There is a wide-spread belief that the tradition of spiritual life which was developed within the Upanishadic circles with its insistence upon self-conquest, contemplation, and direct God-Vision, the three essential elements of Upanishadic Mysticism, is a mere relic of the past, having no points of contact with modern life. But this belief if entirely unfounded. The old tradition has not lost its compelling force in the modern word: it continues to exercise its mysterious power over all who submit to its influence, producing God-intoxicated and saintly characters like those of old. In the lives of Ram Mohan Roy, Debendranath Tagore, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Ram Tirtha, to mention only a few names well-known in India, we find the same old scale of values and the same old concentration on the things of sprit. In studying the philosophy of the Upanishads the author has followed a new method. This method starts from the most central fact in the teaching of the Upanishads, viz., their mysticism, and in the light of mystic experience sifts out their essential teachings and combines them into a synthetic whole, with such division and groupings as these teachings may require for purposes of a systematic philosophy treatment. It has therefore, the merit of presenting the philosophy of the Upanishads in a newer and truer perspective.
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