Two Old Faiths | Page 8

Sara, or essence of the Vedanta. A
few extracts will suffice to exhibit its character. "The unity of the soul
and God--this is the scope of all Vedanta treatises." We have frequent
references made to the "great saying," _Tat twam_--that is, That art
thou, or Thou art God; and Aham Brahma, that is, I am God. Again it is
said, "The whole universe is God." God is "existence (or more exactly
an existent thing[15]), knowledge, and joy." Knowledge, not a knower;
joy, not one who rejoices.
[Sidenote: It teaches absolute idealism.] Every thing else has only a
seeming existence, which is in consequence of ignorance (or illusion).
Ignorance makes the soul think itself different from God; and it also
"projects" the appearance of an external world.
"He who knows God becomes God." "When He, the first and last, is
discerned, one's own acts are annihilated."
Meditation, without distinction of subject and object, is the highest
form of thought. It is a high attainment to say, "I am God;" but the
consummation is when thought exists without an object.
There are four states of the soul--waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep,
and the "fourth state," or pure intelligence. The working-man is in

dense ignorance; in sleep he is freed from part of this ignorance; in
dreamless sleep he is freed from still more; but the consummation is
when he attains something beyond this, which it seems cannot be
explained, and is therefore called the fourth state.
[Sidenote: Doctrine of "the Self." Inconsistent statements.] The name,
which in later writings is most frequently given to the "one without a
second,"[16] is Atman, which properly means self. Much is said of the
way in which the self in each man is to recover, or discover, its unity
with the supreme or real self. For as the one sun shining in the heavens
is reflected, often in distorted images, in multitudes of vessels filled
with water, so the one self is present in all human minds.[17] There is
not--perhaps there could not be--consistency in the statements of the
relation of the seeming to the real. In most of the older books a
practical or conventional existence is admitted of the self in each man,
but not a real existence. But when the conception is fully formulated
the finite world is not admitted to exist save as a mere illusion. All
phenomena are a play--a play without plot or purpose, which the
absolute plays with itself.[18] This is surely transcendent
transcendentalism. One regrets that speculation did not take one step
more, and declare that the illusion was itself illusory. Then we should
have gone round the circle, and returned to sensus communis. We must
be pardoned if we seem to speak disrespectfully of such fantastic
speculations; we desire rather to speak regretfully of the many
generations of men which successively occupied themselves with such
unprofitable dreams; for this kind of thought is traceable even from
Vedic days. It is more fully developed in the Upanishads. In them
occurs the classical sentence so frequently quoted in later literature,
which declares that the absolute being is the "one [thing] without a
second."[19]
[Sidenote: The Gita.] The book which perhaps above all others has
molded the mind of India in more recent days is the Bhagavad Gita, or
Song of the Holy One. It is written in stately and harmonious verse, and
has achieved the same task for Indian philosophy as Lucretius did for
ancient Epicureanism.[20] It is eclectic, and succeeds, in a sort of way,
in forcing the leading systems of Indian thought into seeming harmony.

[Sidenote: Intellectual pride.] Some have thought they could discern in
these daring speculations indications of souls groping after God, and
saddened because of the difficulty of finding him. Were it so, all our
sympathies would at once be called forth. But no; we see in these
writings far more of intellectual pride than of spiritual sadness. Those
ancient dreamers never learned their own ignorance. They scarcely
recognized the limitations of the human mind. And when reason could
take them no farther they supplemented it by dreams and ecstasy until,
in the Yoga philosophy, they rushed into systematized mysticisms and
magic far more extravagant than the wildest theurgy of the degraded
Neoplatonism of the Roman Empire.
A learned writer thus expresses himself:
"The only one of the six schools that seem to recognize the doctrine of
divine providence is the Yoga. It thus seems that the consistent
followers of these systems can have, in their perfected state, no religion,
no action, and no moral character."[21]
[Sidenote: Indian philosophy a sad failure.] And now to take a brief
review of the whole subject. The Hindu sages were men of acute and
patient thought; but their attempt to solve the problem of the divine and
human natures, of