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• Preface
• Remarks Concerning the Translation Its Method and Arrangement
• List of Abbreviations
• Errata
• An Outline of the Philosophy of the Upanishads
• Chapter I: The Place of the Upanishads In the History of Philosophy
• Chapter II: The Upanishads and Their Place In Indian Philosophy
• Chapter III: First Attempts At the Conception of a Unitary World-ground
• Chapter IV: The Development of the Conception of Brahma
• Chapter V: The Development of the Conception of the Atman and Its Union With Brahma
• Chapter VI: The Realistic Conception of the Ultimate Unity, and the Doctrine of Illusion
• Chapter VII: Idealism and the Conception of Pure Unity
• Chapter VIII: The Outcome On Religion and On the Doctrine of Karma
• Chapter IX: The Outcome On Practical Life and On Morals
• Chapter X: The Artificial Method of Unity In Renunciation and In Yoga
• Chapter XI: Concluding Estimate
• BṚihad-ĀraṆyaka Upanishad
• First AdhyĀya
• Second AdhyĀya
• Third AdhyĀya
• Fourth AdhyĀya
• Fifth AdhyĀya
• Sixth AdhyĀya
• ChĀndogya Upanishad
• First PrapĀṬhaka a Glorification of the Chanting of the Sāma-veda 1
• Second PrapĀṬhaka the Significance of the Chant In Various Forms
• Third PrapĀṬhaka Brahma As the Sun of the World-all
• Fourth PrapĀṬhaka Conversational Instructions
• Fifth PrapĀṬhaka Concerning Breath, the Soul, and the Universal Soul
• Sixth PrapĀṬhaka the Instruction of Śvetaketu By Uddālaka Concerning the Key to All Knowledge
• Seventh PrapĀṬhaka the Instruction of Nārada By Sanatkumāra
• Eighth PrapĀṬhaka Concerning the Nature of the Soul
• TaittirĪya Upanishad
• First VallĪ (Śikshā Vallī, ‘chapter Concerning Instruction’)
• Second VallĪ (brahmānanda Vallī, ‘bliss-of-brahma Chapter’)
• Third VallĪ (bhṛigu Vallī, ‘chapter Concerning Bhṛigu’)
• Aitareya Upanishad
• First AdhyĀya
• Second AdhyĀya
• Third AdhyĀya
• KaushĪtaki Upanishad 1
• First AdhyĀya the Course of Reincarnation, and Its Termination Through Metaphysical Knowledge 2
• Second AdhyĀya the Doctrine of Prāṇa, Together With Certain Ceremonies
• Third AdhyĀya Doctrine of Prāṇa (the Breathing Spirit)
• Fourth AdhyĀya a Progressive Definition of Brahma 2
• Kena Upanishad 1
• (first KhaṆḌa)
• (second KhaṆḌa)
• (third KhaṆḌa) 3
• (fourth KhaṆḌa)
• KaṬha Upanishad
• First VallĪ 1
• Second VallĪ
• Third VallĪ
• Fourth VallĪ
• Fifth VallĪ
• Sixth VallĪ
• ĪŚĀ Upanishad 1
• MuṆḌaka Upanishad
• First MuṆḌaka Preparation For the Knowledge of Brahma
• Second MuṆḌaka the Doctrine of Brahma-Ātman
• Third MuṆḌaka the Way to Brahma
• PraŚna Upanishad 1
• First PraŚna
• Second PraŚna
• Third PraŚna
• Fourth PraŚna
• Fifth PraŚna
• Sixth PraŚna
• MĀṆḌŪkya Upanishad
• ŚvetĀŚvatara Upanishad
• First AdhyĀya
• Second AdhyĀya
• Third AdhyĀya
• Fourth AdhyĀya
• Fifth AdhyĀya
• Sixth AdhyĀya
• Maitri Upanishad
• First PrapĀṬhaka
• Second PrapĀṬhaka
• Third PrapĀṬhaka
• Fourth PrapĀṬhaka
• Fifth PrapĀṬhaka
• Sixth PrapĀṬhaka
• Seventh PrapĀṬhaka
• A Bibliography of the Upanishads Selected, Classified, and Annotated

CHAPTER X

THE ARTIFICIAL METHOD OF UNITY IN RENUNCIATION AND IN YOGA

As the absolute unity of the Ātman was the final goal of speculative thought, so absolute unity with the Ātman was regarded as the supreme actual attainment. Though this is theoretically accomplishable by mere metaphysical knowledge, it is as a matter of fact accomplished only after death or during sleep. Therefore for the period while one is still alive and not sleeping some other method than knowledge must be provided.

That was found to be what in Muṇḍ. 3. 2. 1 was joined with knowledge as the means of escaping transmigration:—

• ‘They who, being without desire, worship the Person
• And are wise, pass beyond the seed [of rebirth] here.’

After knowledge has informed a person that he is Brahma or Ātman, he should strictly have no more desires, for ‘he who has found and has awakened to the Soul . . . the world is his’ (Bṛih. 4. 4. 13).

• ‘If a person knew the Soul
• With the thought “I am He!”
• With what desire, for love of what
• Would he cling unto the body?’

• (Bṛih. 4. 4. 12.)

‘Verily, because they knew this, the ancients desired not offspring, saying: “What shall we do with offspring, we whose is this Soul, this home?” They, verily, rising above the desire for sons and the desire for wealth and the desire for worlds, lived the life of a mendicant’ (Bṛih. 4. 4. 22; cf. 3. 5. 1).

In actual experience, however, desires do still continue and harass one. But by harboring desires and resorting to activity to satisfy them, one is only admitting and emphasizing to the mind a lack or limitation, and thereby preventing assimilation to and union with the desireless, blissful plenum of the Soul. The entertaining of any desires whatsoever, and the resulting activity, are conditions which from the point of view of knowledge are sheer ignorance; these react in dulling the understanding (cf. Muṇḍ. 1. 2. 9), blind one to the limitation of existence in the world and to the series of rebirths, and maintain the person’s false separation from the real Brahma or Ātman:—

• ‘He who in fancy forms desires,
• Because of his desires is born [again] here and there.’

• (Muṇḍ. 3. 2. 2.)

The psychology and praxis of this doctrine are set forth in a notable passage, Bṛih. 4. 4. 5-7. ‘A person is made of desires only. As is his desire, such is his resolve; as is his resolve, such the action he performs; what action (karma) he performs, that he procures for himself. On this point there is this verse:—

• Where one’s mind is attached—the inner self
• Goes thereto with action, being attached to it alone.
• Obtaining the end of his action,
• Whatever he does in this world,
• He comes again from that world
• To this world of action.

So the man who desires. Now the man who does not desire. He who is without desire, who is freed from desire, whose desire is satisfied, whose desire is the Soul—his breaths do not depart. Being very Brahma, he goes to Brahma. On this point there is this verse:—

• When are liberated all
• The desires that lodge in one’s heart,
• Then a mortal becomes immortal!
• Therein he reaches Brahma!’1

But if the metaphysical knowledge of the essential oneness of the individual soul (ātman) and the universal Soul (Ātman) did not procure the blissful union with that Soul, neither does this theory of the avoidance of limiting desires; for they inevitably rise up in the ordinary life of activity. The final solution of the practical problem which the Upanishads offer, namely Yoga, is the outcome of that conception of strict unity which started the speculations of the Upanishads and which urged them on from cosmology to monism, from monism to pantheism, and from an external to an internal unity. That unity—under which it is the aim of every philosophy which has ever existed rationally to bring experience—the early Indian thinkers found in Brahma, and then in the objective Soul (Ātman), and then in one’s own soul, wherein the manifoldness of thought itself and the limitation of the distinctions of object and subject and all sorrows of the heart are merged into an undifferentiated unitary blissful plenum. ‘To the unity of the One goes he who knows this [i. e. that all is one]. The precept for effecting this [unity] is this: restraint of the breath, withdrawal of the senses [from objects], meditation, concentration, contemplation, absorption’ (Maitri 6. 17, 18). This is Yoga (from the root yuj, meaning to ‘join,’ ‘yoke,’ ‘harness’), a harnessing of the senses and mind from the falsely manifold objects and thoughts, and at the same time a union with the unitary blissful Self.

• ‘When cease the five
• [Sense-]knowledges, together with the mind,
• And the intellect stirs not—
• That, they say, is the highest course.’

• (Kaṭha 6. 10; Maitri 6. 30.)

The practical application, the ethics, and the offers of this theory of the union with the Self are set forth in Maitri 6. 20. According to that—

• ‘By tranquillity of thought
• Deeds, good and evil, one destroys!
• With soul serene, stayed on the Soul,
• Delight eternal one enjoys!’

The final exhortation of the Upanishads is well expressed in the following words connected with the Brahma-theory:—

• ‘Taking as a bow the great weapon of the Upanishad,
• One should put upon it an arrow sharpened by meditation.
• Stretching it with a thought directed to the essence of That,
• Penetrate that Imperishable as the mark, my friend.
• The mystic syllable Om1 is the bow. The arrow is the soul.
• Brahma is said to be the mark.
• By the undistracted man is It to be penetrated.
• One should come to be in It, as the arrow [in the mark].’

• (Muṇḍ. 2. 2. 3-4.)

[1 ]It is interesting to note the opposition between this theory that desires are limitations, and the earlier theory in which one of the strongest practical inducements to knowledge was the sure means of obtaining all desires. Cf. Chānd. 1. 1. 7; 5. 1. 4; 7. 10. 2; 8. 2. 10; Bṛih. 1. 3. 28; 6. 1. 4; Tait. 2. 1; Kaṭha 2. 16. Similarly the former method of obtaining Brahma was to know Brahma; now it is to quench all desires. The change on this point is another instance of that transition from epistemological realism to idealism which has been previously traced.

[1 ]The sacred syllable to be repeated until one passes into an unconscious stupor or ecstasy.