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THE DOCTRINE OF LIBERATION IN INDIAN RELIGIONS
oneness, it would conflict with a previous statement in the same section in which it is said: “It thought, may I be many;" and further if it meant oneness then by the knowledge of one thing all things are to be known could not be considered as fulfilled.88 So it is not possible that a brahman whose essential nature is knowledge, omniscience etc., should belong to the area of ignorance. It only fufils the demand according to Ramānuja that "brahman free from all imperfections and comprising within itself all auspicious qualities is the internal ruler of the individual selves and possesses lordly power."89 Thus the brahman is the ground of individual souls and not that souls are completely identical with brahman. C.D. Sharma observes :
“The individual soul is a mode of God Who is its inner self. God constitutes the “I” of the soul. "I live, yet not I, but God liveth in me." Tat tvam asi, therefore does not teach absolute identity (which is a mere abstraction) between soul and God as Šamkara imagines, but a qualified identity which means that God as the inner self of the soul and God as the cause of the universe are one and the same."#0
Rāmānuja refutes the theory of Šamkara that the bondage of the self is unreal (mithyä) and can be removed by mere knowledge of the brahman alone. Unlike Samkara, Rāmānuja holds that bondage of the self is real and it can be overcome not by the knowledge alone but with pure devotion and grace (k spā) of God. To quote Rāmānuja's words :
"That doctrine, again, that ignorance is put an end to by the cognition of brahman being the self of all can in no way be upheld, for as bondage is something real it cannot be put an end to by knowledge. How, we ask, can any one assert that bondage ... which consists in the experience of pleasure and pain caused by the connexion of selves with bodies of various kind, a connexion springing from good or evil actions--is something false, unreal?... the cessation of such bondage is to be obtained only through the grace of the highest self pleased by the devout meditation of the worshippers ..,"91 Rāmānuja thus holds that liberated soul only becomes similar to
88, Rāmānuja on The Vedāntasūtras, I.i.l. Tr. by Thibaut; Radhakrishnan and C.A.
Moore, A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, p. 551. 89. Ibid., p. 551-2. 90. C.D. Sharma, op. cit., p. 356. 91. Radhakrishnan and C.A. Moore, op.cit., p. 552.
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