“The transcendentalism implies the unity of self-being (soul) with qua being (God) which is the foundation of Aristotelian metaphysics. And the empirical experience of it as truth and goodness discerned rationally from the phenomenal experiences. According to Aristotle: If no universal can be a substance, as has been said in our discussion of substance and being, and if being itself cannot be a substance in the sense of one apart from many, but is only a predicate, clearly unity cannot be a substance; for being and unity are the most universal of all predicates. The universal never could be a substance discernible to humans. It is beyond human cognition, but being and unity are the universal. The soul’s unity with the heavens is unique unity. But in modern times we are trying to create universal as a substance. Vedic philosophy in India follows a similar view as they accept the teachings of the Vedas as the absolute truth and the intrinsic and organic relationship between atman (soul) and Brahman is the paradigm for explaining transcendentalism where, when the misconceptions and confusions created by illusions (maya) are removed, all transcendental virtues would be dawned in the subjective self organically. So the efforts of the individual should be to realize the self-nature of the atman (soul). Vedic philosophy, instead of relying on a transcendental entity such as heaven and the empire of the gods, relay upon the teachings of the Vedas as the metaphysical sources of knowledge. Accordingly, the transcendental virtues in Vedic philosophy are Truth, Concsciousness, and Bliss (sat, cit, and ananda). In short, Vedic philosophy focuses on the inherent subjective virtuous self-nature of atman (soul) and its natural relationship with eternity (Brahman), where the true nature of Brahman is inexplicable, but the relationship of atman (soul) with Brahman is discernible as transcendental virtues: Truth, Consciousness, and Bliss (sat, cit, and ananda). The book tries to explain the unique conception of Buddhist subjective self (self-being) to explain what is meant by the conception of nairatmya—essenceless atman, by using the conceptions of ‘self-being’ and ‘dominion of subjectivity’. The Buddhist understanding of transcendentalism is not based on positively asserting and logically concluding any trans-empirical entity that is independent of the phenomenal world of existence. Buddha, and later, Nagarjuna, use negations to explain the Buddhist conception of transcendentalism, which can be discerned in the dominion of subjectivity as the self-being of an individual.”
—Prabuddha Bharata, February 2021