A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c8.s2.4

c8.s2.4

the end of time, rolls them up again. He has his eyes everywhere, and his face everywhere; his hands and feet are also omnipresent. He creates the men of earth and endows them with hands. He creates the fowl of air and endows them with wings. He is the only God who has created the heaven and the earth (S. 8. b). In a later passage of the same Upanishad, the author inquires further into the nature and attributes of this God. He calls him the only Lord of the universe, the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer of all. He ends by declaring that it is only to those who regard this God as identical with the Self within,—to those belongs eternal happiness, to none else: "Some so-called wise men, being under a great philosophic delusion, regard Nature, and others Time, as the source of being. They forget that it is the greatness of the Lord, which causes the wheel of Brahman to turn round. It is by Him that all this has been covered. He is the only knower, he is death to the god of death, the possessor of all qualities and wisdom. It is at His command that creation unfolds itself, namely, what people call earth, water, fire, air and ether. He is the permanent as well as the accidental cause of unions. He is beyond the past, the present, and the future, and is truly regarded as without parts. That universal God, who is immanent in all these beings, should be meditated upon as dwelling in our minds also—that God who is the Lord of all gods, who is the Deity of all deities, who is the supreme Master of all masters, and who is the adorable Ruler of the universe. There is no cause of Him, nor any effect. There is none equal to Him, nor any superior. The great power inherent in Him manifests itself alike in the form of knowledge and action. There is no master of Him in this world, nor any ruler, nor is there anything which we might regard as His sign. He is the only Cause, the Lord of all those who possess sense-organs. There is no generator of Him, nor any protector. He is the self-subsistent mover of the unmoving manifold, who causes the one seed to sprout in infinite ways. It is only to those who regard this Universal Being as immanent in their own Selves, to them belongs eternal happiness, to none else" (S. 8. c). In this theistic description of the Śvetāśvatara Upanishad we are told how God is the only cause of the world, and how ultimately he is to be regarded as identical with the Self within. Here again the purely theological category becomes subservient to the psychological category of the Self; and it seems as if the ultimate category of existence to the Upanishadic philosophers is God-Ātman.