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SANKHYA AND YOGA wells up spontaneously, of itself; it is not an effect of thought. For why should a creature just born, and without any experience of death, shrink back from death???
This elemental cry and craving to expand, even to multiply in new forms in order to circumvent the inevitable doom of individual death, is rendered vividly in the pictorial script of one of the great Ilindu myths of the Brāhmaṇa period (c. 900-600 B.C.), in which we are told of the first, world-creative impulse of Prajāpati, the “Lord of Creatures." This ancient god-creator was not an abstract divine spirit, like the one in the first chapters of the Old Testament, who, floating in the pure void, beyond and aloof from the confused welter of the dark world of matter, created the universe by the sheer magic of the commands of his holy voice, summoning all things into being by the mere utterance of their names. Prajāpati, rather, was a personification of the allcontaining life-matter and life-force itself, yearning to develop into teeming worlds. And he was impelled to create, we are told, by a twofold impulse. On the one hand, he felt lonely, destitute, and fearful, and so brought forth the universe to surround himself with company; but on the other hand, he also felt a longing to let his substance overflow, wherefore he said to himself: "May I give increase; may I bring forth creatures!" 28
This double attitude of destitution and longing, at once forlorn amid the utter Nought and surging to put forth the creative life-strength within, represents in mythical form the whole meaning of the primal, universal cry. The Hindu god-creator is a personification of the dual tendency that inhabits all living things, everywhere. A timorous shrinking from possible dissolution, with, at the same time, the valiant impulse to increase, to multiply indefinitely and thus become a complete universe through prog
22 Cf. ib., p. 118.
28 Satapatha Brahmaņa 2. 2. 4; 6. 1. 1-9; 11. 5. 8. 1. Compare Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1. 2, 1-7 and 1. 4. 1-5.
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