English
What the Upanishads profess to do is not to lay down rules for the betterment of our daily lives, but to enlighten us as to the spirit in which our lives are to be lived. Indeed, having, as it does, in view a good, higher than that of action, the good or blessed¬ ness of a vita contemplativa, the Upanishads con¬ ceive their main function to be the creation of a spiritual atmosphere and not the formulation of an ethical code. In their functioning, the Upanishads emulate that all-pervading ether which works in¬ visibly and unceasingly, but does not vibrate into light. The ineptitude of the comparison should not have escaped the notice of a scholar of Deussen’s eminence. What has some semblance of justifica¬ tion is their comparison with the first maxim of Pure Practical Season as formulated by Immanuel Kant, viz., “So act that the principle of thy action can be consistently universalised.” The point of the comparison consists in their respective answers to the question of the spirit in which our lives are to be lived—in the enunciation, in short, of an a-priori maxim of universal applicability. Sloth acquiesce, THE CULTURAL VALUE OF THE VEDANTA 399 on the whole, in the same merits and demerits. The barren formalism of a principle of universal legislation which fails to give us a concrete code of maxims, or a guidance in the practical concerns of life, must naturally and necessarily provoke its own Nemesis in the entire set of casuistical literature that has followed in the wake of both. The criticism may not be relished by the Vedantists, but it is none the less true. It is undeniable that Kant sought to obviate the empty formalism of his teachings in the proposal to make Humanity always the end of action, and never a means only—that is to say, the happiness of humanity, represented in your neighbour, always the end of our action. Whether the cult of ‘ the love of one’s neighbour ’ has failed or not is writ large across the face of history which, if Croce is right, is but contemporary history. But that is not the point of philosophical importance in this con¬ nection. It is just when Kant was warming up to the idea of a ‘ unity of our lives as a systematic whole,’ as a * Kingdom of Ends,’ he was moved, by reason of a hampering prejudice and fatal dualism, to neutralise the force of this fruitful con¬ ception with a characteristically Kantian ‘ as if.’ The saving clause ‘ as if ’ does not save, but damns for ever, the Kingdom of Ends which, we are told, on its authority, has a mere, heuristic or regulative validity but lacks a constitutive one. Thus punctuated and sterilised, the Kingdom of Ends—which could have developed far more fruitfully than the manner in which Kaut could have intended it to do—becomes in the 400 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA end one of those ‘ floating air-bubbles, gay in the sunshine and broken by the passing wind.’ Is not in all conscience, the injunction of that we have in the Gita, although backed by the meta¬ physical oneness of being of the Samkara-Vedanta, confronted with the same deadlock in practice, and pursued by the same aftermath of casuistry that the other draws in its wake? Indeed, we must look for the cultural significance of the Vedanta elsewhere— not in any positive prescripts that it might have unconsciously enforced, but in the very abstention therefrom, because its function is mainly limitative or prohibitive. When there is even the remotest suspicion of its acquiring a positive signification, the TJpanishadic thinker hastens at once to correct that misdirection. That is why the high-pitched key on which the Ishabasyopanishad begins thus: fa i.e., “whatever is active in this world is to be known as permeated by the Lord and to be enjoyed as provided by Him ”—and is in the very next line saddled with a negation which appears to many as a fall from the sublime to the ridiculous—an anti¬ climax : “xnun: “ enjoy but do not covet any other man’s wealth ”; but it is, in fact, no bathos, nothing of the kind. No high-flown ideal¬ ism can afford, without prejudice to its own safety, to neglect making sure of the terra firma of the elementary Levitical morals on which it has to stand. THE OCLTUEAL VALUE OF THE VEDANTA 4Q| Summarily speaking, Vedantism stands lor the cult of ‘no-cult.’ Although it is of the nature of a paradox, that appears to be the exact transcript of its attitude towards the universe. It presents the im¬ pressive spectacle of the Spirit of Humanity passing under review all the distracting cults of human exist¬ ence, demanding divided allegiance from them, and giving the redemptive warning —** It is in bitter earnest with the ‘ Everlasting Nay ' which, in its view, must be pressed to its ultimate limit before ‘ the Everlasting Yea ’ of a blessed life symbolised by ‘ Aum ’ can make itself felt to us; for, it is grounded in the belief that in spiritual things ‘ the greatness of the price we pay has much to do with the value of the good that we acquire.’ In thus carrying out its life-giving mission it strong¬ ly reminds the discerning mind of the much-perse¬ cuted preacher of Galilee, drawing men away from the delusive worship of earthly gods with the per¬ petual reminder : ‘ ‘ My kingdom is not of this world! ’ ’ This via negation is no more the last word in the one case than it is in the other. It does not land us, as is sometimes apprehended, in sheer emptiness or negation. If the negative pre¬ script were to terminate in pure negation or blank, would it (in all propriety) be called the true of the true, as asks Samkara most significantly?* Thus is revealed ultimately the source of abiding inspiration for the Vedantist. It is the spirit of the * TO w m ifr i nftfat far tow TOfa^a— Com* on V.S. Ill, 2. xxii. 61 402 A SYSTEMATIC study OF THE VEDANTA Whole, which does not allow us to halt at any half¬ way house, but bids us march past till the goal is reached. This, the underlying and informing spirit of the Whole, may best be indicated, in the words of Bradley, as ‘ Justice in the name of the whole to each aspect of the world according to its special place and proper rank—Reality everywhere through self- reStffetion iri claim and in denial.’ Well might the Vcdantist declare in Bradley’s own words : “ Every¬ where on behalf of the real Absolute 1 have been warning [all] against that false absolutism which in philosophy is to me another name for error . . . as against such absolutism, the very soul of the Absolute which I defend is its insistence and emphasis on an all-pervasive relativism.” Accord¬ ingly, ‘ one main work of philosophy,’ for the Vedantist as much as for Bradley ‘ is to show that, where there is isolation and abstraction, there is everywhere, so far as this abstraction forgets itself, unreality and error.’* Critics there will be who would repudiate this version of the Vedanta as un¬ orthodox, and as being fundamentally at variance with the ingrained * Oriental despotism ’ that has never respected the rights of minority, and which makes its appearance in philosophy as absolutism in its objectionable sense. But instead of sub¬ mitting to this parrot’s training, constantly dinned into our ears, we should bring an unprejudiced mind to bear on the situation and see if we have not, in the epistemological rendering of the doctrine of * aihikarijbfreda, ’ a full substantiation of the case * Etsays on Truth and Reality, Conclusion. THE CULTURAL VALUE OF THE VEDANTA 4Q3 for the Absolute as presented by Bradley. It is under the perennial inspiration of that spirit of the Whole, that the Vedantist passes by the cult of family, society, nationalism, or even international¬ ism, with the characteristic anathema—sfcf qm3. Such other-worldliness may not he quite in tune with the spirit of modernism, but it is there and must make itself heard. “ The roots of modern philosophy,” so writes one European Historian of Philosophy, “ are sunk deep in the fruitful soil of nationality, while the top of the tree spreads itself far beyond national limitations. It is national and cosmopolitan together; it is international as the common property of the various peoples which exchange their philosophical gifts through an active commerce of ideas.”* Nothing could be a truer description of the cult of internationalism that has its root struck deep in the soil of nationality! Ah, there is the rub ! Mischief, they say, always lies about the root. A Parliament or Federation of Mankind, must for ever remain an idle dream, and a League of Nations is too apt to degenerate into a clique of nations, until and unless the making of the international mind is an accomplished fact; and this has the greatest chance of materialising under the perpetual inspiration of the Yedantic cult of ‘ no¬ cult,’ or what is the same thing, the inspiration of a Church Invisible. The method of working from bottom upwards has been tried and found wanting. Why not try the other—namely, of working from * Falckenbe*^, History of Modern Philosophy. Intro¬ duction. 404 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA above downwards. That is why the Upanishadic sage, with unerring prophetic vision, declares that this ancient holy fig tree (symbolising the Infinite and the Eternal, (the has its roots in heaven and its branches spreading downwards xpftSERQ: This is, however, no mere dream of some future possibility, of some * far-off divine event,’ no mere vague aspiration of the Futurist, but is verily the Everlasting Real, dwelling in us. ‘ nearer than our hands and feet.’ It is easy to deride the notion, and take to the blunt Johnsonian method of refuting an ideal by kicking against it.