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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
Brahman) has non-sentient and sentient beings for its body, and hence utterances such as 'This which is Being only was in the beginning one only' are unobjectionable in every way. All change and all imperfection belongs only to the beings constituting Brahman's body, and Brahman itself is thus proved to be free from all imperfection, a treasure as it were of all imaginable holy qualites. This point will be further elucidated under II, 1, 22.—The Khåndogya-text then further teaches that all sentient and non-sentient beings have their Self in Brahman 'in that all this has its Self'; and further inculcates this truth in 'Thou art that.'
Texts met with in other sections also teach this same non-difference of the general cause and its effect : 'All this indeed is Brahman' (Kh. Up. III, 14, 1); When the Self has been seen, heard, perceived, and known, then all this is known' (Bri. Up. IV, 5, 6); 'That Self is all this' (Bri. Up. II, 4, 6); Brahman indeed is all this' (Mai. Up. IV, 6); “The Self only is all this' (Kh. Up. VII, 25, 2). Other texts, too, negative difference: 'Everything abandons him who looks for anything elsewhere than in the Self' (Bri. Up. II, 4, 6); 'There is not any plurality here' (Bri. Up. IV, 4, 19); 'From death to death goes he who sees here any plurality' (Bri. Up. IV, 4, 19). And in the same spirit the passage. For where there is duality as it were, one sees the other ; but when for him the Self has become all, whereby then should he see and whom?' (Bri. Up. II, 4, 13)—in setting forth that the view of duality belongs to him who does not know and the view of non-duality to him who knows-intimates that non-difference only is real.
It is in this way that we prove, by means of the texts beginning with arambhana, that the world is non-different from the universal cause, i.e. the highest Brahman. Brahman only, having the aggregate of sentient and non-sentient beings for its body and hence for its modes (prakara), is denoted by all words whatsoever. The body of this Brahman is sometimes constituted by sentient and nonsentient beings in their subtle state, when-just owing to that subtle state-they are incapable of being (conceived
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