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

A NEW APPROACH TO THE VEDAS

so performs the rite intellectually, who knows Selfevidently that the horse is transubstantially Prajapati, the Year, the Son, wins either now or in due course, according to the perfection of his realisation, back to Intellect, to Brahman, and is thus delivered, he only forfends mortality, being one with Death, in and of the Supreme Identity, One Angel.

“ Forfends immortality,’ then what ? That is, in the last analysis beyond our ken, which can extend only to the operation of the Persons, that is beyond the ken of God himself as Person, “ he knows or knows not,” as the Rg Veda, X, 129, 7, expresses it. For the thing known being in the knower always and only according to the mode of the knower, existence can know only of existence. He only is, without a second whom he might know, or by whom He might be known. So then he only “ who knows ‘I am Brahman’ becomes this All . . . whoever worships any other Angel than him-Self, thinking * He is one and I another,’ he knows not, he can only be likened to a sacrificial animal fit to be offered to the Angels,” Brhadavanyaka Up., I, 4, 10.

What lies there beyond the order of nature, on the farther shore of time, is compared by the Veda either to dreamless sleep, or to a fourth state of simultaneous sleep and waking; that corresponds in Christian phraseology to the ‘‘ idleness ’’ or ‘‘ silence,” and to the simultaneity of “eternal rest and eternal work.” None of this is intelligible to the reason, being inexpressible in terms of thesis and antithesis. Let us see nevertheless what Vedic and Christian seers have told of that primordial and modeless state of being.

It is implied in the doctrine of reflection, that the Self is present in the world throughout time, and that the world-picture and all therein is similarly present to the Self throughout time, ‘‘ He, Varuna, numbers the winkings of the eyes of men,” Atharva Veda, IV, 16, 4, “nota sparrow falls to the ground without thy Father's know-