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TWO PHASES OF CULTURE
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Upanishads held that the feeling of duality is the sole cause of fear or other miseries. As soon as the cosmic unity is realized, no cause for fear would be left. In course of time the above message was forgotten and the questions of cosmic unity or difference began to be discussed as metaphysical problems purely on the intellectual level. Jainism and Buddhism arose as moral revolutions against the dry ritualism of Brahmans and lifeless authorities of ascetics. They emphasised the moral life based upon a natural order of action and its fruit.
Jaimani in his aphorisms relates that every sentence of the Veda is meant for some action. Consequently the sentences which are merely descriptive without any proposition or negation should be construed with those proposing an action. A sentence without action is futile or useless. Thus the religion of the Vedic period was dominated by action. In the Upanishadic period, the same became introvert and realization of the innerself became the sole object of religions. The Upanishads proposed the path of knowledge and stressed upon meditation.
According to Jainism every individual soul is essentially God or superman possessing infinite knowledge, power and happiness. This nature of the soul is obscured by external matter. Religion means to remove the external obscurance and explore the real-self. Buddhism is actionist in its extreme form. According to it entire universe is a flow or movement. There is nothing stationary or immobile. God in this period was not
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