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VEDANTA-SOTRAS.
134
'sat' denotes the individual soul) it follows that the individual soul also has Brahman for its Self, owing to the fact of Brahman having entered into it.-From all this it follows that the entire aggregate of things, intelligent and nonintelligent, has its Self in Brahman in so far as it constitutes Brahman's body. And as, thus, the whole world different from Brahman derives its substantial being only from constituting Brahman's body, any term denoting the world or something in it conveys a meaning which has its proper consummation in Brahman only: in other words all terms whatsoever denote Brahman in so far as distinguished by the different things which we associate with those terms on the basis of ordinary use of speech and etymology.The text 'that art thou' we therefore understand merely as a special expression of the truth already propounded in the clause in that all this has its Self.'
This being so, it appears that those as well who hold the theory of the absolute unity of one non-differenced substance, as those who teach the doctrine of bhedâbheda (co-existing difference and non-difference), and those who teach the absolute difference of several substances, give up all those scriptural texts which teach that Brahman is the universal Self. With regard to the first-mentioned doctrine, we ask 'if there is only one substance; to what can the doctrine of universal identity refer?'-The reply will perhaps be 'to that very same substance.'-But, we reply, this point is settled already by the texts defining the nature of Brahman', and there is nothing left to be determined by the passages declaring the identity of everything with Brahman. But those texts serve to dispel the idea of fictitious difference!-This, we reply, cannot, as has been shown above, be effected by texts stating universal identity in the way of co-ordination; and statements of co-ordination, moreover, introduce into Brahman a doubleness of aspect, and thus contradict the theory of absolute oneness.-The bhedâbheda view implies that owing to Brahman's connexion with limiting adjuncts (upâdhi) all the imperfections
1 Such as 'The True, knowledge,' &c.
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