1.009: THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIṢADS 2

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1.009: THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIṢADS 2

First revision: Aug.20, 2026
Last change: Sep.1, 2026
Searched, gathered, rearranged, translated, and compiled by Apirak Kanchanakongkha.

163 (Cont.)

VIII

BRAHMAN

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We may now proceed to define the ultimate reality from the objective side, when it is called Brahman.¹
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^1. The question of how Brahman came to denote the supreme reality of the Upaniṣads has been answered in different ways by different scholars. Haug holds that Brahman means prayer, being derived from the root Bṛh, to swell or to grow. It is that which swells or grows. It is that which swells or grows. Sacred prayers cause the growth, and then it came to mean the force of nature, and later the supreme reality. According to Roth, Brahman is first the force of will directed to the gods, then it came to mean a sacred formula, and then the Absolute. Oldenburg thinks that in the Vedic times, when the world was peopled with many gods and mysterious forces capable of producing happiness and misery, the most powerful man was the medicine man, who wielded the magic spell and produced whatever effect was desired. Then Brahman meant a magic spell. During the time of the Brāhmaṇas it referred to the sacred hymns used in the sacrifices. Perhaps some of these hymns were used as spells for producing magical effects. The word was slowly transferred to the central energy which produces the world. Deussen holds that Brahman is prayer, which elevates the soul, when we perceive the truth, and the truth came to be denoted by the word. Max Müller traces it to “word,” as is evident from the name Bṛhaspati or Vācaspati, lord of speech. That which utters is Brahman (S.S., pp. 52, 70). We need not trouble ourselves about the etymology of the word. To us, it is clear, Brahman means reality, which grows, breathes or swells.
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In the Ṛg-Veda we have seen that the monistic idea was arrived at. The Upaniṣads undertake the task of a more logical definition of the Eternal Spirit ever acting and ever resting. In another place, we traced the progress from the lower, imperfect conceptions to the more adequate ones formulated in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad.¹ In chapter iii, the son approaches the father with the request to teach him the nature of reality from which all things flow and to which all return. The son is given the general features of Brahman and is asked to discover the content which satisfies these requirements. “That from which these beings are born, that in which when born they live, and that into which they enter at their death, that is Brahman.”² Things of the world are ever changing their forms, and they cannot be considered to be real in an ultimate sense. Is there anything unalterably fixed underlying the universe of changing things, nāmarūpa, name and form, as the Upaniṣads call them? The son considers matter to be the ultimate reality. It is the most prominent aspect of the outer world. This view is held by the lokāyatas, or the materialists. The son soon discovers that matter cannot account for the life phenomena. Vegetable growth requires a different explanation. He hits upon Prāṇa or life as the ultimate principle.³ Matter does not hold the secret of life, though life cannot exist without matter. Something in life enables it to absorb and transmute inorganic elements. This something is the vital principle which in man helps to change the vegetable product into blood, bone, and muscle. It is the principle which pervades the universe and binds human beings with the rest of creation.⁴ The son is sure that life belongs to a different order from matter, though prāṇa is the essence of the body.⁵
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^1. See Reign of Religion, chap. xiii.
^2. iii, l.
^3. Prāṇa means breath. See R.V., i. 66. I; iii. 53. 21; x. 59. 6.
^4. See Praśna, ii.
^5. Bṛh., i. 3. 90. See Chān., vi. 2. 4.
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Again, he is dissatisfied with the solution of prāṇa as the ultimate reality, for conscious phenomena which we come across in the animal world are not explicable by the principle of life. Manas, or perceptual consciousness, is a product distinct from life and matter. It seems to be the crown of the vital process. So, the son believes that manas is Brahman. Even this will not suffice, for there are intellectual facts which mere perceptual consciousness does not take into account. Vijñāna or intelligence is Brahman.¹ (The Translation will start from here.) Some schools of Buddhism adopt this view. The son realizes that even intellectual self-consciousness is incomplete, being subject to discord and imperfection. It is the aim of the Upaniṣads to point out that elements of duality and externality persist at the intellectual level, however much we may try to overcome them. In knowledge and morality, we have the subject-object relation. There must be something higher than mere intellect, where existence is no longer formulated in terms of knowledge. The unity of existence requires that we must transcend the intellectual level. Thought, as ordinarily understood, deals with objects viewed as beyond or other than and contrasted with itself. Reality is different from thought and can be reached in the turīya state of highest immediacy, which transcends thoughts and their distinctions, where the individual coincides with the central reality. Ānanda or delight is the highest fruition, where the knower, the known and the knowledge become one. Here the philosophical quest terminates, the suggestion being that there is nothing higher than ānanda. This ānanda is active enjoyment or unimpeded exercise of capacity. It is not sinking into nothingness, but the perfection of being.² “The discerning sees by their superior knowledge the Ātman which shines all bliss and immortality.”³ Strictly speaking, we cannot give any account of the highest reality of ānanda; even the question whether it is abstract or concrete is illogical. Intellectual necessities require us to give some description. It is truer to consider it concrete than abstract.
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^1. See Ait., iii. 3; Tait., iii 5
^2. See Muṇḍaka Up.
^3. Muṇḍaka, ii. 8.
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Each higher principle is more concrete and inclusive than the lower one, and therefore ānanda, which is Brahman, is the most inclusive of all. From it all things flow. By it all things are sustained, and into it all things are dissolved. The different parts, the mineral world, the plant life, the animal kingdom, and the human society, are not related to the highest in any abstract or mechanical way. They are one in and through that which is universal about them. All parts in the universe share in the light of this universal spirit and possess specific features on account of the special functions which they have to perform. The parts are not self-subsistent factors but are dependent aspects of the one. “Sir, on what does the infinite rest? On its own greatness or not even on greatness.” Everything else hangs on it, and it hangs on nothing. The organic and living nature of the relation of the parts to the whole is brought out in many passages. “As all spokes are contained in the axle, and in the fully of wheel, thus also, all beings and all gods, all worlds and all organs, also are contained in that self.”¹ “There is that ancient tree whose roots grow upward and whose branches go downward. That is the bright, Brahman, the immortal; all worlds are contained in it, and no one goes beyond it.”²

We have defined reality as ānanda, and thus contradicted the statement frequently made that the ultimate is indefinable. Constructive attempts at obtaining a comprehensive reality generally end in a concrete whole. If, however, we try to reconcile the defined reality with the undefined one, which also the Upaniṣads support, then we shall have to say that ānanda in the present context is not the ultimate reality, but only the highest conceivable by the thought of man. It is not the absolute or the eternal being which ever exists in its own essentiality. To the logical mind, the whole is real, and within it falls the diversity of the world. The concrete ānanda is the prāmāṇika sattā, or the real revealed to thought, and answers to the highest Brahman accepted by Rāmānuja. The pure Brahman free from all the predicates is the nirupādhika satta,
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^1. Bṛh., ii. 5. 15.
^2. Kaṭha, ii. 6. 1. See also Tait., i, 10; BG., xi. i.
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Or the Nirguṇa Brahman accepted by Śaṁkara. The former is an organized whole; the latter is an indefinable real. Yet even according to Śaṁkara it is the latter that shows itself as the former. The one of intuition appears as the whole of knowledge.¹

This difference of view has resulted in a good deal of discussion about the interpretation of ānanda in the Upaniṣads. Śaṁkara squarely says that ānandamaya, by its suffix maya, indicates that it is only a phenomenal effect. Unless it were different from Ātman, there can be no talk of reasoning about it. If it were pure Brahman, it would be inappropriate to give it form and attribute to it head, limbs, as the Taittirīya Upaniṣad does. If ānanda were Brahman, there would be no separate mention of Brahman as the supporting tail of ānanda.² So Śaṁkara concludes, “Ānandamaya Ātman is an effect, and not the unconditioned Ātman.” Rāmānuja, by contrast, argues that this ānanda is Brahman. The suffix of maya indicates only fullness or prācurya. Though with regard to matter, life, etc., it is clearly stated that there is some other inside, anyo’ntra Ātmā, no such inner reality is asserted for ānanda. Ascribing limbs, etc., is nothing more than kalpana or imagination. Puccham Brahma need not be taken as implying any difference between ānanda and Brahman. The two may be related as whole and part,³ which is sometimes the significance of the accusative usage. Immediately after the reference to ānandamaya, it is said in the Upaniṣad “sokāmayata,” “he desired,” and this masculine gender can only refer to ānandamaya, and not to puccham Brahma,
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^1. The Upaniṣads are definite about the fact that the supreme is indefinable, though they give intellectual accounts of it which are not absolutely true. If any logical description be true at all, it is Rāmānuja’s way of putting it. Śaṁkara, in the true spirit of the Upaniṣads, contends that there is a higher than the logical highest, which is Rāmānuja’s. In discussing the philosophy of Śaṁkara, we shall see how he establishes the inadequacy of the highest categories to the reality intended by them. He contends that we cannot say whether the absolute is finite or infinite, or both or neither. The same holds for all relations like whole and part, substance and quality, cause and effect. A rational demonstration of the limits of thought such as the one we have in Śaṁkara is rendered possible only by the intervening of the great Buddhist tradition between the Upaniṣads and Śaṁkara.
^2. Brahma puccham pratiṣṭhā.
^3. Samudāyasamudāyībhāva.
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which is neuter. Other forms of bliss, like priya, moda, are included within the whole of ānanda, and the disciple reaches his final resting-place when he gets to ānanda. We have many cases in the same Upaniṣad where the word ānanda is used as a synonym for final reality.

It is obvious that the whole controversy is due to the doubt whether ānanda is to be looked upon as the logically highest or the ultimate being. The Upaniṣads did not draw any hard and fast line of distinction between the simple one of intuition supported by Śaṁkara and the concrete whole of Rāmānuja. If we separate the two, it will become impossible for us to admit any distinction or value in the world of concrete existence. The Upaniṣads imply that the Īśvara is practically one with Brahman. Very strict usage and meticulous philosophic accuracy require us to say that there is the slightest conceivable diminution from the absolute when we come to the self-conscious, I am I.¹ This quasi ought is quite enough for Śaṁkara to precipitate pure being, the basal thought and fact of all, into the world of space, time and cause. The Upaniṣads by implication admit that the moment we think the pure being, we make nothing the principle of distinction and difference, equally basal. The self-conscious God, who later develops into the organized whole of existence, is the maximum of being and the minimum of non-being. He is least penetrated with objectivity and touched by externality. The One is revealed in the existences of the world, and that is why we are able to ascerain the degrees of reality possessd by the objects of the world by measuring the distance separating them from the One. Each lower degree consists in a diminution of the highest to the lowest; we have the revelation of Brahman as well as the common characters of space, time, and cause. The lower things are farther away from the simple being than the higher ones, so much so that the ānandamaya of the Upaniṣads, the concrete Brahman of Rāmānuja, the Īśvara of Śaṁkara, is the nearest to it. Nothing nearer can be thought. The supreme Brahman of ānanda at the level of Vijñāna or self-consciousness becomes the personal Īśvara with a voluntary limitation.
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^1. Bṛh., i. 4. 10.
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God or self is the ground of unity, and matter or not-self becomes the principle of plurality.¹
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BRAHMAN AND ĀTMAN

The two, the objective and the subjective, the Brahman and the Ātman, the cosmic and the psychical principles, are looked upon as identical. Brahman is Ātman.² “He who is this Brahman in man, and who is that in the sun, those are one.”³ The transcendent conception of God held in the Ṛg-Veda is here transformed into an immanent one. The infinite is not beyond the finite but in the finite. The subjective character of the Upaniṣads teaching is responsible for this change. India realized the identity between the subject and the object before Plato was born. Deussen speaks of it thus: “If we strip this thought of the various forms, figurative to the highest degree and not seldom extravagant, under which it appears in the Vedānta texts, and fix our attention upon it solely in its philosophical simplicity as the identity of God and the soul, the Brahman and the Ātman, it will be found to possess a significance reaching far beyond the Upaniṣads, their time and country; nay, we claim for it an inestimable value for the whole race of mankind. We are unable to look into the future; we do not know what revelations and discoveries are in store for the restlessly inquiring human spirit; but one thing we may assert with confidence – whatever new and unwonted paths the philosophy of the future may strike out, this principle will remain permanently unshaken, and from it no deviation can possibly take place. If ever a general solution is reached by the great riddle, which presents itself to the philosopher in the nature of things, all the more clearly the further our knowledge extends, the key can only be found where alone the secret of nature lies open to us from within,
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^1. See Tait., i. 5; S.B. And R.B. On V.S., i. 1.6.
^2. Tait., i. 5.
^3. ii. 8. See also iii. 10; Chān., iii. 13. 7; iii. 14.2.4; Bṛh., v. 5. 2; Muṇḍaka, ii. 1. 10..
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that is to say, in our innermost self. It was here that for the first time the original thinkers of the Upaniṣads, to their immortal honor, found it when they recognized our Ātman, our inmost individual being, as the Brahman, the inmost being of universal nature and of all her phenomena.”¹ This identity of subject and object is not a vague hypothesis, but the necessary implication of all relevant thinking, feeling and willing. The human self cannot think, conquer and love nature, were it unthinkable, unconquerable and unlovable. Nature is the object of a subject, quite rational and thoroughly intelligible, capable of control and worthy of love. It exists for man. The stars serve as lamps for his feet, and the darkness lulls him into slumber. Nature summons us to the spiritual reality of life and answers the needs of the soul. It is formed, vitalized, and directed by the spirit. From the beginning of reflection, this oneness of subject and object, the existence of one central reality, pervading and embracing all, deep piety witnesses to the truth of the great saying, “That art thou,” “Tat tvam asi.” We may not understand it, but that does not give us sufficient right to deny it.

The different conceptions of Brahman correspond to the different ideas of the Ātman, and vice versa. The stages of waking, dreaming, sleeping, and the conception of ecstasy of the self are clearly discriminated in the later Vedānta writings and answer to the different conceptions of Brahman. The highest Brahman, which is ānanda, is just Ātman, as realized in the fourth of the turīya state. There the object and the subject are one. The seer, the seeing eye, and the object seen merge together in one whole. When we identify Ātman with the self-conscious individual, Brahman is viewed as the self-conscious Īśvara with a force opposed to him. As the self-conscious individual will be a mere abstraction apart from some content or object from which he derives his being, even so the Īśvara requires an element opposing him. The conception of Īśvara is the highest object of the religious consciousness. When the Ātman is identified with the mental and vital self of man (manas and prāṇa),
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^1. Philosophy of the Upaniṣads, pp. 39-40.
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Brahman is reduced to the Hiraṇyagarbha or the cosmic soul, which comes between the Īśvara and the soul of man.

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