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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
he know Him?' This means-He, i.e. the highest Self, which abiding within the individual soul as it's true Self bestows on it the power of knowledge so that the soul knows all this through the highest Self; by what means should the soul know Him? In other words, there is no. such means of knowledge: the highest Self cannot be fully understood by the individual soul. That Self,' he continues, 'is to be expressed as-not so, not so l' That means-He, the highest Lord, different in nature from everything else, whether sentient or non-sentient, abides within all beings as their Self, and hence is not touched by the imperfections of what constitutes his body merely. He then concludes, 'Whereby should he know the Knower? Thus, O Maitreyi, thou hast been instructed. Thus far goes Immortality'; the purport of these words being-By what means, apart from the meditation described, should man know Him who is different in nature from all other beings, who is the sole cause of the entire world, who is the Knower of all, Him the Supreme Person? It is meditation on Him only which shows the road to Immortality. It thus appears that the Maitreyi-brahmana is concerned with the highest Brahman only; and this confirms the conclusion that Brahman only, and with it Prakriti as ruled by Brahman, is the cause of the world. Here terminates the adhikarana of the connexion of sentences.'
23. (Brahman is) the material cause on account of this not being in conflict with the promissory statements and the illustrative instances.
The claims raised by the atheistic Sankhya having thus been disposed of, the theistic Sankhya comes forward as an opponent. It must indeed be admitted, he says, that the Vedanta-texts teach the cause of the world to be an allknowing Lord; for they attribute to that cause thought and similar characteristics. But at the same time we learn from those same texts that the material.cause of the world is none other than the Pradhana ; with an all-knowing, unchanging superintending Lord they connect a Pradhana,
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