Search For Absolute In Neo Vedanta

Author(s): George B Burch
Publisher: George B Burch

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CONTEMPORARY CURRENTS
Tufts
.
Search for the Absolute in Neo-Vedanta: The Philosophy of K. C. Bhattacharyya
George B. Burch
SEARCH FOR the Absolute is the central concern of Vedanta
philosophy. All sources of knowledge-reason, revelation, experience—are employed for its speculative apprehension, and all ways of spiritual progress-doing, loving, knowing-are utilized for its practical attainment. The monist or non-dualist (advaita) school of Vedanta philosophy differs from the other schools (dualist, qualified non-dualist, and dualistic non-dualist) in that search for the Absolute is its exclusive concern, all else being rejected as illusion. In this school practical philosophy is based strictly on knowing and speculative philosophy, conceived as the rational analysis of ordinary experience, is based strictly on reason. The Absolute is sought in experience, not in analysis of abstract being, but it is sought by means of reason. The authority of the revealed Upanishads is accepted only in the sense of faith seeking understanding, a clue and psychological aid to truth but not a dogmatic basis from which to infer it. The possibility of mystical experience is admitted as of merely religious, not philosophical or cognitive, significance. Moksha, ineffable intuition of the Self as Absolute Reality, transcends reason to be sure, but it also transcends
1 I am indebted to the Trustees of Tufts College for the sabbatical leave of absence, to the Rockefeller Foundation for the financial grant, to Visvabharati University for the hospitality, and to Professor (now Vice-Chancellor) Kalidas Bhattacharyya for the instruction which made possible the study on which this article is based.
2 Vedanta epistemologists also recognize three other sources of knowledge analogy, assumption, and negation. K. C. Bhattacharyya analyzes the six ways of knowing in his Studies in Vedantism (I 71-90).