The Doctrine of the Upanishads:4. Swami Krishnananda

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Monday 25, November 2024, 06:20.
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Scriptures
The Doctrine of the Upanishads:4. 
Swami Krishnananda

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The conception of God in the Upanishads is of special significance. The God of the Upanishads is the Antaryamin, the Indwelling Presence in the Universe. This God is different from the God of the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika philosophies, who is entirely cut off from the universe of manifestation; the God of the Yoga philosophy, who has no intelligible relation to the principles of Purusha and Prakriti, and is not the ultimate goal of the aspirations of individuals; or the God of certain theistic schools, who is different from the manifested universe and the Jivas, though he is considered to be omnipresent and the existence of everything. The God or the Ishvara of the Upanishads is the Absolute-Individual, the only Person or Purusha, whose form is all that was, is and will be, who transcends the threefold time and is beyond spatiality and its concomitants. In this Great God are comprehended the possibilities and the potentialities of all the Jivas; in him are also all the actual forms of the Jivas. He is the Goal of knowledge and power. He is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. He is, to the universe, the highest representative of Satchidananda, Brahman. He is the universe and he is all the individuals. Different from this God, there is no universe, no individuals. Ishvara is Brahman from the cosmic standpoint. Brahman is Reality unrelated. As long as the Absolute is experienced as an object by differentiated individuals, it shall appear as a material universe of changing forms, a not-self contending with the self. Differences cannot be annihilated in individualistic perception. Only the Experience-Whole can reveal the reality of the indivisible Absolute, whose essence and existence is Consciousness, Eternal, without any relation to external appearances.

The Upanishads, it is true, do not give us a systematic account of reality. They are collections of statements of Truth in its various phases. These statements are made not by one but several seers in different Upanishads. We have to study the Upanishads carefully and thoroughly in order to gather a philosophical system from them. It is the genius of Acharaya Shankara that for the first time evolved a consistent system out of the diverse declarations of the Upanishads. It is the argument of Shankara that reason should not be unbridled, but should conform to the intuition expressed in the Upanishads; reason can be made use of till its limit is reached, but beyond this limit the Shrutis or the words of the spiritual preceptor alone are the support. Reason has, therefore, a value, but within certain limits. Tarka (discussion) and Anubhava (experience), Yukti (reason) and Shruti (revelation), logic and intuition, should go hand in hand. As long as it is possible to make use of the power of reason in determining truth, it is one's duty to use it; but when its limit is reached, it should be abandoned. Any further use of it would lead to error and not truth. We cannot conceive of a greater respecter of reason than Shankara, and yet no one could be more conscious of its defects and limitations. Reason and faith in the intuitional declarations together become the royal road to the realisation of Brahman. The lower truths are useful until higher truths are realised. The higher truth includes the lower in a transfigured condition.

An attempt at attaining to the truth of experience takes us through two ideas-the subjective and the objective. The subjective idea considers things as purely mental or idealistic. The universe, according to it, is an externalised form of mind or idea. But, it will be clear that this is not a tenable position. Experience shows that the object of consciousness is not more real or more unreal than the experiencing idea or consciousness. If the idea of the perceiver is to externalise itself as something in the universe, there must be a basis for it. We have objective perception in dream-experience. We have a dream-space, a dream-time and dream-objects. It may be said that all that we perceive in dream is an idea. But, if we critically examine this position, we shall notice that there is something deeper implied in the argument than what is apparent. What is the meaning of dream? It is known that, in dream-experience, there is a dream-subject together with dream-objects. I become the perceiver of the dream-objects in my dream. But is this dreaming individual identical with the waking individual?

I become a subject in dream; and I am a subject in the waking state also. The question that we have to put here is: Is this dreaming individual who is different from the dream-objects the same as the waking individual who is different from the objects of waking experience? If we think carefully over the issue, we will find that they are different from each other. The waking individual contains within himself the dream-subject as well as the dream-objects. It is the waking subject that has externalised his ideas as the dream-subject and his universe. When we wake up we find that not only the dream-universe is not there, but the dream-subject, also, is not there. The dream-subject and the dream-objects are unified in the waking subject. This can give us a clue to the relation of the individual to the universe. Even as the dream-subject is different from the dream-objects, this waking subject is different from the waking universe; but even as the dream-universe is not created by the dream-subject, so the waking universe is not the product of the waking subject. And, even as the subject and the objects in the dream state are resolved into another subject in the waking state, the waking subject and the waking universe are resolved into another subject which is Purushottama or Virat. Ishvara contains in himself all the objects and subjects. The universe is the objectification of the Cosmic or Universal Consciousness, and not of any individual mind.

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Continued

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