A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c4.s3.1.3

c4.s3.1.3

a)—an expression which gives us an insight into the *θεωρία* of the Upanishadic gods. As an example of allegory in the Upanishads, we may take the eschatological passage from the Kaushītaki which speaks of "the river of agelessness, the hall of omnipresence, the couch of grandeur, the damsel of mind, the hand-maid of vision, the flowers of the worlds which these are intent on weaving, the passage of the Soul through the river merely by the motion of the mind, the haven of safety which it reaches by the assertion of its identification with the highest Brahman—a fit concatenation of circumstances that befall the Soul which is described as the Child of the Seasons." We have said above that the Upanishads do not contain either nature-poetry or love-poetry, and hence the beautiful does not much fall within the scope of Upanishadic thought; but the Upanishads deal nevertheless with the sublime in nature, or with the sublime in the region of mind, or even in the transcendental sphere. As an example of the sublime in nature, we may take the passage from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka which tells us that "by the command of the imperishable Brahman, the sun and the moon stand in their places; by the command of that Brahman, the heaven and the earth stand apart; by the command of that Brahman, the moments and the hours, the days and the nights, the half-months and the months, the seasons and the years, all stand apart;