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

Page 374

VEDA
The alchemy of nature, melting the two hearts in a mutual fire, reduces the 1-plus-1 to the 1-made-out-of-2. But nature's alchemy does not stop there. Instead of the normal multiplication table, which we learn in school and use in business and practical-minded calculations, nature follows a witches' or wiz. ards' multiplication table-a Hexeneinmaleins, as Goethe calls it in his Faust. After a brief delay, when i plus i has become 1, the married couple normally evolves into a triad; the first child is born). And if this evolution is not checked by prudent plan. ning, an uncontrollable series evolves. The i that had been made of 1 plus i grows into 4, 5, 6-in fact goes on in a virtually indefinite series; the odd fact being, furthermore, that each additional unit contains potentially, and hands down into the future, the plenitude of the biological inheritance of the first fertilc unit, for it shows forth features that were latent in both terms of that original i made of i plus 1.
Mythical thought, when evolving a manifold of godly forces and figures out of the one primal source or essence, proceeds according to this dialectical rationale. And Brāhmanical thought, in its brilliant formulae of psychological self-analysis, which were developed in the Upanişadic period, traces the same kind of dialectical evolution in man's consciousness; as follows. Deep sleep (sușupti), when regarded from the point of view either of waking consciousness (vaiśvānara) or of consciousness in the web of dream (taijasa), would seem to be a state of sheer non-being (a-sat); nevertheless, it is from this sheer blank that the dreams emerge, like clouds condensing out of the void of the firmament; and from this same unconsciousness, moreover, the waking state suddenly bursts into being. Furthermore, it is back into this emptiness that the little cosmos of man's waking consciousness dissolves and disappears in sleep.18 Thus it can be said that the emanation of dreams and the passage of consciousness from sleep to waking are two stages, or two varieties, of a con. 18 Cf. infra, pp. 361-362 and 372ff.
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