In His Hands There
Rests A Full Moon, Which Is Reflected In The Waters At His Feet.
The Vedanta Has
Taught for thousands of years what some of the
German philosophers began to preach at the end of last century
And
the beginning of this one, namely, that everything objective in
the world, as well as the world itself, is no more than an illusion,
a Maya, a phantom created by our imagination, and as unreal
as the reflection of the moon upon the surface of the waters. The
phenomenal world, as well as the subjectivity of our conception
concerning our Egos, are nothing but, as it were, a mirage. The
true sage will never submit to the temptations of illusion. He
is well aware that man will attain to self-knowledge, and become
a real Ego, only after the entire union of the personal fragment
with the All, thus becoming an immutable, infinite, universal Brahma.
Accordingly, he considers the whole cycle of birth, life, old age,
and death as the sole product of imagination.
Generally speaking, Indian philosophy, split up as it is into
numerous metaphysical teachings, possesses, when united to Indian
ontological doctrines, such a well developed logic, such a
wonderfully refined psychology, that it might well take the
first rank when contrasted with the schools, ancient and modern,
idealist or positivist, and eclipse them all in turn. That
positivism expounded by Lewis, that makes each particular hair
on the heads of Oxford theologians stand on end, is ridiculous
child's play compared with the atomistic school of Vaisheshika,
with its world divided, like a chessboard, into six categories
of everlasting atoms, nine substances, twenty-four qualities, and
five motions.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 53 of 357
Words from 14284 to 14564
of 96531
