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448
VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
body and the sense-organs. This also has been proved before.--Nor is there any proof for your assertion that all bodies must be held to spring from the avidyå of one subject, because they are bodies, non-intelligent, effects, fictitious. For that all bodies are the fictitious creations of avidya is not true; since that which is not sublated by valid means of proof must be held to be real-Nor again can you uphold the assertion that all intelligent subjects are non-different, i.e. one, because we observe that whatever is other than a subject of cognition is non-intelligent; for this also is disproved by the fact of the plurality of intelligent subjects as proved by the individual distribution, among them, of pleasures and pains.—You have further maintained 'Through me only all bodies are animated by a Self; they are the fictitious creations of my avidyå ; I alone constitute the whole aggregate of intelligent subjects,' and, on the basis of these averments, have attempted to prove the oneness of the Ego. But all this is nothing but the random talk of a person who has not mastered even the principles of his own theory; for according to your theory the Self is pure intelligence to which the whole distinction of 'I,' Thou,' &c., is altogether foreign. Moreover, if it be held that everything different from pure, non-differenced intelligence is false, it follows that all effort spent on learning the Veda with a view to Release is fruitless, for the Veda also is the effect of avidya, and the effort spent on it therefore is analogous to the effort of taking hold of the silver wrongly imagined in the shell. Or, to put it from a different point of view, all effort devoted to Release is purposeless, since it is the effect of knowledge depending on teachers of merely fictitious existence. Knowledge produced by texts such as 'Thou art that' does not put an end to bondage, because it is produced by texts which are the fictitious product of avidyâ; or because it is itself of the nature of avidya; or because it has for its abode knowing subjects, who are mere creatures of avidya; or because it is the product of a process of study which depends on teachers who are the mere creatures of avidya; it is thus no better than knowledge resting on texts teaching
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