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The Great Aranyaka
FOREWORD
THE Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad, at once the most obscure and the profoundest of the Upanishads, offers peculiar difficulties to the modern mind. If its ideas are remote from us, its language is still more remote. Profound, subtle, extraordinarily rich in rare philosophical suggestions and delicate psychology, it has preferred to couch its ideas in a highly figurative and symbolical language, which to its contemporaries, accustomed to this suggestive dialect, must have seemed a noble frame for its riches, but meets us rather as an obscuring veil. To draw aside this curtain, to translate the old Vedic language and figures into the form contemporary thought prefers to give to its ideas is the sole object of this commentary. The task is necessarily a little hazardous. It would have been easy merely to reproduce the thoughts and interpretations of Shankara in the modern tongue; if there were an error, one could afford to err with so supreme an authority. But it seems to me that both the demands of truth and the spiritual need of mankind in this age call for a restoration of old Vedantic truth rather than for the prolonged dominion of that single side of it systematised by the mediaeval thinker. The great Shankaracharya needs no modern praise and can be hurt by no modern disagreement. Easily the first of metaphysical thinkers, the greatest genius in the history of philosophy, his commentary has also done an incalculable service to our race by bridging the intellectual gulf between the sages of the Upanishads and ourselves. It has protected them from the practical oblivion in which our ignorance and inertia have allowed the Veda to rest for so many centuries, only to be dragged out by the rude hands of the daringly speculative Teuton. It has kept these ancient grandeurs of thought, these high repositories of spirituality under the safeguard of that temple of metaphysics, the Adwaita philosophy — a little in the background, a little too much veiled and shrouded, but nevertheless safe from Page – 397 the iconoclasm and the restless ingenuities of modern scholarship. Nevertheless, it remains true that Shankara's commentary is interesting not so much for the light it sheds on the Upanishad as for its digressions into his own philosophy. I do not think that Shankara's rational intellect, subtle indeed to the extreme, but avid of logical clearness and consistency, could penetrate far into that mystic symbolism and that deep and elusive flexibility which is characteristic of all the Upanishads, but rises to an almost unattainable height in the Brihad Aranyaka. He has done much, has shown often a readiness and quickness astonishing in so different a type of intellectuality, but more is possible and needed. The time is fast coming when the human intellect will be aware of the mighty complexity of the universe, more ready to learn and less prone to dispute and dictate; we shall be willing then to read ancient documents of knowledge for what they contain instead of attempting to force into them our own truth or get them to serve our philosophic or scholastic purposes. To enter passively into the thoughts of the old Rishis, allow their words to sink into our souls, mould them and create their own reverberations in a sympathetic and responsive material— submissiveness, in short, to the Sruti — was the theory the ancients themselves had of the method of Vedic knowledge — girām upaśrutim cara, stomān abhi svara, abhi gṛ̣̣̣̣̣ṇīhi a ruva. To listen in soul to the old voices and allow the Sruti in the soul to respond, to vibrate, first obscurely, in answer to the Vedantic hymn of knowledge, to give the response, the echo and last to let that response gain in clarity, intensity and fullness — this is the principle of interpretation that I have followed — mystical perhaps, but not necessarily more unsound than the insistences and equally personal standards of the logician and the scholar. And for the rest, where no inner experience of truth sheds light on the text, to abide faithfully by the wording of the Upanishad and trust my intuitions. For I hold it right to follow the intuitions especially in interpreting the Upanishad, even at the risk of being accused of reading mysticism into the Vedanta, because the early Vedantists, it seems to me, were mystics not in the sense of being vague and loose-thoughted visionaries, but in the sense of being intuitional symbolists — men who regarded the world as a movement Page – 398 of consciousness and all material forms and energies as external symbols and shadows of deeper and deeper internal realities. It is not my intention here nor is it in my limits possible to develop the philosophy of the Great Aranyaka Upanishad, but only to develop with just sufficient amplitude for entire clearness the ideas contained in its language and involved in its figures. The business of my commentary is to lay a foundation; it is for the thinker to build the superstructure.
THE HORSE OF THE WORLDS
The Upanishad begins with a grandiose abruptness in an impetuous figure of the Horse of the Ashwamedha. "OM," it begins, "Dawn is the head of the horse sacrificial. The sun is his eye, his breath is the wind, his wide open mouth is Fire, the universal energy. Time is the self of the horse sacrificial. Heaven is his back and the mid-region is his belly. Earth is his footing, the quarters are his flanks and these intermediate regions are his ribs; the seasons are his members, the months and the half-months are that on which he stands, the stars are his bones and the sky is the flesh of his body. The strands are the food in his belly, the rivers are his veins, the mountains are his liver and lungs, herbs and plants are the hairs of his body; the rising day is his front portion, and the setting day is his hinder portion. When he stretches himself, then it lightens; when he shakes himself, then it thunders; when he urines, then it rains. Speech verily is the voice of him. Day was the grandeur that was born before the horse as he galloped, the Eastern Ocean gave it birth. Night was the grandeur that was born in his rear and its birth was in the Western waters. These were the grandeurs that arose into being on either side of the horse. He became Haya and carried the Gods, — Vajin and bore the Gandharvas, — Arvan and bore the Titans, — Ashwa and carried mankind. The sea was his brother and the sea his birthplace." This passage, full of gigantic imagery, sets the key to the Upanishad and only by entering into the meaning of its symbolism can we command the gates of this many-mansioned city Page – 399 of Vedantic thought. There is never anything merely poetic or ornamental in the language of the Upanishads. Even in this passage which would at first sight seem to be sheer imagery, there is a choice, a selecting eye, an intention in the images. They are all dependent not on the author's unfettered fancy, but on the common ideas of the early Vedantic theosophy. It is fortunate, also, that the attitude of the Upanishad to the Vedic sacrifices is perfectly plain from this opening. We shall not stand in danger of being accused of reading modern subtleties into primitive minds or of replacing barbarous superstitions by civilised mysticism. The Ashwamedha or Horse-Sacrifice is, as we shall see, taken as the symbol of a great spiritual advance, an evolutionary movement, almost, from out of the dominion of apparently material forces into a higher spiritual freedom. The Horse of the Ashwamedha is, to the author, a physical figure representing, like some algebraical symbol, an unknown quantity of force and speed. From the imagery it is evident that this force, this speed is something world-wide, something universal; it fills the regions with its being, it occupies Time, it gallops through Space, it bears on in its speed men and Gods and the Titans. It is the Horse of the Worlds, — and yet the Horse sacrificial. Let us regard first the word Ashwa and consider whether it throws any light on the secret of this image. For we know that the early Vedantins attached great importance to words in both their apparent and their hidden meaning and no one who does not follow them in this path, can hope to enter into the associations with which their minds were full. Yet the importance of associations in colouring and often in determining our thoughts, determining even philosophic and scientific thought when it is most careful to be exact and free, should be obvious to the most superficial psychologist. Swami Dayananda's method with the Vedas, although it may have been too vigorously applied and more often out of the powerful mind of the modern Indian thinker than out of the recovered mentality of the old Aryan Rishis, would nevertheless, in its principle, have been approved by these Vedantins. Now the word asva must originally have implied strength or speed or both before it came to be applied to a horse. In its first or root significance it means to exist pervadingly and Page – 400 so to possess, have, obtain or enjoy. It is the Greek echo (old Sanskrit aś), the ordinary word in Greek for "I have". It means, also and even more commonly, to eat or enjoy. Besides this original sense inherent in the roots of its family, it has its own peculiar significance, existence in force, — of strength, solidity, sharpness, speed, — in aśan and aśma, a stone, aśani, a thunderbolt, aśri, a sharp edge or corner (Latin acer, acris, sharp, acus, point etc.), and finally aśva, the strong, swift horse. Its fundamental meanings are, therefore, pervading existence, enjoyment, strength, solidity, speed. Shall we not say, therefore, that aśva to the Rishis meant the unknown power made up of force, strength, solidity, speed and enjoyment that pervades and constitutes the material world? But there is a danger that etymological fancies may mislead us. It is necessary, therefore, to test our provisional conclusions from philology by a careful examination of the images of this parable. Yet before we proceed to this enquiry, it is as well to note that in the very opening of his second Brahmana, the Rishi passes on immediately from Ashwa the Horse to aśanāyā mṛtyuḥ, Hunger that is death, and assigns this hunger that is death as the characteristic, indeed the very nature of the Force that has arranged and developed, — evolved, as the moderns would say, — the material world. "Dawn," says the Rishi, "is the head of the Horse Sacrificial." Now, the head is the front, the part of us that faces and looks out upon our world, — and Dawn is that part to the Horse of the worlds. This goddess must therefore be the opening out of the world to the eye of Being — for as day is the symbol of a time of activity, night of a time of inactivity, so dawn images the imperfect but pregnant beginnings of regular cosmic action; it is the Being's movement forward, thus its impulse to look out at the universe in which it finds itself and waking to yearn towards it, to desire to enter upon its possession of a world which looks so bright because of the brightness of the gaze that is turned upon it. The word Ushas means etymologically coming into manifested being; and it could mean also desire or yearning. Ushas or Dawn, to the early thinker, was the impulse towards manifest existence, no longer a vague movement in the depths of Page – 401 the Unmanifest, but already emerging and on the brink of its satisfaction. For we must remember that we are dealing with a book full of mystical imagery which starts with looking on psychological and philosophical truths in the most material things and we shall miss its meaning altogether, if in our interpretation we are afraid of mysticism. The sun is the eye of this great Force, the wind is its life-breath or vital energy, Fire is its open mouth. We are here in the company of very familiar symbols. We shall have to return to them hereafter but they are, in their surface application obvious and lucid. By themselves they are almost sufficient to reveal the meaning of the symbol, — yet not altogether sufficient. For, taken by themselves, they might mislead us into supposing the Horse of the Worlds to be an image of the material universe only, a figure for those movements of matter and in matter with which modern Science is so exclusively preoccupied. But the next image delivers us from passing by this side-gate into materialism. "Time in its period is the self of the Horse Sacrificial." If we accept for the word ātmā a significance which is also common and is, indeed, used in the next chapter, if we understand by it, as I think we ought here to understand by it, "substance" or "body", the expression, in itself remarkable, will become even more luminous and striking. Not Matter then, but Time, a mental circumstance, is the body of this force of the material universe whose eye is the sun and his breath the wind. Are we then to infer that the Seer denies the essential materiality of matter? does he assert it to be, as Huxley admitted it to be, "a state of consciousness" ? We shall see. Meanwhile it is evident already that this Horse of the worlds is an image of the power which pervades and constitutes the material universe, as we had already supposed it to be, not an image merely of matter or material force. We get also from this image of true Time the idea of it as an unknown Power — for Time which is its self or body, is itself an unknown quantity. The reality which expresses itself to us through Time — its body — but remains itself ungrasped, must be still what men have always felt it to be, the unknown God. In the images that immediately follow we have the conception Page – 402 of Space added to the conception of Time. Both are brought together side by side as constituents of the being of the Horse. For the sky is the flesh of his body, — the quarters his flanks and the intermediate regions his ribs, — the sky, nabhas, the ether above us in which the stellar systems are placed; and these stellar systems themselves, concentrations of ether, are the bones which support the flesh and of which life in this spatial infinity takes advantage in order more firmly to place and organise itself in matter. But side by side with this spatial image is that of the seasons reminding us immediately and intuitionally of the connection of Time and Space. The seasons, determined for us by the movements of the sun and stars, are the flanks of the horse and he stands upon the months and the fortnights — the lunar divisions. Space, then, is the flesh constituting materially this body of Time which the sage attributes to his Horse of the Worlds, — by movement in Space its periods are shaped and determined. Therefore we return always to the full idea of the Horse — not as an image of matter, not as a symbol of the unknown supra-material Power in its supra-material reality, but of that Power expressing itself in matter, materially, we might almost say, pervading and constituting the universe. Time is its body, — yes, but samvatsara not kāla. Time in its periods determined by movement in Space, not Time in its essentiality. Moreover, it is that Power imaging itself in Cosmos, it is the Horse of the Worlds. For, we read, "Heaven is its back, the mid-region is its belly, earth is its footing" —pājasyam, the four feet upon which it stands. We must be careful not to confuse the ancient Seer's conception of the universe with our modern conception. To us nothing exists except the system of gross material world — annamayam jagat — this earth, this moon, this sun and its planets, these myriad suns and their systems. But to the Vedantic thinkers, the universe, the manifest Brahman, was a harmony of worlds within worlds; they beheld a space within our space but linked with it, they were aware of a time connected with our time but different from it. This earth was Bhur. Rising in soul into the air above the earth, the antarikṣam, they thought, they came into contact with other sevenfold earths in which just as here matter is the predominant principle, so there nervous Page – 403 or vital energy is the main principle or else manas, still dependent upon matter and vital energy; these earths they called Bhuvar. And rising beyond this atmosphere into the ethereal void they believed themselves to be aware of other worlds which they called Swar or heaven, where again, in its turn, mind, free, blithe, delivered from its struggle to impose itself in a world not its own, upon matter and nerve-life, is the medium of existence and the governing Force. If we keep in mind these ideas, we shall easily understand why the images are thus distributed in the sentence I have last quoted. Heaven is the back of the Horse, because it is on the mind that we rest, mind that bears up the Gods and Gandharvas, Titans and men; the mid-region is the belly, because vital energy is that which hungers and devours, moves restlessly everywhere seizing everything and turning it into food; earth is the footing, because matter, outward form, is the fundamental condition for the manifestation of life, mind and all higher forces. On Matter we rest and have our firm stand; out of Matter we rise to our fulfilment in Spirit. Then once again, after these higher and more remote suggestions, we are reminded that it is Force manifesting in matter which the Horse symbolises; the material manifestation constitutes the essence of its symbolism. The images used are of an almost gross materiality. Some of them are at the same time of a striking interest to the practical student of Yoga, for he recognises in them allusions to certain obscure but exceedingly common Yogic phenomena. The strands of the rivers are imaged as the undigested food in the Horse's belly — earth not yet assimilated or of sufficient consistency for the habitual works of life; the rivers distributing the water that is the life-blood of earth's activities are his veins; the mountains, breathing in health for us from the rarer altitudes and supporting by the streams born from them the works of life, are his lungs and liver; herbs and plants, springing up out of the sap of earth, are the hairs covering and clothing his body. All that is clear enough and designedly superficial. But then the Upanishad goes on to speak no longer of superficial circumstances but of the powers of the Horse. Some of these are material powers, the thunder, the lightning, the rain. "When he stretches himself, then it lightens, when he shakes himself, then Page – 404 it thunders; when he urines, then it rains." Vijṛmbhate—extends himself in intensity, makes the most of his physical bulk and force; vidhūnute — throws himself out in energy, converts his whole body into a motion and force; these two words are of a great impetuosity and vehemence and, taken in conjunction with the image, extremely significant. The Yogin will at once recognise the reference to the electrical manifestations, visible or felt, which accompany so often the increase of concentration, thought and inner activity in the waking condition, — electricity, Vidyutas, the material symbol, medium and basis of all activities of knowledge sarvāṇi vijñāna-vijṛmbhitāni. He will recognise also the meghadhvani, one of the characteristic sounds heard in the concentration of Yoga, symbolical of kṣātratejas and physically indicative of force gathering itself for action. The first image is therefore an image of knowledge expressing itself in matter, the second is an image of power expressing itself in matter. The third, the image of the rain, suggests that it is from the mere waste matter of his body that this great Power is able to fertilise the world and produce sustenance for the myriad nations of his creatures. "Speech verily is the voice of him." Vāgevāsya vāk. Speech, with its burden of definite thought, is the neighing of this mighty Horse of sacrifice; by that this great Power in matter expresses materially the uprush of his thought and yearning and emotion, the visible sparks of the secret universal fire that is in him — guhāhitam. But the real powers, the wonderful fundamental greatnesses of the Horse are, the sage would have us remember, not the material. What are they then? The sunrise and sunset, day and night are their symbols, not the magnitudes of Space, but the magnitudes of Time, — Time, that mysterious condition of universal mind which alone makes the ordering of the universe in Space possible, although its own particular relations to matter are necessarily determined by material events and movements — for itself subtle as well as infinite it offers no means by which it can be materially measured. Sunrise and sunset, that is to say, birth and death, the front and hind are part of the body of the Horse, Time expressed in matter. But on Day and Night the sage fixes a deeper significance. Day is the symbol of the continual Page – 405 manifestation of material things the vyākṛta, the manifest or fundamentally in Sat, in infinite being; Night is the symbol of their continual disappearance into avyākṛta, the Unmanifest or finally into asat, into infinite non-being. They appear according to the swift movement of this Horse of the Worlds, anu ajāyata, or as I have written, translating the idea and rhythm of the Upanishads rather than the exact words, as he gallops. Day is the greatness that appears in his front, Night in his rear, — whatever this Time-Spirit, this Zeitgeist or the greatness that appears, turns his face towards or arrives at, as he gallops through Time, that appears or, as we say, comes into being, whatever he passes away from and leaves, that disappears out of being or, as we say, perishes. Not that things are really destroyed, for nothing that is can be destroyed — na abhāvo vidyate sataḥ — but they no longer appear, they are swallowed up in this darkness of his refusal of consciousness; for the purposes of manifestation they cease to exist. All things exist already in Parabrahman, but all are not here manifest. They are already there in Being, not in Time. The universal Thought expressing itself as Time reaches them, they seem to be born. It passes away from them, they seem to perish, but there they still are, in Being, but not in Time. These two greatnesses of the appearance of things in Time and Space and their disappearance in Time and Space act always and continuously so long as the Horse is galloping, are his essential greatnesses. Etau vai mahimānau. The birth of one is in the Eastern Ocean, of the other in the Western, that is to say, in sat and asat, in the ocean of Being and the ocean of denial of Being or else in vyākṛta prakṛti and avyākṛta prakṛti, occult sea of Chaos, manifest sea of Cosmos. Then the sage throws out briefly a description, not exhaustive but typical, of the relations of the Horse to the different natural types of being that seem to possess this universe. For all of them He is the vāhana. He bears them upon His infinite strength and speed and motion. He bears all of them without respect of differences, samabhāvena, with the divine impartiality and equality of soul — samam hi brahma. To the type of each individual being this Universal Might adapts himself and seems to take upon himself their image. He is Haya to the gods, Arvan to the Page – 406 Asura, Vajin to the Gandharvas, Ashwa to men. Ye yathā mām prapadyante.... In reality they are made in His image, not He in theirs, and though He seems to obey them and follow their needs and impulses, though they have the whip, ply the spur and tug the reins, it is He who bears them on in the course of Yugas that are marked out for Him by His hidden Self; He is free and exulting in the swiftness of His galloping. But what are these names, Haya, Vajin, Arvan, Ashwa? Certainly, they must suggest qualities which fit the Horse in each case to the peculiar type of its rider; but the meaning depends on associations and on etymology which in modern Sanskrit have gone below the surface and are no longer easily seizable. Haya is especially difficult. For this reason Shankara, relying too much on scholarship and intellectual inference and too little on his intuitions, is openly at a loss in this passage. He sees that the word haya for horse must arise from the radical sense of motion borne by the root hi; but every horse has motion for his chief characteristic activity, Arvan and Vajin no less than Haya. Why then should Haya alone be suitable for riding by the gods, why Arvan for the Asuras ? He has, I think, the right intuition when he suggests that it is some peculiar and excelling kind of motion (viśiṣṭagati) which is the characteristic of Haya. But then, unable to fix on that peculiarity, unable to read any characteristic meaning in the names that follow, he draws back from his intuition and adds that after all, these names may have merely indicated particular kinds of horses attributed mythologically to these various families of riders. But this suggestion would make the passage mere mythology; but the Upanishads, always intent on their deeper object, never waste time over mere mythology. We must therefore go deeper than Shankara and follow out the intuition he himself has abandoned. I am dwelling on this passage at a length disproportionate to its immediate importance, not only because Shankara's failure in handling it shows the necessity and fruitfulness of trusting our intuitions... in contact with the Upanishads, but because the passage serves two other important uses. It illustrates the Vedantic use of the etymology of words and it throws light on the precise notions of the old thinkers about those super-terrestrial Page – 407 beings with whom the vision of the ancient Hindus peopled this universe. The Vedantic writers, we continually find, dwelt deeply and curiously on the innate and on the concealed meaning of words; vyākaraṇa, always considered essential to the interpretation of the Vedas, they used not merely as scholars, but much more as intuitive thinkers. It was not only the actual etymological sense or the actual sense in use but the suggestions of the sound and syllables of the words which attracted them; for they found that by dwelling on them new and deep truths arose into their understandings. Let us see how they use this method in assigning the names assumed by the sacrificial Horse. Here modern philology comes to our help, for, by the clue it has given, we can revive in its principle the Nirukta of our ancestors and discover by induction and inference the old meaning of the Vedic vocables. I will leave haya alone for the present; because philology unaided does not help us very much in getting at the sense of its application, — in discovering the viśiṣṭagati which the word conveyed to the mind of the sage. But vājin and arvan are very illuminative. Vāja and vājin are common Vedic words; they recur perpetually in the Rig-veda. The sense of vāja is essentially substantiality of being attended with plenty, from which it came to signify full force, copiousness, strength and, by an easy transition, substance and plenty in the sense of wealth and possessions. There can be no doubt about vājin. But European scholarship has confused for us this approach to the sense of arvan. Ar is a common Sanskrit root, the basis of ari, arya, aryamā and a number of well-known words. But the scholars tell us that it means to till or plough and the Aryans so called themselves because they were agriculturists and not nomads or hunters. Starting from this premiss one may see in arvan a horse for ploughing as opposed to a draught-animal or a war-horse, and support the derivation instancing the Latin arvum, a tilled field. But even if the Aryans were ploughmen, the Titans surely were not — Hiranyakashipu and Prahlada did not pride themselves on the breaking of the glebe and the honest sweat of their brow! There is no trace of such an association in arvan here, — I know not where there is any elsewhere in the Vedas. Indeed, this agriculturist theory of the Aryans seems one of the worst of Page – 408 the many irresponsible freaks which scholastic fancifulness has perpetrated in the field of Sanskrit language. No ancient race would be likely so to designate itself. Ar signifies essentially any kind of pre-eminence in fact or force in act. It means therefore to be strong, high, swift in action, to be pre-eminent, noble, excellent, be first; to raise, lead, begin or rule; it means also to struggle, to fight, to drive, to labour, to plough. The sense of struggle and combat appears in ari, an enemy. The Greek Ares, war-god, aretē, virtue, meaning originally like the Latin virtus, valour; the Latin arma, weapons. Arya means strong, high, noble or worthier, as its...use in literature constantly indicates. The word asura also means the strong or mighty one. We can now discover the true force of Arvan, — it is the strong one, it is the stallion or the bull, the master of the herd, the leader, master or the fighter. The Gandharvas are mentioned here briefly, so as to suit the rapidity of the passage, as the type of a particular class of beings, Gandharvas, Yakshas, Kinnaras whose unifying characteristic is material ease, prosperity and a beautiful, happy and undisturbed self-indulgence; they are the angels of joy, ease, art, beauty and pleasure. For them the Horse becomes full of ease and plenty, the support of these qualities, the vāhana of the Gandharvas. The Asuras are, similarly, angels of might and force and violent struggle, — self-will is their characteristic, just as an undisciplined fury of self-indulgence is the characteristic of their kindred Rakshasas. It is a self-will capable of discipline, but always huge and impetuous, even in discipline, always based on a colossal egoism. They struggle gigantically to impose that egoism on their surroundings. It is for these mighty but imperfect beings that the Horse adapts himself to their needs, becomes full of force and might and bears up their gigantic struggle, their increasing effort. And Haya ? In the light of these examples we can hazard a suggestion. The root meaning is motion; but from certain kindred words, hil to swing, hind to swing, hinḍ to roam about freely and from another sense of hi to exhilarate or gladden, we may, perhaps, infer that haya indicated to the sage a swift, free, joyous, bounding motion, fit movement for the bearer of the gods. For the Aryan gods were devas, angels of joy and brightness, fulfilled in being, in harmony with their functions and surroundings, Page – 409 not like the Titans imperfect, dispossessed, struggling. Firmly seated on the bounding joy of the Horse, they deliver themselves confidently to the exultation of his movements. The sense here is not so plain and certain as with Vajin and Arvan; but Haya must certainly have been one in character with the Deva in order to be his vāhana; the sense I have given certainly belongs to the word and that this brightness and joyousness was the character of the Aryan gods, the devas, is discoverable in Haya from its root, I think every reader of Veda and Purana must feel and admit. Last of all, the Horse becomes Ashwa for men. But is he not Ashwa for all ? Why particularly for men ? The answer is that the Rishi is already moving forward in thought to the idea of aśanāyā mṛtyuḥ with which he opens the second Brahmana of the Upanishad. Man, one and supreme type of. terrestrial creature, is most of all subject to this mystery of wasting and death which the Titans bear with difficulty and the Gods and Gandharvas entirely overcome. For in man that characteristic of enjoyment which by enjoying devours and wastes both its object and itself is especially developed and he bears that consequent pressure of aśanāyā mṛtyuḥ. which can only lighten and disappear if we rise upward in the scale of Being towards Brahman and become truly sons of immortality, amṛtasya putrāḥ. Finally, there comes a consummation to the parable in which the thought of the Upanishad opens out to that ultimate idea for which the image of the Horse is only a pratiṣṭhā and a preface, — the liberation from aśanāyā mṛtyuḥ.. To this Horse of the Worlds, who bears up all beings, the sea is the brother and the sea is the birthplace. There can be no doubt of the meaning of the symbol. It is the upper Ocean of the Veda in which it imaged the superior and divine existence, the waters of supramaterial causality. From that this lower Ocean of our manifestation derives its waters, its flowing energies, apas; from that, when the Vritras are slain, the firmaments opened, it is perpetually replenished, prati samudram syandamānāḥ, and of that it is the shadow, the reproduction of its circumstances under the conditions of mental illusion — Avidya, mother of limitation and death. This image not only consummates this passage but opens a door of escape from that which is to follow. Deliverance from the dominion of aśanāyā mṛtyuḥ. is Page – 410 possible because of this circumstance that this sea of divine being is kin (bandhu) and friend to the Horse. The aparārdha proves to be of the same essential nature as the parārdha; our mortal part, in its essence, a kin to our unlimited and immortal part and partakes of its nature. The Horse of the Worlds comes to us from that divine source and from what other except this Ocean can the Horse of the Worlds, who is material yet supramaterial, be said to have derived his being? We appearing bound, mortal, limited, are manifestations of a free and infinite reality and from that from which we were born comes friendship and assistance for that which we are, towards making us that which we shall be. From our kindred heavens the Love descends always that works to raise up the lower to its brother, the higher. Page – 411 |