Brahma
TO Emerson, this is all the same. Moreover, the Spirit, essence Of “life,” cannot be killed. It is eternal, without beginning or end. Death is (as is killing) an illusion. This ignorance of the slayer and the slain come directly from the second chapter of the Baghdad Gait, a sacred Hindu text Emerson studied and admired. Check it out here. Emerson is saying (as Brahmas) that death is the same as life, and that killing someone is the same as not. They’re all relative concepts. For example, say I killed someone.
You may call me a murderer, then. However, what if killed someone to save an old woman being mugged? Then I’m a hero. Everything is circumstantial, and to Brahmas, it is all the same. Brahmas is in everything. Therefore, he’s beyond such words as far, because far would be relative to a point. Brahmas is all points, so everything is equally close and equally far. There is always something infinitely bright in one of these points and always something infinitely dark. Therefore, again, these are relative and Brahmas has no interest in them.
Brahmas is also timeless; to him, something too far into the past to remember is just occurring, and something in the future is also happening. There are a couple different ways of looking at this. Catholicism puts God in a similar situation, called ‘ ‘The Eternal NOW’; if you read mathematical mysticism (drawn from mathematics, Descartes. And eastern philosophy), you may consider this a seventh dimension, in which Brahmas (and to a degree Emerson and all of us, as since Brahmas touches all of us, we all are part of Brahmas) is part of all time but at the same time not part of any of it.
A lot of this is pulling from an Davit Pedant idea called “Non-Self’, something drawn upon by countless others (Emerson called it the “oversell”), n which everyone is part of a universal font of spiritual power, all times and peoples coexisting, drawing on each others energy. If Brahmas is everyone and everything, separation from everyone and everything would make ‘them” reckon you ill. He combines in “reckon ill” both “wishing for illness upon” as well as “reckon ill of mind” “Fly’ here might mean the way one “flies” a flag, only Brahmas is conceived as a bird.
Or “fly/’ here might mean “flee,” and the “wings” may be chasing the person in flight. Brahmas (or the oversell) is what enables action to take place; without Brahmas and the interconnectivity of everyone’s powers, we’d all be stones in the road. Brahmas is never pictured with a weapon, unlike most of if not all of the major Hindu gods. While Brahmas is strong, it is not in a physical sense, not in a RED SLAYER sort of sense. It’s in passiveness, something both Emerson and his buddy Thoreau were big on.
The sacred Seven is another title for the Spearfish, directly juxtaposed here with the strong gods that pine. These seven sages, or risks, work under the guidance of the Brahmas. Though there are different lists with different names, a common one names them as follows: Boring, Atria, Angoras, Vistas, Pulsates, Phallus and Karat. The sacred seven could also refer to the Startups, or seven sacred cities. Hinduism said that, if one were to visit all seven within his lifetime, one escapes the life death cycle (Samara), attaining mimosa. Emerson was well versed in Hinduism.
This also brings to mind the symbolism of numbers (known to Jews and Sabbaticals as geometric), saying that putting faith into numbers is in vain. If you find Brahmas (here, one may posit the name of whatever deity in which they believe), you’re pretty much set, right? Then why would he say to turn his back on heaven? Consider this; why practice religion? To attain heaven, yes? To gain entrance to something better? But then, that would make practicing religion (something Emerson didn’t much like, as Emerson condemned all institutions) for the self, and not for God.
Instead, if you attempt to find God in your own way, then you are really doing it for God, not for your own salvation. For that reason, then, turn your back on heaven, and look for God. Only then will you be privy to Brahmas and his subtle ways. Greatly influenced by a sacred text of Hinduism, Kathy-Punished, “Brahmas” s a philosophical explication Of the universal spirit by that name. The poetic form of elegiac quatrain is used to represent the solemn nature of the subject. Throughout the poem, Brahmas appears as the only speaker, sustaining the continuity of the work.
That the spirit is the only speaker signifies not only its absolute nature but also its sustaining power, upon which the existence of the entire universe-?metaphorically, the poem-?is based. The poem begins by examining the common-essentials view that the spirit ends with one’s death. Even though the body may be destroyed, Brahmas, which resides in each individual as the fountain of life, never ceases to exist: “If the red slayer think he slays,/ Or if the slain think he is slain,’ They know not well the subtle ways/ I keep. When the body is destroyed, the poet maintains, the spirit will appear again, likely in a different form. By employing the examples of both the slayer and the slain, the speaker is suggesting not only the prevalence of their view (that the spirit may not be eternal) but also the dichotomy that normally characterizes a person’s perception. The psychotic recurs in the second stanza, in which opposite notions such as far and near, shadow and sunlight, vanishing and appearing, and shame and fame are juxtaposed.
To the speaker, who unifies the universe, the seemingly unbridgeable differences between opposite concepts can be perfectly resolved; hence, the paradoxical statements. Abraham’s great power is further described in the third stanza, where the spirit states that it comprehends yet transcends everything-?both “the doubter and the doubt,” the subject and object, and matter and mind. In addition, the rhyme scheme befittingly enforces the spirit’s interweaving power, yielding a sense of wonder based on unusual metrical symmetry.
Different from the otherworldly spirit in Hinduism, however, the transcendental spirit represented by Brahmas in this poem leads the follower not to Heaven but to this world. By using the conjunction ‘t)UT” in the last stanza, Emerson prepares his reader for his MM,’n interpretation of the universal spirit. The concluding statement that justifies self-sufficient existence in this world, “But thou, meek lover of the good! / Find me, and turn thy back on heaven,” makes this poem characteristically Impression. “Brahmas” is a poem written by Ralph Wald Emerson. Brahmas” is “the Creator” in Hinduism. “Brahmins” in the line “l am the hymn the Brahmins sings. ” is definitely not a coincidence that it has ;o meanings. One meaning is a socialite who has great power and the other meaning is a high priest in Hinduism. Basically, this poem is said by “Brahmas” to his people. He’s saying that people sometimes forget him, but if you are good, you shouldn’t. This poem is written as four stanzas with four lines in each. It is rhymed as ABA. It is written in pyrrhic-tetrameter (no stresses).
