THE UPANISHADS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2355, 13 April 1899, Page 58

THE UPANISHADS.

» ... ..- 1 By O. E. Hugo.

I Yajnavalkya had two wives — Maitreyi and J Katayani. Maitreyi was wise in her speech j about Brahma, but Katayani knew only what j most women knew. Now when Yajnavalkya ! desired to become a hermit he spoke to j Maitreyi thus : " Before I leave this world of 1 men I will divide what I possess between 1 you and Katayani." Maitreyi replied: "If j now, the whole of this earth and its riches 1 were to become mine, would it bring mo immortality?" "By no means," he an- ' swered. "A« the lives of the wealthy, so j would your life be, but through riches there '• is no hope .of immortality." "Then," said j Maitreyi, " that which cannot make me immortal, what good is it to me? — but rather, O Lord, give me the wisdom which you possess. "

This Maitreyi iB the personification of the Hindoo spirit. India cannot point to conquests in the material world, but her conquests in the world of ideas are *the greater. Much earlier and more thoroughly than the materialistic West, she gained possession of some of the deepest metaphysical and religious truths, and as she has carefully treasured up-this wealth of an inner life from generation to generation through 20 centuries she is able to bequeath some of her riches <o her more imperial and less synthetic sister.

Everyone who has followed the course of philosophy in Europe during later years cannot fail to perceive the influence of Indian thought upon Continental thinkers. Schoppenhauer, Hartman, Amiel, Nieutzsche were permeated by- the spirit of the Upanishade. The Upanishads are those books of Vedaie literature which contain reflections upon the problems of life, matter and spirit, fate, good and evil. These meditatious culminate in the teachings about Brahma — the Weltgeist, as tho Germans would render it — the worldego, which is in truth the only reality, "indivisible and yet apparently divided." The word "Brahma," as .Professor Deussen points out, is a neuter term, and it excludes all ideas of a personal God. Brahma is manifested in all forms of existence, of which the geds, or the forces of Nature, are the highest. This teaching seems at first glance to bo identical with what is known in Europe as Pantheism. Yet the difference is so great that the two systems become opposite. Pantheism defies the material world as the only absolute ; Brahmaism denies the reality of this world. Pantheism is optimistic, and has no consciousness of sin and no need of redemption, which is the aim of Brahicaism. This redemption v achieved 'by &« &c-

ceptation of Brahma. By acceptation of Brahma is not to be understood a- mere intellectual act, but an inner revolution, in which, as in Christianity, the natural man is annihilated. After this chabge it is quite immaterial what the natural man has been, — " robber or honourable citizen, his works disappear with him." Good works, as in the Pivuline theology, have no merit in gaining salvation — they are its consequences, not its cause.

The goal of the soul's aspirations is union with and absorption in Brahma. Union can begin here in life, but abeorption can onlytake place by death. Of course such a doctrine does away with immortality in as far as by immortality is understood the continuation of personality after death, but according to Brahmaism this desire for a. personal immortality is one of the chimeras of selfishness which is destroyed by the new birth. One life is, however, insufficient for the purification which is needed to fit the spirit for union with Brahma. Hence the doctrine of Re-incarnation, a continuation of births and deaths here upon earth. These are the chief teachings of the Upanishads. They are interwoven with much that is puerile, grotesque, and repulsive, but as Sehoppenhauer said, " Truth, like water, can only be carried in vessels. The philosopher who insists on setting it pure is like the mnn who, to get the water, would break the vessel."

From perusing the Upanishads we learn how little originality Buddha can lay claim to. ' His teachings are in all main points those of the Upanishads. He was not a religious innovator, but a reformer, who sought to restore the early religious ideas in their purity, and froe them from the mass of theology and ceremonial observances which centuries of priestcraft had heaped around them. Temuka, March 31, 1899.