$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 not his essence, but his highest attribute. Brahman is all-embracing, all-pervading, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful, the opposite and the enemy of all that is evil. The external world of our experience and individual souls are not the baseless fabric of a troubled dream, but constitute the body of the Lord, of which he is the inner ruler. The unity of Brahman is therefore not a simplicity that excludes all distinctions, but a systematic unity which embraces them all. The passages in the Upanishads which seem to contradict this view - the teachings on which the absolutist Vedanta of Cankara is based - refer, according to Ramanuja, to the periods of world-involution, when matter and souls subsist in Brahman in a germinal state; matter being "unevolved," and without those qualities by which it is empirically known, and the intelligence of disembodied souls being in a state of contraction, or non-manifestation. When this period, which we may call a resting-stage, is over, the world is created again by the will of God; the "unevolved" matter evolves and assumes the qualities with which we are familiar; the intelligence of souls expands; they are united to material bodies according to their deserts in former existences, and the round of death and birth begins again. [Footnote 1: It is now generally admitted that Ramanuja is closer to the sense of the sutras than Cankara.] From this endless cycle there is no deliverance by the works of the law; but he who by the study of the Upanishads, by thinking on God and by love to him, seeks the knowledge of Brahman is aided by the grace of the Lord to attain it, and at death such a soul passes by the several stations on the way of the gods to the world of Brahman, and there abides for ever in bliss, sharing all the attributes of Brahman except only his cosmogonic functions. The dualistic philosophy was earlier systematised than the monistic doctrine. For a long time, it seems, regarded as heretical because of its divergence from the main tendencies of Brahmanic thought, it was later counted as one of the orthodox systems, which means that it gained currency among the Brahmans and was fortified with proof-texts from the Upanishads; and not only the epic but the law-books plainly show that in the early centuries of our era it was widely accepted. The essential features of the Sankhya system have been briefly set forth above. ^1 It is a pluralistic realism, recognising on the one side an eternal universal matter, on the other eternal individual souls. [Footnote 1: See p. 277.] The primary substance is a subtle matter, not perceptible by the keenest sense; its existence is proved by the necessity of positing an ultimate uncaused, or, more exactly, a producer that is not a product. This substance is one, infinite, and eternal. It is composed of three constituents, the upsetting of whose equilibrium - occasioned by the proximity of souls, as iron is drawn to a magnet without the magnet's doing anything to draw it - is the cause of the evolution of worlds, and whose presence in varying proportion gives their character to all things. The soul is eternal and unchangeable; it is in its essence spiritual, pure intelligence; no attributes or qualities can be ascribed to it; it is a kind of monad absolute. Not only perception and sensation, but all psychical processes and experiences, including the self-consciousness which refers these phenomena to an ego, are not affections or activities of the soul, but functions of a psychical mechanism, the origin and construction of which are minutely described. This mechanism, which belongs wholly to the realm of the material (prakriti), is not an organ or instrument of the soul, nor does it produce impressions on the soul; nor, finally, is there a psycho-physical parallelism between the two. The soul is entirely unaffected by what thus goes on about it. In the "evolved," or actual, state of the universe the absolute soul is always associated with a psychical mechanism, and with an ethereal body composed of subtle material elements which in turn produce the common matter of which bodies consist. The source and substance of the misery of life, the ground of the endless succession of rebirths, is that the soul confounds itself, the true self, with the empirical self thus constituted, mistakenly imagining that it is actor or sufferer in the tragedy of existence, as though a crystal on which the image of a red hibiscus flower falls should deem that it was itself red. The salvation of the soul is the knowledge of itself as metaphysical, not as empirical ego. This dissociation makes an end at once of suffering and of the doing which is the germ of future suffering: "It is not I, it is not mine." When the residuum of deeds done in the time of ignorance is exhausted, the gross body dissolves into the earthly elements; the ethereal body, the psychical mechanism, the individuating principle which manifests itself in self-consciousness, and the emanated intelligence, return into the "unevolved" state of the primal substance out of which they sprang; and the soul remains for ever the absolute monad soul it really is, subject without object, pure spiritual intelligence without consciousness, as in the bliss of an eternal dreamless sleep. This emancipation cannot be achieved by works; the Vedic offerings and ceremonies have not even a paedagogic use, nor do they lead to a lower and temporary blessedness in the heavens of the gods, as in the Vedanta; the whole "work branch" of the Brahmanic religion is rejected. Deeds of humanity and charity do not further a man in the way of salvation; for deeds, good as well as bad, must bear their appropriate fruit in another embodiment. Only philosophy conducts to the goal. The guidance of a teacher who has attained salvation in this life is of great use, but the knowledge itself is an intuition, not a tradition nor a conclusion of reason. Whereas the Brahmanic Vedanta restricts salvation to the three high castes, whose members alone can fulfil the condition of Veda study, the Sankhya, like the great heresies, excludes no class or condition of men; the Cudra can achieve emancipation as well as the Brahman. The system is highly intellectualistic; it undertakes to solve the problem of life by purely rational means. But it was far too profound and abstruse for the ordinary mind, and many who accepted it in theory sought a shorter and surer road to the saving intuition of the soul's true nature, and found it in the teaching and practice of Yoga. The name and thing are far older than the philosophical systems; in the later Upanishads it appears as a means of realising the unity of the soul with the universal soul, Brahman, and the essential features of the Yoga method already appear in these texts; but the systematised Yoga of Patanjali (second century B. C.) ^1 attaches itself to the Sankhya, and accordingly presents itself as a means of realising the isolation of the soul from all that is not self, the whole realm of material reality. It is an interesting evidence of the rising tide of Hindu theism that the Yoga Sutras, while adopting the atheistic metaphysics of the Sankhya, introduce, illogically and superfluously, an otiose personal god. This god is not employed to account for the origin of matter and souls, nor for their association; he neither requites men's deeds nor delivers them from the inexorable natural law of retribution; nor, finally, is salvation a return to him and union with him; he is at most a paradigm of a blissful soul untouched by the evils of ignorance, egoism, love, hate, and attachment to life, or by deeds and their consequences. [Footnote 1: If Patanjali be identified with the grammarian. A recent critic dates the Yoga Sutras in the fifth century A. D.] The essence of the Yoga, as defined in the sutras, is the suppression of the intellectual functions (the psychical apparatus and all its operations belonging, it will be remembered, to the sphere of the non-ego - Prakriti); only so is the emancipation of the ego to be achieved. The method has eight stages. The first two, the observance of five prohibitions and five commandments, are not essentially different from the moral and ascetic discipline of other Indian ways of salvation. To these succeed the cultivation of postures and the regulation of breathing - in later hand-books of the Hatha-Yoga thirty-two salutary postures are enumerated and illustrated, and breathing exercises practicable only in the mythical anatomy of the Hindus. The retraction of the senses follows, compared to a tortoise drawing his head and limbs back into his shell. So far the external stages. The higher discipline comprises the binding of the thoughts, concentrated meditation, and absorption. By the last a trance is meant, in which the absolute isolation of the soul is realised. In short, the Yoga is an elaborate method, partly physiological and partly psychological, of inducing abnormal psychical states. In freeing himself completely from the natural world with its laws and from the sphere of natural causation altogether, the Yogin becomes, logically, a supernatural being endowed with all manner of occult powers which, because they transcend the category of cause and effect, we call magical; these fruits of his efforts are detailed at length in the sutras. Marvellous tales are told of the performances of some of the practitioners of these arts. There are three other philosophical systems which are classed as orthodox because they acknowledge the authority of the Vedas. The Mimansa is related to the works prescribed in the Veda, that is, the ritual and ceremonial elements in it, as the Vedanta to the knowledge revealed in its philosophy, and is largely occupied with a casuistic discussion of the fruits, or benefits, accruing from observing the various rites and ceremonies. The Nyaya is essentially a system of logic and eristic; the Vaiceshika an atomistic philosophy of nature. In opposition to all these schools stood the Carvakas, thoroughgoing materialists, who regarded the soul (intellect) as a mere product of the combination of the four elements which constituted the body, as intoxicating spirits are a product of fermentation. There is, therefore, no soul distinct from the animated body, which is the real ego; and when the body is dissolved at death the soul ceases to be; there is nothing beyond this life to hope or fear. The Vedas are drivel, and dishonest drivel at that, the Brahmans a brainless and unmanly lot, who make their living by preying on the superstitions of their fellows. The pleasure of the senses is the highest good, the true end of human life, and the wise man will not let himself be kept back from these pleasures by the fact that earthly pleasures are accompanied by pain; the art of living consists in taking the pleasures and leaving the pains; as, when a man eats, he rejects the scales and bones of fish and the husks of rice - he does not give up eating because fish have bones and rice has husks! The Carvakas have been called by other names indicative of their opinions, such as Nastikas, that is, those who say (of the soul) na asti (non est), and Lokayatas, those who do not look beyond this world. Their views were revived in more recent times by a sect who named themselves Cunyavadins, or nihilists, their one comprehensive doctrine being, all is emptiness. "Theism and atheism, Maya and Brahma, all is false, all is error." Heaven and earth, sun and moon, the gods, religion, the teacher and his pupil, "the individual and the species, the temple and the god, the observance of ceremonial rites and the muttering of prayers, all is emptiness. Speech, hearing, and discussion are emptiness, and substance itself is no more." Virtue and vice are equally unreal. "Take during the few days of your life what the world offers you. Enjoy your own share, and give some of it to others." Hindus and Moslems are two leaves of one tree; these call their teachers Mollahs, those term them Pandits - two pitchers of one clay!