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


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Page 1314
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106
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
or Knowing itself. Now it cannot be 'Knowing,' as you deny that there is any distinction in the nature of knowing ; and that 'Knowing,' which is the substrate of the imperfection, cannot be held to be unreal, because that would involve the acceptance of the Madhyamika doctrine, viz. of a general void'.
And if knowers, objects of knowledge and knowing as determined by those two are fictitious, i.e. unreal, we have to assume another fundamental imperfection, and are thus driven into a regressus in infinitum.—To avoid this difficulty, it might now be said that real consciousness itself, which constitutes Brahman's nature, is that imperfection.But if Brahman itself constitutes the imperfection, then Brahman is the basis of the appearance of a world, and it is gratuitous to assume an additional avidyå to account for the world. Moreover, as Brahman is eternal, it would follow from this hypothesis that no release could ever take place. Unless, therefore, you admit a real imperfection apart from Brahman, you are unable to account for the great world-error.
What, to come to the next point, do you understand by the inexplicability (anirvakaniyatå) of Nescience ?—Its difference in nature from that which is, as well as that which is not I-A thing of such kind would be inexplicable indeed; for none of the means of knowledge apply to it. That is to say—the whole world of objects must be ordered according to our states of consciousness, and every state of consciousness presents itself in the form, either of something existing or of something non-existing. If, therefore, we should assume that of states of consciousness which are limited to this double form, the object can be something which is neither existing nor non-existing, then anything
* If the imperfection inhering in Consciousness is itself of the nature of consciousness, and at the same time unreal, we should have to distinguish two kinds of Consciousness—which is contrary to the fundamental doctrine of the oneness of Consciousness. And if, on the other hand, we should say that the Consciousness in which the imperfection inheres is of the same nature as the latter, i.e. unreal, we are landed in the view of universal unreality.
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