The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s6.26

v2.c40.s6.26

The absolute, after the production of the elements, must enter into the world, and many texts refer to this entry. Hence the world is penetrated throughout organic nature by the self of the absolute, which exists in the plant world, in insect life, in animal life, and in man, in things born of the egg, born alive, and sprout-born¹ or born from sweat, a category including insects.² The tree and the plant alike are regarded as animated by a spirit. The idea is seen frequently in the doctrine of transmigration where animals, insects, vegetables and gods appear as subject to transmigration. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad³ has, in a legend which may be compared with the famous observations of Plato in the *Symposion*,⁴ a theory of the Ātman as neither male nor female which is cleft asunder and attains fresh unity in the creation of new life, human and animal alike.