With this introduction, we may now turn to the message of some of the Upanishads, the great legacy not merely of this country but of mankind as a whole, one should say. The Upanishads are the record of the experiences of superhuman thinkers, those who had risen above the level of ordinary mankind, and rose beyond the limitations of sensory knowledge. It is the Upanishads that will guide us in answering these questions which we raised at the beginning. We cannot independently walk with the strength of our own legs in this arduous task of solving universal questions. The Upanishads, among whom we are to take up here one or two for the purpose of the analysis of the subject, are documents left by people who, by the power of their meditations, soared above the ordinary level of human thinking. They could plumb the depths of this total Mind to which we made reference just now. For us, the total Mind of mankind is only a theory, it is a logically deduced abstract something. We are inferring that there should be a total Mind, on the ground that mankind seems to be moving towards the realisation of a common purpose. But these masters were not merely theoreticians. They were those who thought in terms of that single Mind only. As I think through my mind, you think through your mind and each one thinks through one’s mind, these masters were able to think through this total Mind, so that their thoughts were not individual thoughts, they were thoughts of all people blended together into an amalgam of completeness. These are the Upanishads. The reason why we feel like taking the aid of these thoughts of the Upanishadic masters in answering our questions is that they have gone to the very roots of the cause of all causes of these effects manifested as this world, this society, mankind, the efforts of mankind, etc. We speak of human life, human duties and human purposes and so on, without properly paying sufficient heed to the conditioning factors that underlie these phenomena behind mankind. Our minds work in a particular fashion, being conditioned by certain factors.

Now, we gradually move to a philosophical realm from the ordinary social and empirical level of thought on which we have been traversing up to this time. Philosophy is a study of causes, rather ultimate causes, and an explanation of everything in terms of these causes. Sometimes they call it metaphysical thinking. Whatever be the name we give to it, it is the study of ultimate causes and an explanation of everything through these. The ultimate causes should be such that there should not be causes behind these causes; else they would not be the ultimate causes. The meaning of an ultimate cause is that it stands by its own right, and it does not need an explanation or a cause precedent to it or prior to it. If every cause has a cause behind it, naturally there should be a final cause which is an explanation of every other cause. Otherwise, we would land in an infinite regress of causes behind causes without coming to a decision whatsoever. But you know very well that our minds are averse to any kind of infinite regress. We strive for a final conclusion. But, this would not be possible unless there is an ultimate cause of causes, the causeless cause. This causeless cause we call the final cause. The ultimate cause should be capable of containing in itself every effect. And before we try to understand the nature of this cause which is ultimate, we also have to understand the effects which are contained in the cause. The effects are what we are capable of thinking about anything which we confront in our life. The whole objective universe is the effect. Why do we call it an effect? Because the universe has a tendency to move forward through the process of evolution. You would never see one atom in this world lying static without movement. There is a motion of everything towards something of which there is no proper idea at the present moment. Rivers are flowing, the sun and the moon and the stars are active, we are more active, the whole world is busy with doing something. The astronomical universe and the sub-atomic world are active moving vibrantly. All seem to be ever engaged for some purpose which they have not yet fulfilled. If the purpose has been fulfilled, there would be no activity afterwards. The very fact that everything in Nature seems to be busily doing something is an indication that it is aiming at a purpose. This is the characteristic of an effect. An effect is that which is aiming at its own transcendental nature. There is an effort on the part of everyone to transcend oneself, to rise in dimension, to become better quantitatively and qualitatively. This is what they call the urge of evolution, whether it is physical evolution, biological evolution or psychological evolution. So, from this point of view one can very easily conclude that the whole universe is in the position of an effect and is not the ultimate cause. For, if it had been an ultimate cause, there would have been no tendency to move or transcend, there would not be such a thing as an urge to move forward, to outgrow oneself. Everything in the world seems to have a tendency to outgrow itself, to become more and grow larger. That is why it is said that the universe is an effect, and not a cause. It turns towards the cause, and its activities cease on the realisation of the final cause, the purpose of existence.

The universe is moving towards the realisation of its purpose. This is cosmic evolution, which takes place through different manifestations. The lowest level of it is physical, the stage of material evolution. The higher is the biological evolution or growth, to become inwardly subtler, a tendency to psychological growth. This is mental evolution, intellectual ascent and so on. The whole world conceived of in any of its levels seems to be restlessly moving forward for the realisation of its one purpose. What this purpose is, is the subject of the Upanishads. Two of the important Upanishads are the Aitareya and the Taittiriya which are related to each other in a way, and coextensive in content, the one emphasising one aspect of the matter and the other a coordinated theme. The Aitareya and the Taittiriya Upanishads speak of the same theme but from two different points of view.

They try to answer the question of life by reference to causes. This is a very proper attitude, no doubt. You know very well that every question when it is attempted to be answered brings us to its causative factors. Why is there a disease? Why is a person sick? We ask questions of this kind. In reply we try to find out the present cause of the situation. If one is sick, we must find out the reason behind the sickness. If there is a war, we must find out the cause behind the war. If there is some kind of discrepancy, we have to know the cause behind it. If there is any kind of tension, we argue out why this kind of tension has arisen. Unless we find out the cause of a particular circumstance, we cannot probe into the context of its circumstance, whether it is a physical, social, biological or medical one. This is a philosophical attitude we are adopting towards everything in life. There is no one who is not a philosopher, in the sense that everyone wants to know the cause of particular effects. This is the philosophical trend of thinking. The great masters of the Upanishads moved from the lower causes to the higher ones, until they were able to grasp the final cause of things, and they gave out their conclusions, the final truth for mankind. The ills of mankind are effects in their nature, and they become causes of other illnesses to which we are heir. By the process of deep Yoga and meditation, in which the masters of yore engaged themselves, plumbing the depths of reality, the ultimate cause, the truths of life were unravelled. These experiences are recorded in the Upanishads.

The way in which we can encounter anything is twofold, inductive and deductive. Students of logical intelligence move from particulars to generals, which is inductive reasoning. If it is a movement from the general to the particular, we call it deduction. Both ways are permissible according to the nature of the case. Everyday the sun rises in the East. We are seeing the sun rising in the East for days, months and years. We collect the particular instances of the sun rising in the East everyday. Then we make a general conclusion, we say the sun rises always in the East. But there is a flaw in inductive reasoning. Our conclusions may not be correct. The sun may be rising in the East from thousands of years, but why should we come to the conclusion that the sun shall rise only in the East in the future also? It need not be a valid conclusion, because the sun is not bound by our conclusions. It can change its position for some reason or the other. Some law may operate differently, and tomorrow the sun may rise in the West. Induction is not valid as an ultimate form of reasoning. Going from the particular to the general may be a practically useful way of thinking, as far as things go, but not ultimately reliable. The deductive reasoning is the other way round, it is argument from the general to the particular. For example, ‘all men are mortal’ is the theory. We know very well that everyone dies. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal by nature. This is the way of argument from the general to the particular. From the general concept of all humanity being mortal, we come to the conclusion that Socrates must also be mortal, since he is also a man. This is to give an idea of inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning.

Philosophy is mostly inductive especially from the point of Western thought. Western philosophers are very much inclined to the inductive way of thinking. They cannot suddenly jump to generals in as much as there are great controversies concerning the nature of the universal. We are not going to enter into this subject now. Our purpose is different. The masters of the Upanishads had a direct experience and from this experience which is of the general, they drew conclusions on particular consequences in a deductive fashion. When we study the Aitareya and the Taittiriya Upanishads, we will find that both of them adopted the deductive process of reasoning. The thought is deductive in the sense that the ultimate conclusion has already been given to us. The nature of the cause need not be investigated by the sweat of one’s brow, through inductive reasoning. We can try that method also, of course, but, for the present moment, it is not necessary. The Upanishads come to the conclusion of an ultimate generality. This declaration pertains to eternal verities; to the ultimate nature of reality, the cause of all causes. The ultimate cause is the determining factor in the effects. The whole of this world, this universe is the effect of the ultimate cause, Brahman. We have already noticed that the ultimate cause cannot have another cause behind it; if that was the case, it cannot be regarded as the ultimate cause; it would then be an effect of another cause altogether. There cannot be two ultimate causes; else there would arise the difficulty of understanding the relationship between the two causes. We cannot come to any conclusion without a definite notion of relation. The concept of relation is the most difficult thing to imagine in the mind. We cannot understand how one thing is related to another thing. The very fact of our ability to communicate our thoughts among ourselves is an indication of there being one Mind behind ourselves. Otherwise, there would not be such thing as communication at all. Likewise, the imagination of two ultimate causes would imply that there is something connecting these two causes, transcendent to these two causes which will become the ultimate cause. So, somehow or other, the ultimate cause cannot be more than one, and there cannot be another cause behind it.

Now you have an idea of what an ultimate cause can be. There cannot be something behind it, something prior to it, something larger than it or greater than it and there cannot be something equal to it also. Such is the unique character of the Ultimate Reality. This is the Cause. We call it Reality, because we cannot see anything further than itself. It has no purpose beyond itself. Everything proceeds from that. It does not have anything beyond it to move to. The ultimate cause and the ultimate reality mean one and the same thing. This existed, this exists and this shall exist always. There cannot be anything more than this. Here earthly bondage ceases.