Universal path and spirit

Science and technology have contributed greatly in bringing people closer in the present era of globalisation. Spirituality does this differently, by highlighting the oneness of all, and by talking of a common goal.

Uplift of self is a concept universally accepted by all religions. Vedic seers emphasised that good comes from the entire universe. The aim of life is to achieve ananda or bliss. This takes us to the psycho-epistemological realm of philosophy, the study of man's cognitive process, an interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of the subconscious.

The Taittiriya Upanisad gives an interesting view of the evolving universe and man. The five-fold concentric kosas or sheaths are annamaya or material, pranamaya or vital, manomaya or mental, vijnanamaya or intellectual, and anandmaya or blissful. Each process is a continuum, transcendentally projected - having expressions of emergence, sustenance and disappearance, from the existing to the highest order. The end process of the apparent orders is to the anandamaya kosa, which is finally grounded in a mystic way in a supremely transcendent process of Brahmn or pure existentiality, which is both expressive and non-expressive.

This analysis is accepted by the Buddha who speaks of the five kinds of food for the physical, vital, psychological, logical and spiritual elements. The enjoyment of nirvana is food for spirit. For Aristotle, the human soul is, in a certain sense, everything.

Centuries later Augustine, in an entirely different religious environment, asserts the same. "Step by step was I led upward, from anna or bodies to the soul which perceives by means of prana or bodily senses; and hence to the soul's inward faculty, manas, which is the limit of the intelligence of animals; and thence again to the reasoning faculty to whose judgment is referred the knowledge received by vijnana or bodily senses. And when this power also within me found itself changeable it lifted itself up to its own intelligence, and withdrew its thoughts from experience, abstracting itself from the contradictory throng of sense-image that it might find what that light was wherein it was bathed when it cried out that beyond all doubt than unchangeable is to be preferred to the changeable; and thus with a flash of one trembling glance it arrived at That which is ananda."

It is said that Schopenhauer had the Latin text of the Upanishads on his table and was in the habit, before going to bed, of performing his devotions from its pages. "From every sentence (of the Upanishads), deep original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit. In the whole world... there is no study... so beneficial and elevating as that of the Upanishads. They are the products of the highest wisdom. They are destined, sooner or later to become the faith of the people." -- Bloomfield, 'Religion of the Veda.'

This is how the Upanishadic transcendentalism will proceed. It is for one conscious of the post-Hegelian philosophy of transcendental phenomenology of Husseri in its development towards the existential phenomenological traits of Heidegger and Sartre; to see where exactly the advanced model of the Upanishads can be located or reflected upon.

Seers have aptly stated: Ekam sat vipra bahudha vedant - "'So many religions, so many paths to reach one and the same goal."