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Chapters for a Work on the Isha Upanishad
[1] The Isha Upanishad
The Puranic account supposes us to have left behind the last Satya period, the age of harmony, and to be now in a period of enormous breakdown, disintegration and increasing confusion in which man is labouring forward towards a new harmony which will appear when the spirit of God descends again upon mankind in the form of the Avatara called Kalki, destroys all that is lawless, dark and confused and establishes the reign of the saints, the Sadhus, those, that is to say,—if we take the literal meaning of the word Sadhu, who are strivers after perfection Translated, again, into modern language—more rationalistic but, again, let me say, not necessarily more accurate—this would mean that the civilisation by which we live is not the result of a recent hotfooted gallop forward from the condition of the Caribbee and Hottentot, but the detritus and uncertain reformation of a great era of knowledge, balance and adjustment which lives for us only in tradition but in a universal tradition, the Golden Age, the Saturnia regna, of the West, our Satyayuga or age of the recovered Veda What then are these savage races, these epochs of barbarism, these Animistic, Totemistic, Naturalistic and superstitious beliefs, these mythologies, these propitiatory sacrifices, these crude conditions of society? Partly, the Hindu theory would say, the ignorant & fragmentary survival of defaced & disintegrated beliefs & customs, originally deeper, simpler, truer than the modern,—even as a broken statue by Phidias or Praxiteles or a fragment of an Athenian dramatist is
The six chapters comprising this work have been numbered [1] to [6] by the editors Sri Aurobindo’s own chapter divisions have been reproduced as written in the manuscript.
Page – 311 at once simpler & nobler or more beautiful and perfect than the best work of the moderns,—partly, a reeling back into the beast, an enormous movement of communal atavism brought about by worldwide destructive forces in whose workings both Nature and man have assisted Animism is the obscure memory of an ancient discipline which put us into spiritual communion with intelligent beings and forces living behind the veil of gross matter sensible to our limited material organs Nature-worship is another side of the same ancient truth Fetishism remembers barbarously the great Vedic dogma that God is everywhere and God is all and that the inert stone & stock, things mindless & helpless & crude, are also He; in them, too, there is the intelligent Force that has built the Himalayas, filled with its flaming glories the sun and arranged the courses of the planets The mythologies are ancient traditions, allegories & symbols The savage and the cannibal are merely the human beast, man hurled down from his ascent and returning from the sattwic or intelligent state into the tamasic, crumbling into the animal and almost into the clod by that disintegration through inertia which to the Hindu idea is the ordinary road to disappearance into the vague & rough material of Nature out of which we were made The ascent of man, according to this theory, is not a facile and an assured march; on the contrary, it is a steep, a strenuous effort, the ascent difficult, though the periods of attainment & rest yield to us ages of a golden joy, the descent frightfully easy Even in such a descent something is preserved, unless indeed we are entirely cut off from the great centres of civilisation, all energetic spirits withdrawn from our midst and we ourselves wholly occupied with immediate material needs An advanced race, losing its intelligent classes and all its sources of intelligence and subjected to these conditions, would be in danger of descending to the same level as the Maori or the Basuto On the other hand individuals of the most degraded race—a son of African cannibals, for instance—could under proper conditions develop the intellectual activity and high moral standard of the most civilised races The spirit of man, according to the Vedic idea, is capable of everything wherever it is placed; it has an infinite capacity both for the
Page – 312 highest and the lowest; but because he submits to the matter in which he dwells and matter is dominated by its surrounding contacts, therefore his progress is slow, uncertain and liable to these astounding relapses Such is the Hindu explanation of the world and, so expressed, freed from the Puranic language & symbols which make it vivid & concrete to us, I can find nothing in it that is irrational Western thought with its dogmatic materialism, its rigid insistence on its own hastily formed idea of evolution, its premature arrangements of the eras of earth, animal and man, may be impatient of it, but I see no reason why we Hindus, heirs of that ancient and wise tradition, should so long as there is no definite disproof rule it out of court in obedience to Western opinion We can afford at least to suspend judgment Modern research is yet in its infancy We, a calm, experienced & thoughtful nation, always deep & leisurely thinkers, ought not to be carried away by its eager and immature conclusions. I will take this Puranic theory as a working hypothesis and suppose at least that there was a great Vedic age of advanced civilisation broken afterwards by Time and circumstance and of which modern Hinduism presents us only some preserved, collected or redeveloped fragments; I shall suppose that the real meaning & justification of Purana, Tantra, Itihasa & Yoga can only be discovered by a rediscovery of their old foundation and harmonising secret in the true sense of the Veda, and in this light I shall proceed, awaiting its confirmation or refutation and standing always on the facts of Veda, Vedanta & Yoga We need not understand by an advanced civilisation a culture or a society at all resembling what our modern notions conceive to be the only model of a civilised society—the modern European; neither need or indeed can we suppose it to have been at all on the model of the modern Hindu It is probable that this ancient culture had none of those material conveniences on which we vaunt ourselves,—but it may have had others of a higher, possibly even a more potent kind (Perfection of the memory and the non-accumulation of worthless books might have dispensed with the necessity of large libraries Other means of receiving information and the habit of thinking for oneself might have
Page – 313 prevented the growth of anything corresponding to the newspaper,—it is even possible that the men of those times would have looked down on that crude and vulgar organ Possibly the power of telepathy organised—it seems to persist disorganised,—in some savage races,—might make the telegraph, even the wireless telegraph unnecessary ) The social customs of the time might seem strange or even immoral to our modern sanskaras,—just as, no doubt, many of ours will seem incredible and shocking to future ages The organisation of Government may have been surprisingly different from our own and yet not inconsistent with civilisation; there may have been a simple communism without over-government, large armies or wars of aggression, or even an entire absence of government, a human freedom & natural coordination such as Tolstoy & other European idealists have seen again in their dreams,—for it is at least conceivable that, given certain spiritual conditions which would constitute, in the language of religion, a kingdom of Heaven on earth or a government of God among men, the elaborate arrangements of modern administration,—whose whole basis is human depravity & the needs of an Iron Age,—would become unnecessary The old tradition runs that in the Satyayuga there was neither the desire nor the need of modern devices; the organised arrangement of men’s actions, duties and institutions by an external compulsion representing the community’s collective will began in the Bronze Age with the institution of government in Kingship The Vishnu Purana tells us, conformably with this idea, that Vishnu in the Satya incarnates as Yajna, that is to say as the divine Master in man to whom men offer up all their actions as a sacrifice, reserving nothing for an egoistic satisfaction, but in the Treta he descends [as] the Chakravarti Raja, the King & standing forward as sustainer of society’s righteousness, its sword of justice & defence, its preserver of the dharma gathers a number of human communities under his unifying sway But it is unnecessary to my present purpose to consider these speculations, for which much might be said and many indications collected It is sufficient that an ancient society might differ in every respect from our modern communities and yet be called advanced if it possessed
Page – 314 a deep, scientific and organised knowledge and if it synthetised in the light of large & cultured conceptions all human institutions, relations and activities This is all with which I am here and at present concerned For I have only to inquire whether we have not at any rate some part of such a profound and organised knowledge in the surviving Upanishads and the still extant Sanhitas of the Veda;—written long afterwards, mostly in the Dwapara & Kali when, chiefly, men sought the aid of the written word & the material device to eke out their failing powers & their declining virility of mind & body, we need expect from them no picture of that ancient civilisation, nor even the whole of its knowledge, for the great mass of that knowledge has been lost to us with the other numberless Sanhitas of Veda The whole of it we cannot reconstitute, since a great mass of Vedic material has been lost to us, possibly beyond hope of recovery until Vishnu descends once more as the Varaha into the sea of oblivion and lifts up the lost Veda on his mighty tusks into the light of our waking consciousness and on to the firm soil of our externalised knowledge. Not therefore the conception of semi-savages or half civilised philosophers, but the disjecta membra of a profound spiritual culture, a high and complex Yogic discipline and a well-founded theory of our relations with the unseen is what we shall expect in Veda & Vedanta It is here that Comparative Philology intervenes For it professes to have fixed for the Vedas a meaning which will bring them well within the savage theory and for the Vedanta an ambiguous character, half of it barbarous foolishness and half of it sublime philosophy such as we might expect from a highly gifted nation emerging out of a very primitive culture into a premature and immature activity of the higher intellectual faculties A worship of the personified Sun, Moon, Fire, Wind, Dawn, Sky and other natural phenomena by means of a system of animal sacrifices, this is the Veda; high religious thinking & profound Monistic ideas forcibly derived from Vedic Nature-worship marred by the crudest notions about physics, psychology, cosmology and material origins & relations generally and mixed up with a great mass
Page – 315 of unintelligible mystical jargon, this is the Upanishads If that be so, our preoccupation with these works is misplaced We must put them away as lumber of the past, interesting records of the beginnings and crude origins of religion and philosophy but records only, not authorities for our thought or lamps for our steps in life We must base ourself not on the Vedas and Upanishads, but, as for that matter many of us are well inclined to do, on Badarayana, Kapila, Shankara and Buddha, not on the ancient Rishis but on the modern philosophers and logicians. Such an abandonment is only obligatory on us after we have fixed the precise scientific value of these philological conclusions, the view of this modern naturalistic interpretation of which so much is made We are too apt in India to take the European sciences at their own valuation The Europeans themselves are often more sceptical In ethnology the evidence of philology is increasingly disregarded The ethnologists tend to disregard altogether, for example, the philological distinction between Aryan and Dravidian with its accompanying corollary of an immigration from the sub-Arctic regions or the regions of the Hindu-Kush and to affirm the existence of a single homogeneous Indo-Afghan race in immemorial occupation of the peninsula Many great scientific thinkers deny the rank of a science to philology or are so much impressed by the failure of this branch of nineteenth-century inquiry that they doubt or deny even the possibility of a science of language We need not therefore yield a servile assent to the conclusions of the philologists from any fear of being denounced as deniers of modern enlightenment and modern science; for we shall be in excellent company, supported by the authority of protagonists of that enlightenment and science. When we examine the work of the philologists, our suspicions will receive an ample confirmation; for we shall find no evidence of any true scientific method, but only a few glimpses of it eked out by random speculation sometimes of a highly ingenious and forcible character but sometimes also in the last degree hasty and flimsy A long time ago European scholars comparing what are now called the Indo-Aryan tongues were struck
Page – 316 by the close resemblance amounting to identity of common domestic and familiar terms in these languages “Pitar, pater, pater, vater, father”, “matar, meter, mater, mutter, mother”,—here, they thought, was the seed of a new science and the proof of an affiliation of different languages to our parent source which might lead to the explanation of the whole development of human speech And indeed there was a coincidence & a discovery which might have been as important to human knowledge as the fall of Newton’s apple and the discovery of gravitation But this great possibility never flowered into actuality On the contrary the after results were disappointingly meagre One or two bye-laws of the modification of sounds as between the Aryan languages were worked out, the identity of a certain number of terms as between these kindred tongues well-established and a few theories hazarded or made out as to the classification not scientific but empirical of the various extant dialects of man No discovery of the laws governing the structure of language, no clear light on the associations between sound and idea, no wide, careful and searching analysis of the origins and development even of the Aryan tongues resulted from this brilliant beginning Philology is an enquiry that has failed to result in the creation of a science. In its application to the Vedas modern philology has followed two distinct methods, the philological method proper and the scholastic, derivation of words and the observation of the use of words From comparative philology in its present imperfect & rudimentary condition all that Vedic research can gain is the discovery of a previously unsuspected identity of meaning as between some peculiarly Vedic words or forms or the Vedic use of Sanscrit words or forms and the sense of the same vocable or form, whether intact or modified, in other Aryan tongues Wherever Philology goes beyond this limit, its work is conjectural, not scientific and cannot command from us an implicit assent Unfortunately, also, European scholars permit themselves a licence of speculation and suggestion which may sometimes be fruitful but which renders their work continually unconvincing I may instance—my limits forbid more detail
Page – 317 —Max Muller’s extraordinary dealings in his Preface to the Rig Veda with the Vedic form uloka (for loka) He derives this ancient form without an atom or even a shadow of proof or probability from an original uruloka or urvaloka, rejecting cavalierly the obvious & fruitful Tamil parallel uloka—the same word with the same meaning—on the strength of an argument which proceeds from his ignorance of the Tamil tongue and its peculiar phonetic principles The example is typical These scholars are on firmer ground when they attempt to establish new meanings of words by legitimate derivation from Sanscrit roots and careful observation of the sense suitable to a particular word in the various contexts in which it occurs But here also we may be permitted to differ from their arguments and reject their conclusions For their work is conjectural; not only is the new meaning assigned to particular words conjectural but the interpretation of the context on which its correctness depends is also very often either doubtful or conjectural We are moving in a field of uncertainty and the imposing careful method and systematisation of the European scholars must not blind us to the fact that it is a method of conjecture and a systematisation of uncertainties. Is a more certain application of philology to the Veda at all possible? I believe it is I believe that by following a different clue we can arrive at least at the beginnings of a true science which will explain in its principles & details the origin, structure and development first of the Sanscrit, and then of the other Aryan & Dravidian tongues, if not of human speech generally in its various families The scholars erred because they took the identity “pitar, pater, vater, father” as the master-clue to the identities of these languages But this resemblance of familiar terms is only an incident, a tertiary result of a much deeper, more radical, more fruitful identity The real clue is not yet discovered, but I believe that it is discoverable Until, however, it is found and followed up, a task which demands great leisure and a gigantic industry, I am content to insist on the inconclusiveness of the initial work of the philologists I repeat, the common assumption in Europe and among English-educated Indians that the researches of European
Page – 318 scholarship have fixed for us correctly, conclusively & finally the meaning of Veda and the origin & process of development of Vedanta, is an assumption not yet justified and until it is justified no one is bound by it who does not choose to be bound The field is still open, the last word still remains to be pronounced I refuse, therefore, at this stage, my assent to the European idea of Veda and Vedanta and hold myself free to propound another interpretation and a more searching theory
[2] Chapter [ ]1
I have combated the supremacy of the European theory—not seeking actually to refute it but to open the door for other possibilities, because the notions generated by it are a stumbling block to the proper approach to Vedanta Under their influence we come to the Upanishads with a theory of their origin and in a spirit hostile to the sympathetic insight to which alone they will render up their secret The very sense of the word Vedanta indicates clearly the aim of the seers who composed the Upanishads as well as the idea they entertained,—the true & correct idea, I believe, of their relations to the Veda They were, they thought, recording a fulfilment of Vedic knowledge, giving shape to the culmination to which the sacred hymns pointed, and bringing out the inner and essential meaning of the practical details of the Karmakanda The word, Upanishad, itself meant, I would suggest, originally not a session of speculative inquirers (the ingenious & plausible German derivation) but an affirmation and arrangement of essential truths & principles The sense, it would almost seem, was at first general but afterwards, by predominant practice, applied exclusively to the Brahmi Upanishad, in which we have the systematisation particularly of the Brahmavidya In any case such a systematisation of Vedic Knowledge was what these Rishis thought themselves to be effecting But the
1 Sri Aurobindo did not write a chapter number—Ed
Page – 5 modern theory denies the claim and compels us to approach the Upanishads from a different standpoint and both to judge and to interpret them by the law of a mentality which is as far as the two poles asunder from the mentality of the writers We shall therefore certainly fail to understand the workings of their minds even if we are right in our history. But I am convinced that the claim was neither a pretence nor an error I believe the Vedas to hold a sense which neither mediaeval India nor modern Europe has grasped, but which was perfectly plain to the early Vedantic thinkers Max Muller has understood one thing by the Vedic mantras, Sayana has understood another, Yaska had his own interpretations of their antique diction, but none of them understood what Yajnavalkya and Ajatashatru understood We shall yet have to go back from the Nature-worship and henotheism of the Europeans, beyond the mythology and ceremonial of Sayana, beyond even the earlier intimations of Yaska and recover—nor is it the impossible task it seems—the knowledge of Yajnavalkya and Ajatashatru It is because we do not understand the Vedas that three fourths of the Upanishads are a sealed book to us Even of the little we think we can understand, much has been insecurely grasped and superficially comprehended, so that these sublimest of all Scriptures have become, latterly, more often a ground for philosophic wranglings than an illumination to the soul For want of this key profound scholars have fumbled and for want of this guidance great thinkers gone astray,—Max Muller emitted his wonderful utterance about the babblings of humanity’s nonage, Shankara left so much of his text unexplained or put it by as inferior truth for the ignorant, Vivekananda found himself compelled to admit his non-comprehension of the Vedantins’ cosmological ideas & mention them doubtfully as curious speculations It is only Veda that can give us a complete insight into Vedanta Only when we thoroughly know the great Vedic ideas in their totality shall we be able entirely to appreciate the profound, harmonious and grandiose system of thought of our early forefathers By ignoring the Vedas we lose all but a few rays of the glorious sun of Vedanta
Page – 320 But whether this view is sound or unsound, whether we decide that the sense of those ancient writings was best known to the ancient Hindus or to the modern Europeans, to Yajnavalkya or to Max Muller, two things are certain that the Vedantic Rishis believed themselves to be in possession of the system of their Vedic predecessors and that they surely did not regard this system as merely a minute collection of ritual practices or merely an elaborate worship of material Nature-Powers Minds that saw the world steadily as a whole, they did not repel that worship or disown that ritual Surya was to them the god of the Sun; Agni they regarded as the master of fire; but they were not—and this is the important point—simply the god of the sun and simply the master of fire They were not even merely a Something behind both, unknown & vague, although deep, mighty & subtle; but because of the nature & origin of the sun, Surya was also a god of a higher moral & spiritual function & Agni possessed of diviner & less palpable masteries I will cite the single example of the Isha Upanishad in support of my point The bulk of this poem is occupied with the solution of problems which involve the most abstruse and ultimate questions of metaphysics, ethics and psychology; yet after a series of profound and noble pronouncements on these deep problems the Upanishad turns, suddenly, without any consciousness of descent, without any lowering of tone to appeal with passion and power not to some Supernal Power but to Surya, to Agni Is it to the earthly Fire and the material Sun that the Rishi lifts his mighty song? Does he pray to Surya to give him the warmth of his beams or to drive away night from the sky? Does he entreat Agni to nourish the sacrificial fire or to receive for the gods on his flaming tongues the clarified butter and the Soma-juice? Not even for a moment, not even by allusion; but rather to Surya to remove—from the sight of his mind—the distracting brilliance which veils from mankind the highest truth and form of things, to enable him to realise his perfect identity with God and to Agni to put aside this siege of the devious attractions of ignorance and desire and raise our kind to that sublime felicity reserved for purified souls It is for the fulfilment of the loftiest spiritual ends
Page – 321 that he calls upon Surya; it is for support in the noblest moral victories that he appeals to Agni This is not Helios Hyperion but another Vivusvan, master of this sun & its beams (that is also evident) but master too of the soul’s illumination, sa no dhiyah prachodayat; this is not the limping blacksmith Hephaistos, but another Hiranyaretas, master no doubt of this fire and its helpful & consuming flames, but master also of purified & illuminated action and force, hota kavikratuh satyas chitrasravastamah—agnih purvebhir rishibhir idyo nutanair uta, the priest, the seer, the true, the full of rich inspirations, Agni adorable to the sages of the past, adorable to the great minds of today Here is no lapse of a great philosophic mind into barbarous polytheistic superstition, no material and primitive Nature-worship, no extraordinary intellectual compromise and vague henotheism We are in the presence of an established system of spiritual knowledge and an ordered belief in which matter, mind and spirit are connected and coordinated by the common action of great divine powers When we know according to what idea of cosmic principle Surya and Agni could be at once material gods and great spiritual helpers, we shall have some clue to the system of the early Vedantins and at the same time, as I believe, to the genuine significance and spiritual value of that ancient & eternal bedrock of Hinduism, the Vedas. But European scholars have their own explanation of the development of this remarkable speculative system out of the superstitious ritual and unintelligent worship which is all they find in the Vedas and, since the utmost respect in intellectual matters ought to be paid to the king of the day even when we seek to persuade him to abdicate, I must deal with it before I close this introductory portion & pass to the methods & substance of the Upanishads It is held that there was a development of religious thought from polytheism to henotheism and from henotheism to pantheism which we can trace to some extent in the Vedas themselves and of which the Upanishads are the culmination Some, notably the Indian disciples of European scholarship—interpreting these ancient movements by the light of our very different modern intellectuality or pushed by the
Page – 322 besetting Occidental impulse to search in our Indian origins for parallels to European history—even assert that the Upanishads represent a protestant and rationalistic movement away from the cumbrous ritual, the polytheistic superstition and the blind primitive religiosity of the Vedas and towards a final rationalistic culmination in the six Darshanas, in the agnosticism of Buddha, in the atheism of Charvaka & in the loftiness of the modern Adwaita philosophy It would almost seem as if this old Indian movement contains in itself at one & the same time the old philosophic movement of [the Greeks], Luther’s Protestant reformation and the glories of modern free thought 2 These are indeed exhilarating notions and they have been attractively handled—some of them can be read, developed with great lucidity and charm in that remarkable compilation of European discoveries and fallacies, M r Romesh Chandra Dutt’s History of Ancient Indian Civilisation Nothing indeed can be more ingenious and inspiriting, nothing more satisfactory at once to the patriotic imagination and our natural human yearning for the reassuringly familiar But are such ideas as sound as they are ingenious? are they as true as they are exhilarating? One may surely be permitted to entertain some doubt! I profess myself wholly unable to find any cry of revolutionary protest, any note of rationalism in the Upanishads I can find something one might almost call rationalism in Shankara’s commentary—but an Indian rationalism entirely different in spirit from its European counterpart But in the Upanishads the whole method is suprarational; it is the method of intuition and revelation expressed in a language and with a substance that might be characterised rather as the language of mysticism than of rationality These sages do not protest against polytheism; they affirm the gods
2 The following sentence was written in the top margin of the manuscript page Its place of insertion was not marked: One would sometimes almost think that this upheaval of thought anticipated at once Plato & Empedocles, Luther, Erasmus and Melanchthon, Kant, Hegel & Berkeley, Hume, Haeckel & Huxley—that we have at one fell blast Graeco-Roman philosophy, Protestant Reformation & modern rationalistic tendency anticipated by the single movement from Janaka to Buddha
Page – 323 These spiritual Titans do not protest against ritual and ceremony, they insist on the necessity of ritual and ceremony It is true that they deny emphatically the sufficiency of material sacrifices for the attainment of the highest; but where does the Rigveda itself assert any such efficacy? From this single circumstance no protestant movement against ritual and sacrifice can be inferred, but at the most we can imagine rather than deduce a spiritual movement embracing while it exceeded ritual and sacrifice But even this seems to me more than we can either infer or hazard without more light on the significance of early Vedic worship & the attitude on the subject of the Vedic Rishis It is also true that certain scattered expressions have been caught at by Theistic minds as significant of a denial of polytheistic worship I have heard the phrase, nedam yad idam upasate, not this to which men devote themselves, of the Kena Upanishad given this sense by reading the modern sense of upasana, worship, into the old Vedantic text It can easily be shown from other passages in the Upanishads that upasate here has not the sense of religious worship, but quite another significance We have enough to be proud of in our ancient thought & speculation without insisting on finding an exact anticipation of modern knowledge or modern thought & religion in these early Scriptures written thousands of years ago in the dim backwards of our history. The theory of a natural and progressive development of Pantheistic ideas is far more rational and probable than this adhyaropa of European ideas & history onto the writings of the ancient world But that theory also I cannot accept Because the clearly philosophical passages in the Vedas,—those that are recognised as such,—occur in the later hymns,—in which the language is nearest to modern Sanscrit,—it is generally supposed that such a development is proved It is, however, at least possible that we do not find philosophical ideas in the more ancient hymns merely because we are not mentally prepared to find them there Not understanding their obscure and antique diction we interpret conjecturally with a confidence born of modern theories, led by our preconceived ideas to grasp only at what, we conceive, ought to be the primitive notions of a half-savage
Page – 324 humanity Any indications of more developed religious motives, if they exist, will from this method get no chance of revealing themselves & no quarter even if they insisted on lifting their luminous heads out of the waves of oblivion In hymns with an almost modern diction, we have on the contrary no choice but to recognise their presence. We cannot then say that there was no philosophy in the earlier & obscurer hymns unless we are sure that we have rightly interpreted their difficult language But there are also certain positive considerations The Vedantic thinkers positively believed that they were proceeding on a Vedic basis They quote Vedic authority, appeal to Vedic ideas, evidently thinking themselves standing on the secure rock of Veda Either, then, they were indulging in a disingenuous fiction, inconsistent with spiritual greatness & that frank honesty, arjavam, on which the nation prided itself,—either they were consciously innovating under a pretence of Vedic orthodoxy or else quite honestly they were reading their own notions into a text which meant something entirely different, as has often been done even by great & sincere intellects The first suggestion—it has, I think, been made,—is inadmissible except on conclusive evidence; the second deserves consideration. If it were only a matter of textual citation or a change of religious notions, there would be no great difficulty in accepting the theory of an unconscious intellectual fiction But I find in the Upanishads abounding indications of a preexisting philosophical system, minute & careful at least & to my experience profound as well as elaborate Where is the indication of any other than a Vedic origin for this well-appointed metaphysics, science, cosmology, psychology? Everywhere it is the text of the Veda that is alluded to or quoted, the knowledge of Veda that is presupposed The study of Veda is throughout considered as the almost indispensable preliminary for the understanding of Vedanta How came so colossal, persistent & all-pervading a mistake to have been committed by thinkers of so high a capacity? Or when, under what impulsion & by whom was this great & careful system originated & developed? Where shall
Page – 325 we find any documents of that speculation,—its initial steps, its gradual clarifying, its stronger & more assured progress? The Upanishads are usually supposed themselves to be such documents But the longer I study these profound compositions, the less I feel able to accept this common and very natural hypothesis If we do not prejudge their more recondite ideas as absurd, if we try sympathetically to enter into the thoughts & beliefs of these Rishis, to understand what precise facts or experiences stand behind their peculiar language, especially if we can renew those experiences by the system they themselves used, the system of Yoga,—a method still open to us—it will, I think, very soon dawn upon our minds that these works are of a very different nature from the speculative experiments they are generally supposed to be They represent neither a revolt nor a fresh departure We shall find that we are standing at a goal, not assisting at a starting-point The form of the Upanishads is the mould not of an initial speculation but of an ultimate thinking It is a consummation, not a beginning, the soul of an existing body, not the breath of life for a body yet to come into being Line after line, passage after passage indicates an unexpressed metaphysical, scientific or psychological knowledge which the author thinks himself entitled to take for granted, just as a modern thinker addressing educated men on the ultimate generalisations of Science takes for granted their knowledge of the more important data and ideas accepted by modern men All this mass of thought so taken for granted must have had a previous existence and history It is indeed possible that it was developed between the time of the Vedas and the appearance of these Vedantic compositions but left behind it no substantial literary trace of its passage and progress But it is also possible that the Vedas themselves when properly understood, contain these beginnings or even most of the separate data of these early mental sciences It is possible that the old teachers of Vedanta were acting quite rationally & understood their business better than we understand it for them when they expected a knowledge of Veda from their students, sometimes even insisting on this preliminary knowledge, not dogmatically,
Page – 326 not by a blind tradition, but because the Veda contained that basis of experimental knowledge upon which the generalisations of Vedanta were built There is a chance, a considerable chance—I must lay stress again and more strongly on a suggestion already hazarded,—that minds so much closer to the Vedas in time and in the possibility of spiritual affinity may have known better the meaning of their religion than the inhabitant of different surroundings and of another world of thought speculating millenniums afterwards in the light of possibly fanciful Greek and German analogies So far as I have been able to study & to penetrate the meaning of the Rigvedic hymns, it seems to me that the Europeans are demonstrably wrong in laying so predominant a stress on the material aspects of the Vedic gods I find Varuna and Mitra to be mainly moral and not material powers; Surya, Agni, Indra have great psychical functions; even Sarasvati, in whom the scholars insist on seeing, wherever they can, an Aryan river, presents herself as a moral and intellectual agency,—”Pâvakâ nah Sarasvatî Vâjebhir vâjînivatî, Yajnam vashtu dhiyâvasuh Chodayitrî sûnritânâm Chetantî sumatînâm, Yajnam dadhe Sarasvatî. Maho arnas Sarasvati Prachetayati ketunâ, dhiyo visvâ virâjati ” If we accept the plain meaning of the very plain & simple words italicised, we are in the presence not of personified natural phenomena, but of a great purifying, strengthening and illuminating goddess But every word in the passage, pavaka, yajnam dadhe, maho arnas, ketunâ, it seems to me, has a moral or intellectual significance It would be easy to multiply passages of this kind I am even prepared to suggest that the Vritras of the Veda (for the Sruti speaks not of a single Vritra but of many) are not—at least in many hymns—forces either of cloud or of drought, but Titans of quite another & higher order The insight of Itihasa and Purana in these matters informed by old tradition seems to me often more correct than the conjectural scholarship of the Europeans But there is an even more important truth than the high moral and spiritual significance of the Vedic gods and the Vedic religion which results to my mind from a more careful & unbiassed study of the Rigveda We shall find that the moral functions assigned to these gods are
Page – 327 arranged not on a haphazard, poetic or mythological basis, but in accordance with a careful, perhaps even a systematised introspective psychology and that at every step the details suggested agree with the experiences of the practical psychology which has gone in India from time immemorial by the name of Yoga The line Maho Arnas Sarasvati prachetayati ketunâ dhiyo visva virâjati is to the Yogin a profound and at the same time lucid, accurate and simple statement of a considerable Yogic truth and most important Yogic experience The psychological theory & principle involved, a theory unknown to Europe and obscured in later Hinduism, depends on a map of human psychology which is set forth in its grand lines in the Upanishads If I am right, we have here an illuminating fact of the greatest importance to the Hindu religion, a fact which will light up, I am certain, much in the Veda that European scholarship has left obscure and will provide our modern study of the development of Hindu Civilisation with a scientific basis and a principle of unbroken continuity; we may find the earliest hymns of the Veda linked in identity of psychological experience to the modern utterances of Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna Meanwhile the theory I have suggested of the relations of Veda to Vedanta receives, I contend, from these Vedic indications a certain character of actuality. But I have to leave aside for the present these great & interesting but difficult questions Although I believe the knowledge of Veda to be requisite for a full understanding of Vedanta, although I have considered it necessary to lay great stress on that relation, I shall myself in this book follow a different method I shall confine my inquiry principally to the evidence of the Upanishads themselves and use them to shed their light on the Veda, instead of using the light of the written Veda to illumine the Upanishads The amount & quality of truth I shall arrive at by this process may be inferior in fullness and restricted in quantity; instead of the written mantras, authoritative to many and open to all, I shall have to appeal largely to Yogic experiences as yet accessible only to a few; but I shall have in compensation this advantage that I shall proceed from the less disputed to the more
Page – 328 disputed, from the nearer & better known to the obscurer & more remote, advancing, therefore, by a path not so liberally set with thorns and strewn with impeding boulders By the necessity of the times my object must be different from that of the mighty ones who went before us The goal Shankara and other thinkers had in view was the intellectual assurance of the Brahmavada; ours will be the knowledge of the Veda Mighty Jnanis and Bhaktas, they sought in the Upanishads only those metaphysical truths which base upon reason and Vedic authority the search for the Highest; all else they disregarded as mean or of little moment From those secure & noble heights, facile of ascent to our ancestors, we of the present generation are compelled to descend Obliged by the rationalistic assault to enquire into much which they, troubled only by internal & limited disputes, by Buddhism & Sankhya, could afford to take for granted, called upon by modern necessity to study the ideas of the Upanishads in their obscure details no less than in their clear & inspiring generalities, in their doubtful implications no less than in their definite statements, in physical and psychological limb and member no less than in their heart of metaphysical truth, we must seek to know not only the Brahman in Its Universality, but the special functions of Surya and the particular powers of Agni; devote thought to the minor & preliminary “Vyuha rashmin samuha” as well as to the ultimate and capital So’ham asmi; neglect neither the heavenly fire of Nachicatus nor the bricks of his triple flame of sacrifice nor his necklace of many colours We have behind the Upanishads a profound system of psychology We must find our way back into that system We perceive indications of equally elaborate ideas about the processes underlying physical existence, human action and the subtle connections of mind, body and spirit We must recover in their fullness these ideas and recreate, if possible, this ancient system of psychical mechanics & physics We find also a cosmology, a system of gods and of worlds We must know what were the precise origin and relations of this cosmology, on what experiences subjective or objective they rested for their justification We shall then have mastered not only Vedantadarshana but Vedanta, not only
Page – 329 the truth that Badarayana or Shankara arrived at but the revelation that Yajnavalkya & Ajatashatru saw We may even be compensated for our descent by a double reward By discovering the early Vedantic interpretation of Veda, we may pour out a great illumination on the meaning of Veda itself,—to be confirmed, possibly, by the larger & more perfect Nirukta which the future will move inevitably to discover By recovering the realisations of Yajnavalkya & Ajatashatru, we shall recover perhaps the inspired thoughts of Vasishta and Viswamitra, of Ghora from whom perhaps Srikrishna heard the word of illumination, of Madhuchchhandas, Vamadeva and Atri And we may even find ourself enriched in spiritual no less than in psychological knowledge; rejoice in the sense of being filled with a wider & more potent knowledge & energy, with jnanam, with tapahshakti, & find ourselves strengthened & equipped for the swifter pursuit & mightier attainment of the One whom both Veda & Vedanta aspire to know & who is alone utterly worth possessing.
[3] Chapter V.
The Interpretation of Vedanta
In an inquiry of this kind, so far as we have to use purely intellectual means—and I have not concealed my opinion that intellectual means are not sufficient and one has to trust largely the intuitions of a quiet and purified mind and the experiences of an illuminated and expanding soul,—but still, so far as we are to use purely intellectual means, the first, most important, most imperative must be a submissive acceptance of the text of the Sruti in its natural suggestion and in its simple and straightforward sense To this submissiveness we ought to attach the greatest importance & to secure it think no labour or self-discipline wasted It is the initial tapasya necessary before we are fit to approach the Sruti Any temperamental rebellion, any
Page – 330 emotional interference, any obstinacy of fixed mental association, any intellectual violation of the text seems to me to vitiate the work of the interpreter and deprive it, even when otherwise noble and brilliant, of some of its value It is for this reason that the mind, that restless lake of sanskaras, preferences, prejudices, prejudgments, habitual opinions, intellectual & temperamental likes & dislikes, ought to be entirely silent in this matter; its role is to be submissive and receptive, detached, without passion; passivity, not activity, should be its state, na kinchid api chintayet For the Sruti carries with it, in its very words, a certain prakash, a certain illumination The mind ought to wait for that illumination and receiving it, should not because it is contrary to our expectation or our desire, labour to reject or alter what has been seen Our pitfalls are many One man has an active, vital & energetic temperament; he is tempted to read into Sruti the praise of action, to slur over anything that savours of quietism.. Another is temperamentally quietistic; any command enjoining action as a means towards perfection his heart, his nerves cannot endure, he must get rid of it, belittle it, put it aside on whatever pretext This is the interference of temperamental preference with the text of the Sruti A man is attached to a particular thinker or teacher, enamoured of a definite view of life & God Any contradiction of that thinker, teacher or view irritates his heart & cannot be borne, even though the contradiction seems to stand there plainly on the face of sacred writ; the mind at once obeying the heart sets about proving to itself that the words do not mean what they seem to mean This is the interference of emotional preference Or else the mind has always been accustomed to a particular philosophy, mode of thinking, idea of religion or dogma Whatever contradicts these notions, strikes our fixed mental idea as necessarily wrong Surely, it says, the philosophy, the thought, the dogma to which I am accustomed must be the thought of the Scriptures; there cannot, in the nature of things, be anything in them inconsistent with what I believe; for what I believe is true and the Scriptures are repositories of truth So begins the interference which arises from association & fixed opinions There is, finally, the intervention
Page – 331 of the intellect when a speculative philosopher with a theory or a scholar reaching out after novelty or conscious of an opening for scholastic ingenuities, meddles powerfully with the plain drift of the text All these interferences, however brilliantly they may be managed, are injuries to the truth of Veda; they diminish its universality and limit its appeal It is for others to judge whether I have myself been able to avoid all of them,—especially the intellectual interference to which my temperament is most open, but I have had certainly the will to avoid it if not the power, the intention if not its successful performance. I do not mean, however, that the received or dictionary sense of the word has to be always accepted In dealing with these ancient writings such a scholastical puritanism would be less dangerous indeed than the licence of the philosophic commentators, but would still be seriously limiting But in departing from the dictionary sense one must not depart from the native and etymological sense of the word; one ought to abide within its clear grammatical connotation as in a hedge of defence against one’s own intellectual self-will and any superstructure of special sense or association must be consistent with that connotation and with the general usage of the Upanishads or of the Veda on which they rest I have myself suggested that the scope of dhanam in the first verse of the Isha exceeds the contracted idea of material wealth and embraces all sorts of possessions; eno in the last verse still keeps to me its etymological association and is different from papa; the word vayunani meaning no doubt actions or activities, has been supposed by me to keep a colour of its proper etymological sense “phenomena” and to denote universal activities and not solely the individual or human; but none of these suggestions in the least meddle with the grammatical connotation, the etymological force or even the dictionary meaning of the words used; only a deeper or more delicate shade of meaning is made to appear than can ordinarily be perceived by a careless or superficial reader A more serious doubt may arise when I suggest special associations for drishtaye and satya in the [fifteenth] verse It will be seen however that in neither case do I depart from the basic meaning of the
Page – 332 words, sight for drishti, truth for satya It will be seen also, as I proceed in my larger task, that I have good Vedic warrant for supposing these special senses to be applied sometimes & indeed often to sight and to Truth in the Sruti and that they agree with the whole drift & logical development of this & other Upanishads. For the fixing of the actual sense of separate words in Sruti is not the only condition of the interpretation nor is the acceptance of their natural sense the only standard for the interpreter A great value, indeed an immense value must be attached, in my opinion, to the rhythm & structure and the logical connection with each other in thought of the separate clauses & shlokas The language of the Upanishads is largely regarded by the modern readers as sublime and poetical indeed, full of imagery & suggestion, but not to be too much insisted on, not always to be pressed as having a definite meaning but often allowed to pass vaguely as rather reaching out at truths than accurately expressing them My experience forbids me to assent to this view, in itself very natural and superficially reasonable I have been forced to believe in the plenary inspiration of the Upanishads in word as well as in thought; I have been continually obliged to see that the expressions they use are the inevitable expression for the thought that has to be conveyed, and even when using poetical language the Rishis use it with a definite purpose, not vaguely reaching out at truth, but keeping before their vision a clear and firm thought or experience which they clearly & firmly express No interpretation would impress me with a sense of satisfaction which did not give its clear & due weight to each word or account for the choice of one word over another where the choice is unusual In accordance with this fullness of inspiration is the perfection of the chhandas, the rhythm & structure of verse & sentence which corresponds felicitously with the rhythm & structure of the thought I may instance for this importance of the rhythm & structure of sentence such a juxtaposition as jagatyam jagat in the first verse; while the remarkable development & balance, supremely wedded to the thought, of the six verses about Vidya & Avidya may stand as
Page – 333 an example of the importance of rhythm & structure of both sentence & verse The jagatyam jagat of the first verse already alluded to, is a striking instance of the perfect & pregnant use of language, but there are numerous other examples such as the powerful collocation of kavir manishi paribhuh swayambhur in one of the most noble & profound of the revelatory shlokas, the [eighth] It is easy for a careless translator or interpreter to accept kavir & manishi loosely as words with the same essential meaning used a little tautologically for a rhetorical effect In reality, they differ widely in sense, are used in this passage with great correctness and pregnancy and on a right understanding of them depends our right understanding of the whole system of philosophy developed in the Isha Much depends on whether we take the hiranmaya patra of the [fifteenth] shloka as mere vague poetical rhetoric or an image used with a definite intention and a lucid idea But almost every step in the Isha will give us examples. Even an observation of formal metre as an element of the rhythm is of some importance to the Vedantic interpreter The writers of the Upanishads handle their metres, whether Anushtup or Tristubh, not entirely in the manner of the Vedic Rishis, but very largely on Vedic principles They permit themselves to avoid elision even in the middle of a pada, e.g. vidyancha avidyancha, and always avoid it between the different padas; their principle is to keep not only the two lines of the shloka but all its four parts separate and not to run them into each other by sandhi This peculiarity disappears in the manuscript & printed copies where the post-Vedic sandhi is observed usually though not with absolute consistency But the disregard of Vedic practice is ruinous to the rhythm and sweetness of the verse, for it disregards the first conditions of the Vedic appeal to the ear What for instance can be more clumsy than the junction of the padas in the seventh shloka, with its heavy obstruction & jar as of a carriage wheel jolting momentarily over a sudden obstacle,
yasmin sarvani bhutanyatmaivabhud vijanatah
or what can be more rhythmical, sweet & harmonious than the
Page – 334 same verse properly written & read with an observation of the pause between the padas
yasmin sarvani bhutani atmaivabhud vijanatah?
There are other antique peculiarities, the use of two short matras as the equivalent of one long syllable, the occasional introduction of one or more excessive feet into a pada, resembling the use of the Alexandrine in English dramatic verse, the optional quantity of the vowel before a conjunct consonant of which the second element is a liquid, especially the semivowels y or v, and,—although this is more doubtful,—the Vedic use of these semivowels optionally as actual vowels which turns a dissyllable frequently into a trisyllable—a freedom possible only in a living language appealing to an ear tuned to the flexibility of living & daily intonations It is possible that we have an example of this use in vidyancha avidyancha, but although it would introduce a very beautiful and delicate poetical effect, we cannot speak with certainty These minutiae are not merely interesting to the literary critic and the philologist Their importance will appear when we find that Max Muller would almost tempt us, for the sake of regularity of metre, to eject the important, if not indispensable yathatathyato, which gives such profundity, so many reverberations of meaning to the closing thought in the majestic [eighth] shloka, kavir manishi paribhuh swayambhur, yathatathyato’rthan vyadadhach chhaswatibhyah samabhyah; or that Shankara’s desperate dealings with the line, from his point of view almost unmanageable,
vinashena mrityum tirtwa sambhutyamritam asnute
his forcing of vinasha to mean sambhava and reading of tirtwa asambhutya are negatived by the metre & rhythm of the verse no less than by the rhythm & structure of the thought throughout these six crucial verses. The ordinary view of the Upanishads ignores another equally important, if not more important characteristic, the closeness of their logical structure, the intimate subjective linking of clause with clause, the logical stride from shloka to shloka, the profound relations of passage to passage The usual treatment
Page – 335 of these works seems to go on the assumption that this high logical strenuousness does not exist They might often be loose collections of ill connected speculations, haphazard & illogical structures, for all the importance that is given to this element of their divine inspiration I shall try to show how mighty are the architectonics of thought in the Isha, how movement leads on to movement, how intimately, for instance, the closing invocations to Surya & Agni are related to the whole thought-structure and how perfectly they develop from what precedes The importance of the logical relation in the interpretation will be manifest, if I mistake not, at every step of our progress 3 [ I have spoken so far of the intellectual tests that we can employ Before I pass from this subject, it may be well to insert a word of explanation, of self-defence, almost of apology Among the intellectual interpreters of Sruti, Shankara towers like an unreachable giant above his fellows As a philosopher, as a metaphysician, as a powerful logician & victorious disputant his greatness can hardly be measured For a thousand years and more he has stood in the heavens of Indian thought, his head far away in the altitudes of Adwaita, his feet firmly planted on the lifeless remnants of crushed systems and broken philosophies, the wreckage of his logical conquests, his mouth like Trishira’s swallowing up the world, lokan grasantam, annihilating it in the white flame of the Mayavada, his shadow covering our intellects & stunting the efforts of all who have dared to think originally & dispute his conclusions Not Madhwa, not even Ramanuja can prevail against this colossal shadow Yet I have ventured throughout to differ from this king of commentators—almost even to ignore this great & invincible disputant If I have done so, it is because I think the decree of our liberty has already been pronounced by another giant of thought When the great Vivekananda, potent seedsower of the future, in answer to the objection of the Pundits, “But Shankara does not say that,” replied simply but finally, “No, but I, Vivekananda, say it,” he pronounced the decree of liberation not only for himself but for
3 The paragraph that follows was cancelled in the manuscript by Sri Aurobindo—-Ed
Page – 336 all of us from the yoke, the golden but heavy yoke, of the mighty Dravidian For this was Vivekananda’s mission to smite away all obstacles, however great & venerable, & open the path to the resurgence of Indian originality & the direct confrontation of the soul of man with the living Truth He was our deliverer not only from ignorance & weakness, but from the systems of knowledge that would limit us and impose a premature finality In truth,]
[4]
Part II.
The Instruments and Field of Vedanta
Chapter I. Textual Inference
The three principal means of intellectual knowledge are anumana, pratyaksha and aptavakya Anumana, inference from data, depends for its value on the possession of the right data, on the right observation of the data including the drawing of the right analogies, the unerring perception of true identity & rejection of false identity, the just estimate of difference & contrast, and finally on the power of right reasoning from the right data Pratyaksha is the process by which the things themselves about which we gather data are brought into our ken; aptavakya is evidence, the testimony of men who have themselves been in possession of the knowledge we seek An error in pratyaksha, an error committed by the apta, an error of data or of reasoning from the data may, if serious in its bearing or extent, vitiate all our conclusions even if all our other means are correct and correctly used Especially is this danger present to us when we are reasoning not from things but from words; when we are using the often artificial counters of traditional logic & metaphysics, we are apt to lose ourselves in a brilliant cloud, to be lifted from the earth, our pratistha, into some nebulous region where even
Page – 337 if we win high victories we are not much advanced, since we get thereby nothing but an intellectual satisfaction and cannot apply our knowledge to life This is the great advantage of the scientist over the metaphysician that he is always near to facts & sensible things which, when the truth of them is outraged by the freaks of the mind, present a much more formidable & tangible protest than words, those vague & flexible symbols of things which have been habituated to misuse ever since human thinking began The metaphysician is too apt to forget that he is dealing with the symbols of things and not with the things themselves; he should but is not always careful to compare his intellectual results with the verities of experience; he is apt to be more anxious that his conclusions should be logical than that they should be in experience true Much of the argumentation of the great Dravidian thinkers, though perfect in itself, seems to be vitiated by this tendency to argue about words rather than about the realities which alone give any value to words On the other hand scientists as soon as they go beyond the safe limits of observation & classification of data, as soon as they begin to reason & generalise on the basis of their science, show themselves to be as much subject to the errors of the intellect as ordinary mortals They too like the metaphysicians use words in a fixed sense established upon insufficient data and forge these premature fixatures into fetters upon thought and inquiry We seem hardly yet to possess the right & sufficient data for a proper understanding of the universe in which we find ourselves; the habit & power of right reasoning from data, even if with insufficient materials right reasoning were possible, seem yet to be beyond the reach of our human weakness The continued wrangles of philosophy, dogmatisms of science and quarrels of religion are so many proofs that we are yet unripe for the highest processes of thought and inquiry How few of us have even the first elementary condition of truth-seeking, a quiet heart and a silent, patient & purified understanding For the Vedantins were surely right in thinking that in order to be a discoverer & teacher of truth one must first be absolutely dhira,—live that is to say in a luminous calm of both heart & understanding
Page – 338 [5]
Part II
The Field and Instruments of Vedanta
Chapter I
Historically, then, we have our Hindu theory of the Vedanta It is the systematised affirmation, the reaffirmation, perhaps, of that knowledge of God, man and the universe, the Veda or Brahmavidya, on which the last harmony of man’s being with his surroundings was effected What the Vedanta is, intrinsically, I have already hinted It is the reaffirmation of Veda or Brahmavidya, not by metaphysical speculation or inferential reasoning, but by spiritual experience and supra-intellectual inspiration If this idea be true, then by interpreting correctly the Vedanta, we shall come to some knowledge of what God is, what man, of the nature and action of the great principles of our being, matter, life, mind, spirit and whatever else this wonderful world of ours may hold In fact, this is my sole object in undertaking the explanation of the Upanishads The essential relations of God & the world, so far as they affect our existence here, this is my subject A philological enquiry into the meaning of ancient Hindu documents, an antiquarian knowledge of the philosophising of ancient generations, although in itself a worthy object of labour and a patriotic occupation,—since those generations were our forefathers and the builders of our race,—would not to me be a sufficient motive for devoting much time & labour out of a life lived in these pregnant & fruitful times when each of us is given an opportunity of doing according to our powers a great work for humanity I hold with my forefathers that this is an age of enormous disintegration & reconstitution from which we look forward to a new Satyayuga That Satyayuga can only be reconstituted by the efforts of the sadhus, the seekers after human perfection, by maintaining in however small a degree that harmony of man’s being with his surrounding & containing universe which is the condition of our perfection The knowledge
Page – 339 of the principles of that harmony is therefore man’s greatest need and should be the first preoccupation of his lovers and helpers This knowledge, this perfection is within us and must ultimately be found and manifested by plunging into the depths of our own being, into that karanasamudra or causal ocean from which our beings emerge and bringing out from thence the lost Veda and the already existing future Within us is all Veda and all Vedanta, within us is God & perfected humanity—two beatitudes that are the same and yet different But to effect this great deliverance, to push aside the golden shield of our various thought from the face of Truth, to rescue the concealed Purusha, future Man, out of those waters in which he lies concealed and give him form by the intensity of our tapas, let no man think that it is a brief or an easy task in which we can dispense with the help that the wisdom of the past still offers us We must link our hands to the sages of the past in order that we may pass on the sacred Vedic fire, agnir idyah, to the Rishis of the future The best beginning for this great inquiry is, therefore, to know what the Vedanta has to say on these profound problems Afterwards we may proceed to confirmation from other sources. Three questions at the very beginning confront us What is the nature of the truth that the Vedanta sets out to teach,—what, that is to say, are its relations to the actual thought and labour of humanity? What are these methods of inspiration and experience by which they arrive at the truths of which they are the repositories? And granting that they are inspired in word & thought, how are we to arrive at the right meaning of words written long ago, in the Sanscrit language, by ancient thinkers with ideas that are not ours and a knowledge from which we have receded? Is it the method of the darshanik, the logical philosopher, that we must follow? Shall we arrive by logic at this knowledge of the Eternal? Or is [it] the scientist and scholar, who must be our guides? Shall grammar and analysis from outside help us? But the scientist does not admit inspiration, the logician does not use it
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