The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1
Religion
The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1
Vedanta
In reply to this, we maintain that the passage aims only at giving
information about the highest Lord, not at making additional statements
about the embodied soul.--Why?--On account of the highest Lord being
designated as different from the embodied soul, in the states of deep
sleep and of departing from the body. His difference from the embodied
soul in the state of deep sleep is declared in the following passage,
'This person embraced by the intelligent (praj/n/a) Self knows nothing
that is without, nothing that is within.' Here the term, 'the person,'
must mean the embodied soul; for of him it is possible to deny that he
knows, because he, as being the knower, may know what is within and
without. The 'intelligent Self,' on the other hand, is the highest Lord,
because he is never dissociated from intelligence, i.e.--in his
case--all-embracing knowledge.--Similarly, the passage treating of
departure, i.e. death ('this bodily Self mounted by the intelligent Self
moves along groaning'), refers to the highest Lord as different from the
individual Self. There also we have to understand by the 'embodied one'
the individual soul which is the Lord of the body, while the
'intelligent one' is again the Lord. We thus understand that 'on account
of his being designated as something different, in the states of deep
sleep and departure,' the highest Lord forms the subject of the
passage.--With reference to the purvapakshin's assertion that the entire
chapter refers to the embodied Self, because indicatory marks of the
latter are found in its beginning, middle, and end, we remark that in
the first place the introductory passage ('He among the pra/n/as who
consists of cognition') does not aim at setting forth the character of
the transmigrating Self, but rather, while merely referring to the
nature of the transmigrating Self as something already known, aims at
declaring its identity with the highest Brahman; for it is manifest that
the immediately subsequent passage, 'as if thinking, as if moving'[227],
aims at discarding the attributes of the transmigrating Self. The
concluding passage again is analogous to the initial one; for the words,
'And that great unborn Self is he who,' &c., mean: We have shown that
that same cognitional Self, which is observed among the pra/n/as, is the
great unborn Self, i.e. the highest Lord--He, again, who imagines that
the passages intervening (between the two quoted) aim at setting forth
the nature of the transmigrating Self by representing it in the waking
state, and so on, is like a man who setting out towards the east, wants
to set out at the same time towards the west. For in representing the
states of waking, and so on, the passage does not aim at describing the
soul as subject to different states or transmigration, but rather as
free from all particular conditions and transmigration. This is evident
from the circumstance that on Janaka's question, which is repeated in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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