We have already seen that the universe has come out of Brahman, has its essence in Brahman, and will also return back to it.  But in spite of its existence as Brahman its character as represented to experience could not be denied.  S’a@nkara held that the Upani@sads referred to the external world and accorded a reality to it consciously with the purpose of treating it as merely relatively real, which will eventually appear as unreal as soon as the ultimate truth, the Brahman, is known.  This however remains to be modified to this extent that the sages had not probably any conscious purpose of according a relative reality to the phenomenal world, but in spite of regarding Brahman as the highest reality they could not ignore the claims of the exterior world, and had to accord a reality to it.  The inconsistency of this reality of the phenomenal world with the ultimate and only reality of Brahman was attempted to be reconciled by holding that this world is not beside him but it has come out of him, it is maintained in him and it will return back to him.

The world is sometimes spoken of in its twofold aspect, the organic and the inorganic.  All organic things, whether plants, animals or men, have souls [Footnote ref 1].  Brahman desiring to be many created fire (tejas), water (ap) and earth (k@siti).  Then the self-existent Brahman entered into these three, and it is by their combination that all other bodies are formed [Footnote ref 2].  So all other things are produced as a result of an alloying or compounding of the parts of these three together.  In this theory of the threefold division of the primitive elements lies the earliest germ of the later distinction (especially in the Sa@mkhya school) of pure infinitesimal substances (tanmatra) and gross elements, and the theory that each gross substance is composed of the atoms of the primary elements.  And in Pras’na IV. 8 we find the gross elements distinguished from their subtler natures, e.g. earth (p@rthivi), and the subtler state of earth (p@rthivimatra).  In the Taittiriya, II. 1, however, ether (akas’a) is also described as proceeding from Brahman, and the other elements, air, fire, water, and earth, are described as each proceeding directly from the one which directly preceded it.

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[Footnote 1:  Cha.  VI.11.]

[Footnote 2:  ibid. VI.2,3,4.]

52

The World-Soul.

The conception of a world-soul related to the universe as the soul of man to his body is found for the first time in R.V.X. 121.  I, where he is said to have sprung forth as the firstborn of creation from the primeval waters.  This being has twice been referred to in the S’vetas’vatara, in III. 4 and IV. 12.  It is indeed very strange that this being is not referred to in any of the earlier Upani@sads.  In the two passages in which he has been spoken of,