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16
BHAKTI-YOGA
tinction between the personal soul and the Personal God, very clear.
We shall now try to understand what the great representative of the Advaita School has to say on the point. We shall see how the Advaita system maintains all the hopes and aspirations of the dualist intact, and at the same time propounds its own solution of the problem in consonance with the high destiny of divine humanity. Those who aspire to retain their individual mind even after liberation, and to remain distinct, will have ample opportunity of realising their aspirations and enjoy the blessing of the qualified Brahman. These are they who have been spoken of in the Bhagavata Purâna thus :-"O king, such are the glorious qualities of the Lord that the sages whose only pleasure is in the Self, from whom all fetters have fallen off, even they love the Omnipresent with the love that is for love's sake." These are they who are spoken of by the Sânkhyas as getting merged in nature in this cycle, so that, after attaining perfection, they may come out in the next as Lords of world-systems. But none of these ever becomes equal to God (Ishvara). Those who attain to that state where there is neither creation, nor created, nor creator, where there is neither knower, nor knowable, nor knowledge, where there is neither I, nor thou, nor he, where there is neither subject, nor object, nor relation, "there, who is seen by whom?"
—such persons have gone beyond everything, to "where words cannot go nor mind,” gone to that