Part 10 - The World

We have already seen that the universe has come out of Brahman, has its essence in Brahman, and will also return back to it. But in spite of its existence as Brahman its character as represented to experience could not be denied. Saṅkara held that the Upaniṣads referred to the external world and accorded a reality to it consciously with the purpose of treating it as merely relatively real, which will eventually appear as unreal as soon as the ultimate truth, the Brahman, is known. This however remains to be modified to this extent that the sages had not probably any conscious purpose of according a relative reality to the phenomenal world, but in spite of regarding Brahman as the highest reality they could not ignore the claims of the exterior world, and had to accord a reality to it. The inconsistency of this reality of the phenomenal world with the ultimate and only reality of Brahman was attempted to be reconciled by holding that this world is not beside him but it has come out of him, it is maintained in him and it will return back to him.

The world is sometimes spoken of in its twofold aspect, the organic and the inorganic. All organic things, whether plants, animals or men, have souls^[1]. Brahman desiring to be many created fire (tejas), water (ap) and earth (kṣiti). Then the self-existent Brahman entered into these three, and it is by their combination that all other bodies are formed^[2]. So all other things are produced as a result of an alloying or compounding of the parts of these three together. In this theory of the threefold division of the primitive elements lies the earliest germ of the later distinction (especially in the Sāṃkhya school) of pure infinitesimal substances (tanmātra) and gross elements, and the theory that each gross substance is composed of the atoms of the primary elements. And in Praśna IV. 8 we find the gross elements distinguished from their subtler natures, e.g. earth (prthivī), and the subtler state of earth (pṛthivīmātra). In the Taittirlya, II. I, however, ether (ākāśa) is also described as proceeding from Brahman, and the other elements, air, fire, water, and earth, are described as each proceeding directly from the one which directly preceded it.