A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s9.18

v1.c8.s9.18

'Only the *existent*, my dear one, was here in the beginning, and this only as One without a Second. To be sure, some people have said: Only the non-existent was here in the beginning, and this only as One without a Second, and out of this non-existent arose the existent. But how, my dear one, could this be so? How could the existent arise out of the non-existent? Only the existent, my dear one, was here in the beginning, and this only as One without a Second!' (He then demonstrates further, how this *existent* had created heat, which had created water, which, in its turn, had created food; and how the existent, penetrating those three elements, developed the material world out of itself. In the phenomena of sleep, of hunger and of thirst, he then explains how everything leads back to the three elements, heat, water, food—or, as we would say: fire, water, earth—while these three elements in their turn rest only upon the existent. But as this *existent* has, with the Ātman, its soul, penetrated into all beings, so it is also the soul in us. When, therefore, a man dies, he becomes again that which he originally was; he unites again with the existent, out of which he was produced. Now follow a number of similes which are all intended to illustrate the doctrine of the oneness of the world with the Alone-existing and the human soul.) 'As, my dear one, the bees, when they are preparing honey, collect the juices of the most diverse trees and then combine the juice in one unity;—as in this unity those juices do not retain any difference, so that they could say: I am the juice of this tree, I am the juice of that tree—so, my dear one, all these creatures here, when they have become absorbed in the *existent* have no consciousness of the fact that they have become absorbed in the existent. Whatever they may be here, whether tiger or lion, wolf or boar, worm or bird, fly or gnat,—*this* (namely, the *existent*) they become. And it is this very minute thing which constitutes the being of the All, that is the truth, that is the Ātman, *that art thou*, O Śvetaketu.' 'Venerable one, instruct me yet further.' 'Very well, my dear one...........'