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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
being subject to the power of nature' (Bha. Gî. IX, 7, 8); "With me as supervisor Nature brings forth the movable and the immovable, and for this reason the world ever moves round' (Bha. Gi. IX, 10); 'Know thou both Nature and the Soul to be without beginning' (XIII, 19); 'The great Brahman is my womb, in which I place the embryo, and thence there is the origin of all beings' (XIV, 3). This last passage means--the womb of the world is the great Brahman, i.e. non-intelligent matter in its subtle state, commonly called Prakriti; with this I connect the embryo, i.e. the intelligent principle. From this contact of the non-intelligent and the intelligent, due to my will, there ensues the origination of all beings from gods down to lifeless things.
Non-intelligent matter and intelligent beings-holding the relative positions of objects of enjoyment and enjoying subjects, and appearing in multifarious forms--other scriptural texts declare to be permanently connected with the highest Person in so far as they constitute his body, and thus are controlled by him; the highest Person thus constituting their Self. Compare the following passages : 'He who dwells in the earth and within the earth, whom the earth does not know, whose body the earth is, and who rules the earth within, he is thy Self, the ruler within, the immortal,' &c.(Bri. Up.III, 7,3-23); 'He who moves within the earth, whose body the earth is, &c.; he who moves within death, whose body death is,' &c. (Subâla Up. VII, 1). In this latter passage the word death' denotes what is also called darkness,' viz. non-intelligent matter in its subtle state; as appears from another passage in the same Upanishad,'the Imperishable is merged in darkness. And compare also 'Entered within the ruler of creatures, the Self of all'(Taitt. Ar. III, 24).
Other texts, again, aim at teaching that the highest Self to whom non-intelligent and intelligent beings stand in the relation of body, and hence of modes, subsists in the form of the world, in its causal as well as in its effected aspect, and hence speak of the world in this its double aspect as that which is (the Real); so e.g. 'Being only this was in the beginning, one only without a second-it desired, may
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