The analysis in Chapter II of totemism as a proto religious phenomenon showed it to be as a way to God, not an isolated experience of the solitary individual as religion has come to be thought by many in our times. Rather it was the commonly shared experience of all peoples and the first condition of human thought.

In the last chapter we looked into the transition to the mythic way to God beyond that of totemic thought. We saw the totemic understanding of the unity of reality evolve into mythic thought as a higher and later level of development. As we looked, in particular, into Greek myth as the root of Western philosophy, it would be helpful at this point to look with a similar purpose to the Vedas, the corresponding root of Eastern thought.

Here my words must above all be questions concerning issues for scholars within the Eastern tradition, but both Socrates and Zen have shown questions to be at the heart of philosophizing.

Chapter I followed Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s description of psychological development and saw that it had a number of parallel tracks. The one which is generally attended to and to which Piaget himself would seem to have given priority was the cognitive: the development of improved capabilities of knowledge was seen as the basis for greater sophistication in the affective and kinetic orders. While true, that is but part of the story, for the general theory of development works on the basis of equilibrium, how it is lost creating a need, and how at times it can be regained only by developing a higher cognitive capability such as a capacity for abstract reasoning. From this point of view the higher cognitive capability becomes the effect rather than the cause in the process of development. This centers on affectivity understood as the tendency toward a good (the equilibrium in general and specific objects in particular) or toward a goal that is absent. Affectivity, in turn, is set within the pattern of existential life activities in which we are engaged. Thus the pattern of development can be traced, and perhaps more effectively, through affective concerns than though cognitive capabilities. But affectivity directs attention further to types of action that are not merely of mind or will, but of the full human person, mind and body. Such integrally human actions are the root of the more partial mental processes.

Here, one touches upon the long dialectic in the Hindu tradition between thought and action. This concerns not the commonplace that must be taught to every child, namely, to think before one acts, but rather the higher reaches of the spiritual life. It is here that the real dilemma of the human condition emerges, namely, how can the self-aware human being live his or her destiny. As a participant in God, one is less than God in one’s being and hence in one’s capabilities. Yet inasmuch as one is both from God and directed towards God, one can live truly and fully only by relating to that which transcends one, and which does so infinitely.

As the human person is both body and spirit two ways or paths can be taken in response. One is that of the body and rituals, the other is that of the spirit through mind and heart. Fortunately, these ways need not be mutually exclusive if the person is truly one in nature and being. Indeed, given the limitations of the human person each way can have only partial success and will need to be complemented by the other.

In the Hindu tradition this has entailed, on the one hand, a florid set of rituals and signs all expressing the divine. These employ to the full the capabilities of the human imagination, which we saw as basic to the mythic way discussed in Chapter III. However, as one attempts to enumerate the rituals — someone has counted over forty in the morning bath — it begins to be evident that Hindu culture envisages not a secular life which is made sacred by a number of particular rituals, but that all of life is not only sacralized, but sacred. Yet as human life is essentially relative and not absolute, some argue that it is essential for the mind to enter in order to point beyond actions, even the sacred ritual actions of our life. Beyond the actions of the body, it is up to the human spirit — not merely as marked by the picturing capabilities of the imagination, but as fully spiritual and open to being — to continue on towards God, and so it must.

Nevertheless, the dialectic continues, for the spirit too is finite or limited in power; not only its concepts, but all its acts are limited. In the subsequent chapters we shall see philosophy attempting to come to terms with this in the form of negative intellectual judgements and the work of the heart rushing along mystic pathways. But one side of the Hindu experience argues inexorably that the human mind must always lag behind on any way to God and therefore that two strategies are essential. The first is to shorten, indeed eliminate, the distance by turning from transcendence, according to which God is infinitely distant, to immanence, in terms of which God is infinitely present. The second is to proceed not by mind in which we define and hence delimit the content of our thoughts, but by actions which point but do not define. Though I can point to a person, I cannot and must not attempt to define or delimit that person by my concepts. By actions we are ushered into the realm of sacred ritual, which must always be added over and above whatever can be achieved by human consciousness.

Further, among the numberless signs and rituals, sacrifices have special importance because they proceed not positively, but negatively. We can never be adequate in our attempts positively to affirm the full reality of God. But most philosophers agree that a negative statement can be more true, because less ambiguous than positive ones. In ritual the negative act by which the object of sacrifice is destroyed is decisive and definitive. It does not linger on to define and delimit that in favor of which it is made; in that sense it leaves open if more indeterminate the positive reality to which it points.

Of course, this may not be the end of the dialectic, for the meaning of the sacrifice can always be misinterpreted and this, in turn, will require prayerful reflection in order to achieve a more correct understanding of the actions and their significance. Thus, the two sides of the Hindu debate between mind and action, reflection and ritual, concept and sacrifice, or more deeply, the two ways to God go on, each needing the other.

Here we shall follow the path of sacrifice in terms not of the physical action itself, but of its significance. For this we shall look to the hymns which accompanied the acts of sacrifice and express their significance. Hence, the perspective will not be that of a posteriori reasoning to God as in some of the succeeding chapters, where the outlook is that of the creature looking for its self-sufficient cause. Here, by virtue of the act of sacrifice the bond of physical reality is broken and one reenters the universe, as it were, from the horizon of its source and beginnings. Such is the creation hymn, Rg Veda X, 129.

The Vedas were poetry with a purpose. They sought not to entertain, or even to guide after the manner of an ethics. Rather, pertaining to sacrificial rituals, their intent was to express in words meaning and reality as radical as that expressed symbolically in the sacrificial act itself. There, as in a negative theology, phenomenal existences were destroyed in order to make manifest the absolute reality. The purpose of sacrifice was to transcend the realm of ordinary meaning, which in comparison is an ignorance, and to proclaim the deep origin, order and sense of this life.

Further, there would appear to be here a potentially significant contrast to the Greek mind. While using the language of myth and expressing realities in the personal terms of the gods, the Vedas also employed concrete and proper terms, e.g., for the parts of the universe; indeed, the whole of Rg Veda X, 129, is written in non-mythic terms. This enabled the Rishis to state content which nowhere appears in the records we possess of the early Greek mind, characterized totally by the mythic and symbolic modes of thought.

Here we shall look for the hymn’s understanding of:

(a) that from which all derive,

(b) the origination of the universe,

(c) the resultant relation between things, and

(d) the nature of reality itself.

We shall be interested in seeing what light might be shed on this by taking into account also the earlier context of primitive thought and, comparatively, what relation there might be to the mythic process from unity to diversity developed in the alternate Greek branch of the Aryan family and reflected by Hesiod’s Theogony.

In reading the text a sensitivity to metaphysical issues will be indispensable. A. K. Coomaraswamy remarks:

In keeping with the developmental model elaborated in the first chapter above, we shall be interested in determining the distinctive manner in which the mode of thinking in this hymn surpasses that of the primitive or totemic mind, and differs from subsequent developments.

Nevertheless, here we are engaged in the somewhat different task, described in the second chapter, of stepping back to the content of human thought which preceded the development of philosophic systems. It is crucial that this be done in terms of the early texts themselves, both in order that they might, without circularity, provide a basis for the subsequent systems and in order to retrieve as a basis for really new progress what the philosophic systems themselves did not undertake to articulate and develop.

These ten nuclei provide notably more proximate contexts for interpreting the text of Rg Veda X, 129 than do the much later six orthodox and three heterodox systems. They can be especially useful in identifying both the implicit content of the terms and their allusions. In particular, they were the tools with which that mentality carried out its reflection upon the issues of unity and of participation contained therein. Hence, they will be particularly central to our project of determining the metaphysical content of the vision in its own terms, though from our later and hence more self-conscious standpoint.

The hymn would appear to be constructed of three parts. The first (mantras 1-3, verse 2) treats the state prior to creation; the second (mantra 3, verse 3 — mantra 5) describes the creative process; the third (mantras 6-7) constitutes an epistemic reflection.

There are even certain more positive indications of the nature of the undifferentiated. First, it is termed "that one" (tad ekam). This should be taken as a positive affirmation of being, for the text adds that "other than that there was not anything beyond" (Mantra 2). Secondly, it is also referred to as being of the nature of life by the statement, "that one breathed."

Part II: The Creative Process (mantra 3, verse 3 - mantra 5). This is concerned with "the origin of the evolved world from the unevolved" and introduces two issues: first, in what does this origination consist; second, how is it realized?

As with the Theogony, the nature of the unity which the male and female cosmogonic principles imply depends upon the degree of the unity of this original pair. Here it is most significant that the image conveyed by the hymn from beginning to end is not that these two principles are simply different and then brought together. On the contrary, what precedes or that from which their differentiation arises is a state of undifferentiation. Most fundamentally they are one rather than many. Continuity with the totemic vision and the experience it embodied could provide a basis for this vision.

On the second issue, namely, how this initial division was realized, the text is not silent, though it speaks after the manner of poetry, rather than of technical scientific prose.

In the order of created or differentiated beings the fact that desire is the first seed of mind integrates knowledge within the overall project of unity and orients it finally toward not analysis but synthesis, as it would appear to imply a striving of one person to know the other. This, in turn, is predicated ontologically upon the fact that the mind and its object originally were an undifferentiated unity as noted in the first part of the hymn and as was inherited from totemic thought. Thus, knowledge itself is most fundamentally the effort to grasp the other in its differentiated and hence partial expression of the original and undifferentiated unity. In this light the desire or will of one differentiated being as regards others should be not that of self-seeking, but of aiding, of serving the other, so that it might share or participate more fully in perfection.

Finally, both mind and desire may be combined in wisdom in verses 3 and 4 of mantra 4: "Sages seeking in their hearts with wisdom found out the bond of the existent in the nonexistent." Does this mean only that by reflecting on the problem they found the origin of the differentiated universe? This is possible, but the explicit distinction and ordering of desire and mind would suggest more, namely, the interior road to wisdom which is so characteristic of the Indian philosophers and of great interest in the West from Saint Augustine to present day phenomenologists (see Part III below).

What was said above regarding developmental modes of thought and the dependence of the poetic imagination upon the senses suggests that the answers to further questions, such as monism or pluralisms, monotheism or henotheism, and material or efficient causality will require the development of subsequent modes of thought for work in philosophy proper. This will be the concern of the chapters to follow. The human mind, however, will never be able to supplant poetry or exhaustively to articulate its meaning in scientific terms. Thus, such poetic hymns as the Theogony and Rg Veda, X, 129 will ever remain inexhaustible and essential storehouses or treasuries for philosophers and for all people in their effort to find the way in which their lives can lead to God and to one another.

Part III. Epistemological Reflection. Manras 6-7. In the end the hymn steps back from the task of establishing the literal truth of the description of myth in mantras 1-5, saying: who truly knows?

On one level as it has been concerned with creation this seems to argue that no created intellect can know what preceded it as such — no created mind can know the act of creation itself upon which it depends. A fortiori it cannot know the working of the mind and heart which generated the act of creation. Only the Creator could know such truth.

But mantra 7 goes further to open the possibility that the creator too does not know. This could be read in two senses. One is that the creator is less than knowing: some impersonal force, brute and crude. This would fit the recent evolutionary paradigm in which all is read in terms of matter from which humankind but barely emerges. The other sense is that the creator of knowledge may rather be above knowledge, not a union of subject and object but subsistent truth itself. This would correspond to the body of the Vedas and the basic Hindu conviction that the divine is existence, consciousness and bliss. This is the truly decisive point in the constitution of a culture for it sets the parameters in terms of meaning and value: not of darkness and conflict, but of light and love. This is the basic issue of who and what we are and of what our life is about.

From the above archeology of human thought in its totemic and mythic stages it can be concluded, with Iqbal, that it has been religious insight regarding the Absolute which has made finite thinking possible. Leaving home and going deeply into the past now brings us back home to reconstruct the deep truth of our faith regarding knowledge: not only that knowledge can be also about religion, but that in essence thought itself is the religious reconstitution of all in God: this is what knowledge most fundamentally is.

There are two implications of this archeology which I would like to cite here. The first concerns the relation of a people to the message of a prophet. As the basis of the human self-understanding of the different cultures is essentially religious, a divine revelation through a great prophet comes not as alien and conflictual, but as a special divine help to appreciate, purify and strengthen a culture. The message of the prophet evokes the divine life which lies within; it enables each people to plunge more deeply into the infinite ground of their cultural traditions and to bring out more of its meaning for their life. Indeed, confidence (etymologically rooted in "faith") and commitment to one’s tradition as grounded in the infinite means precisely expecting it to have even more to say then a people has yet articulated. In this light, the Prophet’s voice is a call to delve anew into one’s tradition, to bring out more of its meaning for one’s times and to live this more fully. This is a voice to which one can respond fully and freely.

In this sense might I be permitted to take issue with Iqbal’s seemingly overly Darwinian description of the first period of religious life as:

The first half of this chapter, in reflecting on the creation hymn, was set in the content of the ritual action of sacrifice which the hymn accompanied and expressed. There is another, indeed the most known, text which begins from the actions of daily life, but which also leads the reader to the divine source, and hence to its meaning of life. This is the Bhagavad Gita, to which we shall now look.

Anyone who has travelled in India undoubtedly has received myriad times the good advice: "Do one thing: read the Gita." It holds a unique place in Hindu literature. The main body of this literature emerges, as noted above, from the ritual practices, especially those of sacrifice, and thus is made up of four sections. First is the Vedas or Vedic hymns which were used in the sacrifices and state its basic truths: Rg Veda X, 129, examined above, is an example of this literature. Second are the Brahmanas detailing how the rituals were to be carried out. Third are the Aranyakas or allegorical statements of the meaning of the Vedas. Lastly, come the Upanishad which were really appendices to the Aranyakas and provided in a more direct, non-allegorical manner the philosophy of the Vedas. These four correspond as well to the four ideal stages of life: student, householder, forest ascetic, and mystic contemplation.

Beyond this are two other key text. One is the Sutras, or "strings", which are very short, cryptic statements of the central elements of the Vedic vision. Like the Sententiae of Peter the Lombard in medieval Europe they served as the basis for the systematic exposition of the philosophy.

The other is the Bhagavad Gita. This is part of the great epic poem the Mahabarata, which recounts the history of the Bharata clan. Progressively this moves ineluctably toward a great battle between the Pandavas, the aggrieved party, led by Arjuna, and the Kauravas.

In the moments just prior to the battle all pretense, self deception and minor concern must fall away. As in a great Shakespearean soliloquy it is then that the deepest truths of life are revealed. Here it is Arjuna, coming from a long preparatory forest retreat and tested to the extremes, who questions; it is the Lord Krishna himself who answers. Just as in the Theogony and the creation Hymn ultimate wisdom was sought of the gods, so it is here. It is the beauty and deep insight into the Truth contained in Krishna’s response that alone gives this its standing as the central text of the Hindu tradition. Let us listen to the text itself.

Arjuna asks the Lord Krishna to be his chariot driver and they go to survey the line of the battle. He sees not only his own family and friends, but arrayed against them a set of relatives, teachers and people he loves and admires:

I.

Arjuna’s ethical dilemma is grave indeed. First, he does not want to kill his kinsmen (I, verse 31). Second, he does not want to have killed those who support him in the fight and for whom he is fighting (33). Third, he does not want to kill those who attack him, even though they do evil, for then there would be no one to perform the sacrifices. Above we saw how the sacrifices express the source of meaning. Here Arjuna points out that an end to the sacrifices would eliminate the appreciation of the source of meaning and hence the personal and social dignity, meaning and worth by which we approach immortality. This, in turn, would destroy the social order, just as the loss of the totem of a tribe, leads to social disorder. (38)

Hence both personal and social life would be destroyed. Therefore he concludes that it is better not to act, to stand unarmed and to be killed, than to cause such a total destruction of his people. (46)

At this point the lord Krishna begins to speak and in the 72 verses of chapter II of the Gita presents, succinctly but classically, the main themes of Hinduism and hence the ritual way to God with which the chapter is concerned. The passage stands out so preeminently in Hindu literature that, through part of an immense epic, it has come to be considered part of the Sruti or revealed texts:

II.

Fall not into degrading weakness, for this becomes not a man who is a man. Throw off this ignoble discouragement, and arise like a fire that burns all before it.

Krishna then begins to respond by preparing Arjuna for deeper understanding. He does this by noting: first that Arjuna is not in an enlightened state, but is dominated by concern for his people (I 31, II 6); second, that he would drop out of action due to the problems of the moment, rather than taking a longer view of life in its totality; further, that he may be under the influence of such ignoble emotions as fear and discouragement; and finally, that he gives in to grief, desolation and even to despair (II 1, 7). The reason for this would seem to be too external a sense of meaning. Thus, for example, he is preoccupied by the need to assure the continuation of sacrifices even where this might contradict their meaning. Hence, Arjuna asks the Lord, Krishna, to shed light on the path that is his duty. Krishna proceeds to do so in what certainly is one of the greatest pieces of world literature.

II.

The direct response of Krishna to Arjuna in his dilemma is the message of Karma Yoga. Yoga means Yoke or placing under control; Karma means action in the broad sense of deeds, sacrifices, duties and prayer. The nature of Karma Yoga is to act or to carry out one’s duties without looking for the fruit of one’s action, either immediately here in this life or even afterwards in a higher life with God (II 47). To focus upon the results of one’s action is to be subject to self-interest, to things or to results that we can accomplish. If instead one can proceed to doing one’s duty then one can act with complete equanimity, equilibrium or balance of mind. This is a path between, on the one hand, activitism in this life or even in making sacrifices to obtain goods in the next world and, on the other hand, non-action, passivism or even rejecting all life activities in favor of contemplation. Hence, Krishna advises not renunciation of action, but renunciation in action.

But on what basis should one follow this path (II 1-38)? This must be not merely the way I feel, or the way I look upon things, but the way things really are. This is the path of the eternal, on which is based the path of wisdom, the vision of the eternal and freedom from bondage.

Its method is to move from my multiple states of experience and feeling (hot and cold, pleasure and pain) which are transient (II 1) to my self as that which continues through all these states and is their basis, to move from the many subjective states to the one self who experiences them (14-15). But then Krishna directs Arjuna to go higher still, to rise to the absolute Self (16-18) above even one’s own self, which he relativises as a seen between the two unseens (28) which precede and follow after this life. Like Descartes, this is the search for what really is. The absolute or Brahman is described as sat or existence that is one, cit or consciousness, and ananda or bliss. This is the character of the absolute, of divine life; hence it is also the essence of our true life as deriving therefrom and directed thereto.

Existence (sat) is stated in terms of predurance and unity. It continues the first step noted above as being from the transient to the permanent; it identifies as goal that which is not of limited duration. Where the individual self was a limited "seen between two unseens",(28) this is definitive in existence. The real never is not; it is immortal and eternal beyond time and destruction. As with Xenophanese the one is never changing or moving, but is ever one (16-19, 24, 30).

Consciousness (cit) is seen as the one source of all meaning. The whole process has been one of consciousness, from feeling the varied states of hot and cold, pleasure and pain, to the self. This appears here especially as justice or the ability to make the right judgement in terms of one’s duty or of doing what is right (31). It is honor as greater than death (33-26). Such right judgement is based on wisdom (39) which is the vision of the eternal. Ultimately it is founded in the all knowing Spirit or Self — like Xenophanese’ God who knows all and moves all by His mind.

Bliss (ananda) is the ultimate Source and Goal of all. All comes from God who shows joy in sharing, indeed whose essence, as in Greek myth, is to share rather than to hide or inhibit. The ultimate aim of all then is joy in God or divine life (55); a good life gives peace on earth and glory in heaven (37).

In this broad light the particulars of life are ignored only if taken all by themselves and made into absolutes. This is particularly true of the ego or self, if taken as opposed to all others. This would be to make the ego an end in itself and reduce life to simply a matter of achieving particular pleasures. When, however, particular actions and persons are seen in and through the One then they take on great importance as manifestations of the Brahman, i.e., of existence, consciousness and bliss. Only in these terms are they truly real, just and good. Hence, the point is not to achieve some goal, but to exist or live in a way that is true and just; only this is really meaningful. Only acting in a way that is good, i.e. as a dynamic expression of joy, is really to exist: the rest is illusion.

What then of action which, concretely for Arjuna, is to enter into battle. The response is direct, do your duty (31-33), that is, do what is true, just and righteous. Not to do so is dishonor; and seen in terms of God and eternal life dishonor is worse than death (33-36). In sum, when to battle is one’s duty, then that is what one must do. It is the moral quality of the action that is important, not its outcome, for victory is glory on earth, in death is glory in heaven (37-38).

The metaphysics presented thus far has great ethical implications. The first half of this second chapter of the Gita distinguishes three levels of life: first, that of the various sensations such as hot and cold, pleasure and pain; second that of the individual human self; and third that of the absolute Self or Brahma.

Considering things on the first level there is only an interplay of physiological states, of the senses and of behavior. There is no question of honor: indeed, honor is pretense when taken in terms of Creon in the Antigone. But this is to isolate these realities from their real foundations.

On the second level, that of the individual self or atman, people are seen only in terms of time and place and hence as egos opposed one to the other. To be united they must be seen in terms of reality which transcends this level.

This third level is what was spoken of in the totem and myth; here it is Brahman or the absolute at the third level of reality and of awareness. This is existence; it is consciousness, truth and justice; and it is bliss or joy and love as dynamic gift. The first two levels must be seen to originate from this third, which they express; only in as much as they do so do they really exist and be matters of truth and goodness.

Evil in contrast, as was seen in the Greek myths, is suppression of this emergence from the real, from truth and goodness and hence a negation of justice and goodness. It is dishonor on earth and hell thereafter (34).

After a life lived in truth, however, death is simply the termination of the time sequence. It is negation not of reality, but only of the unreal, that is, of the self as opposed to others. Death then is affirmation of reality (37).

On this basis the text proceeds in its second part to provide particular ethical directions on how to live karma yoga (39-72):

- avoid thinking only of this life or state (II 42-44); these are delusions in comparison to the eternal or if thought of without the eternal (52);

- what is important is to achieve wisdom, i.e., to see all according to the eternal, which entails bringing all things together into an unity or harmony (61-66);

- this is done by ‘re-collection’, that is, by recalling the senses from the particulars (59-61); and hence

- they are truly one who practice karma yoga (47-49).

This is the eternal in man, O Arguna. Reaching him all delusion is gone. Even in the last hour of this life upon earth, man can reach the Nirvana of Brahman — man can find peace in the peace of his God (72).

1. C. Kunhan Raja, Asya Vamasya Hymn (The Riddle of the Universe), Rgveda I-164 (Madras: Ganesh, 1956), pp. 5-6; see also G. McLean, Plenitude and Participation; The Unity of Man and God (Madras: University of Madras, 1978), pp. 34-38.

2. Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1975), I, 10.

3. Arthur B. Keith, The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads (Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. XXXII; Cambridge: Harvard University, Press, 1925), II, 442.

4. Kaegi, p. 89.

5. Keith, p, 437.

6. Griffith, II, 576, n. 5.

7. A. Esteller, "The Text-critical Reconstruction of the Rgveda," Indica, XIV (1977), 1-12. See also the Bandorkar Institute of Oriental Studies Jubilee Volume, 1978.

8. A New Approach to the Vedas: An Essay in Translation and Exegesis (London: Luzac, 1933), p. vii.

10. Ibid., pp. 5-18. Other more detailed analyses of Rig Veda X, 129 are found in Sampurnand, Cosmogony in Indian Thought (Kashi Vidyapith), pp. 61-80; C. Kunhan Raja, Poet Philosophers, pp. 221-31; and Coomaraswamy, pp. 52-59.

11. A.A. MacDonell, A Vedic Reader (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1917), pp. 207-211.

12. Rhadakrishnan, Indian Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1977), I, 101; Keith, p. 436 and n. 3.

13. Kaegi, p. 34.

14. See Chapter III above. Note the etymological similarity of the Sanskrit root of Brahman, ‘brah’, to the Old Norse, ‘brag’ and the close parallels between German spells and those of the Artha Veda.

15. MacDonell, pp. 209-210.

16. Iqbal, p. 180.

17. Ibid., p. 6.

18. Ibid., p. 155.

19. Isaias: 27, 13.