Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
“In the whole world,” said Schopenhauer, “there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life it will be the solace of my death.” Here, excepting the moral fragments of Ptah-hotep, are the oldest extant philosophy and psychology of our race; the surprisingly subtle and patient effort of man to understand the mind and the world, and their relation. The Upanishads are as old as Homer, and as modern as Kant. The Upanishads form the core of Indian philosophy. They are an amazing collection of writings from original oral transmissions, which have been aptly described by Shri Aurobindo as “the supreme work of the Indian mind”. It is here that we find all the fundamental teachings that are central to Hinduism — the concepts of ‘ karma ‘ (action), ‘ samsara ‘ (reincarnation), ‘ moksha ‘ (nirvana), the ‘ atman ‘ (soul), and the ‘Brahman’ (Absolute Almighty). They also set forth the prime Vedic doctrines of self-realization,
Upanishad means the inner or mystic teaching. The word is composed of upa near, and shad, to sit. From “sitting near” the teacher the term came to mean the secret or esoteric doctrine confided by the master to his best and favorite pupils.” In the quietude of the forest hermitages the Upanishad thinkers pondered on the problems of deepest concerns and communicated their knowledge to fit pupils near them. Samkara derives the word Upanishad as a substitute from the root sad, ‘to loosen.,’ ‘to reach’ or ‘to destroy’ with Upa and ni as prefixes and kvip as termination. If this determination is accepted, upanishad means brahma-knowledge by which ignorance is loosened or destroyed. The treatises that deal with brahma-knowledge are called the Upanishads and so pass for the Vedanta. The different derivations together make out that the Upanishads give us both spiritual vision and philosophical argument. There is a core of certainty which is essentially incommunicable except by a way of life. It is by a strictly personal effort that one can reach the truth.
The Upanishads more clearly set forth the prime Vedic doctrines like Self-realization, yoga and meditation, karma and reincarnation, which were hidden or kept veiled under the symbols of the older mystery religion. The older Upanishads are usually affixed to a particularly Veda, through a Brahmana or Aranyaka. The more recent ones are not. The Upanishads became prevalent some centuries before the time of Krishna and Buddha.
There are one hundred and eight of these discourses, composed by various saints and sages between 800 and 500 B.C. 97 They represent not a consistent system of philosophy, but the opinions, apergus and lessons of many men, in whom philosophy and religion were still fused in the attempt to understand and reverently unite with the simple and essential reality under-lying the superficial multiplicity of things. They are full of contradictions, and occasionally they anticipate all the wind of Hegelian verbiage,but they impress us as the profoundest thinking in the history of philosophy.
Out of the 108 Upanishads, only 13 have been commented upon by several Acharyas like Adi Shankaracharya. They are the Chandogya, Kena, Aitareya, Kaushitaki, Katha, Mundaka, Taittriyaka, Brihadaranyaka, Svetasvatara, Isa, Prasna, Mandukya and the Maitri Upanishads. These have also been popularized by many savants like Swami Vivekananda, Swami Chinmayananda etc. They all deal with highest category of philosophy and metaphysics. Because of this, there is a general impression that all Upanishads are texts of Hindu Philosophy. This is not true. There are Upanishads which even tell you how to wear the sacred ash, how to worship a particular God and so on. But the majority of them deal with methods of Yoga and Renunciation (Sanyasa).
We know the names of many of the authors, but we know nothing of their lives except what they occasionally reveal in their teachings. The main figure in the Upanishads, though not present in many of them, is the sage Yajnavalkya. Most of the great teachings of later Hindu and Buddhist philosophy derive from him. He taught the great doctrine of “neti-neti”, the view that truth can be found only through the negation of all thoughts about it. Other important Upanishadic sages are Uddalaka Aruni, Shwetaketu, Shandilya, Aitareya, Pippalada, Sanat Kumara. Many earlier Vedic teachers like Manu, Brihaspati, Ayasya and Narada are also found in the Upanishads. These Indian thinkers were not satisfied with their intellectual speculations. They discovered that the universe remained a mystery and the mystery only deepened with the advance of such knowledge, and one of the important components of that deepening mystery is the mystery of man himself. The Upanishads became aware of this truth, which modern science now emphasizes. In the Upanishads we get a glimpse into the workings of the minds of the great Indian thinkers who were unhampered by the tyranny of religious dogma, political authority, pressure of public opinion, seeking truth with single-minded devotion, rare in the history of thought. As Max Muller has pointed out, “None of our philosophers, not accepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, or Hegel has ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storm or lightnings.”
The Vedas and Upanishads
The breakdown among the 108 Upanishads according to the 5 Vedas are as follows:
The Principal Upanishads are:
Chandogya Upanishad
The Chandogya Upanishad is the Upanishad that belongs to the followers of the Sama Veda. It is actually the last eight chapters of the ten-chapter Chandogya Brahmana , and it emphasizes the importance of chanting the sacred Aum , and recommends a religious life, which constitutes sacrifice, austerity, charity, and the study of the Vedas, while living in the house of a guru. Along with Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, the Chandogyopanishad is an ancient source of principal fundamentals for Vedanta philosophy. Considering the number of references made to this Upanishad in Brahma sutras, this Upanishad is given special importance in Vedanta philosophy. Important spiritual practices like Dahara Vidya and Shandilya Vidya are its speciality. This Upanishad contains the doctrine of reincarnation as an ethical consequence of Karma . It also lists and explains the value of human attributes like speech, will, thought, meditation , understanding, strength memory and hope.
Kena Upanishad
The Kena Upanishad derives its name from the word ‘Kena’, meaning ‘by whom’. . It belongs to the Talavakara Bahmana of Sama Veda and is therefore also referred to as Talavakara Upanishad. It has four sections, the first two in verse and the other two in prose. The metrical portion deals with the Supreme Unqualified Brahman, the absolute principle underlying the world of phenomenon, and the prose part deals with the Supreme as God, ‘Isvara’. whom’In short, it says that “The One power that illumines everything and every one is indivisible. It is the Ear behind the ears, Mind behind the mind, Speech behind speech, the Vital Life behind life. The ears cannot hear it; it is what makes the ears hear. The eyes cannot see it; it is what makes the eyes see. You cannot speak about it; it is what makes you speak. The mind cannot imagine it; it is what makes the mind think. It is different from what all we know; yet it is not known either. Those who feel they know Him, know Him not. Those who know that anything amenable to the senses is not Brahman, they know it best. When it is known as the innermost witness of all cognitions, whether sensation, perception or thought, then it is known. One who knows thus reaches immortality.
The Kena Upanishad concludes, as Sandersen Beck puts it, that austerity, restraint, and work are the foundation of the mystical doctrine; the Vedas are its limbs, and truth is its home. The one who knows it strikes off evil and becomes established in the most excellent, infinite, heavenly world.
Aitareya Upanishad
The Aitareya Upanishad belongs to the Rig Veda, is one of the oldest of the Upanishads. It belongs to the Aitareya Aranyaka of the Rig Veda. It is divided into three chapters and contains thirty three verses. This Upanishad deals with the process of creation. It is the purpose of this Upanishad to lead the mind of the sacrificer away from the outer ceremonial to its inner meaning. It deals with the genesis of the universe and the creation of life, the senses, the organs and the organisms. It also tries to delve into the identity of the intelligence that allows us to see, speak, smell, hear and know.
Kaushitaki Upanishad
This Upanishad is taught by Sage Chithra to Sage Udhalaka and his son, Shwethakethu. It deals with the science of the soul. The temporary nature of rituals and good deeds and permanent nature of doing everything without desire is emphasized. It also tells the need for a father to give up all his personality and knowledge to his son and enter Sanyasa.
The Kaushitaki Upanishad explores the question whether there is an end to the cycle of reincarnation , and upholds the supremacy of the soul (‘atman’), which is ultimately responsible for everything it experiences.
Kathopanishad
Katha Upanishad, which belongs to the Yajur Veda, consists of two chapters, each of which has three sections. The Kathopanishad is divided into six Vallis. Valli literally means a creeper. A Valli, like a creeper, is attached to the Sakhas or Branches of the Veda. This Upanishad is also divided into two Adhyayas (chapters) of three Vallis each. This is one of the most beautiful Upanishads, in which the eternal truths are given in the form of a narrative. The narrative is taken from Taittiriya Brahmana (3-11-8), with some variations. It employs an ancient story from the Rig Veda about a father who gives his son to death (Yama), while bringing out some of the highest teachings of mystical spirituality. There are some passages common to the Gita and Katha Upanishad. Psychology is explained here by using the analogy of a chariot. The soul is the lord of the chariot, which is the body; the intuition is the chariot-driver, the mind the reins, the senses the horses, and the objects of the senses the paths. Those whose minds are undisciplined never reach their goal, and go on to reincarnate. The wise and the disciplined, it says, obtain their goal and are freed from the cycle of rebirth. The same story is told in the Taittiriya Brahmana, the only difference being that in the Brahmana, freedom from death and birth is obtained by a peculiar performance of a sacrifice, while in the Upanishad, it is obtained by knowledge only.
Mundaka Upanishad
The Mundaka Upanishad is assigned to the Fourth Veda, the Atharvana. and has three chapters, each of which has two sections. The name is derived from the root ‘mund’ (to shave) as he that comprehends the teaching of the Upanishad is shaved or liberated from error and ignorance. This Upanishad begins with an Invocation that the eye may see auspicious things, the ear may hear auspicious sounds, and that life may be spent in the contemplation of the Lord. The teaching of this Upanishad is referred to as Brahmavidya, either because it describes first the message of Hiranyagarbha, the casual Brahma, or because the message relates the glory of Brahmam. Apart from this, this Upanishad is honoured as the crest of all, since it expounds the very essence of Brahma Jnana.
The Upanishad clearly states the distinction between the higher knowledge of the Supreme Brahman and the lower knowledge of the empirical world — the six ‘Vedangas’ of phonetics, ritual, grammar, definition, metrics, and astrology. It is by this higher wisdom and not by sacrifices or worship, which are here considered ‘unsafe boats’, that one can reach the Brahman. Like the Katha, the Mundaka Upanishad warns against “the ignorance of thinking oneself learned and going around deluded like the blind leading the blind”. Only an ascetic (‘sanyasi’) who has given up everything can obtain the highest knowledge. The teaching of this Upanishad is referred to as Brahmavidya, either because it describes first the message of Hiranyagarbha, the casual Brahma, or because the message relates the glory of Brahmam.. Apart from this, this Upanishad is honoured as the crest of all, since it expounds the very essence of Brahma Jnana.
Taittiriya Upanishad
The Taittireeya Upanishad belongs to the Taittireeya school of the Yajur Veda. It is divided into three sections called Vallis. The first is the Siksa Valli. Siksa is the first of the six Vedangas (limbs or auxiliaries of the Veda); it is the science of phonetics and pronunciation the second is the Brahmananda Valli and the third third is the Bhrugu Valli, deal with the knowledge of the Supreme Self (‘Paramatmajnana’). Once again, here, Aum is emphasized as peace of the soul, and the prayers end with Aum and the chanting of peace (‘Shanti’) thrice, often preceded by the thought, “May we never hate.” There is a debate regarding the relative importance of seeking the truth, going through austerity and studying the Vedas. One teacher says truth is first, another austerity, and a third claims that study and teaching of the Veda is first, because it includes austerity and discipline. Finally, it says that the highest goal is to know the Brahman, for that is truth.
Svetasvatara Upanishad
This Upanishad is taught by a sage called Svetasvatara. Its main emphasis is on the teaching of Sankhya Yoga and the philosophy of illusion (Maya).The Svetasvatara Upanishad derives its name from the sage who taught it. It is theistic in character and identifies the Supreme Brahman with Rudra ( Shiva ) who is conceived as the author of the world, its protector and guide. The emphasis is not on Brahman the Absolute, whose complete perfection does not admit of any change or evolution, but on the personal ‘Isvara’, omniscient and omnipotent who is the manifested Brahma. This Upanishad teaches the unity of the souls and world in the one Supreme Reality. It is an attempt to reconcile the different philosophical and religious views, which prevailed at the time of its composition.
Isavasya Upanishad
It is a very succinct summary of Indian philosophy that explains life itself.The Isavasya Upanishad derives its name from the opening word of the text ‘Isavasya’ or ‘Isa’, meaning ‘Lord’ that encloses all that moves in the world. Greatly revered, this short Upanishad is often put at the beginning of the Upanishads, and marks the trend toward monotheism in the Upanishads. Its main purpose is to teach the essential unity of God and the world, being and becoming. It is interested not so much in the Absolute in itself (‘Parabrahman’) as in the Absolute in relation to the world (‘Paramesvara’). It says that renouncing the world and not coveting the possessions of others can bring joy. The Isha Upanishad concludes with a prayer to Surya (sun) and Agni (fire).
Prasna Upanishad
The Prashna Upanishad belongs to the Atharva Veda and has six sections dealing with six questions or ‘Prashna’ put to a sage by his disciples. In Sanskrit, Prashna means ‘question’. This book consists of six questions and their answers. It is in a question-answer format. The questions are: From where are all the creatures born? How many angels support and illumine a creature and which is supreme? What is the relationship between the life-breath and the soul? What are sleep, waking, and dreams? What is the result of meditating on the word Aum? What are the sixteen parts of the Spirit? This Upanishad answers all these six vital questions. Except the first and last questions, all other questions are actually a group of smaller sub-questions. As narrated in the beginning of this Upanishad, six pupils interested in knowing divinity or Brahman come to the sage Pippalada and ask questions of great spiritual importance. Pippalada asks them to take up a penance of one year. Upon completion of the penance, they again come to the sage and ask questions, and then the sage answers their questions.
Mandukya Upanishad
According to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, in this Upanishad, we find the fundamental approach to the attainment of reality by the road of introversion and ascent from the sensible and changing, through the mind which dreams, through the soul which thinks, to the divine within but above the soul.The Mandukya Upanishad belongs to the Atharva Veda and is an exposition of the principle of Aum as consisting of three elements, a, u, m, which may be used to experience the soul itself. It contains twelve verses that delineate four levels of consciousness: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and a fourth mystical state of being one with the soul. This Upanishad by itself, it is said, is enough to lead one to liberation. The Muktikopanishad, which talks about all other Upanishads, says that if a person cannot afford to study all the hundred and more Upanishads, it will be enough to read just the Māndūkya Upanishad.
Maitri Upanishad
The Maitri Upanishad is the last of what are known as the principal Upanishads. This Upanishad tells us about the penance of a king called Brahadratha. The king asked the sage Sakanya about the feeling of desire in this meaningless world. Sage Sakanya relates to him what had been told to him by Sage Maithreya. He teaches him the great science of Brahma Vidya. Finally he tells him that the mind and illusion are responsible for this contradiction.
It recommends meditation upon the soul (‘atman’) and life (‘prana’). It says that the body is like a chariot without intelligence but it is driven by an intelligent being, who is pure, tranquil, breathless, selfless, undying, unborn, steadfast, independent and endless. The charioteer is the mind, the reins are the five organs of perception, the horses are the organs of action, and the soul is unmanifest, imperceptible, incomprehensible, selfless, steadfast, stainless and self-abiding.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad means the “great forest-book”. This Upanishad is one of the oldest of all the Upanishads. It consists of three sections or kandas: the Madhu kanda, the Yajnavalkya or the Muni kanda and the Khila kanda.
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which is generally recognized to be the most important of the Upanishads, consists of three sections (‘Kandas’), the Madhu Kanda which expounds the teachings of the basic identity of the individual and the Universal Self, the Muni Kanda which provides the philosophical justification of the teaching and the Khila Kanda, which deals with certain modes of worship and meditation, (‘upasana’), hearing the ‘upadesha’ or the teaching (‘sravana’), logical reflection (‘manana’), and contemplative meditation (‘nididhyasana’). Here the Brahman is portrayed as universal and undifferentiated consciousness. The doctrine of the indescribability of the absolute and the doctrine of ‘Neti, Neti’ are explained. This Upanishad concludes by stating the three virtues that one should practice, i.e. self-restraint, giving, and compassion. T.S.Eliot’s landmark work The Waste Landends with the reiteration of the three cardinal virtues from this Upanishad: ‘Damyata’ (restraint), ‘Datta’ (charity) and ‘Dayadhvam’ (compassion) followed by the blessing ‘Shantih shantih shantih’, that Eliot himself translated as “the peace that passeth understanding.”
Bertrand Russell rightly said: “Unless men increase in wisdom as much as in knowledge, increase in knowledge will be increase in sorrow.” While the Greeks and the others specialized in the subject of man in society, India specialized in man in depth, man as the individual, as Swami Ranganathananda puts it. This was one ruling passion of the Indo-Aryans in the Upanishads. The great sages of the Upanishads were concerned with man above and beyond his political or social dimensions. It was an inquiry, which challenged not only life but also death and resulted in the discovery of the immortal and the divine self of man.
The most vivid figure Yajnavalkya, the man, and Gargi, the woman who has the honor of being among the earliest of philosophers. Of the two, Yajnavalkya has the sharper tongue. His fellow teachers looked upon him as a dangerous innovator; his posterity made his doctrine the cornerstone of unchallengeable orthodoxy. 101 He tells us how he tried to leave his two wives in order to become a hermit sage; and in the plea of his wife Maitreyi that he should take her with him, we catch some feeling of the intensity with which India has for thousands of years pursued religion and philosophy.
The theme of the Upanishads is all the mystery of this unintelligible world. “Whence are we born, where do we live, and whither do we go? O ye who know Brahman, tell us at whose command we abide here. . . . Should time, or nature, or necessity, or chance, or the elements be considered the cause, or he who is called Purusha” the Supreme Spirit? India has had more than her share of men who wanted “not millions, but answers to their questions.” In the Maitri Upanishad we read of a king abandoning his kingdom and going into the forest to practice austerities, clear his mind for understanding, and solve the riddle of the universe. After a thousand days of the king’s penances a sage, “knower of the soul,” came to him. “You are one who knows its true nature,” says the king;
“do you tell us.” “Choose other desires,” warns the sage. But the king insists; and in a passage that must have seemed Schopenhauerian to Schopenhauer, he voices that revulsion against life, that fear of being reborn, which runs darkly through all Hindu thought:
“Sir, in this ill-smelling, unsubstantial body, which is a conglomerate of bone, skin, muscle, marrow, flesh, semen, blood, mucus, tears, rheum, feces, urine, wind, bile and phlegm, what is the good of en- joyment of desire? In this body, which is afflicted with desire, anger, covetousness, delusion, fear, despondency, envy, separation from the desirable, union with the undesirable, hunger, thirst, senility, death, disease, sorrow and the like, what is the good of enjoyment of desires? And we see that this whole world is decaying like these gnats, these mosquitoes, this grass, and these trees that arise and perish. . . . Among other things there is the drying up of great oceans, the falling-away of mountain-peaks, the deviation of the fixed pole- star, … the submergence of the earth. … In this sort of cycle of existence what is the good of enjoyment of desires, when, after a man has fed upon them, there is seen repeatedly his return here to the earth?”
The first lesson that the sages of the Upanishads teach their selected pupils is the inadequacy of the intellect. How can this feeble brain, that aches at a little calculus, ever hope to understand the complex immensity of which it is so transitory a fragment? Not that the intellect is useless; it has its modest place, and serves us well when it deals with relations and things; but how it falters before the eternal, the infinite, or the elementally real! In the presence of that silent reality which supports all appearances, and wells up in all consciousness, we need some other organ of perception and understanding than these senses and this reason. “Not by learning is the Atman (or Soul of the World) attained, not by genius and much knowledge of books. . . . Let a Brahman renounce learning and become as a child. Let him not seek after many words, for that is mere weariness of tongue.” The highest understanding, as Spinoza was to say, is direct perception, immediate insight; it is, as Bergson would say, intuition, the inward seeing of the mind that has deliberately closed, as far as it can, the portals of external sense. “The self-evident Brahman pierced the openings of the senses so that they turned outwards; therefore man looks outward, not inward into himself; some wise man, however, with his eyes closed and wishing for immortality, saw the self behind.”
If, on looking inward, a man finds nothing at all, that may only prove the accuracy of his introspection; for no man need expect to find the eternal in himself if he is lost in the ephemeral and particular. Before that inner reality can be felt one has to wash away from himself all evil doing and thinking, all turbulence of body and soul. For a fortnight one must fast, drinking only water; then the mind, so to speak, is starved into tranquillity and silence, the senses are cleansed and stilled, the spirit is left at peace to feel itself and that great ocean of soul of which it is a part; at last the individual ceases to be, and Unity and Reality appear. For it is not the individual self which the seer sees in this pure inward seeing; that individual self is but a series of brain or mental states, it is merely the body seen from within. What the seeker seeks is Atman the Self of all selves, the Soul of all souls, the immaterial, formless Absolute in which we bathe ourselves when we forget ourselves.
This, then, is the first step in the Secret Doctrine: that the essence of our own self is not the body, or the mind, or the individual ego, but the silent and formless depth of being within us, Atman.
The second step is Brahman, ( Brahman as here used, meaning the impersonal Soul of the World, is to be distinguished from the more personal Brahma, member of the Hindu triad of gods (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva); and from Brahman as denoting a member of the priestly caste. The distinction, however, is not always carried out, and Brahma is sometimes used in the sense of Brahman. Brahman as God will be distinguished in these pages from Brahman as priest by being italicized.) the one pervading, neuter, i(The Hindu thinkers are the least anthropomorphic of all religious philosophers. Even in the later hymns of the Rig-veda the Supreme Being is indifferently referred to as be or it, to show that it is above sex.)impersonal, all-embracing, under- lying, intangible essence of the world, the “Real of the Real,” “the unborn Soul, undecaying, undying,”" the Soul of all Things as Atman is the Soul of all Souls; the one force that stands behind, beneath and above all forces and all gods.
The third step is the most important of all: Atman and “Brahman are one. The (non-individual) soul or force within us is identical with the impersonal Soul of the World. The Upanishads burn this doctrine into the pupil’s mind with untiring, tiring repetition. Behind all forms and veils the subjective and the objective are one; we, in our de-individualized reality, and God as the essence of all things, are one. A teacher expresses it in a famous parable:
“Bring hither a fig from there.”
“Here it is, Sir.”
“Divide it.”
“It is divided, Sir.”
“What do you see there?”
“These rather fine seeds, Sir.”
“Of these please divide one.”
“It is divided, Sir.”
“What do you see there?”
“Nothing at all, Sir.”
“Verily, my dear one, that finest essence which you do not perceive verily from that finest essence this great tree thus arises. Believe me, my dear one, that which is the finest essence this whole
world has that as its soul. That is Reality. That is Atman. Tattvam asi that art thou, Shwetaketu.”
“Do you, Sir, cause me to understand even more.”
“So be it, my dear one.”
This almost Hegelian dialectic of Atman, Brahman and their synthesis is the essence of the Upanishads. Many other lessons are taught here, but they are subordinate. We find already, in these discourses, the belief in transmigration, (It occurs first in the Satapatha Upanishad, where repeated births and deaths are viewed as a punishment inflicted by the gods for evil living. Most primitive tribes believe that the soul can pass from a man to an animal and vice versa; probably this idea became, in the pre-Aryan inhabitants of India, the basis of the transmigration creed.)and the longing for release (Moksha) from this heavy chain of reincarnations. Janaka, King of the Videhas, begs Yajnavalkya to tell him how rebirth can be avoided. Yajnavalkya answers by expounding Yoga: through the ascetic elimination of all personal desires one may cease to be an individual fragment, unite himself in supreme bliss with the Soul of the World, and so escape rebirth. Whereupon the king, metaphysically overcome, says: “I will give you, noble Sir, the Videhas, and myself also to be your slave.”" It is an abstruse heaven, however, that Yajnavalkya promises the devotee, for in it there will be no individual consciousness,” there will only be absorption into Being, the reunion of the temporarily separated part with the Whole. “As flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their name and form, thus a wise man, freed from name and form, goes to the divine person who is beyond all.”
Such a theory of life and death will not please Western man, whose religion is as permeated with individualism as are his political and economic institutions. But it has satisfied the philosophical Hindu mind with astonishing continuity. We shall find this philosophy of the Upanishadsthis monistic theology, this mystic and impersonal immortality dominating Hindu thought from Buddha to Gandhi, from Yajnavalkya to Tagore. To our own day the Upanishads have remained to India what the New Testament has been to Christendom a noble creed occasionally practised and generally revered. Even in Europe and America this wistful theosophy has won millions upon millions of followers, from lonely women and tired men to Schopenhauer and Emerson. Who would have thought that the great American philosopher of individualism would give perfect expression to the Hindu conviction that individuality ‘is a delusion?
Brahma
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahman sings.
The Upanishads gave a permanent orientation to Indian culture by their emphasis on inner penetration and their wholehearted advocacy of what the Greeks later formulated in the dictum “man, know thyself.” All subsequent developments of Indian culture were powerfully conditioned by this Upanishadic legacy.
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