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I ADHYAYA, 4 PÂDA, 21.
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statement aims at representing the individual Self and the highest Self as non-different for the purpose of fulfilling the promise made.-This is the opinion of the teacher Asmarathya .
21. (The initial statement identifies the individual soul and the highest Self) because the soul when it will depart (from the body) is such (i.e. one with the highest Self); thus Audulomi thinks.
The individual soul which is inquinated by the contact with its different limiting adjuncts, viz. body, senses, and mind (mano-buddhi), attains through the instrumentality of knowledge, meditation, and so on, a state of complete serenity, and thus enables itself, when passing at some future time out of the body, to become one with the highest Self; hence the initial statement in which it is represented as non-different from the highest Self. This is the opinion of the teacher Audulomi.—Thus Scripture says, “That serene being arising from this body appears in its own form as soon as it has approached the highest light' (Kh. Up. VIII, 12, 3).—In another place Scripture intimates, by means of the simile of the rivers, that name and form abide in the individual soul,' As
The comment of the Bhâmate on the Satra runs as follows: As the sparks issuing from a fire are not absolutely different from the fire, because they participate in the nature of the fire; and, on the other hand, are not absolutely non-different from the fire, because in that case they could be distinguished neither from the fire nor from each other; so the individual souls also—which are effects of Brahman-are neither absolutely different from Brahman, for that would mean that they are not of the nature of intelligence ; nor absolutely non-different from Brahman, because in that case they could not be distinguished from each other, and because, if they were identical with Brahman and therefore omniscient, it would be useless to give them any instruction. Hence the individual souls are somehow different from Brahman and somehow non-different. The technical name of the doctrine here represented by Asmarathya is bhedabhedavâda.
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