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VEDÂNTA-SÛTRAS.
state of truth and reality the whole apparent world does not exist. The Bhagavadgitâ also ('The Lord is not the cause of actions, or of the capacity of performing actions, or of the connexion of action and fruit; all that proceeds according to its own nature. The Lord receives no one's sin or merit. Knowledge is enveloped by Ignorance; hence all creatures are deluded;' Bha. Gî. V, 14; 15) declares that in reality the relation of Ruler and ruled does not exist. That, on the other hand, all those distinctions are valid, as far as the phenomenal world is concerned, Scripture as well as the Bhagavadgitâ states; compare Bri. Up. IV, 4, 22, ' He is the Lord of all, the king of all things, the protector of all things; he is a bank and boundary, so that these worlds may not be confounded ;' and Bha. Gî. XVIII, 61, ‘The Lord, O Arguna, is seated in the region of the heart of all beings, turning round all beings, (as though) mounted on a inachine, by his delusion.' The Sûtrakara also asserts the non-difference of cause and effect only with regard to the state of Reality; while he had, in the preceding Sûtra, where he looked to the phenomenal world, compared Brahman to the ocean, &c., that comparison resting on the assumption of the world of effects not yet having been refuted (i.e. seen to be unreal). — The view of Brahman as undergoing modifications will, morcover, be of use in the devout meditations on the qualified (saguna) Brahman.
15. And because only on the existence (of the cause) (the effect) is observed.
For the following reason also the effect is non-different from the cause, because only when the cause exists the effect is observed to exist, not when it does not exist. For instance, only when the clay exists the jar is observed to exist, and the cloth only when the threads exist. That it is not a general rule that when one thing exists another is also observed to exist, appears, for instance, from the fact, that a horse which is other (different from a cow is not observed to exist only when a cow exists. Nor is the jar observed to exist only when the potter exists; for in that case non-difference
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