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THE SYSTEMS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
from the human soul, that it always is there though covered by darkness or nescience, and that as soon as that darkness or that nescience is removed the soul is once more and in its own right what it always has been. It is—it does not become-Brahma.
(f) Last time I gave you the dialogue from the Chhandogya Upanishad between a young student Shwetaketu and his father. In that dialogue we have only a popular and not yet systematized view of the Vedanta. There are several passages indeed which seem to speak of the union and absorption of the soul rather than of its recovery of its true nature. Such passages are always explained away by the stricter Vedanta philosophers and they have no great difficulty in doing this. For there remains always the explanation that the qualified personal al in the masculine gender is
ant and not yet the highest Brahma which is free from all qualities. That modified personal al exists for all practical purposes, till its unreality has been discovered through the discovery of the highest Brahma; and as in one sense the modified masculine El is the highest Brahma as soon as we know it and shares all its true reality with the highest Brahma as soon as we know it, many things may in a less strict sense be predicated of Him, the modified ter, which in truth apply to it only, the highest Brahma. This amphiboly runs through the whole of the Vedanta Sutras and a considerable portion of the Sutras is taken up with the task of showing that when the qualified TET seems to be meant it is really the unqualified Brahma that ought to be understood. Again, there are ever so many passages in the Upanishads which seem to refer to the individual soul but which, if properly explained, must be considered as referring to the highest 37THFT that gives support and
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