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GEORGE BURCH
only in name and form. But it causes them only as illusions. Brahman is "one without a second" (advaita), and neither becomes nor really creates the world. These properties, therefore, only express Brahman's relation to the world, and have no metaphysical significance. The intrinsic properties of Brahman, which do have metaphysical significance, are either negative or positive. Negative properties are lack of qualities and lack of relations. Positive properties are being, consciousness, bliss, purity, intellect, freedom, reality, contemplation, infinity, perfection, and so forth. These properties, especially being-consciousness-bliss, are positive contents which distinguish the Vedanta ideal of freedom from the indefinite nirvana of Buddhism. The properties are distinguished, however, only in relation to our doubts. Really, in Brahman, they are all the same, for Brahman is without internal differences (ekarasa, "of one flavor"). The properties serve to refute false theories, but do not adequately describe Brahman. The essential nature of Brahman is ineffable. It cannot be conceived as being anything (negation of everything that can be known or thought) or as not being anything (negation of negation). It cannot be conceived at all, or known as an object, and has no character in itself. But it nowise follows that Brahman is remote, mysterious, or unknown—much less that it is non-existent. Brahman is directly intuited, for it is the self--not the felt body or introspected conscious content but the self which knows. The secondary statements of the Upanishads connote the intrinsic properties of Brahman, but the four principal statements (“Thou art That"; "I am Brahman"; "Brahman is intelligence"; "I am Atman and this Atman is the stuff of intelligence") denote the essential nature of Brahman. Brahman is truly known not through its description as being-consciousness-bliss but through its identity with the self. Reality is all that I know myself to be when I dissociate myself from illusory objects, with their characteristic transiency, materiality, and suffering. Brahman has the nature of the self because it is the self—the transcendental consciousness beyond all states."
37 "It is the ultimate ground of changelessness. It has no history and no temporal dimension. It eats up time itself (which in Hindu thought 'eats up' all things). It alone is truly eternal and immortal." (Philosophy of the Self, p. 190.)
