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THE SYSTEMS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
word Brahma is defined. Brahma is that from which the origin, subsistence and dissolution of this world proceed. Shankara explains this definition by saying that omniscient omnipotent cause from which proceed the origin, subsistence and dissolution of this worldwhich world is differentiated by names and forms, contains many agents and enjoyers, is the abode of the fruits of actions, these fruits having their definite places, times and causes, and the nature of whose arrangement cannot even be conceived by mind-that cause is Brahma.
(b) Vedanta philosophy then rests on the fundamental conviction of the Vedantist that the Soul and Absolute Being or Brahma are one in their essence. In the old Upanishads this conviction rises slowly; but when once it was recognized that the Soul and Brahma were in their deepest essence one, the old mythological language of the Upanishads was given up; for instance the passage representing the soul as travelling on the road of the fathers (faqur) or the road of the gods (217). We read in the Vedanta aphorisms that this approach to the throne of Brahma has its proper meaning so long only as Brahma is still considered personal and endowed with various qualities but that when the knowledge of the true, the absolute and unqualified Brahman, the Absolute Being, has once risen in the mind these mythological concepts have to vanish. "How would it be possible,” Shankara says, “that he who is free from all attachment, unchangeable and unmoved, should approach another person, should move or go to another place? The highest oneness, if once truly conceived, excludes anything like an approach to a different object or to a distant place."
2. VS 1.2 and Shankara thereon.
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