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I ADHYAYA, 3 PÂDA, I.
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thoroughly appropriate only if we understand the highest Self and not anything else.-(To propound another interpretation of the phrase 'svasabdât' employed in the Sûtra.) Sometimes also Brahman is spoken of in Sruti as the general abode by its own terms (i.e. by terms properly designating Brahman), as, for instance (Kh. Up. VI, 8, 4), 'All these creatures, my dear, have their root in the being, their abode in the being, their rest in the being ''-(Or else we have to explain 'svasabdena' as follows), In the passages preceding and following the passage under discussion Brahman is glorified with its own names 2; cp. Mu. Up. II, 1, 10, 'The Person is all this, sacrifice, penance, Brahman, the highest Immortal,' and II, 2, 11, 'That immortal Brahman is before, is behind, Brahman is to the right and left.' Here, on account of mention being made of an abode and that which abides, and on account of the co-ordination expressed in the passage, 'Brahman is all' (Mu. Up. II, 2, 11), a suspicion might arise that Brahman is of a manifold variegated nature, just as in the case of a tree consisting of different parts we distinguish branches, stem, and root. In order to remove this suspicion the text declares (in the passage under discussion), 'Know him alone as the Self.' The sense of which is: The Self is not to be known as manifold, qualified by the universe of effects; you are rather to dissolve by true knowledge the universe of effects, which is the mere product of Nescience, and to know that one Self, which is the general abode, as uniform. Just as when somebody says, 'Bring that on which Devadatta sits,' the person addressed brings the chair only (the abode of Devadatta), not Devadatta himself; so the passage, 'Know him alone as the Self,' teaches that the object to be known is the one uniform Self which constitutes the
general abode. Similarly another scriptural passage reproves him who believes in the unreal world of effects,
From passages of which nature we may infer that in the passage under discussion also the abode' is Brahman.
2 From which circumstance we may conclude that the passage under discussion also refers to Brahman.
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