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


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Page 1424
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216
VEDÂNTA-SÛTRAS..
not heard is heard,' &c., Kh. Up. VI, 1, 3); thereupon declares that Brahman is the sole cause of the world ( Being only this was in the beginning), and possesses exalted qualities such as the power of realising its intentions ( it thought, may I be many '); and then finally, by means of the co-ordination, Thou art that,' intimates that Brahman is one with the individual soul, which we know to be subject to endless suffering! Nothing therefore is left to us but the hypothesis that Brahman is the substrate of Nescience and all that springs from it 1-Not even for the purpose, we reply, of making sense of Scripture may we assume what in itself is senseless and contradictory!--Let us then say that Brahman's connexion with evil is real, and its absolute perfection unreal !-Scripture, we reply, aims at comforting the soul afflicted by the assaults of threefold pain, and now, according to you, it teaches that the assaults of suffering are real, while its essential perfection and happiness are unreal figments, due to error! This is excellent comfort indeed I–To avoid these difficulties let us then assume that both aspects of Brahman-viz. on the one hand its entering into the distressful condition of individual souls other than non-differenced intelligence, and on the other its being the cause of the world, endowed with all perfections, &c.—are alike unreal !-Well, we reply, we do not exactly admire the depth of your insight into the connected meaning of texts. The promise that through the knowledge of one thing everything will be known can certainly not be fulfilled if everything is false, for in that case there exists nothing that could be known. In so far as the cognition of one thing has something real for its object, and the cognition of all things is of the same kind, and moreover is comprised in the cognition of one thing ; in so far it can be said that everything is known through one thing being known. Through the cognition of the real shell we do not cognise the unreal silver of which the shell is the substrate.--Well, our adversary resumes, let it then be said that the meaning of the declaration that through the cognition of one thing everything is to be known is that only non-differenced Being is real, while everything
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