Others, again (the followers of Śaṅkaráchárya), maintain that pure intelligence, exempt from all differences, the absolute, alone is really existent; and that this absolute whose essence is eternal, pure, intelligent, and free, the identity of which with the individuated spirit is learnt from the "reference to the same object" (predication), "That art thou," undergoes bondage and emancipation. The universe of differences (or conditions) such as that of subject and object, is all illusorily imagined by illusion as in that (one reality), as is attested by a number of texts: Existent only, fair sir, was this in the beginning, One only without a second, and so forth. Maintaining this, and acknowledging a suppression of this beginningless illusion by knowledge of the unity (and identity) of individuated spirits and the undifferenced absolute, in conformity with hundreds of texts from the Upanishads, such as He that knows spirit passes beyond sorrow; rejecting also any real plurality of things, in conformity with the text condemnatory of duality, viz., Death after death he undergoes who looks upon this as manifold; and thinking themselves very wise, the Śáṅkaras will not tolerate this division (viz., the distribution of things into soul, not-soul, and Lord). To all this the following counterposition is laid down:--This might be all well enough if there were any proof of such illusion. But there is no such ignorance (or illusion), an unbeginning entity, suppressible by knowledge, testified in the perceptions, I am ignorant, I know not myself and other things. Thus it has been said (to explain the views of the Śáṅkara)-- "Entitative from everlasting, which is dissolved by knowledge, "Such is illusion. This definition the wise enunciate." This perception (they would further contend) is not conversant about the absence of knowledge. For who can maintain this, and to whom? One who leans on the arm of Prabhákara, or one to whom Kumárila-bhaṭṭa gives his hand? Not the former, for in the words-- "By means of its own and of another's form, eternal in the existent and non-existent, "Thing is recognised something by some at certain times. "Non-entity is but another entity by some kind of relation. Non-entity is but another entity, naught else, for naught else is observed."