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II ADHYAYA, 3 PÂDA, 18.
543
which declare the origination of the soul, really mean only to state that the souls are by turns associated with or dissociated from bodies-the effect of which is that their intelligence is either contracted or expanded. Texts again which deny the origination of the soul and affirm its permanency (He is not born and does not die,' &c.) mean to say that the soul does not, like the non-sentient element of creation, undergo changes of essential nature. And finally there are texts the purport of which it is to declare the absence of change of essential nature as well as of alternate expansion and contraction of intelligence-cp. 'That is the great unborn Self, undecaying, undying, immortal, Brahman' (Bri. Up. XI, 4, 25); 'the eternal thinker,' &c. (Ka. Up. II, 5, 13); such texts have for their subject the highest Lord. All this also explains how Brahman, which is at all times differentiated by the sentient and non-sentient beings that constitute its body, can be said to be one only previous to creation; the statement is possible because at that time the differentiation of names and forms did not exist. That that which makes the difference between plurality and unity is the presence or absence of differentiation through names and forms, is distinctly declared in the text, 'Now all this was undifferentiated. It became differentiated by form and name' (Bri. Up. I, 4, 7).-Those also who hold that the individual soul is due to Nescience; and those who hold it to be due to a real limiting adjunct (upâdhi); and those who hold that Brahman, whose essential nature. is mere Being, assumes by itself the threefold form of enjoying subjects, objects of enjoyment, and supreme Ruler; can all of them explain the unity which Scripture predicates of Brahman in the pralaya state, only on the basis of the absence of differentiation by names and forms; for according to them also (there is no absolute unity at any time, but) either the potentiality of Nescience, or the potentiality of the limiting adjunct, or the potentialities of enjoying subjects, objects of enjoyment, and supreme Ruler persist in the pralaya condition also. And, moreover, it is proved by the two Sûtras, II, 1, 33; 35, that the distinction of the several individual souls and the stream of their works are eternal.
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