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BRAHMANISM
with an utterly brilliant self-effulgence." 100 Nevertheless, the consciousness of the all-comprising, all-pervading supreme Lord of the Universe is an essence identical with the sum total of the consciousness of the manifold of individuals-as the space (ākāśa) enclosed by a forest is precisely the same as that enclosed by the circumference of the crowns of all the single tices, or as the one and self-same sky reflected by the collective unity of the lakes and ponds of a region is mirrored in each separate lake or pond.181 That Highest Lord is sheer, unmitigated self-effulgence, like the pure Self itself, in spite of the fact that a translucent nescience (sattva-avidya) mirrors him. The play of ignorance is hardly as much as a thin veil for him; he sees through it and enacts his role in it, like an adult in a children's game. And so he is identical, not with our ignorance (the limiting adjuncts that keep us apart from each other and constitute the whole difference between that omnipotent, omniscient highest presence and our troubled earthly selves), but with the consciousness, the bliss and the pure being, the brilliant spiritual space (ākāśa), that abides within.
Nescience (avidyā, ajñāna), we have said, is possessed of a twofold power: 1. that of concealing, and 2. that of projecting or expanding. 12 Through the operation of the former it conceals the true reality of Brahman-timeless existence, pure consciousness, and bliss illimited (sat-cit-änanda)-that is to say, it conceals our own Self from us, the kernel of our nature, while simultaneously through the second power a spectacle of illusory phenomenal entities is produced that is taken for real-the mirage of name-and-form (nāma-rupa), which distracts us from the quest for the really existing entity of the Self.
We tend to resist with every kind of argument the Vedantic demonstration of the predicament we are in; for at first it seems
180 Vedantasära 44.
161 Ib. 47-48.
162 Supra, pp. 415-416; Vedāntasāra 51.
430
