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BRAHMANISM
likewise the Self, which, being the sole reality, is the source of all.
Yathā nadyaḥ syandamānāḥ samudre astain gacchanti nāmarūpe vihāya, tathā vidvān nămarūpād vimuktaḥ
parātparam puruşam upaiti diryam. “As flowing rivers go to rest in the ocean and there leave behind them name and form, so likewise the Knower, released from name and form, goes to that divine Man (puruşa), who is beyond the beyond (parāt param: higher than the highest, transcending the transcendent)." 18
Descriptive metaphors were multiplied to form a string of classic images, surrounding like a garland the mystery of the Self. “Divide the fig”; “Place this salt in water"; "Just as, my dear, by one piece of clay everything made of clay may be known." "The various forms going to pieces, he does not know them to be broken." "This whole world has that as its soul; that is Reality; that is Ātrhan; that art thou, Svetaketu.” 19
"That art thou" (tat tvam asi), this word of the old Brāhman İruņi to his son, which became the "great formula” (mahāvākya) of Vedāntic truth, reduced the entire spectacle of nature to its single, all-pervading, most subtle, absolutely intangible, hidden essence. Śvetaketu was taught, by his lesson, to look beyond the visible principle celebrated in the Vedic Hymn of Food; for the idea that food in its various manifestations, visible and tangible, was the highest essence of the universe, had long since been outgrown. The life-essence was now to be conceived of as invisible (like the void within the sced of the fig), all suffusing (like the salt in the pan of water), intangible, yet the final substance of all phenomena. It could be ascertained but not grasped, like the dissolved salt-and was extremely subtle, like the presence within the seed. Therefore, one was not to re
18 Mundaka Upanişad 3. 2. 8. 19 Chandogya Upanisad 6. Cf. supra, pp. 895-337.
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