The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0080/00807.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00807}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter IV}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{brahman
soul
knowledge
upanishads
world
life
vedanta
nor
itself
salvation}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of India
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter IV

The Philosophical Systems

     Relation to the Veda - The Vedanta - Idealistic Monism of Cankara -
Metaphysics: Brahman as the Absolute - Theology: Brahman as Personal God - The
Higher and the Lower Knowledge - The Theistic Vedanta of Ramanuja - The
Pluralistic Realism of the Sankhya - The Yoga - Its Practical Methods - Other
Orthodox Philosophies - Atheistic Materialism.

     In the centuries during which the great heresies were flourishing in
India, and partly in opposition to them, the Brahmanic philosophies were
systematised - the monistic conception of the Upanishads, as the Vedanta; the
dualistic view of the universe with which Jainism and Buddhism have closer
affinity, as the Sankhya.  The Brahma-Sutras of Badarayana as expounded by
Cankara in the eighth century of our era present the Vedanta in the form which
has been most widely accepted in India; the oldest extant text of the rival
system is the Sankhya-Karika.

     The Vedanta professes to be based, not on speculation but on revelation;
it is the teaching of the Veda, specifically of the Upanishads, to which it
refers as irrefragable authority.  The Upanishads, however, proceeding from
many individual thinkers or schools of thought, naturally contain numerous
inconsistencies, not to say contradictions. These inconsistencies were most
keenly felt at the vital point, the nature of the Brahman.  On the one hand
Brahman is, ontologically, absolute being; on the other hand, Brahman is
pantheistically conceived as the ground of being, the soul of the universe, or
theistically as a personal god, the supreme Lord.

     The metaphysics of the Vedanta develops the first of these conceptions,
the higher doctrine of the Upanishads.  Brahman is the sole reality, without
attributes, distinctions, or determinations; of it nothing more can be said
than neti, neti - it is not anything that you can say of it - pure being.
This one reality is not material but spiritual, it is absolute intelligence;
intelligence is not an attribute of Brahman, which would be irreconcilable
with its simple unity, but its essence.  Its unknowableness lies in the fact
that it is universal subject without object; and for the same reason
consciousness, which implies the duality of subject and object, cannot be
predicated of it.  The true self of man (atman) is identical with the
universal Brahman (paramatman, the supreme self) - "That art Thou!" The world
of appearance owes its seeming existence to illusion (maya), as when our
senses are deceived by the art of a conjurer.  The illusion is objectively
conceived; Brahman is the great magician who projects it.  Man's individual
consciousness is an illusion of the same kind.  The essence of the illusion is
man's failure to distinguish the true self from the faculties of mind and
sense, the principle of life, the subtle body, and the substratum of moral
character, which seem to make him a person distinct from other persons and
things, an individual ego.

     Yet although the phenomenal world and the empirical ego are in a
metaphysical sense non-existent, a kind of reality is allowed to them, as the
experiences of a dream are real experiences though no reality corresponds to
them; ^1 but when nescience (avidya) is overcome, the semblance of reality
vanishes as the dream-reality when one awakes.  So long as the state of
nescience subsists, the round of death and birth continues; the only salvation
is the knowledge that the phenomenal world and the individual soul have no
true existence, the knowledge of the identity of Brahman-Atman.  Therewith the
thrall of deed is free, the round of death and birth is ended - "it cometh not
again." He is "saved in this life" (jivanmukta); and when the residue of
former deed is exhausted, the substrata of existence are dissolved into the
elements, and the soul is finally and for ever Brahman.

[Footnote 1: Cankara distinguishes the unreality of our waking world from that
of dreams: the latter is not co-ordinated in time, space, and causality.]

     Salvation cannot be gained by the works of the law nor by the striving
for moral perfection; knowledge alone saves.  This knowledge is the opposite
of all empirical knowledge in that in it the distinction of subject and object
vanishes.  It is not a doctrine that can be taught and accepted, even on the
authority of scripture, nor can it be reached by any effort of thought.  It is
an experience that comes like the new birth in the Gospel of John to him that
is born of the Spirit.  There are, indeed, means which help put a man in the
frame to attain this knowledge, but it is not the effect of these means, for
the Atman is superior to the category of cause and effect.

     There are, however, as has already been observed, numerous passages in
the Upanishads in which Brahman appears, not as attributeless being, but as
the source of all light, the life from which all beings spring, the principle
of order in the universe, or as a personal god, the supreme Lord.  The latter
conception, relatively infrequent in the Upanishads, has a great place in the
systematic Vedanta.  Brahman is the creator of the world - its material as
well as its efficient cause - and the ruler of the world; the lot of the soul
in the round of rebirth is appointed by him in accordance with the deeds of a
former life; it is by his grace that the saving knowledge comes to men.  When
the Upanishads thus endow Brahman with various perfections, it is - so Cankara
interprets - as an object of adoration, and by way of accommodation to the
limitations of men's understanding. ^1 This lower knowledge of the Brahman
"with attributes" has its reward.  The soul that has attained it takes at
death the way of the gods to heavenly bliss, and progresses by stages toward
true knowledge and final deliverance; it is vastly better off than those who,
with no knowledge of Brahman at all, seek their good by the way of works, the
old Vedic sacrifices and observances, and fare when life is over by the "way
of the fathers" to the reward of their offerings in the moon; while those who
have neither knowledge nor good works atone for their misdeeds in hell, thence
to return to earth as beasts or as men of castes reckoned lower than beasts.

[Footnote 1: Cankara's distinction of the two Brahmans is more explicitly
anticipated in the Upanishads: "There are two manifestations of Brahman, the
one personal, the other impersonal; the personal is unreal, the impersonal is
real." (Maitri-Upanishad, VI, 3; cf. Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, II, 3, 1.)]

     The lower, theological, knowledge cannot, however, bring salvation; for
at bottom it is not knowledge but ignorance which ascribes attributes and
personality to Brahman, and sets him, as creator and ruler, over against a
world of finite reality, and, above all, conceives him as another and a
stranger to the soul itself.

     A radically different system, also in the form of a commentary on the
Vedanta-Sutras of Badarayana, ^1 was expounded by Ramanuja (ca. 1100). The
author belonged to the Bhagavatas, or Pancaratras, an ancient - probably
pre-Buddhistic - sect which developed the pantheistic-theistic ideas in the
Upanishads into a philosophical theology.  In the evolution of Hinduism the
Bhagavatas identified their supreme lord with Vishnu, and contributed not a
little, it may be surmised, to the higher teachings of Vishnuism.  Ramanuja
rejects Cankara's distinctions of a higher and a lower Brahman and the
corresponding discrimination of higher and lower knowledge.  Brahman is the
one reality, but so far from being a metaphysical absolute, devoid of all
attributes, he is endowed with all perfections; intelligence is no