Then there was a necessity felt to establish this truth by logical arguments. Mere feeling was not sufficient. Gesture and articulation by ritual was not adequate. The whole thing had to be logically and satisfactorily proved philosophically. For this purpose, the schools of thought called the Darshanas arose: Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta. In these also, there is a gradational rise. It is not that each school says whatever it wants. There is a continuity of thought even in the Darshanas, or the schools of thought. For instance, there is a primitive, logical acceptance of the truths of God, world and soul in the Nyaya and the Vaisheshika systems. These schools, the Nyaya and the Vaisheshika, which can be clubbed together into a single phase of logical thinking, say that God is transcendent. He is an efficient cause, but not a material cause. Like a carpenter standing outside the tools and the things that he made, God stands above. The individuals are manifold.

In a purely empirical fashion, the Nyaya and the Vaisheshika take into consideration the multiplicity of individual souls; and the transcendent creator, totally unconnected with creation, operates in the world as a mechanic operates a machine or a carpenter makes a table, a chair, etc. This is, in a way, a very basic way of thinking in a so-called logical fashion to justify how the Vedas, Upanishads, Tantras, etc., have been helpful. But that is not satisfactory because it is difficult to believe that God is so far away, unconnected with this world, and that so many people are unconnected among themselves. Everything is in chaos, as it were.

The Samkhya philosophy took up this argument in a different way altogether and said it cannot be so, that gods are somewhere and people are distanced and unconnected. There are only two things in the universe - consciousness and matter. There is nothing else. You may call it God or whatever you like. You feel an awareness inside you. The consciousness which feels that there is something outside calls that thing matter, which is outside consciousness. That which recognises this material existence is consciousness. Technically, the Samkhya calls this consciousness which apprehends material existence as purusha. Purusha does not mean man. It simply means the positive principle of awareness. As a negative principle it is perceived as prakriti. Due to a particular conjunction of consciousness and matter, everything takes place, and there is no separate God outside. There is no necessity for this because it is possible to explain the whole drama of creation by a coming together, in various ways, of consciousness and matter.

This explanation was also not satisfactory, because who brings about the union of consciousness and matter? How does it happen? Consciousness cannot stand outside matter and then attempt to get united with it in some way or the other. The union of consciousness and matter is not possible unless there is an operator transcending both - an umpire who judges the action and operation of two things. Two people cannot resolve their conflict; a third person is necessary to make a judgment.

Thus yoga philosophy, apart from its practical techniques of meditation, etc. recognised a God who dispenses justice and sees to it that there is meaning behind the coming together of consciousness and matter, purusha and prakriti - a deistic God, a God who does not have any practical connection with the operations of prakriti and purusha. That deity was envisaged - a deus ex machina, as it is called, a convenient requirement that was posited - though it was not seen then what kind of connection this divinity can have with the operations of consciousness and matter. It was just a position maintained to get over the difficulties created by the earlier schools of Nyaya and Vaisheshika. Even that was not satisfactory. They had to go further.

Suddenly, a state arose when the human mind reverted to the old concept of many gods. The religious awareness, the historical development of religious consciousness, does not seem to be a unilateral movement on a straight path - walking, as it were, along a paved road. It was moving; there was progression. There was also a kind of retrogression because of the suspicions of the mind which arise in any kind of adventure in life. So, once again, there was a reversal of the thinking mind and it came back to the original requirement dictated by the Brahmana scriptures. A logical approach was envisaged to justify the rituals and performances of sacrifice, etc., that were originally dictated by the Brahmanas in terms of the many gods in heaven. This once again arose, only in a different way; logic was added to it.

This logical acceptance of the original concept of the Brahmanas in respect of the divinities in heaven became the Mimamsa Shastra. It is also called Karma Mimamsa. Mimamsa means an enquiry into the nature of Truth. This enquiry took the form of assuming that there are many gods in heaven and they have to be worshipped - the very same position that was maintained earlier in the Brahmanas, only with a justification added to it by logical arguments. This did not take the feelings too far. It was just a halting place and there seemed to be something more, which position was taken up by the Vedanta school. What is the use of reverting once again, though logically, to the original position which has been transcended?

The Vedanta is actually the Upanishads themselves. Difficult are the Upanishads to understand. The Brahma Sutras attempted to codify certain statements of the Upanishads in order that things may become clear, but that did not work well because many commentaries were written on the explanation itself, which is the Brahma Sutra - and we are nowhere, finally. So logically, further foundation had to be laid for intellectual satisfaction, and for the satisfaction of the human reasoning, by developments of the schools of thought which ultimately, in a group, are called the Vedanta.

Any school that considers God as the ultimate reality is called Vedanta. The goal of life is the realisation of God. If any school accepts this principle, that can be called Vedanta. But for various reasons the schools differed from one another in accepting that God-realisation is the ultimate goal. These reasons were: "Maybe what you say is correct. Let us realise God. We accept that realisation of God is ultimately the goal of life. But, where is God?" There the differences arose. Once again the old habit of thinking crept into the minds of people. One said that God is transcendent only and He can be reached only by deep affection and love for Him. You cannot satisfy somebody merely by rituals. Your heart has to go with it. This is the Bhakti Marga of Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, Ballavha, Krishna Chaitanya Deva, and many others.

The Advaita school of thought is something quite different. It tries to unify all these principles. Bhakti is necessary; it is perfectly right. God may be transcendent, in one sense of the term. He is also immanent, in another sense of the term. Love of God is the way to reach Him because without affection you cannot contact Him, really speaking. All these are accepted by Advaita Vedanta; yet it says there is something more than all these things - namely, there is no point in bringing into the vision of perfection any duality, any discrepancy, any conflict, in any fashion whatsoever, such that there cannot be a distinction even between God and the soul, because if distinction is maintained, you are once again reverting to the old concept of duality, multiplicity, etc.

While all the dualities converge into the perception of a single unitary action of the universe, there is a doubt about the relationship between the human soul and God. That doubt also has to go. In what way are you concerned with God? Are you totally outside, or inside? Are you a servant of God? Are you a friend of God? What kind of person are you? These are all human considerations transplanted from the earth and placed in the kingdom of God. The human feelings do not leave us even when we logical argue things. After all, what is logic? It is only man-made thinking. So Advaita gave the final touch to the superstructure of logical thinking and concluded that there cannot be distinction of any kind, anywhere, between anything. There must be a total, absolute unitariness, Being itself, Existence, pure and simple, which is conscious of itself. It is ultimate freedom, therefore. Satchitananda is its nature. That alone is. Nothing else can be. This is Advaita's point.

Still, some deviations from the original Agamas and Tantras arose in a religious fashion - not in a ritualistic fashion, but in a specialised form of Agamas known as Vaishnava Agamas, Shaiva Agamas and Shakta Agamas. It was not enough to posit only Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. Later on it also became necessary to concede a power that is inherent in these gods - and each god had a shakti, or a force. In common Puranic style the shakti, or the power of Brahma, is called Saraswati; the shakti, or power, of Vishnu is Lakshmi; the shakti of Siva is Durga, Parvati. It was felt that this shakti is inseparable from the god who wields it because you cannot have your power somewhere, and sit somewhere else. When you say you have power, you are identical with that power. It is only a conceptual distinction; the actual power cannot stand outside you. When you say fire is hot, the heat is not outside fire. It is fire only. Likewise, Siva-Shakti samyoga, Lakshmi-Narayan samyoga, etc. were contemplated in the Agamas, which are known as the Shaiva Agamas, Vaishnava Agamas and Shakta Agamas, to bring to a halt any further discussion in the matter of religion - to say, once and for all, everything about religious awareness throughout the process of its development, right from the beginning till the modern day.

Here you have the whole history of religious awareness in Bharata-varsha - in India.