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CHAPTER 1
THEOLOGY
The Upanishads swarm with fanciful and contradictory descriptions of the nature of Brahman. He is the all-pervading âkâça, is the purusha in the sun, the purusha in the eye; his head is the heaven, his eyes are sun and moon, his breath is the wind, his footstool the earth; he is infinitely great as soul of the universe and infinitely small as the soul in us; he is in particular the içvara, the personal God, distributing justly reward and punishment according to the deeds of man. All these numerous descriptions are collected by Çankara under the wide mantle of the exoteric theology, the sagunâ vidyâ of Brahman, consisting of numerous "vidyâs" adapted for approaching the eternal being not by the way of knowledge but by the way of worshipping, and having each its particular fruits.' Mark, that also the conception of God as a personal being, an îcvara, is merely exoteric and does not give us an adequate knowledge of the Atman;-and indeed, when we consider what is personality, how narrow in its limitations, how closely connected which egotism, the counter part of godly essence, who might think so low of God, to impute him personality?
In the sharpest contrast to these exoteric vidyâs stands the esoteric nirgunâ vidyâ of the Atman; and its fundamental tenet is the absolute inaccessibility of God to human thoughts and words
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