Sage Sandilya
Credit; urday.in/shandilya.htm
Sandiliya the great sage in the Chandogya Upanishad sought to explain and speculate on the difficult concept of Brahman they had intuited in the following manner for disciples and followers:
MY SELF WITHIN THE HEART
All this is Brahman. let a man meditate on the visible world as beginning, ending and breathing in it, the Brahman…… The intelligent, whose body is spirit,whose form is light, whose thoughts are true, whose nature is like ether, omnipresent and invisible, from whom all works, all desires, all sweet odours and tastes proceed, he who embraces all this, who never speaks, and is never surprised, he is my Self within the heart, smaller than a corn of rice, smaller than a corn of barley, smaller than a mustard seed, smaller than a canary seed or the kernel of a canary seed. He also is my Self within the heart, greater than the earth, greater than heaven, greater than all these worlds….. when I shall have departed hence, I shall obtain him ( that Self). He who has this faith has no doubt; thus said Sandiilya, yea, thus he said.
Another sage Svetashvatara ( owner of a white mule) speaks of Brahman in the Svetashvatara Upanishad thus:
Those who know the high Brahman, the vast, the hidden in the bodies of all creatures, and alone enveloping everything, as Lord, they become immortal. – I know this great person (Purusha) of sunlike lustre beyond the darkness. …. This whole universe is filled by this person to whom there is nothing superior, from whom there is nothing different, than whom there is nothing smaller or larger, who stands alone like a tree in the sky.
That which is beyond this world is without form and without suffering. …. he dwells in the heart of all beings, he is all pervading, therefore he is ..omnipresent…. the person, not larger than a thumb, dwelling within… in the heart of man, is perceived by the heart, the thought, the mind, they who know it become immortal……
He is the one God, hidden in all beings, all pervading, the Self within all beings, watching over all works, dwelling in all beings, the witness, the perceiver, , the only one, free from qualities. … the wise who perceive him within their self, to them belongs eternal happiness…
Sage Svetashvatara
Credit; shivadarshana.blogspot.com
”The only one free from qualities. ” I love the way the whole text is written.
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…the vast, the hidden in the bodies of all creatures, and alone enveloping everything… Is this like Swedenborg’s vision of the 3 Heavens as the Grand Man, whose various members have corresponding, celestial counter-parts?
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the early Upanishads give the cosmic Man analogy but later this is refined in the concept of Brahman as formless.
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I looked up Swedenborg’s vision of the Cosmic Man – early Upanishadic thought drew its inspiration from the early Vedic analogies of the Cosmic Man to define the all embracing nature of Brahman but the idea of the Cosmic Man as a mere prototype did not serve to explain the further development of Upanishidic thought where Brahman enters his creation and becomes inseparable from it. With Brahman’s immanence the idea of the Cosmic Man receded, replacing the prototype idea with that of a grand unity of matter and spirit and later as this still implied dualism on account of the diversity of phenomena by developing the idea of the illusion of matter or phenomenal creation as a kind of dream of Brahman (Maya) – with this concept the contradiction in Monist theory was resolved and it became fully non-dual ( Advait). Pre Aryan Indian philosophies ( Jainism and Sankya) continued to hold the Cosmic Man idea in their cosmologies of nature and spirit but being essentially atheistically their Cosmic Man had no soul so to speak – for them the universe consisted of numerous souls bound by matter from which through evolution they sought to free themselves – together the Cosmic Man represented both – Buddhism too held similar beliefs about numerous souls – But Brahmanical thought strove to unite spirit and matter as aspects of Brahman calling the latter illusory – Hindu beliefs today are entirely dominated by the Upanishadic-Brahmanical view.
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