The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c5.s2.t1.8

c5.s2.t1.8

1. We have already pointed out how the Indians, setting out from the worship of personified powers of nature, recognised in that raising of the feeling above the consciousness of individual existence which occurs in prayer, that is, in the Brahman, the central force in all the forces of nature, the shaping and supporting principle of all Gods and all worlds; the word Brahman in the whole Rigveda never meaning anything else than this lifting and spiritualising power of prayer. (With the history of this concept may be compared that of the Logos (Λόγος) of the fourth Gospel, which rests on a similar abstraction and hypostasis.) From the standpoint of this apprehension of the Brahman as a cosmic potency inherent in the subject, the *Taittirīya-Brāhmaṇam* (2, 8, 9, 6) for example, takes up a question put in the *Rigveda* (X, 81, 4) and answers it as follows:--