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Updated: May 14, 2025
Hence, if this presentation contains anything of truth and of its rigidly accurate truth I think there can be no question the assertion that the Self-existing Substance is a Personal and Intelligent Being, and the assertion that this Substance is an Impersonal and Non-Intelligent Being, are alike assertions wholly destitute of any assignable degree of logical probability, I say assignable degree of logical probability, because that some degree of such probability may exist I do not undertake to deny.
The word 'that' refers to Brahman omniscient, &c., which had been introduced as the general topic of consideration in previous passages of the same section, such as 'It thought, may I be many'; the word 'thou, which stands in co- ordination to 'that, conveys the idea of Brahman in so far as having for its body the individual souls connected with non-intelligent matter.
Did Atheists admit the universe was contrived, designed, or adapted, they could not deny there must have been at least one Being to contrive, design, or adapt; but they see no analogy between a watch made with hands out of something, and a universe made without hands out of nothing Atheists are unable to perceive the least resemblance between the circumstance of one intelligent body re-forming or changing the condition of some other body, intelligent or non-intelligent, and the circumstance of a bodiless Being creating all bodies; of a partless Being acting upon all parts; and of a passionless Being generating and regulating all passions.
The term 'True' expresses Brahman in so far as possessing absolutely non-conditioned existence, and thus distinguishes it from non-intelligent matter, the abode of change, and the souls implicated in matter; for as both of these enter into different states of existence called by different names, they do not enjoy unconditioned being.
By 'that which is not' or 'which is untrue, we have to understand not what is undefinable, but that which has no true being, in so far as it is changeable and perishable. Of this character is all non-intelligent matter. This also appears from the instance adduced in sl 42: the jar is something perishable, but not a thing devoid of proof or to be sublated by true knowledge.
This being thus, it follows that the highest Brahman, although entering into the 'effected' condition, remains unchanged for its essential nature does not become different and we also understand what constitutes its 'effected' condition, viz. its abiding as the Self of non-intelligent and intelligent beings in their gross condition, distinguished by name and form.
And Scripture declares the difference. The text, 'He who meditates on name as Brahman, for him there is movement as he wishes as far as name extends, &c. Up. Those therefore who meditate on the Intelligent either as mixed with the Non-intelligent or by itself, viewing it either under the aspect of Brahman or as separated from Brahman, are not led on by the conducting deities.
But at the same time we learn from those same texts that the material cause of the world is none other than the Pradhana; with an all-knowing, unchanging superintending Lord they connect a Pradhana, ruled by him, which is non-intelligent and undergoes changes, and the two together only they represent as the cause of the world. Up. Up.
And so this argument also goes by the board, and we have left to us only the old materialistic conception of a non-intelligent, blind, life-force, or energy, derived from food, by a process of chemical combustion, and essentially no more mysterious than any other energy. This, therefore, is the conclusion to which we seem driven.
The meaning is 'when the works which are the cause of the distinction of things are destroyed, then all the distinctions of bodies, human or divine, hills, oceans, &c. all which are objects of fruition for the different individual souls pass away. Non-intelligent matter, as entering into various states of a non-permanent nature, is called 'non-being'; while souls, the nature of which consists in permanent knowledge, are called 'being. On this difference the next sloka insists . We say 'it is' of that thing which is of a permanently uniform nature, not connected with the idea of beginning, middle and end, and which hence never becomes the object of the notion of non-existence; while we say 'it is not' of non-intelligent matter which constantly passes over into different states, each later state being out of connexion with the earlier state.
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