Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One.
Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial

2.B.4. A Genealogy of the Philosophic Enlightenment in Ancient India

Chapter 3: The Upanishads
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Copyright 2003, 2004 by Lawrence Chin. All rights reserved.

The definitive transition from (Brahmanic) myth to philosophy is accomplished with the Upanishads, the foundation of Hindu philosophy, which comprise around 112 of them and "known by another name, Vedanta, as they are believed to be the last portions of the Vedas (veda-anta, end)". (Dasgupta, ibid., p. 30) The transition may also be called a shift from the first mode to the second mode of salvation since the divine source has figured somewhat ambiguously in the Rig-Veda as with Visvakarman, who "is wise, energetic, the creator, the disposer, and the highest object of intuition... He who is our father, our creator, disposer, who knows all spheres and creatures, who alone assigns to the gods their names, to him the other creatures resort for instruction." (Ibid.) The salvational mode, usually remaining buried in mythic consciousness, had thus already been differentiated in the late Veda. It may be said that such monotheistic tendency as the precursor of the first mode co-existed vaguely with the tendency of the second mode, so that the transition to the "absolute monism" (to use textbook terminology) of the Upanishads was not like the development of mysticism in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. "In the Upanishads however, the position is entirely changed and the centre of interest there is not in a creator from outside but in the self... There is no relation here of the worshipper and the worshipped and no prayers are offered to it, but the whole quest is of the highest truth, and the true self of man is discovered as the greatest reality": the second mode. (Ibid., p. 33)

The transmutation of the mythic into the metaphysic, correlative with this definitive triumph of the second mode over the first, has earlier been noted in connection with Aranyaka. Both movements converge at their end-point in the anamnesis of the Brahman.

"The fundamental idea which runs through the early Upanishads is that underlying the exterior world of change there is an unchangeable reality [Brahman] which is identical with that which underlies the essence of man [Atman]" (Dasgupta, ibid., p. 42). This means that Brahman is the eternally conserved substrate of existence called for by the memory of Conservation, and that salvation -- the negation of limited temporo-spatial existence according to the second law of thermodynamics -- consists in the conservation of the self back into this substrate as source which is accomplished the moment when one eliminates the illusion of the self, a self distinct from the substrate, from Being: the enlightened state of mind. This enlightened state of mind is the same as Parmenides' to gar auto noein estin te kai einai.

The Upanishads is thus full of stories of attempts at anamnesis of the Brahman as the eternally conserved source of being. Such definitive commencement of the philosophic (the attainment to the higher level of the functional perspective) within the mythic substratum (the lower level) is marked "with the earnestness and enthusiasm of the sages. They run from place to place with great eagerness in search of a teacher competent to instruct them about the nature of Brahman. Where is Brahman? What is his nature?" (Ibid., p. 43.) (Today, we would call Brahman "energy".) The beginning of the process is fraught with confusions due to the incomplete extrication from the mythic mode which is unable to see beyond things, to articulate Being qua Being rather than in terms of beings, or Conservedness as such rather than in terms of what is conserved. "The whole process of Upanishad thought shows that the magic power of sacrifice as associated with Rita (unalterable law) was being abstracted from the sacrifices and conceived as the supreme power... [The search for Brahman] was at first only imperfectly realized. [In the stories, the early seekers] identified it with the dominating power of the natural objects of wonder, the sun, the moon, etc., with bodily and mental functions and with various symbolic representations, and deluded themselves for a time with the idea that these were satisfactory" (ibid., p. 37). The transit from myth to philosophy (after already the disengagement of the salvational mode within myth) is, as said, the same as the triumph of the second mode over the first: "The sages in the Upanishads had already started with the idea that there was a supreme controller or essence presiding over man and the universe. But what was its nature? Could it be identified with any of the deities of Nature, was it a new deity or was it no deity at all?" (ibid., p. 43.) The inability to break through to a total abstraction of Being per se which results in the explication of Being in terms of beings, the identification of the conserved substrate in terms of one of the non-conserved worldly things, is like the early Ionians such as Thales and Anaximenes who attempt to identify the arche as one of the four elements. Similarly, if the speculation remains entirely within the bounds of myth, this process of the differentiation of consciousness is only to end in summodeism or monotheism. Prana (vital breath), "superior to the other organs, such as the eye or ear" and on which "all other functions depend", is meditated upon as the Brahman, the source of being. And "owing to the presence of the exalting characters of omnipresence and eternality akasa (space) is mediated upon as Brahman. So also manas and Aditya (sun) are mediated upon as Brahman." (Ibid., p. 43) "But as these were gradually found inadequate, they came to the final solution, and the doctrine of the inner self of man as being the highest truth the Brahman originated." (Ibid., p. 37)

The lesson for the seekers was that "by whatever means they tried to give a positive and definite content of the ultimate reality, the Brahman, they failed. Positive definitions were impossible. They could not point out what the Brahman was like in order to give an utterance to that which was unutterable; they could only say that it was not like aught that we find in experience." (Ibid., p. 44) Brahman is like Dao, "The Dao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Dao", because the source of being, the conserved substrate of existence is not-a-being and undifferentiated as yet. "Yajnavalkya said 'He the atman is not this, nor this (neti neti). He is inconceivable, for he cannot be conceived, unchangeable, for he is not changed, untouched, for nothing touches him..." (Ibid.) This substrate as the "total amount", immutable because of the law of Conservation, as yet of immanent philosophy, is to be conceived entirely pure, as the Absolute Being of traditional metaphysics, by the time of the Vedanta of Sankara. The purity of the conception is already visible: "He is asat, non-being, for the being which Brahman is, is not to be understood as such being as is known to us by experience; yet he is being, for he alone is supremely real, for the universe subsists by him." The non-being of Being is its not-a-being-ness. "We ourselves are he, and yet we know not what he is.... That which is inaudible, intangible, invisible, indestructible, which cannot be tasted, nor smelt, eternal, without beginning or end, greater than the great (mahat), the fixed. [Now the second mode of salvation:] He who knows it is released from the jaws of death... When Bahva was questioned by Vaskali, he expounded the nature of Brahman to him by maintaining silence -- 'Teach me,' said Vaskali, 'most reverent sir, the nature of Brahman.' Bhava however remained silent. But when the question was put forth a second or third time he answered, 'I teach you indeed but you do not understand; the Atman is silence.' [Sankara on Brahmasutra]... neti neti... We cannot describe it by any positive content..." (Ibid., p. 45) As with the Daoist and especially the Ch'an Buddhist, not-a-being-ness makes the source ineffable. "Hence the First Principle [of Ch'an Buddhism] is by its very nature inexpressible... In these records [of the sayings of masters] we often find that when a student ventured to ask some question about the fundamental principles of Buddhism, he would often be given a beating by his Ch'an master, or some quite irrelevant answer. He might, for example, be told that the price of a certain vegetable was then three cents... But his purpose is simply to let the student know that what he asks about is not answerable. Once he understands that, he understands a great deal." (Fung, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, p. 257)

The knowledge, or rather the understanding of Brahman, by which salvation is possible is a process of "crossing over", which is why the salvational equation Atman = Brahman is to be realized rather than given as obvious. "But what is the inmost essence of man? The self of man involves an ambiguity, as it is used in a variety of senses. Thus so far as man consists of the essence of food (i.e. physical parts...) he is called annamaya [anna = food; maya = made of, consisting of]. But behind the sheath of this body there is the other self consisting of the vital breath which is called the self as vital breath (pranamaya atman). Behind this again there is the other self 'consisting of will' called the manomaya atman. This again contains within it the self 'consisting of consciousness' called the vijnanamaya atman. But behind it we come to the final essence the self as pure bliss (anandamaya atman [ananda = bliss]). The texts say: 'Truly he is the rapture; for whoever gets this rapture becomes blissful. For who could live, who could breathe if this space (akasa) was no bliss? For it is he who behaves as bliss. For whoever in that Invisible, Self-surpassing, Unspeakable, Supportless finds fearless support, he really becomes fearless. But whoever finds even a slight difference between himself and this Atman there is fear for him.'" (Taitt. II 7, ibid., p. 46) What is to be saved from in the pursuit of salvation is our necessary addiction to the necessities of life (food, etc.) and ultimately our temporal and spatial delimitations, i.e. the lack, or the absencing of Being to get beings (like ourselves) in the parlance of traditional metaphysics or our very existence as open dissipative structures in that of thermodynamics. Salvation is the negation of the second law of thermodynamics by the first law. Insofar as the second mode of salvation consists in the expurgation of lack or the thermodynamic governance and delimitations from ourselves by finding the divine (Being or eternal Conservedness) within ourselves, we need to cross over all the false selves, those delusions by which we believe in our individuality or separateness and become enslavedly addicted to the pleasures in obtaining the necessities of life, to finally find that divine spark hitherto buried which is the recognition, logical conclusion, that we are already Being or conserved in, i.e. as the substrate Eternal. The delimitations which give rise to individuality and the enslavement to things and pleasures of the senses are simply illusions, maya. The overcoming of these illusions results in a psychological liberation from attachment to the sensibles, wherein lies bliss: the joy of liberation, of fearlessness, which may be characterized, following Plato, as the non-wondering of the soul (a-planetonicity) amidst the distractions of manifold things (so ananda = eudaimonia), or as, following Zhuangzi, non-judgmental and non-craving. It is also recollection (anamnesis) rather than learning of something new. The soul is always already conserved, since nothing is outside of Being or nothing is not in the end conserved. This archetypal second mode of salvation is to reach its consummate form in Sunyavada Buddhism where the entire realm of beings (Being-as-Emergence or the thermodynamic, Heraclitean flux), this cycle of genesis and disappearance called samsara or the chain of dependent origination (paticca-samuppada), subsists only on illusions without reality, the recognition of which fact (enlightenment, Awakening) at once dissolves its entirety.

But the trend of the Upanishads, as it stands and even continuing into Vedanta, does not reach the emptying-out of the Source itself, but stops there, and in this manner remains as the same as Plato (Phaedo). Best illustrative is the story in Chandogya VIII 7 - 12 (Max Mueller's translation, in bold). Pragâpati said: 'The self (atman) which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, which desires nothing but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that is to be searched for, that is to be enquired; he gets all his desires and all worlds who knows that self.'

The Devas (gods) and Asuras (demons) both heard these words, and said: 'Well, let us search for that Self by which, if one has searched it out, all worlds and all desires are obtained.' Thus saying Indra went from the Devas, Virokana from the Asuras, and both, without having communicated with each other, approached Pragâpati, holding fuel in their hands, as is the custom for pupils approaching their master. They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. Then Pragâpati asked them: 'For what purpose have you both dwelt here?'

They replied: 'A saying of yours is being repeated, viz. "the Self which is free from sin... He who has searched out that Self and understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires." Now we both have dwelt here because we wish for that Self.' Now the crossing-over. Pragâpati said to them: 'The person that is seen in the eye, that is the Self. This is what I have said. This is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.' They asked: 'Sir, he who is perceived in the water, and he who is perceived in a mirror, who is he?' He replied: 'He himself indeed is seen in all these.' 'Look at your Self in a pan of water, and whatever you do not understand of your Self, come and tell me.' They looked in the water-pan. Then Pragâpati said to them: 'What do you see?' They said: 'We both see the self thus altogether, a picture even to the very hairs and nails.' Pragâpati said to them: 'After you have adorned yourselves, have put on your best clothes and cleaned yourselves, look again into the water-pan.

They, after having adorned themselves, having put on their best clothes and cleaned themselves, looked into the water-pan. Pragâpati said: 'What do you see?' They said: 'Just as we are, well adorned, with our best clothes and clean, thus we are both there, Sir, well adorned, with our best clothes and clean.' Pragâpati said: 'That is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.' Then both went away satisfied in their hearts. And Pragâpati, looking after them, said: 'They both go away without having perceived and without having known the Self, and whoever of these two, whether Devas or Asuras, will follow this doctrine (upanishad), will perish.'

Now Virokana, satisfied in his heart, went to the Asuras and preached that doctrine to them, that the self (the body) alone is to be worshipped, that the self (the body) alone is to be served, and that he who worships the self and serves the self, gains both worlds, this and the next... But Indra, before he had returned to the Devas, saw this difficulty. As this self (the shadow in the water) is well adorned, when the body is well adorned, well dressed, when the body is well dressed, well cleaned, if the body is well cleaned, that self will also be blind, if the body is blind, lame, if the body is lame, crippled, if the body is crippled, and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see no good in this (doctrine). Taking fuel in his hand he came again as a pupil to Pragâpati... He said: 'Sir, as this self (the shadow) is well adorned, when the body is well adorned,... and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see no good in this (doctrine).'

'So it is indeed, Maghavat,' replied Pragâpati; 'but I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me another thirty-two years.' [After which] Pragâpati said: 'He who moves about happy in dreams, he is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.' Then Indra went away satisfied in his heart. But [then]... he saw this difficulty. Although it is true that that self is not blind, even if the body is blind, nor lame, if the body is lame, though it is true that that self is not rendered faulty by the faults of it (the body), nor struck when it (the body) is struck, nor lamed when it is lamed, yet it is as if they struck him (the self) in dreams, as if they chased him. He becomes even conscious, as it were, of pain, and sheds tears. Therefore I see no good in this. Taking fuel [thus]... he went again as a pupil to Pragâpati... 'Sir, although it is true that that self is not blind even if the body is blind, nor lame, if the body is lame... yet it is as if they struck him (the self) in dreams, as if they chased him... Therefore I see no good in this.'

'So it is indeed, Maghavat... but I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me another thirty-two years.' [After which] Pragâpati said: 'When a man being asleep, reposing, and at perfect rest, sees no dreams, that is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.'

Then Indra went away satisfied in his heart. But [then]... he saw this difficulty. In truth he thus does not know himself (his self) that he is I, nor does he know anything that exists. He is gone to utter annihilation. I see no good in this. Taking fuel... he went again as a pupil to Pragâpati... 'Sir, in that way he does not know himself (his self) that he is I, nor does he know anything that exists... I see no good in this! 'So it is indeed, Maghavat... but I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you, and nothing more than this. Live here another five years.'... [Thus in total] Indra Maghavat lived one hundred and one years as a pupil with Pragâpati. Now the crossing-over finished at the end-point. Pragâpati said to him: 'Maghavat, this body is mortal and always held by death. It is the abode of that Self which is immortal and without body. When in the body (by thinking this body is I and I am this body) the Self is held by pleasure and pain. So long as he is in the body, he cannot get free from pleasure and pain. [thermodynamic delimitations] But when he is free of the body (when he knows himself different from the body), then neither pleasure nor pain touches him. The wind is without body, the cloud, lightning, and thunder are without body (without hands, feet, &c.) Now as these, arising from this heavenly ether (space), appear in their own form, as soon as they have approached the highest light, thus does that serene being, arising from this body, appear in its own form, as soon as it has approached the highest light (the knowledge of Self). He (in that state) is the highest person (uttama pûrusha). He moves about there laughing (or eating), playing, and rejoicing (in his mind), be it with women, carriages, or relatives, never minding that body into which he was born. Like as a horse attached to a cart, so is the spirit (prâna, pragñâtman) attached to this body. Now where the sight has entered into the void (the open space, the black pupil of the eye), there is the person of the eye, the eye itself is the instrument of seeing. He who knows, let me smell this, he is the Self, the nose is the instrument of smelling. He who knows, let me say this, he is the Self, the tongue is the instrument of saying. He who knows, let me hear this, he is the Self, the ear is the instrument of hearing. He who knows, let me think this, he is the Self, the mind is his divine eye. He, the Self, seeing these pleasures (which to others are hidden like a buried treasure of gold) through his divine eye, i. e. the mind, rejoices.'

The Devas who are in the world of Brahman meditate on that Self (as taught by Pragâpati to Indra, and by Indra to the Devas). Therefore all worlds belong to them, and all desires. He who knows that Self and understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires.' Thus said Pragâpati, yea, thus said Pragâpati.

"As the anecdote shows, they sought such a constant and unchangeable essence in man as was beyond the limits of any change." (Dasgupta, ibid., p. 47) The immortality of the soul as in the last argument for it in Phaedo. The negation of the thermodynamic delimitations by becoming the Eternal is then the search within oneself of this Eternal (Brahman) which, as the conserved substrate of all existence, is necessarily in and as oneself also. "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 atman. There is nothing outside the atman, and therefore there is no plurality at all." (Ibid., p. 48) Outside of Being there is only non-Being; outside of the Conserved-always-as-the-same there is nothing. This is the meaning of the doctrine of Maya, that "Brahman alone is real and all else beside him is unreal." (Ibid., p. 50) "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. [Compare the same illustration of consubstantiality in the story "The Treasure House" attributed to Seng-Chao, in "The Passage of Being into Non-Being in Chinese Philosophy."] The essence in man and the essence of the universe are one and the same, and it is Brahman." (Ibid.) In a way atman is like the de ("virtue") of Daodejing, i.e. that which makes something be what it is, the specific mode of manifestation of the substrate in and as this. At this immanentist stage, it is feasible to find for this conserved substratum termed Brahman the exact equivalent among the physical concepts of modern physics, i.e. energy, to which everything in the Universe (space and time included) can be reduced. The equivalence between the metaphysical and physical breaks down only at the transcendental stage, as with Sankara's Vedanta philosophy. "... this Atman has no inner or outer, but consists through and through entirely of knowledge." (Ibid., p. 47) "All limitation is fraught with pain; it is the infinite alone that is the highest bliss... " (Ibid., p. 48) The natural state of existence, of consciousness, however, is the ignorance of the conserved underlying reality (or Being), as illustrated by the story in Khandogya VI. 10. "These rivers, my son, run, the eastern (like the Gangâ) toward the east, the western (like the Sindhu) toward the west. They go from sea to sea (i. e. the clouds lift up the water from the sea to the sky, and send it back as rain to the sea). They become indeed sea. And as those rivers, when they are in the sea, do not know, I am this or that river. In the same manner, my son, all these creatures, when they have come back from the True, know not that they have come back from the True. Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a mosquito, that they become again and again. That which is that subtle essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it." "Yet this world principle is the dearest to us and the highest teaching of the Upanishads is 'That art thou'". (tat tvam asi, Dasgupta, ibid., p. 49) The crossing-over, the overcoming of illusions, anamnesis of origin, the equation Atman = Brahman, or Self-knowledge.

With Self-knowledge minor salvation is achieved, enslavement to manifold world of the senses no longer, the meaning of fearlessness, bliss (ananda = eudaimonia). "The knowledge of the self reveals the fact that all our passions and antipathies, all our limitations of experience, all that is ignoble and small in us, all that is transient and finite in us is false... We are not limited by anything, for we are the infinite; we do not suffer death, for we are immortal. Emancipation thus is not a new acquisition, product, an effect, or result of any action, but it always exists as the Truth of our nature. We are always emancipated and always free. We do not seem to be so and seem to suffer rebirth and thousands of other troubles only because we do not know the true nature of the self. Thus it is that the true knowledge of self does not lead to emancipation but is emancipation itself." (Ibid., p. 58) Prelude to Buddhism, one has simply to empty out Brahman (as yet immanent) to get sunya in order to reach the Nibbana of Sunyavada Buddhism. By now "the basic and the oldest formula for defining brahman" as found in Taittiriya II. 1, "as satyam (being, truth), jnanam (consciousness, knowledge), and anantam/anandam (infinite, bliss)" can be understood.1 "Emancipation is the natural and only goal of man simply because it represents the true nature and essence of man. It is the realization of our own nature that is called emancipation." (Ibid., p. 58) Thus is asserted the triumph of the spiritual meaning of life over the material. The empirical world of things, the dissipative function of life through the immersion in it with all the attendant pains and pleasures, the thermodynamic (temporal and spatial) delimitations -- this flux is only an illusion, and our capabilities, our nature is not exhausted by the material meaning of life anchored in it, but, far from it, only by the spiritual meaning of life: the recognition of the self in the source and the source in the self: enlightenment, awakening. This minor salvation as the fearlessness during life -- the relinquishing, due to knowledge of the self as already conserved as all is, of attachment to the temporal world and the material meaning of life as illusion -- then guarantees the major salvation after life, as yet conceived in mythic terms, the doctrine of transmigration of the soul.

"In the Upanishads... we find a clear development in the direction of transmigration [started in Veda] in two distinct stages. In the one the Vedic idea of a recompense in the other world is combined with the doctrine of transmigration, whereas in the other the doctrine of transmigration comes to the forefront in supersession of the idea of a recompense in the other world. Thus it is said that those who performed charitable deeds or such public works as the digging of wells, etc., follow after death the way of the fathers (pitriyana), in which the soul after death enters first into smoke, then into night, the dark half of the month, etc., and at last reaches the moon; after a residence there as long as the remnant of his good deeds remains he descends again through ether, wind, smoke, mist, cloud, rain, herbage, food and seed, and through the assimilation of food by man he enters the womb of the mother and is born again. Here we see that the soul had not only a recompense in the world of the moon, but was re-born again in this world." These correspond to those that in Phaedo are popularly regarded as just and wise men, who do good out of habit and training but without real understanding (justice of the Older Generation or the justice of anxiety). "The other way is the way of gods (devayana), meant for those who cultivate faith and asceticism (tapas). Those souls at death enter successively into flame, day, bright half of the month, bright half of the year, sun, moon, lightning, and then finally into Brahman never to return." (Ibid., p. 54; Khandogya V 10) The eternal extrication from the thermodynamic flux through conservation back into the substrate: major salvation.

The second, more abstract stage, as expressed by Yajnavalkya: "Just as a goldsmith taking a small bit of gold, gives to it a newer and fairer form, so the soul after destroying this body and removing ignorance fashions a newer and fairer form as of the Pitris, the Gandharvas, the gods, of Prajapati or Brahma or any other being... As he acts and behaves so he becomes, good by good deeds, bad by bad deeds, virtuous by virtuous deeds and vicious by vice. The man is full of desires. As he desires so he wills, as he wills so he works, as the work is done so it happens... Having reaped the full fruit (lit. gone to the end) of the karma that he does here, he returns back to this world for doing karma. So it is the case with those who have desires. He who has no desires, who had no desires, who has freed himself from all desires, is satisfied in his desires and in himself, his senses do not go out. He being Brahma attains Brahmahood. Thus the verse says, when all the desires that are in his heart are got rid of, the mortal becomes immortal and attains Brahma here." (Cited by Dasgupta, ibid., p. 55) Dasgupta explains: "The root of all this [rebirth] is the desire [kama] of the self and the consequent fruition of it through will and act [i.e. attachment to the material meaning of life]. When the self continues to desire and act, it reaps the fruit and comes again to this world for performing acts.... All the course of these rebirths is effected by the self itself by its own desires, and if it ceases to desire, it suffers no rebirth and becomes immortal. The most distinctive feature of this doctrine is this, that it refers to desires as the cause of rebirth and not karma. Karma only comes as the connecting link between desires and rebirth -- for it is said that whatever a man desires he wills, and whatever he wills he acts." (ibid., p. 56) This why with Ch'an Buddhists intentionless actions do not produce karma. "Thus it is said in another place [Mundaka III, 2.2.] 'he who knowingly desires is born by his desires in those places (accordingly), but for him whose desires have been fulfilled and who has realized himself, all his desires vanish here." (Ibid.) Images of things are no longer used in this second stage of conception of Conservation, and rebirth is articulated more in terms of mechanistic cause and effect. "Emancipation or Mukti [Conservation] means in the Upanishads the state of infiniteness that a man attains when he knows his own self and thus becomes Brahman. The ceaseless course of transmigration is only for those who are ignorant. The wise man however who has divested himself of all passions and knows himself to be Brahman [during life], at once becomes Brahman and no bondage of any kind can ever affect him": i.e. after death pull him back from conservedness into life.

Surendranath Dasgupta is of the opinion that "comparing the various systems of Upanishad interpretation we find that the interpretation offered by Sankara very largely represents the view of the general body of the earlier Upanishad doctrines, though there are some which distinctly foreshadow the doctrines of other systems, but in a crude and germinal form. It is thus that Vedanta is generally associated with the interpretation of Sankara and Sankara's system of thought is called the Vedanta system, though there are many other systems which put forth their claim as representing the true Vedanta doctrines." (Ibid., p. 42) For the six Hindu schools of philosophy which descended from Upanishads we shall therefore concentrate only on the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara as the transcendentalist elaboration of Brahman.

Footnote:

1. J. G. Arapura, "Some Special Characteristics of Sat (Being) in Advaita Vedanta", in The Question of Being: East-West Perspective, ed. Mervyn Sprung, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978. "It is the consensus of interpreters that this formula is identical with the later formula sat-cit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss). The latter as a single formula does not, as is well-known, occur in the major Upanishads but appears, as is probably not well-known, in a few of the minor ones, the Vasudeva Upanishad, the two Rama Upanishads, the two Nrsimha Upanishads, and the Muktika Upanishad. However, the tradition has invariably regarded the two formulas as identical." (p. 116) Plato has essentially the same idea, which might as well be expressed as Agathon-noesis-eudaimonia.


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