The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE VEDANTA BEFORE we enter upon the theory and practice of Yoga, it is essential that the reader should possess some slight know- ledge of the Vedanta 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 con- sciousness and independent of it; that, in other words, the sum total of external and internal experience always and 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 aro xa6’ avré; what is the Atman? That the thing which we perceive and experience is not * Deussen, “The Philosophy of the Upanishads,” p. 40. See also Berkeley's “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.” 53