VEDANTA. – One of the six orthodox philosophical systems and perhaps the most important, since it still counts millions of followers among the educated classes of India. It is based on the Upanisads (q.v.), the speculative portion of the Veda, and is often associated with another system of a theological character, the Mimamsa or "Investigation," which instead is based on the ritual portion.
The connection between the two systems, limited to their common belonging to Vedic literature, is then indicated by the titles: Pūrva-mimāmsā or "first investigation," given to the theological doctrine, and Uttara-mīmāmsā or "later investigation," given to Vedānta or "end of the Veda." It has been noted that there are contradictions within the Upanisads, which represent a philosophy in formation with all the luxuriance of an unpruned plant. But such a philosophy could not be touched; it was considered revelation. It was left to Bādarāyaṇa, a philosopher who lived between 200 and 450 A.D., of whom nothing is known except his name, to bring order to the conflicting Upanisadic theories. However, the 555 aphorisms (sūtra) of his systematic treatise, entitled Brahma-sūtra, are so extremely concise as to be enigmatic, and have allowed commentators, centuries later, two different interpretations of the Brahma-sūtra: the pantheistic one of Śaṅkara (ca. 800 A.D.) and the theistic one of Rāmānuja (d. Jan. 22, 1138 A.D.) and other followers.
To resolve the most serious contradictions between his interpretation, the text of Bādarāyaṇa, and the Upanisads, Śaṅkara, a formidable dialectician, constructed on the basis of the sūtra two philosophical systems: one empirical, exoteric, for coarse minds, the other metaphysical, esoteric, for the few capable of understanding. He called the first aparā vidyā, "lower knowledge," and the second parā vidyā, "higher knowledge," which he led to triumph over empiricism, and whose substance, in brief, is this. The varied and multiple world, the plurality of souls, their post-mortem destiny, are for Śaṅkara an illusion (māyā), because in reality only Brahman (God) exists, who is not the personified demiurge capable of worship, but the Unknowable, to which one attains only through anubhava, "intuition." This makes man a participant in the divine essence at the very moment when he recognizes: "I am Brahman." From that moment he is jīvanmukta, "liberated in life." He has no desires or passions because he has attained supreme fulfillment, and he truly loves his neighbor as himself, recognizing in him himself. He lives in the world and in its illusion, but without being deceived by it, and upon dying he does not transmigrate but enters into Brahman (q.v.), "like a river into the sea." Even the transmigration of souls or saṃsāra, by the effect of karma (q.v.), is moreover a conception that belongs to the aparā vidyā; from the esoteric point of view it is merely a metaphysical truth, expressed in allegorical form to make it accessible to empirical knowledge. All is illusion except the Ātman, the self, the I that identifies with Brahman, with which the human soul shares the attributes of omnipotence, eternity, and omnipresence, although these divine qualities remain latent "like fire in wood," until liberation (mokṣa) renders them manifest. This, in essence, is the idealistic monism disseminated by Śaṅkara in his Brahma-sūtra-bhāṣya (commentary on the Brahma-sūtra). The work, held in high esteem by most Indian pandits, has a scholastic character, and the distinction between the two vidyās is rather artificial, despite Deussen’s admiration for this device.