Equinox I (04).pdf

THE VEDANTA
BEFORE we enter upon the theory and practice of Yoga, it is
essential that the reader should possess some slight
knowledge of the Vedânta philosophy; and though the
following in no way pretends to be an exhaustive account of
the same, yet it is hoped that it will prove a sufficient guide to
lead the seeker from the Western realms of Magic and action
to the Eastern lands of Yoga and renunciation.
To begin with, the root-thought of all philosophy and
religion, both Eastern and Western, is that the universe is only
an appearance, and not a reality, or, as Deussen has it:
The entire external universe, with its infinite ramifications in space and time,
as also the involved and intricate sum of our inner perceptions, is all merely the
form under which the essential reality presents itself to a consciousness such as
ours, but is not the form in which it may subsist outside of our consciousness and
independent of it; that, in other words, the sum total of external and internal
experience always an only tells us how things are constituted for us, and for our
intellectual capacities, not how they are in themselves and apart from
intelligences such as ours.*
Here is the whole of the World's philosophy in a hundred
words; the undying question which has perplexed the mind of
man from the dim twilight of the Vedas to the sweltering
noon-tide of present-day Scepticism, what is the “Ding an
sich”; what is the aÙtÕ kaq aØtÒ; what is the Âtman?
That the thing which we perceive and experience is not
* Deussen, “The Philosophy of the Upansihads,” p. 40. See also Berkeley’s
“Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.”
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