The Philosophy of the Upanishads and Ancient Indian Metaphysics.

Cover -- Copyright page -- Title page -- Preface -- Contents -- Chapter I. -- The Antecedents of Indian Metaphysics-Metempsychosis. -- The scope of the work -- Indian philosophy the work of a lower race, of mixed Negrito, Tatar, and Aryan blood -- The Aryan infusion scanty -- Low thoughts in high words the difficulty of the Orientalist -- Stationary and progressive order contrasted -- Indian philosophy an Oriental philosophy of inertion -- The social antecedents of Brahmanism and Buddhism -- Personification of elemental forces -- The spiritual instinct languid. Absence of moral aspiration -- The Vedic worship becomes mechanical -- First beginnings of cosmologic speculation in the Vedic hymns -- The Purushasūkta -- The Nāsadīyasūkta -- Climatic, ethnological, and religious degeneration in the Hindu pale -- The worship of Śiva the typical Yogin -- Self-torture, thaumaturgy, ecstasy, Yoga -- Revival of widow-burning -- Polyandry -- Belief in the migration of the soul and the misery of every form of life -- No true help from the gods. Pain in paradise -- The intolerable prospect of life after life and death after death -- The belief in metempsychosis prevalent among the lower races of mankind -- Current in Egypt. Adopted by Empedocles, the Pythago reans, and Plato -- Philosophy the release from metempsychosis in the Phædon -- Asiatic and European pessimism -- Hume's picture of the miseries of life -- The similar picture of the Indian schoolmen -- Chapter II. -- The Quest of the Real-Brahman and Maya, the Self and the World-Fiction. -- Fixity amidst the flux of things -- Repose and peace amidst the miseries of life -- Unity amidst the plurality of experience -- These found at intervals in sleep without a dream -- Permanently in union with the characterless Self, which is the object of the name and notion I -- Brahman the impersonal Self.

Etymology of the word Brahman -- Brahman infinite -- Brahman incogitahle and ineffable -- Brahman the light that irradiates the mental modes -- Brahman is pure thought, eternal and objectless -- Brahman not to be confused with the personal absolute or Christian Deity -- Brahman the pure light of characterless knowledge -- Brahman that which being known all things are known,-the àρχή -- Brahman the principle of reality. The co-eternal principle of unreality, Māyā, the world-fiction -- Māyā the illusion in every individual soul -- Māyā the illusion in all souls, the unreal emanatory principle of the world, co-eternal with Brahman -- Brahman and Māyā eternally associated -- Brahman fictitiously limited by Māyā is Īśvara, and passes into seeming plurality -- Hierarchic emanations out of Brahman and Māyā -- Īśvara, the Demiurgus, world-evolving deity, or cosmic soul -- Īśvara omniscient, the giver of recompense, the internal ruler -- Īśvara not a personal God, but the universal soul -- Īśvara the first figment of the world-fiction -- Hiraṇyagạrbha, the spirit of dreaming sentiencies -- Virāj, the spirit of waking sentiencies -- Six things without beginning -- Chapter III. -- The Release from Metempsychosis. -- Re-ascent to the fontal Self -- Purificatory virtues, renunciation, meditative abstraction, ecstatic vision, re-union -- The Vivekachūḍāamaṇi quoted -- Liberation in this life -- The S'āṇḍilyavidyā. The soul one with the cosmic soul and with the Self -- Renunciation, ecstasy, and liberation, as characterised in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad -- The perfect sage is subject to no moral law -- But will not therefore do evil -- The mystic syllable OM as an image of Brahman -- Invocation of OM in the Taittirīya Upanishad -- The Māṇḍūkya Upanishad. The import of OM. The four states of the soul -- The waking state -- The dreaming state.

The state of dreamless sleep -- The state of the soul in union with pure Self -- Literal analysis of OM -- The doctrine of the five vestures of the soul as taught in the Taittirīya Upanishad -- The Brahmānandavallī, the second section of the Taittrīya Upanishad -- The Self within the mind, inside the heart of every living thing -- The soul is the Self, but does not know itself to be the Self -- Procession of the five elements, and their progressive concretion -- The first and outermost vesture of the soul is the earthly body -- Within the earthly body is the invisible body that clothes the soul throughout its migrations -- The second garment, the vesture of the vital airs -- The third garment, the vesture of the common sensory -- The fourth garment, the mental vesture -- The fifth and innermost garment, the vesture of beatitude. This clothes the soul in its third state of dreamless sleep -- Brahman becomes Īśvara and passes into seeming plurality -- The scale of beatitudes that may be ascended by the sage -- The Bhṛiguvallī, the third section of the Taittirīya Upanishad -- Steps to the knowledge of Brahman. First step: the earthly body is Brahman -- Second step: the vital air is Brahman -- Third step: the common sensory is Brahman -- Fourth step: the mind is Brahman -- Fifth step: the bliss of dreamless sleep is Brahman -- Outward observances of the meditating sage, and their rewards -- He is to meditate on the various manifestations of Brahman -- He strips off the five garments of the soul one after another. Acquires and exercises magical powers. Sings the song of universal unity. Is absorbed into the one and all -- The great text, That art thou -- The dialogue of Āruṇi and S'vetaketu from the Chhāndogya Upanishad -- Allegory of the sweet juices and the honey -- Allegory of the rivers and the sea -- Allegory of the tree and its informing life.

Allegory of the seed of the holy fig-tree -- Allegory of the salt in salt water -- Allegory of the highwayman and the blindfold traveller -- Gradual departure of the soul at death -- Allegory of the fiery ordeal -- Scholastic explanation of the great text, That art thou -- Chapter IV. -- The Mundaka Upanishad. -- The religion of rites and the religion of gnosis, the inferior science and the superior science -- The religion of rites prolongs the migration of the soul -- The religion of gnosis frees the soul from further migration -- This religion or philosophy must be learned from an authorised exponent -- Muṇḍaka Upanishad. First Muṇḍdaka, First Section -- The δiαδοχή -- To know the Self is to know all things -- Simile of the spider -- Hume's misapprehension of this simile -- The Demiurgus and the world-fiction -- First Muṇḍaka, Second Section -- The rewards of the prescriptive sacra transient. The sage must turn his back upon them all -- He must repair to an accredited teacher -- Second Muṇḍaka, First Section -- Simile of the fire and the spayks -- Purusha characterised as in the Purushasūkta -- The vision of the Self within the heart is the only salvation -- Second Muṇḍaka, Second Section -- Use of the mystic syllable OM -- The ties of the heart loosed by seeing the Self, the light of the world -- Third Muṇḍaka, First Section -- Allegory of the two birds on one tree -- Mental purity required of the aspirant -- A pure mind the only mirror that reflects the Self -- Third Muṇḍaka, Second Section -- The Self manifests itself to the perfect sage -- He loses himself in it as a river loses itself in the sea -- Fichte quoted. Perfect peace from conscious participation in the divine life -- Chapter V. -- The Katha Upanishad. -- The story of Nachiketas and the regent of the dead -- Kaṭha Upanishad, First Vallī -- Yama tells Nachiketas to choose three gifts.

The first gift, that he may return to his father -- The second gift, a knowledge of the Nāchiketa fire -- Disquieting douht of awakening reflection -- The third gift, a knowledge of the soul, and of its real nature -- This preferable even to the pleasures that the gods enjoy -- Second Vallī. The pleasuiable and the good -- The liturgic experts are blind leaders of the blind -- The seekers of the Self are few -- Renunciation and meditative abstraction the only path of safety -- The mystic syllable OM must be employed -- Antithetic epithets of the Self -- The Self manifests itself to the purified aspirant -- Third Vallī. The individual soul and the cosmic soul -- Allegory of the chariot -- The goal is release from metempsychosis by re-union with the Self -- The path of release is fine as the edge of a razor -- The liberated theosophist wakes up out of this dream-world -- Fourth Vallī -- The sage eludes the net of death, and has no fear -- It is illusion that presents the manifold of experience -- Purusha or Brahman is pure light -- Fifth Vallī. Various manifestations of Purusha -- Vedāntic proofs of the existence of the Self -- What becomes of the soul at death -- The Self is like a permeating fire or pervading atmosphere -- Simile of the sun unsullied by the impurities it looks down upon -- Everlasting peace for them only that find the light of the world in their own hearts -- Sixth Vallī -- The world-tree and the seed it springs from -- The Self to be seen only as mirrored on the purified mind -- Ecstatic vision and recovery of immortality -- Apathy, vacuity, and trance the steps of access to the Self -- The soul's path of egress and ascent to the courts of Brahma -- The allegory of the chariot compared with the Platonic figure in the Phædrus -- Chapter VI. -- The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. -- Dialogues of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad.

Ajātaśatru and Bālāki.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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