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


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Page 1423
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I ADHYAYA, I PÂDA, 13.
215
as 'It thought, may I be many, may I grow forth.-It sent forth fire,' &c. That even the released soul is unequal to such world business' as creation, two later Sûtras will expressly declare. But, if you deny that Brahman, the cause of the world, is identical with the individual soul, how then do you account for the co-ordination in which the two appear in the Khandogya texts ?-How, we ask in return, can Brahman, the cause of all, free from all shadow of imperfection, omniscient, omnipotent, &c. &c., be one with the individual soul, all whose activities-whether it be thinking, or winking of an eye, or anything else-depend on karman, which implies endless suffering of various kind? -If you reply that this is possible if one of two things is unreal, we ask-which then do you mean to be unreal? Brahman's connexion with what is evil?-or its essential nature, owing to which it is absolutely good and antagonistic to all evil?-You will perhaps reply that, owing to the fact of Brahman, which is absolutely good and antagonistic to all evil, being the substrate of beginningless Nescience, there presents itself the false appearance of its being connected with evil. But there you maintain what is contradictory. On the one side there is Brahman's absolute perfection and antagonism to all evil; on the other it is the substrate of Nescience, and thereby the substrate of a false appearance which is involved in endless pain; for to be connected with evil means to be the substrate of Nescience and the appearance of suffering which is produced thereby. Now it is a contradiction to say that Brahman is connected with all this and at the same time antagonistic to it!-Nor can we allow you to say that there is no real contradiction because that appearance is something false. For whatever is false belongs to that group of things contrary to man's true interest, for the destruction of which the Vedanta-texts are studied. To be connected with what is hurtful to man, and to be absolutely perfect and antagonistic to all evil is self-contradictory.-But, our adversary now rejoins, what after all are we to do? The holy text at first clearly promises that through the cognition of one thing everything will be known ('by which that which is
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