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Updated: May 12, 2025
Nor can it be the soul, because this would imply the defect of what has to be proved being presupposed for the purposes of the proof; and because the existence of the soul is that which is formed by Nescience, just as shell-silver is. And if, finally, you should say that Brahman is the fictitiously forming agent, we have again arrived at a Brahman that is the abode of Nescience.
As the outcome of all this, we sum up our view as follows. And the purpose for which we enter on the consideration of the Vedanta-texts is utterly to destroy what is the root of that error, i.e. Nescience, and thus to obtain a firm knowledge of the oneness of Brahman, whose nature is mere intelligence free, pure, eternal.
I managed to occasionally inject into the sphacelated sheet a quasi-intelligent idea, to disguise its feculence with a breath of sentiment that by contrast seemed an air from Araby the blest; but the stupid ignorance and dollar-worshiping of the management soon dragged it back into the noisome depths of hopeless nescience and subter-brutish degradation. Poor old Houston!
But an analogous proceeding cannot be resorted to with regard to Brahman, which is unlimited in every sense. All meditations on Brahman tend to dispel Nescience, which stands in the way of the intuition of Brahman, and thus equally have for their result the attaining to Brahman; and hence there is option between them.
When, in the next place, you maintain that Brahman, whose nature is homogeneous intelligence, is invested and hidden by Nescience, you thereby assert the destruction of Brahman's essential nature. Causing light to disappear means either obstructing the origination of light, or else destroying light that exists. Consider the following point also.
All this shows that Scripture does not teach the existence of a 'principle called Nescience, not to be defined either as that which is or that which is not. Nor again is such Nescience to be assumed for the reason that otherwise the scriptural statements of the unity of all being would be unmeaning.
In the case of him who through 'hearing, 'reflection, and meditation, has dis-dispelled the entire imagination of plurality, the knowledge of the sense of Vedanta-texts puts an end to Nescience; and what we therefore require is a statement of the indispensable prerequisites of such 'hearing, 'reflection, and so on.
It, moreover, is impossible to ascribe to Brahman, whose nature is constituted by eternal free self-luminous intelligence, the consciousness of Nescience; for what constitutes its essence is consciousness of itself.
The soul is qualified in so far only as it is the abode of Nescience, and you therefore define nothing. Moreover, the theory of Nescience abiding within the individual soul is resorted to for the purpose of establishing a basis for the distinction of bondage and release, but it really is quite unable to effect this.
For if the text 'Thou art that, be viewed as teaching the unity of the individual soul and the highest Self, there is certainly no reason, founded on unmeaningness, to ascribe to Brahman, intimated by the word 'that' which is all-knowing, &c. Nescience, which is contradictory to Brahman's nature. Itihasa and Purana also do not anywhere teach that to Brahman there belongs Nescience.
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