A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.s5.2.1

c9.s5.2.1

17. The Upanishads have preserved for us a few mystic monologues which contain the essence of the raptures of spiritual experience. The Sage of the Muṇḍakopanishad, when he came to realise the immortal Brahman, fell into mystic raptures when he saw that "the Brahman was before him and behind him, to his right and to his left, above and below," and broke forth into the Leibnitzian exclamation that "this was the best of all possible worlds" (S. 26). He considered himself fortunate that he was ever born into this world at all, for, was it not his appearance on the terrestrial globe that led him, by proper means and through adequate stages, to the vision of the Godhead wherever his eye was cast? The Sage Vāmadeva of the Bṛihadāraṇyakopanishad came to know that “ just as, at the origin of things, Brahman came to self-consciousness and then understood that it was verily the All, similarly, whoever among the gods, or the mortals, or the sages comes to self-consciousness becomes verily the All ”; and thus the Sage, to whom the infinite past was like an eternal now, broke forth into the exclamation that “ he it was who had lived in Manu, and that he it was who had given light to the Sun ” (S. 27),—even like the Maratha saint Tukaram, who, at a later date, exclaimed that, in bygone ages, when Śuka had gone to the mountains to reach Self-realisation, he was himself present to watch that Great Act in spirit, if not in body.