Book Title: Satapatha Bramhana Part 05
Author(s): Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford


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Page 1292
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84
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS..
nature of the knower, but belongs to it only as an adventitious attribute, and tells him 'Do not view or think the Self to be such, but consider the seeing and thinking Self to have seeing and thinking for its essential nature.'-Or else this text may mean that the embodied Self which is the seer of seeing and the thinker of thinking should be set aside, and that only the highest Self-the inner Self of all beingsshould be meditated upon.-Otherwise a conflict would arise with texts declaring the knowership of the Self, such as whereby should he know the knower ?' (Bri. Up. IV, 5, 15).
Your assertion that the text Bliss is Brahman' (Taitt. Up. III, 6, 1) proves pure Bliss to constitute the essential nature of Brahman is already disposed of by the refutation of the view that knowledge (consciousness) constitutes the essential nature of Brahman; Brahman being in reality the substrate only of knowledge. For by bliss we understand a pleasing state of consciousness. Such passages as
consciousness, bliss is Brahman,' therefore mean .consciousness—the essential character of which is bliss-is Brahman.' On this identity of the two things there rests that homogeneous character of Brahman, so much insisted upon by yourself. And in the same way as numerous passages teach that Brahman, while having knowledge for its essential nature, is at the same time a knowing subject; so other passages, speaking of Brahman as something separate from mere bliss, show it to be not mere bliss but a subject enjoying bliss ; cp. That is one bliss of Brahman' (Taitt. Up. II, 8, 4); "he knowing the bliss of Brahman' (Taitt. Up. II, 9, 1). To be a subject enjoying bliss is in fact the same as to be a conscious subject.
We now turn to the numerous texts which, according to the view of our opponent, negative the existence of plurality.
- Where there is duality as it were' (Bri. Up. IV, 5, 15); • There is not any plurality here; from death to death goes he who sees here any plurality' (Bri. Up. IV, 4, 19); But when for him the Self alone has become all, by what means, and whom, should he see ?' (Bri. Up. IV, 5, 15) &c.—But what all these texts deny is only plurality in so far as contradicting that unity of the world which depends on its
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