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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
Brahman, is referred to, because the text promises only a reward limited by a certain locality for him who knows it. For, as the highest Brahman is omnipresent, it would be inappropriate to assume that he who knows it obtains a fruit limited by a certain locality. The objection that, if the lower Brahman were understood, there would be no room for the qualification, the highest person,' is not valid, because the vital principal (prâna) may be called higher' with reference to the body 1.
To this we make the following reply: What is here taught as the object of meditation is the highest Brahman only. - Why?-On account of its being spoken of as the object of sight. For the person to be meditated upon is, in a complementary passage, spoken of as the object of the act of seeing, 'He sees the person dwelling in the castle (of the body; purusham purisayam), higher than that one who is of the shape of the individual soul, and who is himself higher (than the senses and their objects).' Now, of an act of meditation an unreal thing also can be the object, as, for instance, the merely imaginary object of a wish. But of the act of sceing, real things only are the objects, as we know from experience; we therefore conclude, that in the passage last quoted, the highest (only real) Self which corresponds to the mental act of complete intuition ? is spoken of as the object of sight. This same highest Self we recognise in the passage under discussion as the object of meditation, in consequence of the term, the highest person.'-But-an objection will be raised—as the object of meditation we have the highest person, and as the object of sight the person higher than that one who is himself higher, &c.; how, then, are we to know that those two are identical ?—The two passages, we
· Pindah sthūlo dehah, prânah sûlrâimâ. Ânanda Giri.— The lower Brahman (hiranyagarbha on sâtrâtman) is the vital principle (prana) in all creatures.
? Samyagdarsana, i.e. complete seeing or intuition; the same term which in other places where it is not requisite to insist on the idea of 'seeing' in contradistinction from 'reflecting' or 'medilating '-is rendered by perfect knowledge.
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