A new approach to the Vedas : an essay in translation and exegesis

NOTES

of us, is come to know good through evil,” cf. Ogden and Richards, The Meaning of meaning, 3rd. ed. 1930, p. 224, Note 1, and cf. also our Note 109 infra. ;

38 In case the doctrine of reincarnation was originally of popular origin, this would mean “‘ first intellectual formulation” : whenever that may have been. Liberation and rebirth are already distinguished and contrasted in Rg Veda, V, 46, I, in the phrase vimucam na aduritam punah “ neither liberation nor coming back again.” ;

39 This Law, of which the ordinances (dharmani) are established by the first sacrifice, Re Veda, X, 90, 16, might be stated as follows : Within the realm of causality, causality operates uniformly, through time and time again. Moreover, as the creation (sacrifice) is without beginning or end, so also is the Law without beginning or end.

40 Eckhart, I, 379, ‘“‘ Aught is suspended from the divine essence ; its progression is matter, wherein the soul puts on new forms and puts off her old ones. The change from one into the other is her death: the one she doffs she dies to, and the one she dons she lives in,”’ presents a remarkable likeness to Bhagavad Gita, II, 22, ““ As a man casting off worn-out garments, taketh other new ones, so the embodied being, casting off worn out bodies, enters into other new ones.” I do not infer that Eckhart is speaking of re-incarnation, in the accepted sense of the word, but rather that he is referring to a progress in wisdom of the individual Self, as in the Brhadaranyaka Up., IV, 4, 4, “ just so this Self, striking down this body and driving out its ignorance, makes for itself another newer and fairer form, such as that of the Patriarchs, Choristers, Angels, Prajapati, Brahma, or other living beings.” Both this passage, and that cited from the Gita could be, and perhaps should be understood to mean not a reincarnation of the individual, but the continuous reincarnation of the Spirit, in forms causally determined by past acts, and so inherited by other, not the same, individuals. Just as we invoke such names as gene or germ-plasm to account for character and species.

41 So there is a daivya parimara = Gotterdammerung, Kausitaki Up., jh sp

42 That ‘‘ insofar ’’ is doctrinally an important point. For pantheism and “ natural religion’ are excluded equally by the Vedas and in Christianity. Primarily, in that infinity is incommensurable with the totality of things finite. Also explicitly, “‘ Only one-fourth of him is born here,’ Rg Veda, X, 90, 4; ““ Heaven and Earth have not measured, nor do they measure, his omnipotence’ ibid., III, 82, 37; ““ Thou dost insist beyond all things, the several worlds,” ibid., I, 81, 5 and I, 1o2, 8; “ of the bright power that pervades the sky it is but a part,’’ Maztri Up., VI, 35; ‘not I in them, but they in Me,” na tvahai tesu te mayt, Bhagavad Gita, VII, 12, ‘1 am existent only in a fraction,” aham... ehamsena sthitah, ibid., X, 42. ‘‘ God enjoys himself in all things .. . yet he loses nothing of his brightness,’” Eckhart, I, 143 ; ‘‘ of that also is the creation, but not in the omnipotence and power, but like an apple which grows upon the tree, which is not the tree itself, but grows from the power of the tree,’ Bohme, Signatura Rerum, XVI, r; “See now the height and breadth of the eternal Worth, which hath made for itself so many mirrors wherein it is refracted, and yet remains within itself One, as before,’’ Dante, Pavadiso, XXIX, 142-145.

In general, the notion of “ pantheism,”’ read into any doctrine, arises from a confusion of the unity which is one in itself, with the merely collective totality of all things.