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

BRHADARANYAKA UPANISAD

best and are most aware of him that way pursue,” Eckhart, I, 482.

It should be observed further that while we speak in theology® of First, Second, and Third Persons, the Persons being connected (bandhu, Rg Veda, X, 129, 4, Brhadavanyaka Up., 1, 1,2) by opposite relation,® the numerical ordering of the Persons is purely conventional (samkettta), not a chronological or real order of coming into being : for the Persons are connascent, itavetarajanmana, the Trinity (¢ridha) is an arrangement (samhita), not a process. For example, the Son creates the Father as much as the Father the Son,?® for there can be no paternity without a filiation, and vice versa, and that is what is meant by “ opposite relation.”’ Similarly, there cannot be a Person (Purusa) without Nature (Prakrti), and vice versa. That is why in metaphysical “ mythology ’’ we meet with “ inversions,” as for example, when in the Rg Veda, X, 72, 4, Daksa (a personal name of the Progenitor, see Satapatha Brahmana, 11, 4, 4, 2) is born of Aditi as her son, and she also of him as his daughter ; or X, 90, 5, where Viraj is born of Purusa, and vice versa. Metaphysics are consistent, but not systematic: system is found only in religious extensions,11 where a given ordering of the Persons becomes a dogma, and it is precisely by such “matters of faith,’ and not by a difference of metaphysical basis, that one religion is distinguished from another. That is truly a “distinction without a difference.”

It should be observed that the connascence (sahajanma) of Father-essence and Mother-nature, the “‘ two forms ” of Brahman, though metaphorically spoken of as “ birth ” (janma), is not a sexual-begetting, not a generation from conjoint principles, maithunya prajanana: in that sense both are equally un-begotten, un-born, as in Svetdsvatara Up., 1, 8, dvdvajau, or as implied in the Byhadavanyaka Up., 1, 4, 3 where the origination of the conjoint principles called a “ falling apart,” diremption, or karyokinesis,