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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
(Mu. Up. III, 1, 1).—Here finishes the adhikarana of what is known everywhere.'
Well then, if the highest Self is not an enjoyer, we must conclude that wherever fruition is referred to, the embodied soul only is meant 1-Of this view the next adhikarana disposes.
9. The eater (is the highest Self) on account of there being taken all that is movable and immovable.
We read in the Kathavalli (1, 2, 25), Who then knows where he is to whom the Brahmans and Kshattriyas are but food, and death itself a condiment?' A doubt here arises whether the 'eater,' suggested by the words 'food' and condiment,' is the individual soul or the highest Self.
– The individual soul, the Purvapakshin maintains; for all enjoyment presupposes works, and works belong to the individual soul only.-Of this view the Satra disposes. The 'eater' can be the highest Self only, because the taking, i.e. eating, of the whole aggregate of movable and immovable things can be predicated of that Self only. 'Eating' does not here mean fruition dependent on work, but rather the act of reabsorption of the world on the part of the highest Brahman, i.e. Vishnu, who is the cause of the origination, subsistence, and final destruction of the universe. This appears from the fact that Vishnu is mentioned in the same section, 'He reaches the end of his journey, and that is the highest place of Vishnu' (Ka. Up. 1, 3, 9). Moreover the clause 'to whom death is a condiment' shows that by the Brahmans and Kshattriyas, mentioned in the text, we have to understand the whole universe of moving and non-moving things, viewed as things to be consumed by the highest Self. For a condi. ment is a thing which, while itself being eaten, causes other things to be eaten; the meaning of the passage, therefore, is that while death itself is consumed, being a condiment as it were, there is at the same time eaten whatever is flavoured or made palatable by death, and that is the entire world of beings in which the Brahmans and Kshat
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