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Updated: June 5, 2025
Because, we reply, the whole aggregate of sentient and non-sentient beings constitutes the body of the Supreme Person, omniscient, omnipotent, and so on. Moreover, as your six substances, soul, and so on, are not one substance and one paryaya, their being one substance, and so on, cannot be used to prove their being one and also not one, and so on.
For the word 'this' must, on account of its sense, the general topic of the section and so on, be taken in a non-limited meaning, and hence denotes the entire world, as presented by Perception and the other means of knowledge, with all its sentient and non-sentient beings. That the term 'work' does not here denote good and evil actions, appears from the following consideration of the context.
Moreover, the daharakasa-section ascribes to the small ether other attributes which cannot belong to the individual Self even 'when its true nature has manifested itself. The small ether is there called a bank and support of all worlds; and one of its names,'satyam, is explained to imply that it governs all sentient and non-sentient beings.
Just as ether, although connecting itself separately with jars, pots, and so on, which undergo increase and decrease, is not itself touched by these imperfections; and just as the sun, although seen in sheets of water of unequal extent, is not touched by their increase and decrease; thus the highest Self, although abiding within variously-shaped beings, whether non-sentient like earth or sentient, remains untouched by their various imperfections increase, decrease, and so on remains one although abiding in all of them, and ever keeps the treasure of its blessed qualities unsullied by an atom even of impurity.
In this sense, then, all sentient and non-sentient beings together constitute the body of the Supreme Person, for they are completely controlled and supported by him for his own ends, and are absolutely subordinate to him. Ka. Up. This point will be fully established in subsequent adhikaranas also. And on account of the objections to his view.
That Scripture teaches the operative and the material causes to be separate, is not true; it rather teaches the unity of the two. Up. Prakriti, we reply, in such passages denotes Brahman in its causal phase when names and forms are not yet distinguished. Up. Up. Up. Up. The highest Brahman, having the whole aggregate of non-sentient and sentient beings for its body, ever is the Self of all.
It is not, on the other hand, possible that what the word 'this' denotes, i.e. the whole world of intelligent and non-intelligent creatures, should be one with the personal soul as long as it remains what it is, whether connected with or disassociated from non-sentient matter.
It thus appears that Brahman is none other than the well- known elemental ether. This prima facie view is set aside by the Sutra. The word 'ether' in the text under discussion denotes the highest Self with its previously established characteristics which is something quite different from the non-sentient elemental ether.
In the same way as it is impossible that the different non-sentient things such as stones, iron, wood, herbs, &c., which are of an extremely low constitution and subject to constant change, should be one in nature with Brahman, which is faultless, changeless, fundamentally antagonistic to all that is evil, &c. &c.; so it is also impossible that the individual soul, which is liable to endless suffering, and a mere wretched glowworm as it were, should be one with Brahman who, as we know from the texts, comprises within himself the treasure of all auspicious qualities, &c. &c.
We have shown that there are three entities of distinct nature, viz. objects of fruition, enjoying subjects, and a Ruler; that origination and so on which are characteristic of the objects do not belong to the subjects, and that the latter are eternal; that the characteristic qualities of the objects and likewise those of the subjects viz. liability to pain and suffering do not belong to the Ruler; that the latter is eternal, free from all imperfections, omniscient, immediately realising all his purposes, the Lord of the lords of the organs, the highest Lord of all; and that sentient and non-sentient beings in all their states constitute the body of the Lord while he constitutes their Self.
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