History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

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48
The Earlier Upanisads
[CH.
son, brother, wife, or husband, wealth or prosperity. It is for it and by it that things appear dear to us. It is the dearest par excellence, our inmost Atman. All limitation is fraught with pain; it is the infinite alone that is the highest bliss. When a man receives this rapture, then is he full of bliss; for who could breathe, who live, if that bliss had not filled this void (ākāśa)? It is he who behaves as bliss. For when a man finds his peace, his fearless support in that invisible, supportless, inexpressible, unspeakable one, then has he attained peace.
Place of Brahman in the Upanisads.
There is the atman not in man alone but in all objects of the universe, the sun, the moon, the world; and Brahman is this ātman. There is nothing outside the atman, and therefore there is no plurality at all. As from a lump of clay all that is made of clay is known, as from an ingot of black iron all that is made of black iron is known, so when this atman the Brahman is known everything else is known. The essence in man and the essence of the universe are one and the same, and it is Brahman.
Now a question may arise as to what may be called the nature of the phenomenal world of colour, sound, taste, and smell. But we must also remember that the Upanisads do not represent so much a conceptional system of philosophy as visions of the seers who are possessed by the spirit of this Brahman. They do not notice even the contradiction between the Brahman as unity and nature in its diversity. When the empirical aspect of diversity attracts their notice, they affirm it and yet declare that it is all Brahman. From Brahman it has come forth and to it will it return. He has himself created it out of himself and then entered into it as its inner controller (antaryāmin). Here is thus a glaring dualistic trait of the world of matter and Brahman as its controller, though in other places we find it asserted most emphatically that these are but names and forms, and when Brahman is known everything else is known. No attempts at reconciliation are made for the sake of the consistency of conceptual utterance, as Sankara the great professor of Vedanta does by explaining away the dualistic texts. The universe is said to be a reality, but the real in it is Brahman alone. It is on account of Brahman that the fire burns and the wind blows. He is the active principle in the entire universe, and yet the most passive and unmoved. The