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

BRHADARANYAKA UPANISAD

being that by which the generator generates, ”’ St. Thomas, Sum. Th., 1, Q. 41, A. 5. Our text takes for granted the second of the conjoint principles, the unuttered Word or Understanding, vac: but we know from other and abundant sources that She is the divine Nature, Prakrti, Aditi, Viraj, the Waters. She is the silence in Godhead, every possibility and promise of existence, his means whereby, the inexhaustible well of his abundance. But inasmuch as God and Godhead, Heaven and Earth, essence and nature are one in Him, it is an emission of seed not alone on the part of Intellect, pregnancy not only in the Word that has to be understood : it is Deity, not any one of the Persons separately that is pregnant, “ He ”’ brings forth.

Retas, “ seed,” is not only poured forth, but becomes the begotten offspring, and so for example we speak of the “ seed of Abraham” : compare the account of generation in the Auztareya Aranyaka, II, 5, and the Self-identity (consubstantiality) of father and son asserted here and elsewhere. The child is “not any new thing, but the very seed of man and woman, and is only bred forth in the mixture, and so only a twig groweth out of the tree,” Béhme, XL Questions concerning the Soule, VIII, 18. In the Aitareya Up., IV, I, retas, seed, is identified with tejas, the Fiery-Energy: elsewhere, e.g., Manava DharmasSsastra I, 8, virya, “ virility,” “‘ virtue,’ is synonymous. Seed was probably regarded as the vehicle of Spirit, prana, for “ it is prdna, verily the Self as pure Intelligence, that grasps and animates the flesh,” Kausitaki Up., II, 3: that comes very near to the Christian point of view, “ the formation of the body taken by the Son is attributed to the Holy Ghost . . . just as the power of the soul which is in the semen, through the spirit enclosed therein, fashions the body in the generation of other men,” St. Thomas, Sum. Th., III, QO. 32, A.r.**4

Whether the Persons of the Trinity are rightly named : though there is not a “ real,” but only a possible relation-