e rites of sacrifice
with appropriate chanting of hymns--in short, ritual magic. This
mystic force the Rigvedic poets have represented in personal form as
the god Brihaspati, in much the same way as they embodied the spirit
of the sacrifice in Vishnu. Their successors, the orthodox ritualists
of the Brahmanas, have not made much use of this term; but sometimes
they speak of Brahma as an abstract first principle, the highest and
ultimate source of all being, even of Prajapati (Samav. B. I. 1, Gop.
B. I. i. 4); and when they speak of Brahma they think of him not as a
power connected with religious ceremony but as a supremely
transcendent and absolutely unqualified and impersonal First
Existence. But the school of the Aupanishadas has gone further.
Seeking through works mystic knowledge as the highest reality, they
see in Brahma the perfect knowledge. To them the absolute First
Existence is also transcendently full and unqualified Thought. As
knowledge is power, the perfect Power is perfect Knowledge.

Brahma then is absolute knowledge; and all that exists is really
Brahma, one and indivisible in essence, but presenting itself
illusively to the finite consciousness as a world of plurality, of
most manifold subjects and objects of thought. The highest wisdom, the
greatest of all secrets, is to know this truth, to realise with full
consciousness that there exists only the One, Brahma, the infinite
Idea; and the sage of the Upanishads is he who has attained this
knowledge, understanding that he himself, as individual subject of
thought, is really identical with the universal Brahma. He has
realised that he is one with the Infinite Thought, he has raised
himself to the mystic heights of transcendental Being and Knowledge,
immeasurably far above nature and the gods. He knows all things at
their fountain-head, and life can nevermore bring harm to him; in his
knowledge he has salvation, and death will lead him to complete union
with Brahma.

The Aupanishadas have thus advanced from the pantheism of the orthodox
ritualists to a transcendental idealism. The process has been gradual.
It was only by degrees that they reached the idea of salvation in
knowledge, the knowledge that is union with Brahma; and it was
likewise only through slow stages that they were able to conceive of
Brahma in itself. Many passages in the Upanishads are full of
struggles to represent Brahma by symbols or forms perceptible to the
sense, such as ether, b