The messages contained in the Upanishads, like some eternal source of light, still illumine and vitalize the religious minds of India. They are not associated with any particular religion, but they have the breadth of a universal soil that can supply with living sap all religions which have any spiritual ideal hidden at their core, or apparent in their fruit and foliage.
The Upanishads are based not upon theological reasoning, but on experience of spiritual life. And life is not dogmatic; in it opposing forces are reconciled – ideas of non-dualism and dualism, the infinite and the finite, do not exclude each other. Moreover, the Upanishads do not represent the spiritual experience of any one great individual, but of a great age of enlightenment which has a complex and collective manifestation, like that of the starry world. Different creeds may find their sustenance from them, but can never set sectarian boundaries round them; generations of men in our country, no mere students of philosophy, but seekers of life’s fulfillment, may make living use of the texts, but can never exhaust them of their freshness of meaning.
For such men the Upanishad-ideas are not wholly abstract. They are concrete, like all truths realized through life. The idea of brahma when judged from the view-point of intellect is an abstraction, but it is concretely real for those who have the direct vision to see it. Therefore the consciousness of the reality of brahma has boldly been described to be as real as the consciousness of an amlaka fruit held in one’s palm. And the Upanishad says:- From Him come back baffled both words and mind. But he who realizes the joy of brahma is free from fear.
Cannot the same thing be said about light itself to men who may by some mischance live all through their life in an underground world cut off from the sun’s rays ? They must know that words can never describe to them what light is, and mind, through its reasoning faculty, can never even understand how one must have a direct vision to realize it intimately and be glad and free from fear.
