Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

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BRAHMANISM
primal, one and only, innermost Self and Core of all existences, the "Iloly Power"-Brahman-Ātman-cannot be achieved by means of logic; for logic rejects as absurd, and therefore impossible, whatever goes against the rules of reason. For example, i plus i logically is 2, never 3 or 5, and can never shrink to 1. Yet things are not that way in the field of the vital processes of nature, where the most alogical developments take place every day, on every side, as a matter of course. The rules of life are not those of logic but of dialectics; the rcasonings of nature not like those of the mind, but rather like those of our illogical belly, our procreative faculty, the vegetable-animal aspect of our microcosm. In this sphere, the sphere of biological dialectics, the illogical sphere of nature and life's forces, i plus i is usually far from remaining merely 2 for very long.
Supposc, for example, that the one i is a male and the other i a female. When they first meet, they are but the 1-plus-1 that is 2; when they fall in love with cach other, however, and throw their destinies together, then they become the 1-plus-i that is i, "for better or for worse.” The holy sacrament-at least in its more solemn, ancicni, and magical form, as prescried in the Roman Catholic ritual-insists emphatically on the idea that now the two are "made one flesh” (una caro facta est). This very union, in fact, is what takes away the flaw, the suspicion or tinge of sin, which attaches to every kind of carnal interrelationship between the sexes, according to the ascetic Christian belief. The fact that the two have been transforined into one through the performance of the sacrament makes the married couple exempt from concupiscentia, sinfulness; hallows their sexual union. Thus through a magical transmutation, 1 plus i emphatically coalesces into 1, the sacramental formula only stating what is actually the basic experience of all true lovers when they have found each other and become joined with an attachment that projects happily the single prospect of their two lives' duration.
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