English
One fundamental difference comes out, however, as we recall the fact that the ‘ dark ground ’ is a principle of self-realisation on the part of the Absolute, while Saipkara’s Brahman is eternally realised and self- centred, wholly unaffected by Maya. This is a crucial point which must not be lost sight of in our comparison of Samkara’s position in this regard with its Eastern and Western analogues. In Samkara’s sense Maya can be characterised as a principle of self-expression or self-realisation only with reference to Igvara and not Brahman. So long as we are in the malm of dvaita —the realm of logic and ISVAUA AND BltAHMAN 261 practice—the highest, reality is, admittedly, not the indeterminate, unqualified Brahman, or Absolute, hut the determinate, qualified Saguna Brahman or I-wara that offers an explanation of the world of becoming from the human end—by combining Avitbin Himself the natures of being and be¬ coming, of the non-relative or absolute Brahman and the relative or dependent world. “ Thus Samkara,” as it has been justly observed,* “ at¬ tempts to combine the ideas of the negation of the finite and the presupposition of the finite in his con¬ ception of Isvara. The charge against Spinoza that lie reduces the Absolute to a mere blank of indeter¬ minate being, which he inconsistently transforms into the self-determining God, has no force, against Samkara, who commits no such sublime inconse¬ quence. . . But there is throughout Samkara’s philosophy the pervading prejudice against the ade¬ quacy of logic and the finality of its ideal, and so we find that this conception of Saguna Brahman, or concrete spirit is, according to him, so riddled with self-contradictions and inconsistencies that it cannot be regarded as the highest reality.” Now, whether, in the light of our foregoing discussions, we choose to regard Thar a as different from Brahman, or as one with Brahman, there is no denying the fact that the conception of Saguna Brahman, Ihara or Creator must be understood ns the strict correlative of the world of names and forms Oronsft), whether evolved or unevolved. Samkara * Prof. S. Badhakrishnan, Indian. Philosophy, Vol. H, pp, 668-59. 262 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDiNTA is unambiguously emphatic on this point and would urge with a Hegelian emphasis totidem rerbis : ‘ Without the world, God is not God.’ I&vara as the self-ccnscious Brahman is not to be rendered by the word ‘ God ’ merely, but the phrase ‘ God-and- the-world,’ to use an expression popularised by James Ward, would better express the import of gaipkarn’s ‘ Idvara.’ Although not in doctrinal sym¬ pathy with the notion of creation understood in an ultimate or metaphysical sense ( , Samkara * was far too acute a logician to ignore or tone down the strict correlativity of the Creator and the creation, God and the world, or the subject and the object. By way of expounding the Vedantic theory of ‘ motived creation in his commentary on the sutra (I. i. 5), Samkara proceeds to argue thus : “ In the case, however, of a transitive, specific reference to the object (of the activity of conscious choice or motivation), the texts bearing on the design or pur¬ pose of Brahman become all the more cogent or appropriate (as the intransitive use of such other- regarding activities has been justified with reference to their proper objects understood in that context). What, then, is that thing, which is, prior to creation, the object of God’s omniscience?--we reply: it is the (world of) names and forms, inde¬ finable either as ultimately real or the reverse, and (as yet) unevolved but with nisus or impulse towards ♦Corn, on V.8., II. i. 84, I9VARA AND BRAHMAN 263 evolution or articulation.”* So construed it is the Johannine Logos, the Word that was with God in the beginning. A God or Ih'ara before creation is after all, as Hegel pointed out, a figurative way of speaking—an abstract possibility, like God the Father of the Christian Trinity in its exclusiveness. • which is anything but real. It would thus compare not unfavourably with the Absolute Idea of Hegel. But $nmkara was far too securely lodged in the logical admission of the strict correlativity of subject and object to allow himself to use figurative expres¬ sions that are calculated to unhinge this correlation. It is true, in a sense, that God becomes or emerges for ‘ so long as creation and destruction are real movements in the life of God, the latter is not above time but is subject to time ; so that, even as creation and destruction belong to the empirical world, 16 vara belongs to it.’t But this admission does in no way conflict with gamkara’s adherence to the logical aspect of the question. It is that very logical demand which leads him to interpret creation as eternal jfare)- { The periodical creation and dissolution, to which gaqikara also has given countenance, following the lead of Sruti and Smriti, are understood as the developed and the undeveloped * ^nf^traP!! wse* mwror: i iWfpnfr fi! wja:—Com. on Y.S., I. i. 5. f Prof. Badhiikrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 558. t Com. on V.S„ II. i. 80. 264 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA state of names and forms so as not to imperil this logical order—by maintaining intact the two terms of a relation. Without this logical censorship, the religious imagination of man is too apt to project a fancied picture of a lonely God into the vacancy ^before the world was, that is, before God was, in strictness of language, God, and to paint God as tired of this loneliness and creating the world out of nothing by the issue of a fiat or decree. Even Hegel seems to have succumbed to this temptation so far as he closes his ‘ Phenomenology ’ with the well- known lines of Schiller: “ Friendless was the mighty Lord of worlds, Felt defect—therefore created spirits, Blessed mirrors of his blessedness.” As it has been truly remarked* : “ the divine Ere¬ mite, as a pre-existent Creator, is a figure, if one may so speak, of the logical imagination : it indi¬ cates what God is not, it does not tell us what He once was.” On account of the invariable intrusion of the time-perspective—as for example, in the Biblical chronology of creation fixed at 4004 B. C. —many a scaffolding and justification, altogether gratuitous, have had to be improvised to meet the requirements of a shallow and misguided anthropo¬ morphism. To take a typical example, St. Augus¬ tine’s explanation by way of a scholarly distinction —the world was not created in time but together with time (cum tempore, non in tempore )-*-is more * Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of Ood, p. 270, 18 YABA AND BRAHMAN 265 ingenious than convincing. It only circumvents, instead of envisaging, the real issue. In modern times, however, the issue has been faced, fair and square, and nowhere has it been presented with more persuasiveness and force than in the typically modern treatment of the problem by Ulrici, a semi- Hegelian of the last century, in his remarkable book entitled ‘ God and World ’ (Goff und Welt). “ In truth,” says the writer, “ God is not first God and then creator of the world, but as God he is creator of the world, and only as creator of the world is he God... Hence just as God does not become creator of the world, so the world too, though not eternal of itself, exists from eternity as the creation (or act) of God.” Such typical utterances bearing on the eternity of the creative act, however illustrative and con¬ firmatory of the standpoint of Samkara with regard to the scriptural texts importing creation fcfejgAn:), can easily lead us, by reason of contextual emphasis, into misunderstanding the real intention and atti¬ tude of Samkara with reference to this much-debated, age-long, cherished creed of theological dogmatics! The very fact that he had a firm grasp of the logical situation underlying the problem of creation and spared no pains to convey that fact, in no uncertain terms, that he accepted creation as an eternal act on the part of Thara, or that he posited an original ‘ volition ' or ‘ design ’(%fn or on the part of the Creator effectuating the transition from the undeveloped or inarticulate '(TOTVff) to the full- fledged, articulate or developed (anwn) world of .* names and forms, ’ does not in the least justify us u A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA in supposing that Sarpkara was in ‘ bitter earnest ! with the theistic position, or was prepared to accord to the doctrine of creation a central or ultimate signi¬ ficance, or to view it from the side of the Absolute. That decidedly he was not; and this he has not left us to conjecture or presume from his commitment but 'has, on the contrary, harped on this thetne so often that there can be no room for any misgiving or misrepresentation. In the very context of his exposition of the sot disant theistic position of the Aflvaita-Vedanta, as he warms up to the very heart of his theme and proceeds in a high-pitched key, the whole effect of his teaching, impassioned and edify¬ ing as it is, seems to have been neutralised by the chilling blast of his absolutistic prepossessions. Indeed, the note on which this lofty strain is round¬ ed off is not very much unlike the characteristically Kantian ‘ as if ’ (als ob) which, by giving a finishing touch to an otherwise sublime note, converts it into a bathos. As it is, Satpkara reminds us that the scriptural texts importing creation are not to be Understood in an ultimate or ontological reference, but as inculcating, On the one hand, the falsity of all ijudgnleUts and practice concerning the world of names and forms, and, on the other, the essential identity of Brahman and the world.