Mr. Subba Rau has written a valuable work. His Mulāvidyā Nirasa represents, as its other name implies, the Vedantic Truth as taught by Yajnavalkya, Goudapada, Sankara and Suresvara. Later Vedantins came too much under the power of Reason divorced from Intuition, Intellect severed from Life; and hence in their hands the Brahman of the Upanishads, the soul of the Universe, has become a dry abstraction, a concept void of human interest. It marks the decadence of the metaphysical sense, and the triumph of the dead forms of thought to which myraid-sided Life is forced to conform itself. The result is obvious. Vedanta has ceased to be a living force; and notwithstanding the lip homage paid to the System of Sankara its followers have become either pessimistic anchorites looking with unconcealed pity on the struggles of the ignorant, or selfish seekers of the goods of life, declaring that truth is beyond the reach of man, and its realization possible only after death. They argue that so long as we identify ourselves with the physical body we are not enlightened; and, as this identification is inevitable while we live, to aspire to an immediacy of knowledge, with breath in our body, is to attempt the impossible. Thus even without the insidious’ efforts of adverse critics, Vedanta has long ago come to lose its vitality, and degenerate into a sanctified superstition.
- many-sided. 2. recluses. 3. not clearly perceptible but harmful
Mr. Subba Rau has set before himself the task of pointing out the radical errors that have crept into later Vedanta, defacing, disfiguring and very nearly killing out its central Truth. If by his noble endeavour that Truth can be made to emerge from the obscuraton’ that it has so long suffered, he will have laid every lover of Vedanta under a deep debt of gratitude. To an individual or a nation, nothing is more precious than, spiritual truths - truths in which Vedantic Literature is especially rich.
As this work, to be properly understood presupposes the reader’s acquaintance with the later form of Vedanta as expounded at present, I will summarize the main doctrines of the latter and show how they fail to establish the Truth, but turn Vedanta into a mere handmaid of mysticism.
The oneness of Reality which from the time of the Upanishads down to the times of Sankara and Suresvara was not a matter of faith but one of intuitive Experience, not a doctrine accepted on authority but a Truth realized in life, has become a cardinal’ article of belief based on Vedic assertion admittedly unprovable. The Vedantins of the present day take refuge in Degrees of Reality known as the Paramarthic (Transcendental), and Vyavaharic (empirical), and Pratibhasic (Illusory). In their hands the Transcendental has passed into a pure assumption, since all experience has to be included in the Empirical. Vedantic Truth has thus become an unsupported dogma resting on the sanctity of the ancient writings, but neither attainable, nor demonstrable. With a modesty undistinguishable from self humiliation, the modern exponents confess that they cannot aspire to the vision of the ancients, and that they must pass through innumerable births before they can become entitled 1.concealment. 2. chief.
to Release. A great deal of importance is attached to Samadhi, or trance, and only the gifted are supposed to enjoy the bliss of the Mystic Union. Unchecked Intellectualism has punished itself. While the Pundits cannot overcome the fascination of Vedanta, of the doctrine of oneness, they feel their helplessness as to how it can be attained in life.
The problem of the world, however, has tasked all their energies. If, as they piously believe, Reality is one, whence is this multiplicity and difference of Perceptual Experience? It must be real, and must be traced to a real source. A difficulty soon presents itself: If Brahman be the cause, then the cause and the effect must belong to the same Degree of Reality. The scriptures on the contrary insist on the one only being real. The world must therefore be traced to some other Principle which by the side of Brahman must part with its reality, but in relation to the world be as real as the world. In this perplexity, the Post Sankaras transformed Maya into the Prakriti or the Primordial matter of the Sankhyas, and made it an eternal. This certainly rendered the world more intelligible, but at the same time cast an impenetrable veil over Brahman which has lapsed into a holy fetish, unconnected and unconnectible with Life. The grand structure raised by Goudapada and Sankara on the solid foundations laid by the Vedic seers has in the hands of the pandits vanished like a summer dream, like Alladin’s Palace by the magic of the African sorcerer'.
- where from. 2. an object of obsessive reverence. 3. magician.
But their difficulties have only increased. The Avidya of the ancients has somehow to be identified with this Prakriti, and Vidya or enlightenment must dissolve it. How is this miracle to be accomplished? Nothing daunted’, they proceeded with their bold speculation, and declared that the unconsciousness of the world which we experience in dreamless-sleep is due to the persistence of Prakriti or the world-principle. It is Maya, Mulāvidyā, or radical nescience. Mere Avidya, or Ignorance, they argue, cannot explain the positive appearance of the world with its Time, Space, and Causation. It is too negative being a mere non existence and therefore uncreative. On the other hand this root-Ignorance is a positive substance, adequate for purposes of an evolutionary process and is experienced by all in dreamless-sleep in the form of total Ignorance, Ignorance of the world and of Brahman. The waking world is a transformation, an organic growth, like a tree from the seed of the Positive Ignorance persisting in sleep. Being a positive principle it gives rise to the positive world; but again, being of the nature of ignorance, of darkness, it disappears with the light of knowledge. Sankara, they admit, did not put it so explicitly but his sytem would crumble to atoms wihout this doctrine. The Post-Sankaras thus claim the credit of having made the system of non-duality complete and invulnerable.
The reader might fear that in making these attempts to provide the world with a rational explanation, the Post Sankaras have lost sight of Brahman altogether. But he mistakes. For the Root-Ignorance is, according to them, not distinct from Brahman, though not identical with it at the same time. Brahman does not, it is true, admit of a second entity separate from itself, and is an unqualified one. Yet somehow it must find room in itself for Maya, which is inscrutable’ and indefinable. Here all enquiry and explanation must cease. The source of Maya cannot be traced further.
- discouraged by nothing.
The system of Sankhya from which so much has been freely borrowed by the later Sankaras, is perhaps the most rational speculative product of ancient India. It is plain unsophisticated Dualism. It posits spirit and matter as two independent realities. By Aviveka, or beginningless Ignorance, the spirit identifies himself with the physical body which is an evolved product of Nature or primordial matter; and, though essentially pure and blissful, he becomes thereby subject to suffering. Nature exists to help him to regain a knowledge of himself through enjoyment or suffering and finally obtain release from the wheel of Samsara. The system recognises the irremovable distinction between the two primary elements of life, and steers clear of the ontological difficulty of Absolute Monism. Vedanta, however, cannot accept this view. If there be an entity second to the self, and the self suffer from its attachment to the non-self, the existence of the latter is a standing menace to the peace of the self. To say that Nature is always mindful of the interests of the soul is a pious fiction, and a solace derived from it is childish. Besides, as a Kantian* might urge, two entities must be related to each other by Time, Space or Causation, and to aver that Nature’s changes are unregulated by Time or Causation is untrue, and unthinkable.
- mysterious. 2. steer clear of = avoid. 3. ontological difficulty= a difficulty to explain the apparent multiplicity of existence. 4. follower of Kant, a western philosopher. 5. assert.
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The mind that thirsts for final solution of the mystery of the dualities of Life cannot rest in two ultimates. Also, speculation can never end. As science advances, and as more and more of the external world comes under the dominion of the Intellect, human views must undergo modification; and since the aim of science is the unification of knowledge, Dualism can only be a half way house on its journey to Truth. Sankara’s perspicacity’ realized the excellnce of the Vedantic Method of discovering Truth. Yajnavalkya and Goudapada sought it in the principle, our Self, that persisted in the three states transcending the dualistic experiences of every single state. Sankara followed in their footsteps and declared that every other view was but a will o’ the wisp’, an intellectual quagmire®, in which those that were caught could never extricate themselves. At the end of his examination of the Sankhya and Yoga school he delivered a note of warning to the reader that however ethically perfect they might profess to be, they were not, as unvarnished* dualisms, calculated to put him in possession of the only Truth that can lead to bliss, namely, Absolute Monism.
- an unusual power to see through and understand what is hidden. 2. Will o’ the wisp=an elusive, delusive goal. 3. a boggy or muddy land. 4. plain and straightforward. 5. perseverence. 6. not repairable. 7. stabbornly persisting.
But the assuity of the Post-Sankara’s is incorrigible’ incurable, indefatigable’. They dread neither disloyalty to Sankara, nor disaster to Truth. Such is their restless zeal that they hunt up every passage in which he refers to Avidya, though in his own sense of mistake of identity, and hasten to add a comment thereon that it is only the effected, not the causal Avidya that Sankara means there. Yet, one might wonder, where ever he refers to this causal Ignorance which is the idol of the Post-Sankaras ? The fact is that Sankara in his search for Truth is never dominated by a tender consideration for the authority of scriptures, or of tradition. He proceeds like a Kant or a Spinoza, carefully analysing Life and experience, but reverently acknowledging the help he derives from the guidance of the Vedic Seers. Whoever reads his masterly introduction to his comment on the Sutras must be filled with admiration for the boldness and frankness with which he states his position, characterizing all human activities as based on an innate tendency to mistake one thing for another, and in this he makes no exception in favour of the Vedas and allows no privilege of age, caste, or learning. The subject in man is the root principle of Life and cannot be turned into an object nor the latter into the former. This is the irreversible judgement of Reason. Yet we see man identifying himself with the body, the mind, and the senses. What can this be due to but to a radical want of discrimination, to Avidya or Ignorance. The world as the manifestation of Atman is Maya, the cournterpart of Ignorance and ultimately identical with it. Now does Atman possess the Power of manifesting itself, this Maya? The answer is both yes and no. It does seem to have the Power, for when as in dreamless sleep we experience all existence absorbed in Pure consciousness the only Reality-the Kosmos can be referred to no second source and must be inferred to be only an expression of that Reality. Hence Atman has the power to manifest itself as the world. Nevertheless, Atman as Pure Consciousness, is ever beyond Time and Change, and can be allowed to have Power only anticipatively with reference to the world regarded as the effect.
In itself Atman is beyond Change and Causation, and to invest it with Power is to regard it as a Cause, to convert it into an empirical entity, Atman is neither a Power, nor a Cause. This conclusion drawn from a study of the Avasthas is final, and cannot be twisted to suit the predilections of the waking intellect. Sankara’s procedure is strictly scientific, and he never permits his reasoning to be deflected by any extraneous consideration. In undertaking to expound the teaching of the Sutras, he starts with the Premise that they establish the Truth of Atman being the only Reality, and that they are only aphoristic collections, strung on the same principle, of the various doctrines of the Upanishads, the parental source of that Truth. He quotes no authority for his position, showing thereby that he entirely relies on facts of Life and Experience.
It is thus evident that Sankara who never mentions the persistence of Nescience as a substance, even in his examination of the state of dreamless sleep, accepted the age-old Avidya as a convenient theory, borne out by life, to explain its patent contradictions - a theory serviceable so long as Knowledge has not arisen and Truth is not comprehended. The realization of Brahman being All and of its being the only Reality, rings the death-knell of Avidya, which is but an intellectual stop-gap", to spur* the soul on its upward course.
- a strong and innate liking. 2. open. 3. temporary substitute. 4. urge or push. 5. dull - wittedness.
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Unable to preceive the value of Avidya adopted only as a theory, the later Shankaras in their obtuseness", “boldly rush where angels fear to tread”, and fancying a serious defect in the system, piously erect a theory into a fact, and insist on seeing the Causal Ignorance, as a lump of matter, entering the mansion of the Lord - dreamless sleep - as his ever threatening rival, and placidly occupying a second throne by his side!
But, a Post-Sankara might say, if in dreamless sleep a man finds himself one with Brahman, and there is no second entity, why , he obtains release whenever he sleeps. How then does it happen that still he wakes into fetters? If Maya does not persist in sleep, what leads to one’s entanglement again in the wheel of Samsara so soon as he wakes? Finally, objection betrays ignorance of the fundamentals of Vedanta. A man whether waking or sleeping never ceases to be Brahman, never can be other than what he is by nature. His bondage results from his ignorance of his true nature. Hence he need not be made Brahman, he is that already, but he must be cured of his ruinous notion that he is any other. Release occurs so soon as he realizes this Truth. He then discovers that, as Brahman, he neither wakes nor sleeps but is eternal bliss, free from the bondage of the states. As to the world the idea that it is or can be something other than Brahman is the source of all difficulties. The enlightened is troubled with no such abstraction’, and his position is free from doubts of every kind. The waking world cannot desiderate a cause beyond the state in which it appears, for all causality binds together phenomena of the same state only. To sow the seed (Maya) in dreamless sleep that it might grow up into a tree - the world - in the waking state is ludicrous".
- it is surprising that. 2. a wrong notion. 3. require. 4. ridiculous
No common gardener will approve of the suggestion. The seed and the tree must belong to the same order of things, and to the same Time-series.
But this misguided zeal in refining is, alas, suicidal. In their undeft’ handling of Vedantic problems the Post Sankaras have caused Truth to evaporate, knowldge to dwindle into a pretence’, and Release, a pious hope. According to their presentation, Atman and Maya alike constitute the inseparable and constant elements of each state, so that, as Life does not extend beyond the three states, Dualism is left uncontradicted. For whatever Degree of Reality is conferred on the Atman is equally claimed by Maya, and the pretentions of the latter cannot in fairness be denied or dismissed. To escape from this predicament, it is urged that there is a fourth state, Samadhi or trance, in which the claims of Atman, as a higher Reality, can be vindicated. This device is equally futile. The argument that dreamless sleep is not a state of oneness because it is followed by waking, and that this demands the persistence in dreamless sleep of a second entity, namely, Causal Ignorance to account for the subsequent projection of an external world, applies pari passu’ to the state of Samadhi. For Samadhi must likewise contain the germ of a world, since it is succeeded by a world. If still it is contended that the state of Absolute Identity is experienced in the Final Samadhi from which there is no waking, we shall have no evidence left in experience to testify to it, as the only witness who has enjoyed the oneness will never return to life.
- Unskilful. 2. To be reduced to a false show. 3. equally.
Baffled in all directions, and a hopelessly pinned to a corner, the Post-Sankara advocate of Vedanta is compelled to confess that, after all, non-duality is only a matter of faith in the scriptural declaration, and that all doors to Knowledge or Truth are slammed in the face of the faithless skeptic. But Sankara deals a knock-out blow to the mere worshippers of Texts by meeting them on their own ground. “Tat twam asi” (that thou art), he urges, cannot by any means be interpreted to mean “that thou wilt become after thou art dead”. Thus even the holy text for which all reason is sacrificed by the Post-Shankara cannot save him. Truth cannot be proved, knowledge cannot be acquired in life and Release must occur, on his authority, only after death, that is, after all the organs of perception and reflection have suffered dissolution. Sweet life and Reason become positive obstacles in the way of realization. Such is the fate of the later Vedic Monism which is ushered with so much clap-trap , pomp, and ceremony.
But in all earnestness, what are Vedic assertions? Sankara treats them as only suggestions of Truth, which must stand or fall, as we find them confirmed or condemned by Life and Experience. As he shrewdly adds, Truth must in the last resort come to be realized in our own experience, and no blind faith in the dicta’ of the scriptures or the seers, can constitute it as such. The monster of a positive causal Avidya which the Post-Sankaras conceived in a fatal hour and have undergone such throes’ to deliver, is a still born child. Far rather, it is a veritable canker* that eats into the vitals of Vedanta. The sooner it is killed, and its elegy is sung, the better for the well-being of True Vedanta.
- pretentious non-sense. 2. sayings. 3. labour pains. 4. ulcer. 5. mourning poem.
“Mulāvidyā Nirasa” is a magnificent reassertion of the impregnable position of Sankara and of the Vedantic truth, and I trust that it will effectively break down the idols of unreflecting belief entrenched behind walls of learned superstition, and later tradition. It has not appeared one day too soon. No other contribution made to spiritual knowledge since the time of Suresvara can compare with it, in depth or achievement. It gains in value from the circumstance that Mr. Subba Rau’s acquaintance with European speculation, has enabled him to press into his service the Kantian discovery of Time, Space and Causality as the a prioriť forms of the intellect, which has greatly facilitated the explosion of the dry logic-chopping of the later Sankaras.
Mr. Subba Rau in his inimitable manner which combines vigour with clearness, has bravely set himself against the misinterpretations that have for centuries been in vogue; and the services he has rendered to the cause of the ancient Truth of fadeless lustre, are simply incalculable. In his indomitable fights with superstition and glittering fallacies, he neither asks nor gives quartero. He reasons where plain facts are involved, and quotes authorities where these are necessitated by the context. He gives short shrift to irrational dogmas which have hitherto ruled opinion with unquestioned sway. But alas, the life of a scholar, as of an independent thinker, is an incessant battle with antagonistic forces-with afflictions, social obligations, philistine opposition, weak health, and, what is most inexorable, finance.
- strong enough to be unaffected. 2. presupposed. 3. showing to be false. 4. clever but false reasoning. 5. unyielding. 6. neither asks for nor shows mercy. 7. give short shrift=show no sympathy. 8. hostile. 9. oppressively constant.
Mr. Subba Rau’s work consists of two volumes, and he has been able to publish the present, through the encouragement given by the Mysore Educational Department in the shape of prize from the Devaraja Bahadur Charity Funds (Literary Section). I hope that the second volume will meet with even greater encouragement.
The present work being in Sanskrit may not be so widely useful as if the thoughts were presented in English with which nowadays our own countrymen are more familiar. An English rendering is very desirable, and I intend to supply it after my own work on “Vedanta or the Science of Reality” which is now finished has seen the light of day.
K.A. KRISHNASWAMY IYER.
Bangalore, Oct 1929.