BRAHMA KNOWLEDGE

BRAHMA KNOWLEDGE

Three Concepts about Brahma

Firstly, the whole of finite or phenomenal being is evolved from an infinite and unconditioned substrate of absolute reality, Brahma. Secondly, Brahma is pure Thought, absolute Spirit. Thirdly, Brahma is one with the essential thought of each individual subject of thought, the Soul or Ātmā.

Furthermore

Brahma as the primitive Spirit and single Cosmic matter, neither existent nor non-existent, a watery void, from which arose a primal Unity, whence sprang Desire as first bond between being and non-being.

Brahma, in the earlier Vedic books, is a neuter noun, meaning the spell or prayer of the priest and the magic power which it exerts over gods, men, and the universe.

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BRAHMA KNOWLEDGE - Part I

Chapter X - BRAHMA IS ABSOLUTE BEING

§ 10. Brahma is Absolute Being.—The question whether the universal substrate, or Brahma, should properly be called being (sat) or non-being (a-sat), already agitated the Vedic poets (see Ṛig veda, x. cxxix. 1), and passed through the schools of the Brāhmaṇas to those of the older Upanishads. The debate, however, was merely over words. As Brahma is beyond all the limiting conditions of phenomenal being, either term may be applied to it; it is at once metaphysically existent and empirically non-existent.

Brahma is non-being, B.A. II. iii. 1, Ch. III. xix. 1, Taitt. II. vi.-vii.; being, Ch. VI. ii. 1, etc. Brahma is "reality of reality," B.A. II. i. 20, iii. 6; "the Eternal cloaked in (empirical) reality," I. vi. 3. A reconciliation from the transcendental standpoint is found in Śvet. IV. 18, v. 1, Muṇḍ. II. ii. 1, etc. Śankara (on Brahma-sūtra, I. iv. 14 f.) rightly notes the twofold meaning of the terms "being" and "not-being."

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INTERPRETATION

THE GREAT SPIRIT denotes without form or unseen, said to be full of eternity, knowledge and bliss - corresponding to three main features of the Supreme: residing everywhere, residing within, residing outside and BEYOND......

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BRAHMA KNOWLEDGE - PART I

CHAPTER 17 -

RELATION OF UNIVERSAL TO INDIVIDUAL SOUL

§ 17. Relation of Universal to Individual Soul.—It is a first principle of the Upanishads that the numberless individual souls are really one with the Universal Self. But how is this relation conceivable? To this question no answer is vouchsafed. The older texts instead give us

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cosmogonic myths, which realistically depict a Universal Spirit creating the phenomenal world and then animating it as world-soul; and the latter they simply identify with the self of the individual, sometimes more pantheistically (Ch. VI. iii.), sometimes more idealistically (B.A.II. iv. 5, III. iv. 1, v. 1, etc.). But why should there be this division between the one Absolute Soul and the innumerable individual souls condemned to suffer the intellectual darkness and physical sorrows of embodied life? The Upanishads find a solution in their theory of karma, the acts done in previous births requiring further embodiment to work away their influence upon the soul. This implies a regressus ad infinitum, as every act is the resultant of a former act; and this conclusion is cheerfully drawn by the later Vedānta, which thus avoids the necessity of explaining the "origin of evil." The older Upanishads, whose cosmogonies contradict this theory, simply avoid the question.

The theory which begins to appear in a somewhat late Upanishad (the Maitrāyaṇīya), that the Soul conceives division and plurality in consequence of the delusive attractions of physical Nature, and hence assumes embodied form and comes under the influence of "works," is partly connected with the dualism of the Sānkhya school, and partly with the theory of "illusion" developed in the later Vedānta (see § 16). Śankara generally regards the universe itself, i.e. the

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aggregate of subjects and objects of experience, as created in order to furnish finite souls with experiences in recompense of previous "works"; but the reason moving the Supreme Brahma to render himself an efficient and material cause of a universe distinct from himself, says Śankara, can only be motiveless sport.

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INTERPRETATION

The idea is that a fall from a oneness with the Source of Creation is the cause of this universe.