A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s9.14

v1.c8.s9.14

Deussen expresses this fundamental idea of the Upaniṣads briefly and pertinently in the words: "The *Brahman*, the power which presents itself to us materialised in all existing things, which creates, sustains, preserves, and receives back into itself again all worlds, this eternal infinite divine power is identical with the *Ātman*, with that which, after stripping off everything external, we discover in ourselves as our real most essential being, our individual self, the soul."[^\2) (This doctrine has found expression most pointedly and clearly in the Upaniṣad dictum which later became the confession of faith of millions of Indians, in the "*tat tvam asi*" (so often quoted by Schopenhauer), "that art thou," *i.e.*, the universe and the Brahman, that art thou thyself, or in other words: The world exists only in so far as thou thyself art conscious of it.) Let us hear in what manner the poet-philosophers of the Upaniṣads endeavour to make clear this doctrine of the unity of the world with the Brahman and of the Brahman with the Ātman:[^\3)