The Philosophy of the UpaniShads - Forward by Tagore

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Greetings:

 

The book by Dr. S. Radhakrishnanan got the blessings from the great

Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore (who got noble prize in literature for

his poem - Gitanjali). In his forward, Tagore expresses his

appreciation of Indian Philosophy and the scholarship of the eminent

philosopher Dr. Radhakrishnan. Tagore's writings also reveals his depth

of knowledge of the Upanishads.

 

Enjoy!

 

--

Ram Chandran

Burke, VA

 

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FOREWORD By RABINDRANATH TAGORE to The Philosophy of the upaniShads,

Edited with Introduction, Text, Translation and Notes by S.

Radhakrishnan , Harper Collins Publishers, India (Available in Book

Stores in USA).

 

 

Not being a scholar or a student of philosophy, I do not feel justified

in writing a critical appreciation of a book dealing with the philosophy

of the upaniShads. What I venture to do is to express my satisfaction at

the fact that my friend, Professor Radhakrishnan, has undertaken to

explain the spirit of the upaniShads to English readers.

 

It is not enough that one should know the meaning of the words and the

grammar of the Sanskrit texts in order to realize the deeper

significance of the utterances that have come to us across centuries of

vast changes, both of the inner as well as the external conditions of

life. Once the language in which those were written was living, and

therefore the words contained in them had their full context in the life

of the people of that period, who spoke them. Divested of that vital

atmosphere, a large part of the language of these great texts offers to

us merely its philosophical structure and not life's subtle gesture

which can express through suggestion all that is ineffable.

 

Suggestion can neither have fixed rules of grammar nor the rigid

definition of the lexicon so easily available to the scholar. Suggestion

has its unanalysable code which finds its depth of definition in the

living hearts of the people who use it. Code words philologically

treated appear childish, and one must know that all those experiences

which are not realized through the path of reason, but immediately

through an inner vision, must use some kind of code word for their

expression. All poetry is full of such words, and therefore poems of one

language can never be properly translated into other languages, nay, not

even re-spoken in the same language.

 

For an illustration let me refer to the stanza of Keats' 'Ode to a

Nightingale', which ends with the following lines:-

 

The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the

foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

 

All these words have their synonyms in our Bengali language. But if

through their help I try to understand these lines or express the idea

contained in them, the result would be contemptible. Should I suffer

from a sense of race superiority in our own people, and have a low

opinion of English literature, I could do nothing better to support my

case than literally to translate or to paraphrase in our own tongue all

the best poems written in English.

 

Unfortunately, the upaniShads have met with such treatment in some parts

of the West, and the result is typified disastrously in a book like

Gough's Philosophy of the upaniShads. My experience of philosophical

writings being extremely meagre, I may be wrong when I say that this is

the only philosophical discussion about the upaniShads in English, but,

at any rate, the lack of sympathy and respect displayed in it for some

of the most sacred words that have ever issued from the human mind, is

amazing.

 

Though many of the symbolical expressions used in the upaniShads can

hardly be understood to-day, or are sure to be wrongly interpreted, yet

the messages contained in these, like some eternal source of light,

still illumine and vitalize the religious minds of India. They are not

associated with any particular religion, but they have the breadth of a

universal soil that can supply with living sap all religions which have

any spiritual ideal hidden at their core, or apparent in their fruit and

foliage. Religions, which have their different standpoints, each claim

them for their own support.

 

This has been possible because the upaniShads are based not upon

theological reasoning, but on experience of spiritual life. And life is

not dogmatic; in it opposing forces are reconciled - ideas of

non-dualism and dualism, the infinite and the finite, do not exclude

each other. Moreover the upaniShads do not represent the spiritual

experience of any one great individual, but of a great age of

enlightenment which has a complex and collective manifestation, like

that of the starry world. Different creeds may find their sustenance

from them, but can never set sectarian boundaries round them;

generations of men in our country, no mere students of philosophy, but

seekers of life's fulfilment, may make living use of the texts, but can

never exhaust them of their freshness of meaning.

 

For such men the upaniShad-ideas are not wholly abstract, like those

belonging to the region of pure logic. They are concrete, like all

truths realized through life. The idea of brahma when judged from the

view-point of intellect is an abstraction, but it is concretely real for

those who have the direct vision to see it. Therefore the consciousness

of the reality of brahma has boldly been described to be as real as the

consciousness of an amlaka fruit held in one's palm. And the upaniShad

says:-

 

yato vAco nivartante aprApya manasA saha

Anandam brahmaNo vidvAn na bibheti kadAcana

>From Him come back baffled both words and mind. But he who realizes the

joy of Brahman is free from fear.

 

Cannot the same thing be said about light itself to men who may by some

mischance live all through their life in an underground world cut off

from the sun's rays ? They must know that words can never describe to

them what light is, and mind, through its reasoning faculty, can never

even understand how one must have a direct vision to realize it

intimately and be glad and free from fear.

 

We often hear the complaint that the Brahman of the upaniShads is

described to us mostly as a bundle of negations. Are we not driven to

take the same course ourselves when a blind man asks for a description

of light ? Have we not to say in such a case that light has neither

sound, nor taste, nor form, nor weight, nor resistance, nor can it be

known through any process of analysis ? Of course it can be seen; but

what is the use of saying this to one who has no eyes ? He may take that

statement on trust without understanding in the least what it means, or

may altogether disbelieve it, even suspecting in us some abnormality.

 

Does the truth of the fact that a blind man has missed the perfect

development of what should be normal about his eyesight depend for its

proof upon the fact that a larger number of men are not blind ? The very

first creature which suddenly groped into the possession of its eyesight

had the right to assert that light was a reality. In the human world

there may be very few who have their spiritual eyes open, but, in spite

of the numerical preponderance of those who cannot see, their want of

vision must not be cited as an evidence of the negation of light.

 

In the upaniShads we find the note of certainty about the spiritual

meaning of existence. In the very paradoxical nature of the assertion

that we can never know Brahman, but can realize Him, there lies the

strength of conviction that comes from personal experience. They aver

that through our joy we know the reality that is infinite, for the test

by which reality is apprehended is joy. Therefore in the upaniShads

satyam and Anandam are one. Does not this idea harmonize with our

everyday experience ?

 

The self of mine that limits my truth within myself confines me to a

narrow idea of my own personality. When through some great experience I

transcend this boundary I find joy. The negative fact of the vanishing

of the fences of self has nothing in itself that is delightful. But my

joy proves that the disappearance of self brings me into touch with a

great positive truth whose nature is infinitude. My love makes me

understand that I gain a great truth when I realize myself in others,

and therefore I am glad. This has been thus expressed in the

IsopaniShad:-

 

yas tu sarvANi bhUtAni Atmany evAnupasyati

sarvabhUteShu cAtmAnaM tato na vijugupsate

 

He who sees all creatures in himself, and himself in all creatures, no

longer remains concealed.

 

His Truth is revealed in him when it comprehends Truth in others. And we

know that in such a case we are ready for the utmost self-sacrifice

through abundance of love.

 

It has been said by some that the element of personality has altogether

been ignored in the Brahman of the upaniShads, and thus our own

personality, according to them, finds no response in the Infinite Truth.

But then, what is the meaning of the exclamation: 'vedAhametam puruSham

mahAntam'. 'I have known him who is the Supreme Person'. Did not the

sage who pronounced it at the same time proclaim that we are all

amRhtasya putrAh, the sons of the Immortal ?

 

Elsewhere it has been declared: tam vedyam puruSham veda yathA ma vo

mRhtyuh parivyathAh. Know him, the Person who only is to be known, so

that death may not grieve thee. The meaning is obvious. We are afraid of

death, because we are afraid of the absolute cessation of our

personality. Therefore, if we realize the Person as the ultimate reality

which we know in everything that we know, we find our own personality in

the bosom of the eternal.

 

There are numerous verses in the upaniShads which speak of immortality.

I quote one of these:-

 

eSha devo visvakarmA mahAtmA

sadA janAnAm hRhdaye sanniviShThaH

hRhdA manIShA manasAbhikLhpto

ya etad vidur amRhtAs te bhavanti

 

This is the God who is the world-worker, the supreme soul, who always

dwells in the heart of all men, those who know him through their mind,

and the heart that is full of the certainty of knowledge, become

immortal.

 

To realize with the heart and mind the divine being who dwells within us

is to be assured of everlasting life. It is mahAtmA, the great reality

of the inner being, which is visvakarmA, the world-worker, whose

manifestation is in the outer work occupying all time and space.

 

Our own personality also consists of an inner truth which expresses

itself in outer movements. When we realize, not merely through our

intellect, but through our heart strong with the strength of its wisdom,

that mahAtmA, the Infinite Person, dwells in the Person which is in me,

we cross over the region of death. Death only concerns our limited self;

when the Person in us is realized in the Supreme Person, then the limits

of our self lose for us their finality.

 

The question necessarily arises, what is the significance of this self

of ours ? Is it nothing but an absolute bondage for us ?

 

If in our language the sentences were merely for expressing grammatical

rules, then the using of such a language would be a slavery to fruitless

pedantry. But, because language has for its ultimate object the

expression of ideas, our mind gains its freedom through it, and the

bondage of grammar itself is a help towards this freedom.

 

If this world were ruled only by some law of forces, then it would

certainly have hurt our mind at every step and there would be nothing

that could give us joy for its own sake. But the upaniShad says that

from Anandam, from an inner spirit of Bliss, have come out all things,

and by it they are maintained. Therefore, in spite of contradictions, we

have our joy in life, we have experiences that carry their final value

for us.

 

It has been said that the Infinite Reality finds its revelation in

Ananda-rUpam amRhtam, in the deathless form of joy. The supreme end of

our personality also is to express itself in its creations. But works

done through the compulsion of necessity, or some passion that blinds us

and drags us on with its impetus, are fetters for our soul; they do not

express the wealth of the infinite in us, but merely our want or our

weakness.

 

Our soul has its Anandam, its consciousness of the infinite, which is

blissful. This seeks its expression in limits which, when they assume

the harmony of forms and the balance of movements, constantly indicate

the limitless. Such expression is freedom, freedom from the barrier of

obscurity. Such a medium of limits we have in our self which is our

medium of expression. It is for us to develop this into Ananda-rUpam

amRhtam, an embodiment of deathless joy, and only then the infinite in

us can no longer remain obscured.

 

This self of ours can also be moulded to give expression to the

personality of a business man, or a fighting man, or a working man, but

in these it does not reveal our supreme reality, and therefore we remain

shut up in a prison of our own construction. Self finds its

Ananda-rUpam, which is its freedom in revelation, when it reveals a

truth that transcends self, like a lamp revealing light which goes far

beyond its material limits, proclaiming its kinship with the sun. When

our self is illuminated with the light of love, then the negative aspect

of its separateness with others loses its finality, and then our

relationship with others is no longer that of competition and conflict,

but of sympathy and co-operation.

 

I feel strongly that this, for us, is the teaching of the upaniShads,

and that this teaching is very much needed in the present age for those

who boast of the freedom enjoyed by their nations, using that freedom

for building up a dark world of spiritual blindness, where the passions

of greed and hatred are allowed to roam unchecked, having for their

allies deceitful diplomacy and a widespread propaganda of falsehood,

where the soul remains caged and the self battens upon the decaying

flesh of its victims.