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Philosophy and Life
then gradually penetrating deeper it is directed toward an internal worldthat is, towards an accounting of the Supreme Soul. The scholar Edward Caird enumerates the three stages of religious development as follows: "We look out before we look in; and we look in before we look up".
This statement verily echoes the above hymn of Katha-Upanisad. The same order of progress is described in the Upanisads also under the titles 'adhibhūta', 'adhideva', 'adhyatma'. And whenever in Upanisads as also elsewhere there occurs a reference to the learnings called lower and higher or worldly and supra-wordly then too there is indicated the very same idea. The man first of all practises the so many worldly learnings commonly called 'lower learning' or 'worldly learning', but he does not rest content with those learnings alone; so proceeding still further he moves in the dire, ction of what is called 'higher learning'. It is this higher learning which is learning-pertaining-to-soul or learning-pertaining-to-Supreme-Soul.
Through anecdotes like those of Narada and Saunaka it is indicated that even after having acquired so many varieties of lower learning the former did not relish them and went to a competent preceptor with a view to acquiring the varieties of higher learning. In the context of these anecdotes the higher variety of learning is just one and that is learning-pertaing-to-soul. One desirous of acquiring learning-pertaining-to-soul seeks to know besides one's nature also the nature of the Supreme Soul, which exists in all or is common to all. Following the wording of the Upanisads concerned Śankarācārya offers the following interpretation: I am conversant with hymns-that is, conversant with the acts to be performed, this meaning that I am conversat with lower branches of learning like Vedas-along-withtheir-meaning. But I am not conversant with soul-that is, 1 am ignorant of higher learning". Ramanuja, while not interpreting the phrase 'lower learning' in a literal sense and indicating that it stands for learning of the form of an indirect knowledge, interprets the phrase higher learning' as direct knowledge. But however might one interpret the phrases in question the net ultimate-conclusion is that there first originated and developed lower branches of learning which have for their chief aim a knowledge of soul not at all or least of all and that it was only later on that the class of knowledge-seekers turned towards higher learning that is, was more and more inclined towards understanding and experiencing the nature of oneself and the Supreme Soul as also the relationship obtaining between the two.
Man's desire for knowledge and the journey-of-knowledge of the form of an effort to satisfy this desire resulted in his undertaking an investigation into three topics. These very three topics viz. the world, soul
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