Outlines of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007308
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: M Hiriyanna
Publisher: George Allen and Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1932
Total Pages: 419
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 40 MB

Page 56

OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY when prāna, which as vital breath stands for an important aspect of the individual, is universalized and, as cosmic Präna, is represented as the life of the world (p. 41). This notion of parallelism between the individual and the world runs throughout the literature of the later Vedic period and is found in the Upanişads as well. The practice of viewing the whole world as a cosmic ir had its influence on the conception of ātman and transformed what was but a psychical principle into a world-principle. Atman, which as the soul or self is the inmost truth of man, became as the cosmic, soul or self the inmost truth of the world. When the universe came once to be conceived in this manner, its self became the only self, the other selves being regarded as in some way identical with it.
Though this process secures the unity of the self, it does not take us as far as the unity of all Being. For the self in the case of the individual is distinguishable from the not-self such as the body; and the world-self similarly has to be distinguished from its physical embodiment, viz. the material universe. Now there was all along another movement of thought just complementary to the one we have so far sketched. It traced the visible universe to a single source named Brahman. The method there was objective, for it proceeded by analysing the outer world and not by looking inward as in the line of speculation of which atman was the goal. In accordance with the general spirit of Indian speculation, several conceptions were evolved here also each more satisfying than the previous one to account for the universe, and Brahman was the last of the series of solutions. At some stage in the evolution of thought, this primal source of the universe, viz. Brahman, was identified with its inmost essence, viz. ātman. Thus two independent currents of thought-one resulting from the desire to understand the true nature of man and the other, that of the objective world-became blended and the blending led at once to the discovery of the unity for which there had been such a prolonged search. The physical world, which according to the ātman doctrine is only the not-self, now becomes See e.g. Aitaveyve Up. i.
Cf. Taittiriya Up.iii.