English
Accordingly, when we try to schematize the fact for ourselves, we either eliminate the characteristics of self-hood by making the individual simply a vehicle of transmission or, on the other hand, we lose hold of the creative unity altogether by treating the individuals as independent, self- subsistent units/’t These two extracts have been quoted in extenso as being typical of an enlightened or philosophic agnosticism which acts as a whole¬ some antidote to Hegelian gnosticism. But both seem to have departed from this salutary principle which they elect to abide by, so far as they both justify the notion of creation ‘ from the side of the Absolute,’ as Bosanquet would say, so far as God car the Absolute is regarded as a ‘ self-communica¬ ting holiness ’ or ‘ self rimparting blessedness,’ or * Metaphysics, Seo. 246. f Idea of Ood, p. 298. 88 298 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OE THE VEDANTA more philosophically, as Love. “ The idea of end or purpose,” as Prof. Pringle-Pattison admits in the end,* “may not be literally applicable in such sphere, but we may at least say that just * from the side of the Absolute ’ the meaning of the finite pro¬ cess must lie in a creation of a world of individual spirits; for to such alone can He reveal himself, and from them receive the answering tribute of love and adoration.” But as a staunch Absolutist, Samkara would demur to the ultimate theoretical validity of the notion of a Being that receives ‘ the answering tribute of love and adoration.’ The Absolute as eternally realised is beyond the reach of even the highest category of the dvaita, and has no need of a world of created beings. Even Hegel than whom there has been scarcely a more ardent advocate of the need of creation for the self-realisation, admit¬ tedly eternal, of the Absolute, has been not infre¬ quently betrayed, inspite of himself, into the language of Samkara’s lila. In his Philosophy of Religion, for example, Hegel distinctly speaks of the Absolute Life as the eternal play of love with itself. In a much more revealing passage of the Encyclopcedia Hegel proceeds to observe thus: “ Within the range of the finite we can never see or experience that the End has been really secured. The consummation of the infinite End, therefore, consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. The Good, the absolutely Good, is eternally accomplishing itself in the world, and the result is that it need not wait * Idea of God, p. 295. I8VARA AS CREATOR AND CREATION AS LILA 299 upon us, but is already by implication, as well as in full actuality, accomplished. This is the illusion under which we live. It alone supplies at the same time the actualizing force on which the interest in the world depends. In the course of its process, the Idea creates that illusion by setting an antithesis to confront itself, and its action consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created.”* There could be no more faithful exegesis on the standpoint of Samkara than what has been furnished by Hegel in this luminous paragraph, and its authority is so much the greater because it does not directly profess that aim. It presents in a synoptic view the main¬ springs of the Sarnkara-Vedanta—the doctrine of adhydsa, Vila, mayd and the two complementary notions of praptaprdptih ( UTHHTfa: ) and parihrta- pariharah ( qfa EWfrfTC ). In point of fact there is point-to-point correspondence between Samkara and Hegel here : the word ‘ ‘ Tauschung ’ ’ repeated¬ ly used by Hegel in this context is an exact counter¬ part of Samkara’s mayd, avidyd, or, adhydsah and adhyamh or avidyd has profound functional similar ity with the ‘ Tauschung ’ of Hegel, which both regard as the beneficent source of our interest in the world with all its practical usages. So far as Hegel is concerned, this passage, remarkable as it is, is strangely at variance with the main drift of his thought. It is on account of the intrusion of time- perspective that he has not been able to sustain consistently his view of the absolutely good as * Section 212 (Wallace’s translation, p. 852). 300 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA ‘eternally accomplishing itself in the world.’* The true import of Hegel’s philosophy is to be recovered from what he so often tells us, viz., that the Christian, that is to say, in his view, the final, religious, idea of God is that of the self-revealing, or self-imparting God. Such is, indeed, the under¬ lying significance of Brahman, conceived as Ananda ( ^ 1 ^! ) that necessarily goes out of itself into an Other and reveals or fulfils itself therein, for it is the very nature of anandah (xrR*50 t to reveal itself —51 ^ ) as Vacaspati Mi&ra truly observes in this regard. The Supreme Being, the ens realissimum or ens perfectissimum—id quo majus Cogitari nequit of Scholastic theology which has its counterpart in the Vedantic Brahman, as evi¬ denced also by the derivative meaning of the word— is at the same time the Supreme Intelligence (ff:), as the Vedanta fully accepts on the authority of the 8mti text, characterising the Supreme Being as eternally unconditioned or pure, conscious and free ). The epithet 1 buddha ’ ), as Vacaspati Mi6ra further elucidates it in the Bhamatl, has specific reference to the * Saipkara never faltered in this view of creation as eternally realising itself. Creation is not conceived as something accomplished in the past; it is, in other words, not a fact but an act, continuous and perpetual. In his own words, ‘ the end of realising itself in the many (on the part of the One) is not yet fulfilled ’ re t a i n* ifnnftf firren) —Com. on OhWnd., 71. 8. ii. t Vide Bhamatl on I. i. 1 of Sarpikara-Bh&ehya on the Vedinta-Sdtraa. IfiVABA AS CREATOR AND CREATION AS LILA 30l unconditioned or independent manifestation or self-revealing nature of Atman as Ananda It is in this concept of ananda as the supreme principle and essence of Atman that all subsequent develop¬ ments of the Vedantic theory of creation are antici¬ pated and summed up. It is doubtless in the later schools of Vcdantism, with a pronounced theistic bias, that the doctrine of lild figures, no longer as a cloak for ignoi'ance, or as the negation of external teleology, but as the positive principle of self-reali¬ sation cr self-expression which has its sole raison d'etre in the attainment of bliss. Ramanuja, for example, thinks that the ascription of an end to the Creator is unimpeachable, so far as the ‘ end ’ in question is no other than lild or creative spontaneity, which is so called on account of the creation, main¬ tenance and dissolution of the world being accom¬ plished exclusively by the volition of the Creator. 111 Vallabhacaryya, however, emphasises the clement of ‘ self-determination ’ or freedom from constraint in the creative activity of the Lord, conceived as a mere sport or play on His part ( OT 3 T*! ). Now, the essence of play-consciousness or Divine sport (^tUT) is freedom from the operation of any end or purpose whatsoever : it is its own end (af ft fNlRlt i tw iraVwHT<v). This — Srtbhashyam. 302 A systematic study of the vedAnTa trend of thought is carried a step further by "Vala- deva in his Govindabhdshya on the Brdhmasutras* who contends that Ilia is but the activity of a Being, albeit self-sufficient and perfect, towards multiform creation, and is not conditioned by any motive of self-interest.accordingly, lila is only of the very nature of the essential ananda or joy of the Being, t Thus in this last version of Ilia, it appears. as being perfectly in tune with, and a logical carry¬ ing out of, the celebrated Upanishad text that crea¬ tion proceeds from the fulness of the joy of the Creator, or Ananda as the supreme creative principle itself sttcpw ). * II. 1. xxxiii. + aiWWS* *>wn n g vwnf*uifaijfW... (Mig i LECTURE X Jxva and Jagat: Individual and the World The central truth enshrined in the heart of the doctrine of Creation is the fact of individuation. Erom time immemorial, in the East and in the West, the same insistent ‘ Why?—Why is there any world at all? ’ has been pressed by professional philosophers and the lay preachers alike, and all have, like the inquisitive youth in Omar Khayyam, come out by the same door by which they entered the temple of the wise—confessedly none the wiser. Why should, ’ asks William -Tames,* ‘ the Absolute ever have lapsed from the perfection of its own integral experience and refracted itself into all our finite experiences? ’ It is, in his opinion, an in¬ superable impasse before which all absolutism is hauled up, so far as it fails to explain why ‘ the static timeless perfect Absolute ’ should have passed out of ‘ the stagnant felicity ’ of the absolute novel- reader into the Sturm nnd Drang experienced by those that participate fn the ‘ arduousness ’ of the cosmic drama. Beginning with the admission that experience should take place in finite centres, and should wear the form of finite ‘ thisness,’ is in the end inexplicable,” Bradley leaves off with the concluding reflection : ‘ We do not know why or * A Pluralistic Universe , p. 120. 304 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA how the Absolute divides itself into centres, or the way in which, so divided, it still remains one.’* In the same strain Bosanquet broaches the inevit¬ able question : ‘ why the finite world exists ’ which he, however, dismisses with the pointed remark that ‘ we cannot expect to give a reason for the scheme of the universe.