The Philosophy of the Upanishads c11.s2.t2.1

c11.s2.t2.1

“In the beginning the âtman alone in the form of a man was this universe. He gazed around; he saw nothing there but himself. Thereupon he cried out at the beginning:—‘It is I.’ Thence originated the name I. Therefore to-day, when anyone is summoned, he answers first ‘It is I’; and then only he names the other name which he bears.”¹ According to this passage, the first consciousness, and therefore the starting-point and vehicle of all certainty is self-consciousness,² and that for the supreme as well as for the individual soul, for the two are one. Only later, when this original idealism had been obscured by the advancing realism, and a distinction had been set up between supreme and individual soul, does *ahaṅkāra* appear among the functions or organs of the latter,³ as though the âtman the creator of the universe were something other than the self in me; a proposition which to the Indians as well as to Descartes serves already as the alpha and omega of all knowledge of the truth. “The self is the basis (*âśraya*) for the validity of proof, and therefore is constituted also before the validity of proof. And because it is thus formed it is impossible to call it in question. For we may call a thing in question which comes up (*âgantuka*) to us (from without), but not our own essential being. For if a man calls it in question, yet is it his own essential being.”¹ This thought is found expressed in the Upanishads, besides the passage above quoted from Bṛh. 1. 4. 1, in S’vet. 1. 2 also, in so far as it is there said:—