Reading section 33

The task of the soul is to free itself from illusion, and thus from bondage. For strictly speaking the bondage does not exist: it is caused by want of discrimination. Like the Vedanta, the Sankhya regards all this troubled life as being, so far as the soul is concerned, mere illusion. But while the Vedanta bids the soul know its identity with Brahman, the Sankhya bids it isolate itself and know that the acts and feelings which seem to be its own have really nothing to do with it. They are for the soul nothing but a spectacle or play originating in its connection with Prakriti, and it is actually said,[750] "Wherefore no soul is bound, or is liberated or transmigrates. It is Prakriti, which has many bodily forms, which is bound, liberated and transmigrates." It is in Buddhi or intellect, which is a manifestation of Prakriti, that the knowledge of the difference between the soul and Prakriti must arise. Thus though the Sankhya reposes on a fundamental dualism, it is not the dualism of good and evil. Soul and matter differ not because the first is good and the second bad, but because the first is unchangeable and the second constantly changing. Matter is often personified as a woman. Her motives are unselfish and she works for the liberation of the soul. "As a dancer after showing herself on the stage ceases to dance, so does Prakriti cease when she has made herself manifest to the soul." That is to say, when a soul once understands that it is distinct from the material world, that world ceases to exist for that particular soul, though of course the play continues for others. "Generous Prakriti, endowed with Gunas, causes by manifold means without benefit to herself, the benefit of the soul, which is devoid of Gunas and makes no return."[751] The condition of the liberated soul, corresponding to the _mokska_ and _nirvana_ of other systems, is described as Kaivalya, that is, complete separation from the material world, but, as among Buddhists and Vedantists, he who has learnt the truth is liberated even before death, and can teach others. He goes on living, just as the wheel continues to revolve for some time after the potter has ceased to turn it. After death, complete liberation without the possibility of rebirth is attained. The Sankhya manuals do not dwell further on the character of this liberation: we only know that the eternal soul is then completely isolated and aloof from all suffering and material things. Liberation is compared to profound sleep, the difference being that in dreamless sleep there is a seed, that is, the possibility of return to ordinary life, whereas when liberation is once attained there is no such return.

Both in its account of the world process and in its scheme of salvation the Sankhya ignores theism in the same way as did the Buddha. Indeed the text-books go beyond this and practically deny the existence of a personal supreme deity. We are told[752] that the existence of God cannot be proved, for whatever exists must be either bound or free and God can be neither. We cannot think of him as bound and yet he cannot be free like an emancipated soul, for freedom implies the absence of desire and hence of the impulse to create. Similarly[753] the consequences of good and evil deeds are due to Karma and not to the government of God. Such a ruler is inconceivable, for if he governs the world according to the action of Karma his existence is superfluous, and if he is affected by selfish motives or desire, then he cannot be free. It is true that these passages speak of there being no proof of God's existence and hence commentators both Indian and European who shrink from atheism represent the Sankhya as suspending judgment. But if a republican constitution duly describes the President and other authorities in whom the powers of government are vested, can we argue that it is not unmonarchical because it does not expressly say there is no king? In the Sankhya there is no more place for a deity than for a king in a republican constitution. Moreover, the Sutras endeavour to prove that the idea of God is inconceivable and self-contradictory and some commentaries speak plainly on this subject.[754] Thus the Sankhya-tattva-kaumudi commenting on Karika 57 argues that the world cannot have been created by God, whether we suppose him to have been impelled by selfishness or kindness. For if God is perfect he can have no need to create a world. And if his motive is kindness, is it reasonable to call into existence beings who while non-existent had no suffering, simply in order to show kindness in relieving them from suffering? A benevolent deity ought to create only happy creatures, not a mixed world like the one we see.[755]

Arguments like this were not condemned by the Brahmans so strongly as we should expect, but they did not like them and though they did not excommunicate the Sankhya in the same way as Buddhism, they greatly preferred a theistic variety of it called Yoga.

The Yoga and Sankhya are mentioned together in the Svetasvatara Upanishad,[756] and the Bhagavad-gita[757] says that he sees truly who sees them as one. The difference lies in treatment rather than in substance. Whereas the Sankhya is mainly theoretical, the principal topic of the Yoga is the cultivation of that frame of mind which leads to emancipation and the methods and exercises proper to this end. Further, the Yoga recognizes a deity. This distinction may seem of capital importance but the god of the Yoga (called Isvara or the Lord) is not its foundation and essence as Brahman is of the Vedanta.[758] Devotion to God is recognized as one among other methods for attaining emancipation and if this particular procedure, which is mentioned in relatively few passages, were omitted, the rest of the system would be unaffected. It is therefore probable that the theistic portions of the Yoga are an addition made under Brahmanic influence. But taking the existing Sutras of the two philosophies, together with their commentaries, it may be said that the Yoga implies most of the Sankhya theory and the Sankhya most of the Yoga practice, for though it does not go into details it prescribes meditation which is to be perfected by regulating the breathing and by adopting certain postures. I have already spoken of the methods and discipline prescribed by the Yoga and need not dwell further on the topic now.

That Buddhism has some connection with the Sankhya and Yoga has often been noticed.[759] Some of the ideas found in the Sankhya and some of the practices prescribed by the Yoga are clearly anterior to Gotama and may have contributed to his mental development, but circumspection is necessary in the use of words like Yoga, Sankhya and Vedanta. If we take them to mean the doctrinal systems contained in certain sutras, they are clearly all later than Buddhism. But if we assume, as we may safely do, that the doctrine is much older than the manuals in which we now study it, we must also remember that when we leave the texts we are not justified in thinking of a system but merely of a line of thought. In this sense it is clear that many ideas of the Sankhya appear among the Jains, but the Jains know nothing of the evolution of matter described by the Sankhya manuals and think of the relation of the soul to matter in a more materialistic way. The notion of the separate eternal soul was the object of the Buddha's persistent polemics and was apparently a popular doctrine when he began preaching. The ascetic and meditative exercises prescribed by the Yoga were also known before his time and the Pitakas do not hide the fact that he received instruction from two Yogis. But though he was acquainted with the theories and practices which grew into the Yoga and Sankhya, he did not found his religion on them for he rejected the idea of a soul which has to be delivered and did not make salvation dependent on the attainment of trances. If there was in his time a systematic Sankhya philosophy explaining the nature of suffering and the way of release, it is strange that the Pitakas contain no criticism of it, for though to us who see these ancient sects in perspective the resemblance of Buddhism to the Sankhya is clear, there can be little doubt that the Buddha would have regarded it as a most erroneous heresy, because it proposes to attain the same objects as his own teaching but by different methods.

Sankhya ideas are not found in the oldest Upanishads, but they appear (though not in a connected form) in those of the second stratum, such as the Svetasvatara and Katha. It therefore seems probable, though not proven, that the origin of these ideas is to be sought not in the early Brahmanic schools but in the intellectual atmosphere non-theistic, non-sacerdotal, but audaciously speculative which prevailed in the central and eastern part of northern India in the sixth century B.C. The Sankhya recognizes no merit in sacrifices or indeed in good works of any kind, even as a preliminary discipline, and in many details is un-Brahmanic. Unlike the Vedanta Sutras, it does not exclude Sudras from higher studies, but states that there are eight classes of gods and five of animals but only one of men. A teacher must have himself attained emancipation, but there is no provision that he must be a Brahman. Perhaps the fables and parables which form the basis of the fourth book of the Sankhya Sutras point to some more popular form of instruction similar to the discourses of the Buddha. We may suppose that this ancient un-Brahmanic school took shape in several sects, especially Jainism and Buddhism, and used the Yoga discipline. But the value and efficacy of that discipline were admitted almost universally and several centuries later it was formulated in the Sutras which bear the name of Patanjali in a shape acceptable to Brahmans, not to Buddhists. If, as some scholars think, the Yoga sutras are not earlier than 450 A.D.[760] it seems probable that it was Buddhism which stimulated the Brahmans to codify the principles and practice of Yoga, for the Yogacara school of Buddhism arose before the fifth century. The Sankhya is perhaps a somewhat similar brahmanization of the purely speculative ideas which may have prevailed in Magadha and Kosala.[761] Though these districts were not strongholds of Brahmanism, yet it is clear from the Pitakas that they contained a considerable Brahman population who must have been influenced by the ideas current around them but also must have wished to keep in touch with other Brahmans. The Sankhya of our manuals represents such an attempt at conciliation. It is an elaboration in a different shape of some of the ideas out of which Buddhism sprung but in its later history it is connected with Brahmanism rather than Buddhism. When it is set forth in Sutras in a succinct and isolated form, its divergence from ordinary Brahmanic thought is striking and in this form it does not seem to have ever been influential and now is professed by only a few Pandits, but, when combined in a literary and eclectic spirit with other ideas which may be incompatible with it in strict logic, it has been a mighty influence in Indian religion, orthodox as well as unorthodox. Such conceptions as Prakriti and the Gunas colour most of the post-Vedic religious literature. Their working may be plainly traced in the Mahabharata, Manu and the Puranas,[762] and the Tantras identify with Prakriti the goddesses whose worship they teach. The unethical character of the Sankhya enabled it to form the strangest alliances with aboriginal beliefs.

Unlike the Sankhya, the Vedanta is seen in its most influential and perhaps most advantageous aspect when stated in its most abstract form. We need not enquire into its place of origin for it is clearly the final intellectual product of the schools which produced the Upanishads and the literature which preceded them, and though it may be difficult to say at what point we are justified in applying the name Vedanta to growing Brahmanic thought, the growth is continuous. The name means simply End of the Veda. In its ideas the Vedanta shows great breadth and freedom, yet it respects the prejudices and proprieties of Brahmanism. It teaches that God is all things, but interdicts this knowledge to the lower castes: it treats rites as a merely preliminary discipline, but it does not deny their value for certain states of life.

The Vedanta is the boldest and the most characteristic form of Indian thought. For Asia, and perhaps for the world at large, Buddhism is more important but on Indian soil it has been vanquished by the Vedanta, especially that form of it known as the Advaita. In all ages the main idea of this philosophy has been the same and may be summed up in the formula that the soul is God and that God is everything. If this formula is not completely accurate[763]--and a sentence which both translates and epitomizes alien metaphysics can hardly aspire to complete accuracy--the error lies in the fact to which I have called attention elsewhere that our words, God and soul, do not cover quite the same ground as the Indian words which they are used to translate.

Many scholars, both Indian and European, will demur to the high place here assigned to the Advaita philosophy. I am far from claiming that the doctrine of Sankara is either primitive or unchallenged. Other forms of the Vedanta existed before him and became very strong after him. But so far as a synthesis of opinions which are divergent in details can be just, he gives a just synthesis and elaboration of the Upanishads. It is true that his teaching as to the higher and lower Brahman and as to Maya has affinities to Mahayanist Buddhism, and that later sects were repelled by the severe and impersonal character of his philosophy, but the doctrine of which he is the most thorough and eminent exponent, namely that God or spirit is the only reality and one with the human soul, asserts itself in almost all Hindu sects, even though their other doctrines may seem to contradict it.

This line of thought is so persistent and has so many ramifications, that it is hard to say what is and what is not Vedanta. If we take literature as our best guide we may distinguish four points of importance marked by the Upanishads, the Brahma-Sutras, Sankara and Ramanuja.

I have said something elsewhere of the Upanishads. These works do not profess to form a systematic whole (though later Hinduism regards them as such) and when European scholars speak of them collectively, they generally mean the older members of the collection. These may justly be regarded as the ancestors of the Vedanta, inasmuch as the tone of thought prevalent in them is incipient Vedantism. It rejects dualism and regards the universe as a unity not as plurality, as something which has issued from Brahman or is pervaded by Brahman and in any case depends on Brahman for its significance and existence. Brahman is God in the pantheistic sense, totally disconnected with mythology and in most passages impersonal. The knowledge of Brahman is salvation: he who has it, goes to Brahman or becomes Brahman. More rarely we find statements of absolute identity such as "Being Brahman, he goes to Brahman."[764] But though the Upanishads say that the soul goes to or is Brahman, that the world comes from or is Brahman, that the soul is the whole universe and that a knowledge of these truths is the one thing of importance, these ideas are not combined into a system. They are simply the thoughts of the wise, not always agreeing in detail, and presented as independent utterances, each with its own value.

One of the most important of these wise men is Yajnavalkya,[765] the hero of the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad and a great name, to whom are ascribed doctrines of which he probably never heard. The Upanishad represents him as developing and completing the views of Sandilya and Uddalaka Aruni. The former taught[766] that the Atman or Self within the heart, smaller than a grain of mustard seed, is also greater than all worlds. The brief exposition of his doctrine which we possess starts from and emphasizes the human self. This self is Brahman. The doctrine of Uddalaka[767] takes the other side of the equation: he starts with Brahman and then asserts that Brahman is the soul. But though he teaches that in the beginning there was one only without a second, yet he seems to regard the subsequent products of this Being as external to it and permeated by it. But to Yajnavalkya is ascribed an important modification of these doctrines, namely, that the Atman is unknowable and transcendental.[768] It is unknowable because since it is essentially the knowing subject it can be known only by itself: it can never become the object of knowledge and language is inadequate to describe it. All that can be said of it is _neti_, _neti_, that is no, no: it is not anything which we try to predicate of it. But he who knows that the individual soul is the Atman, becomes Atman; being it, he knows it and knows all the world: he perceives that in all the world there is no plurality. Here the later doctrine of Maya is adumbrated, though not formulated. Any system which holds that in reality there is no plurality or, like some forms of Mahayanist Buddhism, that nothing really exists implies the operation of this Maya or illusion which makes us see the world as it appears to us. It may be thought of as mere ignorance, as a failure to see the universe as it really is: but no doubt the later view of Maya as a creative energy which fashions the world of phenomena is closely connected with the half-mythological conceptions found in the Pancaratra and Saiva philosophy which regard this creative illusion as a female force--a goddess in fact--inseparably associated with the deity.

The philosophy of the Upanishads, like all religious thought in India, is avowedly a quest of happiness and this happiness is found in some form of union with Brahman. He is perfect bliss, and whatever is distinct from him is full of suffering.[769] But this sense of the suffering inherent in existence is less marked in the older Upanishads and in the Vedanta than in Buddhism and the Sankhya. Those systems make it their basis and first principle: in the Vedanta the temperament is the same but the emphasis and direction of the thought are different. The Sankhya looks at the world and says that salvation lies in escape into something which has nothing in common with it. But the Vedantist looks towards Brahman, and his pessimism is merely the feeling that everything which is not wholly and really Brahman is unsatisfactory. In the later developments of the system, pessimism almost disappears, for the existence of suffering is not the first Truth but an illusion: the soul, did it but know it, is Brahman and Brahman is bliss. So far as the Vedanta has any definite practical teaching, it does not wholly despise action. Action is indeed inferior to knowledge and when knowledge is once obtained works are useless accessories, but the four stages of a Brahman's career, including household life, are approved in the Vedanta Sutras, though there is a disposition to say that he who has the necessary religious aptitudes can adopt the ascetic life at any time. The occupations of this ascetic life are meditation and absorption or samadhi, the state in which the meditating soul becomes so completely blended with God on whom it meditates, that it has no consciousness of its separate existence.[770]

As indicated above the so-called books of Sruti or Vedic literature are not consecutive treatises, but rather _responsa prudentium_, utterances respecting ritual and theology ascribed to poets, sacrificers and philosophers who were accepted as authorities. When these works came to be regarded as an orderly revelation, even orthodoxy could not shut its eyes to their divergences, and a comprehensive exegesis became necessary to give a conspectus of the whole body of truth. This investigation of the meaning of the Veda as a connected whole is called Mimamsa, and is divided into two branches, the earlier (purva) and the later (uttara). The first is represented by the Purva-mimamsa-sutras of Jaimini[771] which are called earlier (purva) not in the chronological sense but because they deal with rites which come before knowledge, as a preparatory stage. It is interesting to find that Jaimini was accused of atheism and defended by Kumarila Bhatta. The defence is probably just, for Jaimini does not so much deny God as ignore him. But what is truly extraordinary, though characteristic of much Indian literature about ritual, is that a work dealing with the general theory of religious worship should treat the deity as an irrelevant topic. The Purva-mimamsa discusses ceremonies prescribed by an eternal self-existing Veda. The reward of sacrifice is not given by God. When the result of an act does not appear at once, Jaimini teaches that there is all the same produced a supersensuous principle called _apurva_, which bears fruit at a later time, and thus a sacrifice leads the offerer to heaven. This theory is really tantamount to placing magic on a philosophic basis.

Badarayana's sutras, which represent the other branch of the Mimamsa, show a type of thought more advanced and profound than Jaimini's. They consist of 555 aphorisms--less than a fifth of Jaimini's voluminous work--and represent the outcome of considerable discussion posterior to the Upanishads, for they cite the opinions of seven other teachers and also refer to Badarayana himself by name. Hence they may be a compendium of his teaching made by his pupils. Their date is unknown but Sankara evidently regards them as ancient and there were several commentators before him.[772] Like most sutras these aphorisms are often obscure and are hardly intended to be more than a mnemotechnic summary of the doctrine, to be supplemented by oral instruction or a commentary. Hence it is difficult to define the teaching of Badarayana as distinguished from that of the Upanishads on the one hand, and that of his commentators on the other, or to say exactly what stage he marks in the development of thought, except that it is the stage of attempted synthesis.[773] He teaches that Brahman is the origin of the world and that with him should all knowledge, religion and effort be concerned. By meditation on him, the soul is released and somehow associated with him. But it is not clear that we have any warrant for finding in the sutras (as does Sankara) the distinction between the higher and lower Brahman, or the doctrine of the unreality of the world (Maya) or the absolute identity of the individual soul with Brahman. We are told that the state of the released soul is non-separation (avibhaga) from Brahman, but this is variously explained by the commentators according to their views. Though the sutras are the acknowledged text-book of Vedantism, their utterances are in practice less important than subsequent explanations of them. As often happens in India, the comment has overgrown and superseded the text.

The most important of these commentators is Sankaracarya.[774] Had he been a European philosopher anxious that his ideas should bear his name, or a reformer like the Buddha with little respect for antiquity, he would doubtless have taken his place in history as one of the most original teachers of Asia. But since his whole object was to revive the traditions of the past and suppress his originality by attempting to prove that his ideas are those of Badarayana and the Upanishads, the magnitude of his contribution to Indian thought is often under-rated. We need not suppose that he was the inventor of all the ideas in his works of which we find no previous expression. He doubtless (like the Buddha) summarized and stereotyped an existing mode of thought but his summary bears the unmistakeable mark of his own personality.

Sankara's teaching is known as Advaita or absolute monism. Nothing exists except the one existence called Brahman or Paramatman, the Highest Self. Brahman is pure being and thought (the two being regarded as identical), without qualities. Brahman is not intelligent but is intelligence itself. The human soul (jiva) is identical with the Highest Self, not merely as a part of it, but as being itself the whole universal indivisible Brahman. This must not be misunderstood as a blasphemous assertion that man is equal to God. The soul is identical with Brahman only in so far as it forgets its separate human existence, and all that we call self and individuality. A man who has any pride in himself is _ipso facto_ differentiated from Brahman as much as is possible. Yet in the world in which we move we see not only differentiation and multiplicity but also a plurality of individual souls apparently distinct from one another and from Brahman. This appearance is due to the principle of Maya which is associated with Brahman and is the cause of the phenomenal world. If Maya is translated by illusion it must be remembered that its meaning is not so much that the world and individual existences are illusory in the strict sense of the word, as phenomenal. The only true reality is self-conscious thought without an object. When the mind attains to that, it ceases to be human and individual: it _is_ Brahman. But whenever it thinks of particular objects neither the thoughts nor the objects of the thoughts are real in the same sense. They are appearances, phenomena. This universe of phenomena includes not only all our emotions and all our perceptions of the external world, but also what might be supposed to be the deepest truths of religion, such as the personality of the Creator and the wanderings of the soul in the maze of transmigration. In the same sense that we suffer pain and pleasure, it is true that there is a personal God (Isvara) who emits and reabsorbs the world at regular intervals, and that the soul is a limited existence passing from body to body. In this sense the soul, as in the Sankhya philosophy, is surrounded by the _upadhis_, certain limiting conditions or disguises, which form a permanent psychical equipment with which it remains invested in all its innumerable bodies. But though these doctrines may be true for those who are in the world, for those souls who are agents, enjoyers and sufferers, they cease to be true for the soul which takes the path of knowledge and sees its own identity with Brahman. It is by this means only that emancipation is attained, for good works bring a reward in kind, and hence inevitably lead to new embodiments, new creations of Maya. And even in knowledge we must distinguish between the knowledge of the lower Brahman or personal Deity (Isvara) and of the higher indescribable Brahman.[775] For the orthodox Hindu this distinction is of great importance, for it enables him to reconcile passages in the scriptures which otherwise are contradictory. Worship and meditation which make Isvara their object do not lead directly to emancipation. They lead to the heavenly world of Isvara, in which the soul, though glorified, is still a separate individual existence. But for him who meditates on the Highest Brahman and knows that his true self is that Brahman, Maya and its works cease to exist. When he dies nothing differentiates him from that Brahman who alone is bliss and no new individual existence arises.