Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s1.t2.20

c7.s1.t2.20

Since, then, there remains in things a residue which is not Âtman, we ask: in what light was this residue viewed? whence comes it? what significance has it? Naturally comes the expectation that it was conceived to be matter, or dark chaos, which, formless in itself, receives its form from the Âtman, the source of forms and light. Our texts have preserved for us but few hints on this subject. The knowledge of the Âtman itself, which was inseparably associated with the ideas of the deliverance of the spirit from the domain of sorrow-fraught impermanence, had such unlimited value for the Indian, that the other side of the problem receded in speculative importance before it into the background. But where utterances bearing on these questions are found, they do actually point to the notion of a chaos, a world of potentialities, from which the operation of the Âtman produces realities. The bëent, that was in the beginning alone, Uddâlaka thus instructs his son,[*] thought: may I become a plurality. It sent forth fire from itself: the fire sent forth water from itself: the water produced food. "Then thought this being: let me now enter these three beings with this living self and let me then reveal names and forms.” And it enters with its breath of life into the fire, into the water, and into the food, mixes the elements of the one with those of the other, and thus the real world is prepared from the three original existents by the demiurgic operation of the Âtman.