The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.48

c11.48

There is yet one consequence to be drawn. The question is asked, as it must be: "What is the cure for desire, the thirst for life and its contents? How cut the fetter, or the knot of adhesion to the illusory world? How get rid of the will to live?" The answer is, through knowledge. Knowledge, or perhaps it would be better to say intuition, of the unity of the individual self with the great True One; and the recognition, ever present, of the divided, distracted, illusory nature of everything finite: When a mortal has recognised Brahma, feeling, "He is myself," how can he longer desire and cling to bodily life? This is the culminating thought of the Upanishads and the Veda, expressed in the solemn three words *tat tvam asi*, "Thou art That." That is to say, the essence of man is itself Brahma. The wise man when once he has seen That (*tad apaçyat*), becomes That (*tad abhavat*), because in truth he always was and is That (*tad āsīt*).¹ Thus the final attainment of man is this knowledge; it is the "works" of the Jew, and the "faith" of the Christian—salvation by the complete ascendency of the divine in one’s self, and the consequent submergence of all that is temporal and illusory.