The Samkhya System

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IN all the manifold character of the content of the Upanisads it is undoubtedly possible to trace certain leading ideas, the most important of these doctrines is, beyond question, that of the identity of the self, Atman, of the individual with the Brahman, which is the most universal expression for the absolute in which the universe finds its unity. It is probable enough that these two expressions are not intrinsically related, and that they represent two different streams of thought. The Brahman is the devotion of the Brahman priest: it is the sacred hymn to propitiate the gods: it is also the magic spell of the wonder-worker: more generally it is the holy power in the universe at least as much as it is the magic fluid of primitive savagery. Religion and magic, if different in essence and in origin, nevertheless go often in closest alliance, and their unison in the case of the concept Brahman may explain the ease with which that term came to denote the essence of the universe or absolute being. The Atman, on the other hand, in the Brahmana texts which lie before the Upanisads, has very often the sense of the trunk of the body, as opposed to the hands and feet and other members, and it is perhaps from that fact at least as much as from the fact that it has also the sense of wind that it develops into the meaning of the essential self of man.