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I ADHYAYA, I PÂDA, 13.
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Brahman is said to be the tail or support. If Brahman were something different from the Self consisting of bliss, the text would have continued, Different from this Self consisting of bliss is the other inner Self-Brahman. But there is no such continuation. The connexion of the different clauses stands as follows: After Brahman has been introduced as the topic of the section ("He who knows Brahman attains the Highest'), and defined as different in nature from cverything else ('The True, knowledge'), the text designates it by the term • Self,' &c. (From that Self sprang ether '), and then, in order to make it clear that Brahman is the innermost Self of all, emumerates the pranamaya and so on-designating them in succession as more and more inward Selfs, and finally leads up to the anandamaya as the innermost Self('Different from this, &c., is the Self consisting of bliss '). From all which it appears that the term 'Self' up to the end denotes the Brahman mentioned at the beginning.--But, in immediate continuation of the clause,
Brahman is the tail, the support,' the text exhibits the following sloka: 'Non-existing becomes he who views Brahman as non-existing; who knows Brahman as existing, him we know as himself existing. Here the existence and non-existence of the Self are declared to depend on the knowledge and non-knowledge of Brahman, not of the Self consisting of bliss. Now no doubt can possibly arise as to the existence or non-existence of this latter Self, which, in the form of joy, satisfaction, &c., is known to every one. Hence the sloka cannot refer to that Self, and hence Brahman is different from that Self.—This objection, the Parvapakshin rejoins, is unfounded. In the earlier parts of the chapter we have corresponding slokas, each of them following on a preceding clause that refers to the tail or support of a particular Self: in the case, e. g. of the Self consisting of food, we read, This is the tail, the support,' and then comes the sloka, 'From food are produced all creatures,' &c. Now it is evident that all these slokas are meant to set forth not only what had been called 'tail,' but the entire Self concerned (Self of food, Self of breath, &c.); and from this it follows that also the sloka, Non-existing becomes
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