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546
VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
nature. Why? For this very reason,' i.e. on account of Scripture itself. For this reason' refers back to the 'on account of Scripture' in the preceding Sûtra. For in the Khandogya, where the condition of the released and the non-released soul is described, the text says 'He who knows, let me smell this, he is the Self-with the mind seeing those pleasures he rejoices-the devas who are in the world of Brahman-whose desires are true, whose purposes are true-not remembering the body into which he was born' (Kh. Up. VIII, 12, 4-5; 1, 5; 12, 3). And elsewhere 'The seer does not see death' (Kh. Up. VII, 26, 2). Similarly we read in the Vagasaneyaka, in reply to the question Who is that Self?'-' He who is within the heart, surrounded by the Prânas, the person of light, consisting of knowledge' (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 7); 'By what should one know the knower?' (Bri. Up. IV, 5, 15); 'That person knows.' And 'for he is the knower, the hearer, the smeller, the taster, the perceiver, the thinker, the agent-he the person whose Self is knowledge'; and 'thus these sixteen parts of that seer' (Pra. Up. IV, 9; VI, 5). To the objection that if being a cognising subject constituted the essential nature of the Self it would follow that as the Self is omnipresent, there would be conscious. ness always and everywhere, the next Sûtra replies.
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20. On account of (its) passing out, moving and returning.
The Self is not omnipresent, but on the contrary, of atomic size (azu).-How is this known?-Since Scripture says that it passes out, goes and returns. Its passing out is described in the following passage 'by that light this Self departs, either through the eye, or through the skull, or through other parts of the body' (Bri. Up. IV, 4, 2). Its going in the following text 'all those who pass away out of this world go to the moon,' and its returning in the text 'from that world he comes again into this world, for action.' All this going, and so on, cannot be reconciled with the soul being present everywhere.
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