Theosophy - The Philosophy of the Vedanta - in its relations to the Occidental Metaphysics - by Paul Deussen - Adyar Pamphlets No. 136
Adyar Pamphlets No. 136
The
Philosophy of the Vedanta In Its Relations to the Occidental Metaphysics
by Dr Paul Deussen
Professor of Philosophy in the University of Kiel, Germany
ΔΔ
An
address, delivered before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,
Saturday the 25th February, 1893
Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras. India
April 1930
[Page 1] ON my journey through India I have noticed with satisfaction, that in
philosophy till now our brothers in the East have maintained a very good
tradition, better perhaps, than the more active but less contemplative
branches of the great Indo-Aryan family in Europe, where Empirism,
Realism and their natural consequence, Materialism, grow from day to day
more exuberantly, whilst metaphysics, the very center and heart of serious
philosophy, are supported only by a few ones, who have learned to brave
the spirit of the age.
In
India the influence of this perverted and pervasive spirit
of our age has not yet overthrown in religion and philosophy
the good traditions of the great ancient time. It is
true, that most of the ancient darsanas even
in India find only an historical interest; followers of the
Sãnkhya-System occur
rarely; Nyãya is cultivated mostly as an intellectual sport and exercise, like
grammar or mathematics, but the Vedãntic is, now as
in the ancient time living in the mind and heart of every
thoughtful Hindu. It is true, that even here in the [Page 2] sanctuary
of Vedãntic metaphysics, the realistic
tendencies, natural to man, have penetrated, producing the misinterpreting
variations of Shankara's Adwaita, known under the names Visishtãdwaita,
Dwaita, Cuddhãdwaita of Rãmanuja, Mãdhva, Vallabha, but India till now
has not yet been seduced by their voices, and of hundred Vedãntins (I
have it from a well informed man, who is himself a zealous adversary of
Shankara and follower of Rãmãnuja) fifteen perhaps adhere to Rãmãnuja,
five to Madhva, five to Vallabha, and seventy-five to Shankarãchãrya.
This
fact may be for poor India in so many misfortunes a great
consolation; for the eternal interests are higher than
the temporary ones; and the system of the Vedãnta,
as founded on the Upanishads and Vedãnta
Sutras and accomplished by Shankara's commentaries on them,
equal in rank to Plato and Kant — is one of the
most valuable products of the genius of mankind in his
researches of the eternal truth, as I propose to show
now by a short sketch of Shankara's Adwaita and comparison
of its principal doctrines with the best that occidental
philosophy has produced till now.
Taking
the Upanishads, as Shankara does, for revealed truth
with absolute authority, it was not an easy task to build out
of their materials a consistent philosophical system, for the
Upanishads are in Theology, Cosmology and Psychology full of [Page
3] hardest
contradictions. So in many passages the nature of Brahman
is painted out in various and luxuriant colors, and
again we read, that the nature of Brahman is quite
unattainable to human words, to human understanding;
so we meet sometimes longer reports explaining how the
world has been created by Brahman, and again we are told,
that there is no world besides Brahman, and all variety
of things is mere error and illusion; so we have fanciful
descriptions of the Samsãra, the way of
the wandering soul up the heaven and back to the earth, and
again read that there is no Samsãra, no variety
of souls at all, but only one Âtman,
who is fully and totally residing in every being.
Shankara
in these difficulties created by the nature of his materials,
in face of so many contradictory doctrines, which he
was not allowed to decline and yet could not admit altogether,
has found a wonderful way out, which deserves the attention,
perhaps the imitation of the Christian dogmatists in
their embarrassments. He constructs out of the materials
of the Upanishads two systems; one esoteric, philosophical
(called by him
nirgunavidyã, sometimes pãramãrthikãavasthã)
containing the metaphysical truth for the few ones, rare in
all times and countries, who are able to understand it ; and
another exoteric, Theological (sagunãvidyã,
vyãvhãrikiavasthã) for
the general public, who want images, not abstract truth, worship,
not meditation. [Page
4]
I shall now point out briefly the two systems, esoteric and exoteric, in
pursuing and confronting them through the four chief parts, which
Shankara's system contains, and every complete philosophical system
must contain:
I. Theology, the doctrine of God or of the philosophical principle.
II. Cosmology, the doctrine of the world.
III. Psychology, the doctrine of the soul.
IV. Eschatology, the doctrine of the last things, the things after death.
I. THEOLOGY
The
Upanishads swarm with fanciful and contradictory descriptions
of the nature of Brahman. He is the all-pervading akãsa,
is the purusha in the sun, the purusha in the eye; his
head is the heaven, his eyes are sun and moon, his breath
is the wind, his footstool the earth; he is infinitely
great as soul of the universe and infinitely small as
the soul in us; he is in particular the Îsvara,
the personal God, distributing justly reward and punishment
according to the deeds of man. All these numerous descriptions
are collected by Shankara under the wide mantle of the
exoteric theology, the sagunãvidyã of
Brahman, consisting of numerous
vidyas adapted for approaching the Eternal Being
not by the way of knowledge but by the way of worshiping,
and having each its particular fruits. Mark, [Page
5] that also
the conception of God as a personal being
îsvara, is merely exoteric and does not
give us a conform knowledge of the
Âtman; and indeed, when we consider what is personality,
how narrow in its limitations, how closely connected
to egoism the counterpart of Godly essence, who might
think so low of God, to impute him personality ?
In
the sharpest contrast to these exoteric vidyãs
stands the esoteric, nirguriãvidyã of
the Âtman; and its fundamental tenet is the absolute
inaccessibility of God to human thoughts and words;
and again:
and
the celebrated formula occurring so often in Brihadãranyaka-Upanishad; neti! neti, viz.,
whatever attempt you make to know the Âtman,
whatever description you give of him, I always say: naiti, naiti,
it is not so, it is not so ! Therefore the wise Bhãva,
when asked by the king Vãshkalin,
to explain the Brahman kept silence. And when the king repeated
his request again and again, the rishi broke out into the
answer: “I
tell it to you, but you don't understand it; cãnto' yamãtmã,
this Âtmã is silence!” We know it now by the
Kantian philosophy, that the answer of Bhãva
was correct, [Page
6] we
know it, that the very organization of our intellect (which
is bound once for ever to its innate forms of intuition,
space, time and causality) excludes us from a knowledge
of the spaceless, timeless, Godly reality for ever and ever.
And yet the Âtman, the only Godly being is not
unattainable to us, is even not far from us for we have
it fully and totally in ourselves as our own metaphysical
entity; and here when returning from the outside and apparent
world to the deepest secrets of our own nature, we may
come to God, not by knowledge, but by anubhava,
by absorption into our own self. There is a great difference
between knowledge, in which subject and object are distinct
from each other, and anubhava, where
subject and object coincide in the same. He who by anubhava comes
to the great intelligence, “ahambrahmaasmi” obtains
a state called by Shankara Samrãdhanam, accomplished
satisfaction; and indeed, what might he desire, who feels
and vows himself as the sum and totality of all existence
!
II. COSMOLOGY
Here again we meet the distinction of exoteric and esoteric doctrine,
though not so clearly severed by Shankara as in other parts of his system.
The
exoteric Cosmology according to the natural but erroneous
realism (avidyã) in which we are born, considers
this world as the reality and can
[Page
7] express
its entire dependency of Brahman only by the mythical way
of a creation of the world, by Brahman. So a temporal creation
of the world, even as in the Christian documents, is also
taught in various and well-known passages of the Upanishads.
But such a creation of the material world by an immaterial
cause, performed in a certain point of time after an eternity
elapsed uselessly, is not only against the demands of human
reason and natural science, but also against another important
doctrine of the Vedãnta, which teaches and must
teach (as we shall see hereafter) the “beginninglessness
of the migration of souls”, samsãrasyaanãditvam. Here the expedient of Shankara
is very clever and worthy of imitation. Instead of the
temporary creation once for ever of the Upanishads, he
teaches that the world in great periods is created and
reabsorbed by Brahman (referring to the misunderstood verse
of the Rigveda:).
This mutual creation and reabsorption lasts from eternity,
and no creation can be allowed by our system to be a first
one, and that for good reasons, as we shall see just now.
If we ask : Why has God created the world ? The
answers to this question are generally very unsatisfactory.
For his own glorification ? How may we attribute to him
so much vanity! For his particular amusement ? But he was
an eternity without this play-toy! By love of mankind?
How may he love a thing before it exists; and how may
it be called love, to create millions [Page
8] for
misery and eternal pain! The Vedãnta has a better
answer. The never ceasing new-creation of the world is
a moral necessity connected with the central and most
valuable doctrine of the exoteric Vedãnta, the
doctrine of Samsãra.
Man,
says Shankara, is like a plant. He grows, flourishes and
at the end he dies but not totally. For as the plant, when
dying, leaves behind it the seed, of which, according to
its quality, a new plant grows; so man, when dying, leaves
his Karma, the good and bad works of
his life, which must be rewarded and punished in another
life after this. No life can be the first, for it is the
fruit of previous actions, nor the last, for its actions
must be expiated in a next following life. So the Samsãra
is without beginning and without end, and the new creation
of the world after every absorption into Brahman is a moral
necessity, I need not point out, in particular here in India,
the high value of this doctrine of Samsãra as a
consolation in the distresses, as a moral agent in the
temptations of life; I have to say here only, that the Samsãra,
though not the absolute truth, is a mythical representative
of truth which in itself is unattainable to our intellect;
mythical is this theory of metempsychosis only in so far
as it invests in the forms of space and time what really
is spaceless and timeless and therefore beyond the reach
of our understanding. So the Samsãra is just so far
from the truth, as the sagunãvidyã is
from the
nirgunã[Page
9] vidyã;
lit is the eternal truth itself, but (since we cannot conceive
it otherwise) the truth in an allegorical form, adapted
to our human understanding. And this is the character of
the whole exoteric Vedãnta, whilst the esoteric doctrine
tries to find out the philosophical, the absolute truth.
And
so we come to the esoteric Cosmology, whose simple doctrine
is this, that in reality there is no manifold world, but
only Brahman, and that what we consider as the world is
a mere illusion (mãyã)
similar to a
mrigatrishnikã, which disappears when we approach
it, and not more to be feared than the rope, which we took
in the darkness for a serpent. There are, as you see, many
similes in the Vedãnta, to illustrate the illusive
character of this world, but the best of them is perhaps
when Shankara compares our life with a long dream: a man
whilst dreaming does not doubt of the reality of the dream,
but this reality disappears in the moment of awakening, to
give place to a truer reality, which we were not aware of
whilst dreaming. The life a dream! this has been the thought
of many wise men from Pindar and Sophocles to Shakspere and
Calderon de la Barca, but nobody has better explained this
idea, than Shankara. And indeed, the moment when we die may
be to nothing so similar as to the awakening from a long
and heavy dream; it may be, that then heaven and earth are
blown away like the nightly phantoms of the dream, and what
then may stand before us ? or [Page
10] rather
in us ? Brahman the eternal reality, which was hidden
to us till then by this dream of life! This world is mãyã,
is illusion, is not the very reality, that is the deepest
thought of the esoteric Vedãnta, attained not by
calculating tarka but by anubhava,
by returning from this variegated world to the deep recess
of our own self (Âtman).
Do so, if you can, and you will get aware of a reality
very different from empirical reality, a timeless, spaceless,
changeless reality, and you will feel and experience
that whatever is outside of this only true reality is
mere appearance, is mãyã, is a dream!
This was the way the Indian thinkers went, and by a similar
way, shown by Parmenides, Plato came to the same truth,
when knowing and teaching that this world is a world
of shadows, and that the reality is not in these shadows,
but behind them. The accord here of Platonism and Vedãntism
is wonderful, but both have grasped this great metaphysical
truth by intuition; their tenet is true, but they are
not able to prove it, and in so far they are defective.
And here a great light and assistance to the Indian and
the Grecian thinker comes from the philosophy of Kant,
who went quite another way, not the Vedãntic
and Platonic way of intuition but the way of abstract
reasoning and scientific proof. The great work of Kant
is an analysis of human mind, not in the superficial
way of Locke, but getting to the very bottom of it. And
in doing so Kant found, to the surprise of the [Page
11] world
and of himself, that three essential elements of this
outside world, viz.,
space, time and causality, are not, as we naturally
believe, eternal fundaments of an objective reality,
but merely subjective innate intuitive forms of our
own intellect. This has been proved by Kant and by
his great disciple Schopenhauer with mathematical
evidence, and I have given these proofs (the fundament
of every scientific metaphysic) in the shortest and
clearest form in my “Elemete der, Metaphysik” — a
book which I am resolved now to get translated into
English, for the benefit not of the Europeans (who
may learn German) but of my brothers in India, who
will be greatly astonished to find in Germany the
scientific substruction of their own philosophy — the
Adwaita Vedãnta ! (For Kant has demonstrated,
that space, time and causality are not objective
realities, but only subjective forms of our intellect,
and the unavoidable conclusion is this, that the
world, as far as it is extended in space, running
on in time, ruled throughout by causality, in so
far is merely a representation of my mind and nothing
beyond it. You see the concordance of Indian, Grecian
and German metaphysics; the world is mãyã,
is illusion, says Shankara; it is a world of shadows,
not of realities, says Plato; it is “appearance
only, not the thing in itself”, says Kant.
Here we have the same doctrine in three different
parts of the world, but the scientific proofs of [Page
12] it
are not in Shankara, not in Plato, but only in
Kant.
III. PSYCHOLOGY
Here
we convert the order and begin with the esoteric Psychology,
because it is closely connected with the esoteric Cosmology
and its fundamental doctrine: the world is mãyã.
All is illusive, with one exception, with the exception of
my own Self, of my Âtman. My Âtman
cannot be illusive, as Shankara shows, anticipating the “cogito,
ergo sum”
of Descartes, for he who would deny it, even in denying
it, witnesses its reality. But what is the relation between
my individual soul, the Jîva-Âtman and the highest
soul, the Parama-Âtman or Brahman ? Here
Shankara, like prophet, foresees the deviations of
Rãmãnuja,
Madhva and Vallabha and refutes them in showing, that
the Jîva
cannot be a part of Brahman (Rãmãnuja), because
Brahman is without parts (for it is timeless and spaceless,
and all parts are either successions in time or co-ordinations
in space, as we may supply), neither a different thing from
Brahman (Mãdhva), for
Brahman is ekamevaadvitiyam, as we may experience by anubhava,
nor a metamorphose of Brahman (Vallabha), for Brahman is unchangeable
(for, as we know now by Kant, it is out of causality). The
conclusion is, that the Jîva, being neither a part nor
a different thing, nor a [Page
13] variation
of Brahman, must be the Paramãtman fully and totally
himself, a conclusion made equally by the Vedãntin Shankara,
by the Platonic Plotinos, and by the Kantian Schopenhauer.
But Shankara in his conclusions goes perhaps further than any
of them. If really our soul, says he, is not a part of Brahman
but Brahman himself, then all the attributes of Brahman all-pervadingness,
eternity, all-mightiness (scientifically-spoken: exemption
of space, time, causality) are ours; ahambrahmaasmi,
I am Brahman, and consequently I am all-pervading (spaceless),
eternal (timeless), almighty (not limited in my doing by causality).
But these godly qualities are hidden in me, says Shankara,
as the fire is hidden in the wood and will appear only after
the final deliverance.
What
is the cause of this concealment of my godly nature ?
The Upãdhis,
answers Shankara, and with this answer we pass from the esoteric
to the exoteric psychology. The Upãdhis are manas
and indriyas, prana with its five branches, sûkshman
sarîram, in short, the whole psychological
apparatus, which together with a factor changeable from birth
to birth, with my karman, accompanies my Âtman in all
his ways of migration, without infecting his Godly nature,
as the crystal is not infected by the color painted over
it. But wherefrom originate these Upãdhis ? They
form of course part of the mãyã, the
great world illusion, [Page
14] and like mãyã they
are based in our innate avidyã or ignorance,
a merely negative power and yet strong enough to keep us
from our Godly existence. But now, from where comes the avidyã,
this primeval cause of ignorance, sin, and misery ? Here
all philosophers in India and Greece and everywhere have
been defective, until Kant came to show us that the whole
question is inadmissible. You ask for the cause of avidyã,
but she has no cause; for causality goes only so far as this
world of the Samsãra goes, connecting each link of
it with another, but never beyond Samsãra and its
fundamental characteristic the avidyã. In enquiring
after a cause of avidyã with mãyã,
Samsãra and
Upãdhis, you abuse, as Kant may teach us, your innate
mental organ of causality to penetrate into a region for
which it is not made and where it is no more available.
The fact is, that we are here in ignorance, sin and misery,
and that we know the way out of them, but the question
of a cause for them is senseless.
IV. ESCHATOLOGY
And
now a few words about this way out of the Samsãra,
and first about the exoteric theory of it. In the ancient
time of the hymns there was no idea of samsãra
but only rewards in heaven and (somewhat later) punishment
in a dark region (padamgabhiram), the
precursor of the later hells.[Page
15] Then
the deep theory of Samsãra came up, teaching-reward
and punishment in the form of a new birth on earth. The Vedãnta
combines both theories, and so man has a double expiation,
first in heaven and hell, and then again in a new existence
on the earth. This double expiation is different (1) for performers
of good works, going the Pitrîyana, (2) for
worshipers of the Sagunam Brahma, going the Devyãna,
(3) for wicked deeds, leading to what is obscurely hinted at
in the Upanishads as the
TritîyamSthãnam, the third place — (1)
the Pitrîyana leads through a
succession of dark spheres to the moon, there to enjoy the
fruit of the good works and, after their consumption, back
to an earthly existence. (2) The
Devayãna leads through a set of brighter spheres
to Brahman, without returning to the earth ().
But this Brahman is only Sagunam Brahma, the object of worshiping,
and its true worshipers, though entering into this Sagunam
Brahma without returning, have to wait in it until they get moksha by
obtaining
samayogadorshanam, the full knowledge of the Nirgunam
Brahma. (3) The
TritîyamSthãnam, including the
later theories of hells, teaches punishment in them, and again
punishment by returning to earth in the form of lower castes,
animals, and plant. All these various and fantastical ways
of Samsãra are considered as true, quite as true as
this world is, but not more. For the whole world and the whole
way of Samsãra
is [Page
16] valid
and true for those only who are in the avidyã,
not for those who have overcome her, as we have to show now.
The
esoteric Vedãnta does not admit the reality of the
world nor of the Samsãra, for the only reality is
Brahman, seized in ourselves as our own
Âtman. The Knowledge of this Âtman, the great
intelligence: “ ahambrahmaasmi”, does not produce moksha (deliverance),
but is moksha
itself. Then we obtain what the Upanishads say:
When
seeing Brahma as the highest and the lowest everywhere, all
knots of our heart, all sorrows are split, all doubts
vanish, and our works become nothing. Certainly no man
can live without doing works, and so also the Jîvanmukta but
he knows it, that all these works are illusive, as the whole
world is, and therefore they do not adhere to him nor produce
for him a new life after death. And what kind of works may
such a man do ? People have often reproached the Vedãnta
with being defective in morals and indeed, the Indian genius
is too contemplative to speak much of works; but the fact
is nevertheless, that the highest and purest morality is
the immediate consequence of the Vedãnta. The Gospels
fix quite correctly as the highest law of morality: “love
your neighbor as yourselves”. But
why should I do so, since by [Page
17] the order
of nature I feel pain and pleasure only in myself, not
in my neighbor ? The answer is not in the Bible (this
venerable book being not yet quite free of Semitic realism),
but it is in the Veda is in the great formula “tat
team asi”, which gives in three
words metaphysics and morals altogether. You shall love
your neighbor as yourselves, because you are your neighbor,
and mere illusion makes you believe, that your neighbor
is something different from yourselves. Or in the words
of the Bhagavad-Gîtã: “he, who knows
himself in everything and everything in himself, will
not injure himself by himself, nahinastiãtmanããtmãnam”. This is the sum and
tenor of all morality, and this is the standpoint of
a man knowing himself as Brahman. He feels himself
as everything, so he will not desire anything, for
he has whatever can be had; he feels himself as everything, — so
he will not injure anything, for nobody injures himself.
He lives in the world, is surrounded by its illusions
but not deceived by them: like the man suffering from timira,
who sees two moons but knows that there is one only,
so the Jîvanmukta sees the
manifold world and cannot get rid of seeing it, but he
knows, that there is only one being, Brahman, the Âtman,
his own Self, and he verifies it by his deeds of pure
uninterested morality. And so he expects his end, like
the potter expects the end of the twirling of his wheel,
after the vessel is ready. And then, for him, when death [Page
18] comes,
no more Samsãra:
He enters into Brahman, like the streams
into the ocean:
he leaves behind him nãma, and rûpam, he leaves behind him individuality,
but he does not leave behind him his Âtmana, his Self. It is not the falling of
the drop into the infinite ocean, it is the whole ocean, becoming free from
the fetters of ice, returning from his frozen state to that what he is really
and has never ceased to be, to his own all-pervading, eternal, all-mighty
nature.
And
so the Vedãnta, in its unfalsified form, is the strongest
support of pure morality, is the greatest consolation in
the sufferings of life and death. Indians, keep to it ![Page 19]
FAREWELL TO INDIA
O, sun of India, what have we committed,
That we must leave thee and thy children now
Thy giant-trees, thy flowers, so well befitted
To thy blue heaven's never-frowning brow.
And you, our Indian friends, whose hearty feeling
Deep
sympathy with you has fast obtained —
From Ceylon to Peshawar and Darjeeling,
Are you now lost to us, so soon as gained ?
Farewell! Now Space and Time, in separating
Our
bodies, will create a cruel wall;
Until forgetful darkness over-shading
Like
Himãlayan fog, bedims you all.
Did we but dream of your brown lovely faces,
Of your dark eyes, and gently touching hands ?
Was it a dream, that left such tender traces,
We carry back with us to foreign lands ?
O, yes, a dream is all that we are living,
And India be a dream in this great dream;
A dream, repose and recreation giving,
Under a paler heaven's fainter beam.
But what are Time and Space, whose rough intrusion,