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PHILOSOPHY OF THE RIGVEDA
17
we take away from our person all that is Non-self, foreign, all that comes and passes away; it means "the changeless, inseparable essence of our own Self", and on the other hand the essence of the Self of the whole world. It is not possible, as in the case of Prajapati and Brahman, to frame a history of the word Atman. It has no regular development but we see it emerge here and there in proportion as the thinker seeks and finds a more clear-cut expression for the word Brahman to name that being which can never by any means be taken away from us, and therefore forms the only true essence of our nature, out âtman, our Self. With this word we have reached the sphere of the Upanishads; we must now say a few words on these most remarkable monuments of ancient Indian literature.
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