Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 366

VEDA
ered and mastered through wisdom. The individual is to make himself a part of it through abstract means. And he will then share in its potency, just as a priest in the power of his god. He will become both omnipotent and immortal; he will stand beyond change and all fear, beyond the common doom; and he will be a master of the plenitudes both of earthly life and of the life to come.
As we have seen, the Brahmanical search proceeded along the two ways of the macrocosmic and the microcosmic quests. An carly stage of the former is illustrated in the following hymn from the so-called Black Yajurveda, where the highest principle manifests itself as food (annam)." Food is announced as the source and substance of all things. Brahman, the divine essence, makes itself known to the priestly seer in the following impressive, awe-inspiring stanzas:
I am the first-born of the divine essence.
Before the gods sprang into existence, I was.
I am the navel [the center and the source] of immortality. Whoever bestows me on others-thereby keeps me to himself. I am FOOD. I feed on food and on its feeder."
The divine material out of which the living universe and its creatures are composed is revealed here as food, which is matter and force combined. This life-sap builds up and constitutes all the forms of life. Changing its forms it remains nevertheless indestructible. The creatures thrive by feeding on each otherfeeding on each other, devouring, and begetting-but the divine substance itself lives on, without interruption, through the ceaseless interruptions of the lives of all the living beings. Thus we find verified in this solemn hymn, verified and experienced
This concept persists as a central theme in the later period of the Upanisads. For instances, cf. Hume's index, under "food" (op. cit., p. 523). • Taittiriya Brāhmaṇa 2. 8. 8.
345