The word, Moksha,
means release or freedom very early in our history, our sages began to look on
life in the world as bandha or bondage and looked forward to release or moksha
from it. In the earliest phase of the Vedic religion, the future world is the
region of Yama, who serves prosperity and health to the pious and the virtuous
by his side. The dead would be clothed in shining the bodies, drinks the
celestial sura, and enjoy the company of the gods and those near and dear to
them. It has however, been suggested that the great doctrine of karma is not
unknown to the Vedas. In the funeral hymn in the tenth mandala of the Rig Veda
(X-16) the soul is asked to go to the sky or the earth, according to its
dharma. The famous ridding hymn in the first mandala (I.164) has been
interpreted to moves that the soul repeatedly comes inn contact with the body
and moves away from it and that it keeps on returning frequently to the world.
In the sacerdotal
age of the Brahmanas and the gritya and the Dranta Sutras, the performance of
various religious rites assumes overwhelming importance. Immortality is assured
to the diligent performers of sacrifices, there is a passage in the Salapata
Brahmana, which suggests that one becomes more ethereal and god like and less
subject to the necessity of eating, the greater the number of sacrifices one
has performed.
The Upanishads,
however, strike the note which has dominated Indian thought since then- using
making a figure of speech from certain old notious about propitious, and
unpropitious times of dying the Brahadaranya Upanishad speaks of the archiradi
and dheemadimargas as two paths for the departed souls. The former, known also
as the deva-yana or the path of the forest, is for those who endowed with the
highest faith, in the forest, worship the Force or the Brahman. They reach the
worlds of the Brahman and there is no return for them. The other path, known
also as the pitri-yana or the path of the manes, is for whose who conquer the
worlds by sacrifice, charity and austerity. They enjoy a transient period of
happiness in the moon, and are born again in the world. In later Indian
thought, the two paths appear to have come to signify two ideals of ethics- the
ideal of disinterested performance of duty and the ideal of what may be called
enlightened self- interest. The Bhagavagita at any rate makes a reference to
the two paths, which suggests some such interpretation.
The Upanishads have
tried to describe the state of mukti in a number of texts. All such
descriptions are traditionally understood to signify what may be called four
states for the liberated soul. There is first salokya, or the state of being in
the same world as the Brhaman. The Chandogya refers to misstate, when it says,
the best kind of eternal life is to reach the region of the Gods whom one has
loved and worshiped during life. Secondly –is Samipya, the state being near to
God, and enjoying, so to speak. His companionship. Then we have sarupya, the
state of having the same form or nature as God. According to a famous text in
the Mundane, the wise one attains supreme likeness to God. Lastly, we come to
sayujya, the state of being united with God.
The various schools
of he Vedanta conceive of Moksha in accordance, with their metaphysical
doctrine. To Sankara, it means the realization by the soul of its identity with
the Brahman. A temporary veil of ignorance has hidden the true nature of the
self from it, and Moksha means the removal of this ignorance. It has a positive
content in the bliss experienced. According to Ramanuja, the realized soul
realizes itself as the same as the Brahman. It become one with the Brahman, but
without His power of creating and controlling the universe. Its knowledge
becomes expanded and its bliss assured. Madhwa believes that the state of
Moksha implies services to God by the liberated soul. The souls are
fundamentally different from God, and even in the state of Moksha the bliss
enjoyed by any soul is different fro that of any other.
In spite of
differences of metaphysical outlook, all Indian thinkers are agreed in holding
that in the state of Moksha the released soul is no longer under the necessity
to enter the cycle of recurring births and deaths known as samsara, that this
state is characterized positively by increased knowledge and enduring bliss,
and that it has to be striven for through ethical endeavour and spiritual
discipline. As life in the world has been weighed in the scale of ultimate
values and found wanting. Moksha is the supreme end of human life. As the soul
realizes all its possibilities of perfection only in the state of Moksha, it is
the natural destiny of the soul.