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Updated: May 22, 2025
Then their divine spirit, the undying part of them, separates from the soul and returns to its primitive source; the soul is reduced to its primordial atoms, and the monad plunges into the darkness of eternal unconsciousness. This is the only case of total destruction of personality. Such is the Vedanta teaching concerning the spiritual man.
But it is obviously the precursor of the Vedânta and the devout Vedântist can justify his system from it. Instead of attempting to summarize the Upanishads it may be well to quote one or two celebrated passages.
Vedanta, particularly as interpreted by Sri Ramakrishna and his successors, offers a wider field of effort, and a more intellectual consideration of Hindu religion than that of the Yoga system as interpreted from the original Sankhya system by Patanjali, about 300 B.C.
As thus it is settled that the highest Brahman, as known from the Vedanta- texts, or Narayana, himself is the promulgator of the entire Pankaratra, and that this system teaches the nature of Narayana and the proper way of worshipping him, none can disestablish the view that in the Pankaratra all the other doctrines are comprised.
Shortly afterwards in the same sutta he even more emphatically says that he does not teach annihilation. Though the Buddha seems to condemn by anticipation the form of the Vedanta known as the Advaita, this philosophy illustrates the difficulty of making any statement about the saint after his death.
Although this theory was known in the East by the ancient Vedanta philosophers, by the Buddhists of the pre-Christian era and by the Greek philosophers in the West, still it has received a new impetus and has grown with new strength since the introduction of the Darwinian theory of the evolution of species.
The second adhyaya is now begun for the purpose of proving that the view thus set forth cannot be impugned by whatever arguments may possibly be brought forward. The Sutrakara at first turns against those who maintain that the Vedanta- texts do not establish the view indicated above, on the ground of that view being contradicted by the Smriti of Kapila, i. e. the Sankhya- system.
When bhakti was once accepted as a part of Indian religion, it was erected into a principle, analogous or superior to knowledge and was defined in Sûtras similar to those of the Sâṅkhya and Vedânta. But its importance in philosophy is small, whereas its power as an impulse in popular religion has been enormous.
It is an evidence of the position held by the Vedânta philosophy that religious leaders made a commentary on the Sûtras of Bâdarâyaṇa the vehicle of their most important views. Unlike Śaṅkara, Râmânuja is sectarian and identifies his supreme deity with Vishṇu or Nârâyaṇa, but this is little more than a matter of nomenclature.
But what must be avoided in this case is to give any opening for the conclusion that the very numerous Smritis which closely follow the doctrine of the Vedanta, are composed by the most competent and trustworthy persons and aim at supporting that doctrine, are irrelevant; and it is for this reason that Kapila's Smriti which contains a doctrine opposed to Scripture must be disregarded.
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