conceptual utterance, as
S'a@nkara the great professor of Vedanta does by explaining away
the dualistic texts. The universe is said to be a reality, but the
real in it is Brahman alone. It is on account of Brahman that
the fire burns and the wind blows. He is the active principle in
the entire universe, and yet the most passive and unmoved. The

49

world is his body, yet he is the soul within. "He creates all,
wills all, smells all, tastes all, he has pervaded all, silent and
unaffected [Footnote ref 1]." He is below, above, in the back, in front,
in the south and in the north, he is all this [Footnote ref 2]." These
rivers in the east and in the west originating from the ocean, return
back into it and become the ocean themselves, though they do not know
that they are so. So also all these people coming into being from the
Being do not know that they have come from the Being...That which
is the subtlest that is the self, that is all this, the truth, that self
thou art O S'vetaketu [Footnote ref 3]." "Brahman," as Deussen points out,
"was regarded as the cause antecedent in time, and the universe
as the effect proceeding from it; the inner dependence of the
universe on Brahman and its essential identity with him was
represented as a creation of the universe by and out of Brahman."
Thus it is said in Mund. I.I. 7:

As a spider ejects and retracts (the threads),
As the plants shoot forth on the earth,
As the hairs on the head and body of the living man,
So from the imperishable all that is here.
As the sparks from the well-kindled fire,
In nature akin to it, spring forth in their thousands,
So, my dear sir, from the imperishable
Living beings of many kinds go forth,
And again return into him [Footnote ref 4].

Yet this world principle is the dearest to us and the highest
teaching of the Upani@sads is "That art thou."

Again the growth of the doctrine that Brahman is the "inner
controller" in all the parts and forces of nature and of mankind as
the atman thereof, and that all the effects of the universe are the
result of his commands which no one can outstep, gave rise to a
theistic current of thought in which Brahman is held as standing
aloof as God and controlling the world. It is by his ordaining, it
is said, that the sun and moon are held together, and the sky and
earth stand held together [Footnote ref 5]. God and soul are distinguished
again in the famous verse of S'vetas'vatara [Footnote