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II ADHYÂYA, I PÂDA, 15.
443
We thus arrive at the conclusion that those who hold the non-duality of Brahman must also admit that it is Brahman alone which is affected with beginningless avidya, and owing to this avidya is conscious of plurality within itself. Nor must it be urged against him who holds this view of avidya belonging to Brahman that he is unable to account for the distinction of bondage and release, for as there is only the one Brahman affected with Nescience and to be released by the cessation of that Nescience, the distinction of souls bound and released, &c., has no true existence : the empirical distinction of souls bound and released, of teachers and pupils, &c. is a merely fictitious one, and all such fiction can be explained by means of the avidya of one intelligent being. The case is analogous to that of a person dreaming: the teachers and pupils and all the other persons and things he may see in his dream are fictitiously shaped out of the avidya of the one dreaming subject. For the same reason there is no valid foundation for the assumption of many avidyâs. For those also who hold that avidya belongs to the individual souls do not maintain that the distinction of bondage and release, of one's own self and other persons, is real ; and if it is unreal it can be accounted for by the avidyå of one subject. This admits of being stated in various technical ways. The distinctions of bondage and of one's own self and other persons are fictitiously shaped by one's own avidyâ ; for they are unreal like the distinctions seen by a dreaming person.-Other bodies also have a Self through me only for they are bodies like this my body.--Other bodies also are fictitiously shaped by my avidya; for they are bodies or effects, or non-intelligent or fictitious creations, as this my body is.—The whole class of intelligent subjects is nothing but me; for they are of intelligent nature: what is not me is seen to be of non-intelligent nature; as e. g. jars.
-It thus follows that the distinctions of one's own self and other persons, of souls bound and released, of pupils and teachers, and so on, are fictitiously created by the avidya of one intelligent subject.
The fact is that the upholder of Duality himself is not
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