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Kena and Other Upanishads: Part Two
mid-region is its belly, earth is its footing” — pajasyam, the four feet upon which it stands. We must be careful not to confuse the ancient Seer’s conception of the universe with our modern conception. To us nothing exists except the system of gross material worlds — annamayam jagat, — this earth, this moon, this sun & its planets, these myriad suns and their systems. But to the Vedantic thinkers the universe, the manifest Brahman, was a harmony of worlds within worlds; they beheld a space within our space but linked with it, they were aware of a Time connected with our Time but different from it. This earth was Bhur. Rising in soul into the air above the earth, the antariksham, they thought they came into contact with other sevenfold earths in which just as here matter is the predominant principle, so there nervous or vital energy is the main principle or else manas, still dependent on matter & vital energy; these earths they called Bhuvar. And rising beyond this atmosphere into the ethereal void they believed themselves to be aware of other worlds which they called Swar or heaven, where again in its turn mind, free, blithe, delivered from its struggle to impose itself in a world not its own upon matter & nerve-life, is the medium of existence & the governing Force. If we keep in mind these ideas, we shall easily understand why the images are thus distributed in the sentence I have last quoted. Heaven is the back of the Horse, because it is on mind that we rest, mind that bears up the Gods & Gandharvas, Titans & men; — the mid-region is the belly because vital energy is that which hungers & devours, moves restlessly everywhere seizing everything and turning it into food or else because mind is the womb of all our higher consciousness; — earth is the footing because matter here, outward form, is the fundamental condition for the manifestation of life, mind and all higher forces. On Matter we rest and have our firm stand; out of Matter we rise to our fulfilment in Spirit. Then once again, after these higher & more remote suggestions, we are reminded that it is some Force manifesting in matter which the Horse symbolises; the material manifestation constitutes the essence of its symbolism. The images used are of an almost gross materiality. Some of them are at the same