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Updated: May 26, 2025
We know no external world: we have never had any experience outside the region of our own consciousness; yet what is regarded as external to the individual consciousness is not Maya, as is taught in some of the Upanishads, and maintained by later philosophers.
The precise nature and intimacy of this union has given rise to as many subtle theories and phrases as the sacraments in Europe. Vishnuite sects in all parts of India show a tendency to recognize vernacular works as their scriptures, but they also attach great importance to the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-gîtâ, the Nârâyaṇîya and the Vedânta Sûtras.
Now that seems an extraordinary conclusion, and one which almost staggers the modern mind to conceive of. But that is the conclusion, that is the thread which runs all through the 'Upanishads' the identity of the self of each individual with the self of every other individual throughout mankind, and even with the selves of the animals and other creatures.
From the time of Śankara onwards nearly all Hindu theologians of the first rank expounded their views by writing a commentary on the Brahma Sûtras, an authoritative but singularly enigmatic digest of the Upanishads. Śankara's doctrine may be summarized as absolute monism which holds that nothing really exists but Brahman and that Brahman is identical with the soul.
We are reminded, too, of 'the doctrine of the Sanscrit Upanishads: There is no limit to the knowing of the Self that knows. Unluckily Catherine was not asked to give other examples of what she considered her successes. Acosta, who has not the best possible repute as an authority, informs us that Peruvian clairvoyants 'tell what hath passed in the furthest parts before news can come.
It quotes the Upanishads and Bhagavad-gîtâ, assumes as a metaphysical basis a vedantized form of the Sâṅkhya philosophy, and also accepts the legends of the pastoral Kṛishṇa but without giving much detail. Jains, Buddhists and Śaivas are blamed and the repetition of the name Govinda is enjoined.
34 By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the heart, the interior being, comes the knowledge of consciousness. The heart here seems to mean, as it so often does in the Upanishads, the interior, spiritual nature, the consciousness of the spiritual man, which is related to the heart, and to the wisdom of the heart.
The co-ordination and apparent unity observable in our mental constitution is due to mano which is commonly translated mind but is really for Buddhism, as for the Upanishads, a sensus communis. Whereas the five senses have different spheres or fields which are independent and do not overlap, mano has a share in all these spheres. It receives and cognizes all sense impressions.
These aimed to give peace to the soul by emancipating it from the bondage of matter, and by imparting a sense of independence of the body and of the external world. These old philosophies are preserved in the Upanishads, or Instructions.
To set it aside as not worth the labour spent on elucidating it, seems to me an error of judgment. As a criticism of the doctrine developed in the Upanishads, it is acute and interesting, even if we hold the Upanishads to be in the right, and no serious attempt to analyze the human mind can be without value, for though the facts are before every human being such attempts are rare.
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