comes into existence for self-consciousness, so that it allows all other content whatever to exist beside it, and recognises it as objective truth. In contrast to this, that faith of reflection, which denies all objectivity to truth, holds fast to that solitude of subjectivity alone, and recognises it alone. In this fully developed reflection the divine world, like all other content, is merely something posited by me.
This first relation of the Hindu to Brahma is set down only in the one single prayer, and since it is itself the existence of Brahma, the momentary character of this existence at once shows itself to be inadequate to the content, and consequently a demand arises that this existence itself should be rendered universal and lasting like its content. For it is only the momentary time element which appears as the most obvious defect in that existence, it being that alone which stands in relation with that abstract Universality, compares itself with it, and shows itself to be inadequate to it; for in other respects its subjective existence—the abstract “I”—is equal or commensurate with it. But to exalt that merely single look into a permanent seeing means nothing else than to stop the transition from the moment of this quiet solitude into the full present reality of life, of its needs, interests, and occupations, and to preserve oneself continuously in that motionless abstract self-consciousness. This is what, in fact, many Hindus who are not Brahmans (of whom later on) virtually accomplish. They give themselves up with the most persevering callousness to the monotony of an inactivity extending over years, and especially to an inactivity of ten years’ duration, in which they renounce all the interests and occupations of ordinary life, and combine with this renunciation the constraint arising from some unnatural attitude or position of the body, as, for example, sitting even on, going with the hands clasped over the head, or else standing, and never even in sleep lying down, and the like.
