Brahmanism: Encyclopedia II - Brahmanism - Moksha

Brahmanism - Moksha

Orthodox Brahmanical scholasticism makes the attainment of final emancipation (mukti, moksha) dependent on perfect knowledge of the divine essence, Brahman. This knowledge can only be obtained by complete detachment of the mind from external objects and intense meditation on the divine, which again presupposes the total extinction of all sensual instincts by means of austere practices (tapas). The chosen few who succeed in gaining complete mastery over their senses and a full knowledge of the divine nature become absorbed into the universal soul (Paramatman) immediately on the dissolution of the body. Those devotees, on the other hand, who have still a residuum, however slight, of ignorance and worldliness left in them at the time of their death, pass to the world of Brahma, where their souls, invested with subtle corporeal frames, await their reunion with the Eternal Being.

The self-exaltation of the first class was not, it would seem, altogether due to priestly arrogance and ambition; but, like a prominent feature of post-Vedic belief, the transmigration of souls, it was, if not the necessary, yet at least a natural consequence of the pantheistic doctrine.

To the Brahmanical speculator who saw in the numberless individual existences of animate nature but so many manifestations of the one eternal spirit, to union with which they were all bound to tend as their final goal of supreme bliss, the greater or less imperfection of the material forms in which they were embodied naturally presented a continuous scale of spiritual units from the lowest degradation up to the absolute purity and perfection of the supreme spirit. To prevent ones sinking yet lower, and by degrees to raise ones self in this universal gradation, or, if possible, to attain the ultimate goal immediately from any state of corporeal existence, there was but one way - subjection of the senses, purity of life and knowledge of the deity.

He (thus ends the code of Manu) who in his own soul perceives the supreme soul in all beings and acquires equanimity toward them all, attains the highest state of bliss. Was it not natural then that the men who, if true to their sacred duties, were habitually engaged in what was most conducive to these spiritual attainments, that the Brahmanical class early learnt to look upon themselves, even as a matter of conviction, as being foremost among the human species in this universal race for final beatitude? The life marked out for them by that stern theory of caste duties which they themselves had worked out, and which, no doubt, must have been practised in early times at least in some degree, was by no means one of ease and amenity. It was, on the contrary, singularly calculated to promote that complete mortification of the instincts of animal nature which they considered as indispensable to the moksha, or final deliverance from Samsara, the revolution of bodily and personal existence.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Moksha", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki