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

BRHADARANYAKA UPANISAD

lume riflesso . . . mi parve pinta della nostra effige,”’ Paradiso, I, 1-2, and XXXIII, 127-131.

“ For that God 7s God he gets from creatures,” and “I have loved you in the reflection of my darkness,” the “reflection of the mirror in the sun is in the sun,” Eckhart, I, 274, 377 and 143: “‘ as when a man beholdeth his face in a mirror,” Bohme, Clavis, 42 and 43. Or from Indian sources, ‘‘ Without Thee I have no intrinsic-form, without me Thou hast no existence,” Siddhdntamuktavalt, li; “‘ without Siva no Devi, without Devi no Siva,” Kamakalavilasa, Commentary, citing agama with reference to the text, 2, “‘ She is the pure mirror wherein Siva sees his own intrinsic-form.’** This conception of the relativity of God, Béhme’s ‘‘ Gegenwurf,’ which we might call a prakdSa-vimarsa-vada, “ doctrine of light and reflection,” and implies that the Fire that shines forth as Light is a dark heat until and simultaneously illuminated by the counter-shining, leads to developments of fundamental significance. That God is man-made, “ takes the forms imagined by his worshippers” (Katlaya-malat, Ceylon National Review, Jan., 1907, p. 285), that his forms “are determined by the relation that subsists between the worshipped and the worshipper ”’ (Sukvanitisara, IV, 4, 159), gives man the right to worship him in any guise whereby he is most aware of him and denies man’s right to speak of any “ other” gods as “ false.”

The Waters and the Earth are to be understood not only with reference to our terrestrial seas and continents, but as respectively the possibilities of existence in any of the Three Worlds, and the support of living beings existent in any one of them according to the terms of its possibilities: in other words, the ‘‘ Waters”’ are literally peut étre, bhavisya, the Earth any corresponding plane or sphere (loka, dhatu, ksetra, bhitmt) or support (pratistha) of experience?’?: and any such Earth floats like a lotus, or like foam, or like a ship, on the surface of the Waters