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IV ADHYAYA, 4 PÂDA, 7.
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to exclude all the qualities depending on avidya--change, pleasure, pain, and so on.-For these reasons Audulomi holds that the released soul manifests itself as mere intelligence.—Next the teacher Bådarayana determines the question by propounding his own view.
7. Thus also, on account of existence of the former qualities (as proved) by suggestion, Bâdarayana holds absence of contradiction.
The teacher Bådarayana is of opinion that even thus, i. e. although the text declares the soul to have mere intelligence for its essential nature, all the same the previously stated attributes, viz. freedom from all sin, and so on, are not to be excluded. For the authority of a definite statement in the Upanishads proves them to exist (“That Self which is free from sin,' &c.); and of authorities of equal strength one cannot refute the other. Nor must you say that the case is one of essential contradiction, and that hence we necessarily must conclude that freedom from sin, and so on (do not belong to the true nature of the soul, but) are the mere figments of Nescience (from which the released soul is free). For as there is equal authority for both sides, why should the contrary view not be held ? (viz. that the soul is essentially free from sin, &c., and that the kaitanya is non-essential.) For the principle is that where two statements rest on equal authority, that only which suffers from an intrinsic impossibility is to be interpreted in a different way (i. e. different from what it means on the face of it), so as not to conflict with the other. But while admitting this we deny that the text which describes the Self as a mass of mere knowledge implies that the nature of the Self comprises nothing whatever but knowledge. -But what then is the purport of that text? The meaning is clear, we reply; the text teaches that the entire Self, different from all that is non-sentient, is self-illumined, i.e. not even a small part of it depends for its illumination on something else. The fact, vouched for in this text, of the soul in its entirety being a mere mass of knowledge in no way conflicts with the fact, vouched for by other texts, of its
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