18. But Jaimini thinks that it has another purport, on account of the question and answer; and thus some also.
The 'but' is meant to preclude the idea that the mention made of the individual soul enables us to understand the whole section as concerned with that soul.—The teacher Jaimini is of opinion that the mention made of the individual soul has another meaning, i.e. aims at conveying the idea of what is different from the individual soul, i.e. the nature of the highest Brahman. 'On account of question and answer.' According to the story told in the Upanishad, Ajâtasatru leads Bâlâki to where a sleeping man is resting, and convinces him that the soul is different from breath, by addressing the sleeping person, in whom breath only is awake, with names belonging to prâna [FOOTNOTE 383:1] without the sleeper being awaked thereby, and after that rousing him by a push of his staff. Then, with a view to teaching Bâlâki the difference of Brahman from the individual soul, he asks him the following questions: 'Where, O Bâlâki, did this person here sleep? Where was he? Whence did he thus come back?' To these questions he thereupon himself replies, 'When sleeping he sees no dream, then he becomes one in that prâna alone.—From that Self the organs proceed each towards its place, from the organs the gods, from the gods the worlds.' Now this reply, no less than the questions, clearly refers to the highest Self as something different from the individual Self. For that entering into which the soul, in the state of deep sleep, attains its true nature and enjoys complete serenity, being free from the disturbing experiences of pleasure and pain that accompany the states of waking and of dream; and that from which it again returns to the fruition of pleasure and pain; that is nothing else but the highest Self. For, as other scriptural texts testify ('Then he becomes united with the True,' Ch. Up. VI, 8, 1; 'Embraced by the intelligent Self he knows nothing that is without, nothing that is within,' Bri, Up. IV, 3, 21), the abode of deep sleep is the intelligent Self which is different from the individual Self, i.e. the highest Self. We thus conclude that the reference, in question and answer, to the individual soul subserves the end of instruction being given about what is different from that soul, i.e. the highest Self. We hence also reject the Pûrvapakshin's contention that question and answer refer to the individual soul, that the veins called hita are the abode of deep sleep, and that the well-known clause as to the prâna must be taken to mean that the aggregate of the organs becomes one in the individual soul called prâna. For the veins are the abode, not of deep sleep, but of dream, and, as we have shown above, Brahman only is the abode of deep sleep; and the text declares that the individual soul, together with all its ministering organs, becomes one with, and again proceeds from, Brahman only—which the text designates as Prâna.—Moreover some, viz. the Vâjasaneyins in this same colloquy of Bâlâki and Ajâtasatru as recorded in their text, clearly distinguish from the vijñâna-maya, i.e. the individual soul in the state of deep sleep, the highest Self which then is the abode of the individual soul. 'Where was then the person, consisting of intelligence, and from whence did he thus come back?—When he was thus asleep, then the intelligent person, having through the intelligence of the senses absorbed within himself all intelligence, lies in the ether that is within the heart.' Now the word 'ether' is known to denote the highest Self; cf. the text 'there is within that the small ether'(Ch. Up. VIII, 1, 1). This shows us that the individual soul is mentioned in the Vâjasaneyin passage to the end of setting forth what is different from it, viz. the prâjña Self, i.e. the highest Brahman. The general conclusion therefore is that the Kaushîtaki-text under discussion proposes as the object of knowledge something that is different from the individual soul, viz. the highest Brahman which is the cause of the whole world, and that hence the Vedânta-texts nowhere intimate that general causality belongs either to the individual soul or to the Pradhâna under the soul's guidance. Here terminates the adhikarana of 'denotation of the world.'
[FOOTNOTE 383:1. The names with which the king addresses the sleeper are Great one, clad in white raiment, Soma, king. The Sru. Pra. comments as follows: Great one; because according to Sruti Prâna is the oldest and best. Clad in white raiment; because Sruti says that water is the raiment of Prâna; and elsewhere, that what is white belongs to water. Soma; because scripture says 'of this prâna water is the body, light the form, viz. yonder moon.' King; for Sruti says 'Prâna indeed is the ruler.']
19. On account of the connected meaning of the sentences.
In spite of the conclusion arrived at there may remain a suspicion that here and there in the Upanishads texts are to be met with which aim at setting forth the soul as maintained in Kapila's system, and that hence there is no room for a being different from the individual soul and called Lord. This suspicion the Sûtra undertakes to remove, in connexion with the Maitreyi-brâhmana, in the Brihadaranyaka. There we read 'Verily, a husband is dear, not for the love of the husband, but for the love of the Self a husband is dear, and so on. Everything is dear, not for the love of everything, but for the love of the Self everything is dear. The Self should be seen, should be heard, should be reflected on, should be meditated upon. When the Self has been seen, heard, reflected upon, meditated upon, then all this is known' (Bri. Up. IV, 5, 6).—Here the doubt arises whether the Self enjoined in this passage as the object of seeing, &c., be the soul as held by the Sânkhyas, or the Supreme Lord, all-knowing, capable of realising all his purposes, and so on. The Pûrvapakshin upholds the former alternative. For, he says, the beginning no less than the middle and the concluding part of the section conveys the idea of the individual soul only. In the beginning the individual soul only is meant, as appears from the connexion of the Self with husband, wife, children, wealth, cattle, and so on. This is confirmed by the middle part of the section where the Self is said to be connected with origination and destruction, 'a mass of knowledge, he having risen from these elements vanishes again into them. When he has departed there is no more consciousness.' And in the end we have 'whereby should he know the knower'; where we again recognise the knowing subject, i.e. the individual soul, not the Lord. We thus conclude that the whole text is meant to set forth the soul as held by the Sânkhyas.—But in the beginning there is a clause, viz. 'There is no hope of immortality by wealth,' which shows that the whole section is meant to instruct us as to the means of immortality; how then can it be meant to set forth the individual soul only?—You state the very reason proving that the text is concerned with the individual soul only! For according to the Sânkhya- system immortality is obtained through the cognition of the true nature of the soul viewed as free from all erroneous imputation to itself of the attributes of non-sentient matter; and the text therefore makes it its task to set forth, for the purpose of immortality, the essential nature of the soul free from all connexion with Prakriti, 'the Self should be heard,' and so on. And as the souls dissociated from Prakriti are all of a uniform nature, all souls are known through the knowledge of the soul free from Prakriti, and the text therefore rightly says that through the Self being known everything is known. And as the essential nature of the Self is of one and the same kind, viz. knowledge or intelligence, in all beings from gods down to plants, the text rightly asserts the unity of the Self 'that Self is all this'; and denies all otherness from the Self, on the ground of the characteristic attributes of gods and so on really being of the nature of the Not-self, 'he is abandoned by everything,' &c. The clause, 'For where there is duality as it were,' which denies plurality, intimates that the plurality introduced into the homogeneous Self by the different forms—such as of gods, and so on—assumed by Prakriti, is false. And there is also no objection to the teaching that 'the Rig-veda and so on are breathed forth from that great being (i.e. Prakriti); for the origination of the world is caused by the soul in its quality as ruler of Prakriti.—It thus being ascertained that the whole Maitreyî-brâhmana is concerned with the soul in the Sânkhya sense, we, according to the principle of the unity of purport of all Vedânta-texts, conclude that they all treat of the Sânkhya soul only, and that hence the cause of the world is to be found not in a so-called Lord but in Prakriti ruled and guided by the soul.
This primâ facie view is set aside by the Sûtra. The whole text refers to the Supreme Lord only; for on this supposition only a satisfactory connexion of the parts of the text can be made out. On being told by Yâjñavalkya that there is no hope of immortality through wealth, Maitreyî expresses her slight regard for wealth and all such things as do not help to immortality, and asks to be instructed as to the means of immortality only ('What should I do with that by which I do not become immortal? What my lord knows tell that clearly to me'). Now the Self which Yâjñavalkya, responding to her requests, points out to her as the proper object of knowledge, can be none other than the highest Self; for other scriptural texts clearly teach that the only means of reaching immortality is to know the Supreme Person—'Having known him thus man passes beyond death'; 'Knowing him thus he becomes immortal here, there is no other path to go' (Svet. Up. III, 8). The knowledge of the true nature of the individual soul which obtains immortality, and is a mere manifestation of the power of the Supreme Person, must be held to be useful towards the cognition of the Supreme Person who brings about Release, but is not in itself instrumental towards such Release; the being the knowledge of which the text declares to be the means of immortality is therefore the highest Self only. Again, the causal power with regard to the entire world which is expressed in the passage, 'from that great Being there were breathed forth the Rig veda,' &c., cannot possibly belong to the mere individual soul which in its state of bondage is under the influence of karman and in the state of release has nothing to do with the world; it can in fact belong to the Supreme Person only. Again, what the text says as to everything being known by the knowledge of one thing ('By the seeing indeed of the Self,' &c.) is possible only in the case of a Supreme Self which constitutes the Self of all. What the Pûrvapakshin said as to everything being known through the cognition of the one individual soul, since all individual souls are of the same type—this also cannot be upheld; for as long as there is a knowledge of the soul only and not also of the world of non-sentient things, there is no knowledge of everything. And when the text enumerates different things ('this Brahman class, this Kshatra class,' &c.), and then concludes 'all this is that Self'—where the 'this' denotes the entire Universe of animate and inanimate beings as known through Perception, Inference, and so on—universal unity such as declared here is possible only through a highest Self which 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. In the same spirit the passage, 'All things abandon him who views all things elsewhere than in the Self,' finds fault with him who views anything apart from the universal Self. The qualities also which in the earlier Maitreyî-brâhmana (II, 4, 12) are predicated of the being under discussion, viz. greatness, endlessness, unlimitedness, cannot belong to any one else but the highest Self. That Self therefore is the topic of the Brâhmana.
We further demur to our antagonist's maintaining that the entire Brâhmana treats of the individual soul because that soul is at the outset represented as the object of enquiry, this being inferred from its connexion with husband, wife, wealth, &c. For if the clause 'for the love (literally, _for the _desire) of the Self refers to the individual Self, we cannot help connecting (as, in fact, we must do in any case) that Self with the Self referred to in the subsequent clause, 'the Self indeed is to be seen,' &c.; the connexion having to be conceived in that way that the information given in the former clause somehow subserves the cognition of the Self enjoined in the latter clause. 'For the desire of the Self would then mean 'for the attainment of the objects desired by the Self.' But if it is first said that husband, wife, &c., are dear because they fulfil the wishes of the individual Self, it could hardly be said further on that the nature of that Self must be enquired into; for what, in the circumstances of the case, naturally is to be enquired into and searched for are the dear objects but not the true nature of him to whom those objects are dear, apart from the objects themselves. It would certainly be somewhat senseless to declare that since husband, wife, &c., are dear because they fulfil the desires of the individual soul, therefore, setting aside those dear objects, we must enquire into the true nature of that soul apart from all the objects of its desire. On the contrary, it having been declared that husband, wife, &c., are dear not on account of husband, wife, &c., but on account of the Self, they should not be dropped, but included in the further investigation, just because they subserve the Self. And should our opponent (in order to avoid the difficulty of establishing a satisfactory connexion between the different clauses) maintain that the clause, 'but everything is dear for the love of the Self,' is not connected with the following clause, 'the Self is to be seen,' &c., we point out that this would break the whole connexion of the Brahmâna. And if we allowed such a break, we should then be unable to point out what is the use of the earlier part of the Brahmâna. We must therefore attempt to explain the connexion in such a way as to make it clear why all search for dear objects—husband, wife, children, wealth, &c.—should be abandoned and the Self only should be searched for. This explanation is as follows. After having stated that wealth, and so on, are no means to obtain immortality which consists in permanent absolute bliss, the text declares that the pleasant experiences which we derive from wealth, husband, wife, &c.. and which are not of a permanent nature and always alloyed with a great deal of pain, are caused not by wealth, husband, wife, &c., themselves, but rather by the highest Self whose nature is absolute bliss. He therefore who being himself of the nature of perfect bliss causes other beings and things also to be the abodes of partial bliss, he—the highest Self—is to be constituted the object of knowledge. The clauses, 'not for the wish of the husband a husband is dear,' &c., therefore must be understood as follows—a husband, a wife, a son, &c., are not dear to us in consequence of a wish or purpose on their part, 'may I, for my own end or advantage be dear to him,' but they are dear to us for the wish of the Self, i.e. to the end that there may be accomplished the desire of the highest Self—which desire aims at the devotee obtaining what is dear to him. For the highest Self pleased with the works of his devotees imparts to different things such dearness, i.e. joy-giving quality as corresponds to those works, that 'dearness' being bound in each case to a definite place, time, nature and degree. This is in accordance with the scriptural text, 'For he alone bestows bliss' (Taitt. Up. II, 7). Things are not dear, or the contrary, to us by themselves, but only in so far as the highest Self makes them such. Compare the text, 'The same thing which erst gave us delight later on becomes the source of grief; and what was the cause of wrath afterwards tends to peace. Hence there is nothing that in itself is of the nature either of pleasure or of pain.'
But, another view of the meaning of the text is proposed, even if the Self in the clause 'for the desire of the Self' were accepted as denoting the individual Self, yet the clause 'the Self must be seen' would refer to the highest Self only. For in that case also the sense would be as follows—because the possession of husband, wife, and other so-called dear things is aimed at by a person to whom they are dear, not with a view of bringing about what is desired by them (viz. husband, wife, &c.), but rather to the end of bringing about what is desired by himself; therefore that being which is, to the individual soul, absolutely and unlimitedly dear, viz. the highest Self, must be constituted the sole object of cognition, not such objects as husband, wife, wealth, &c., the nature of which depends on various external circumstances and the possession of which gives rise either to limited pleasure alloyed with pain or to mere pain.—But against this we remark that as, in the section under discussion, the words designating the individual Self denote the highest Self also, [FOOTNOTE 391:1], the term 'Self' in both clauses, 'For the desire of the Self' and 'The Self is to be seen,' really refers to one and the same being (viz. the highest Self), and the interpretation thus agrees with the one given above.—In order to prove the tenet that words denoting the individual soul at the same time denote the highest Self, by means of arguments made use of by other teachers also, the Sûtrakâra sets forth the two following Sûtras.
20. (It is) a mark indicating that the promissory statement is proved; thus Âsmarathya thinks.
According to the teacher Âsmarathya the circumstance that terms denoting the individual soul are used to denote Brahman is a mark enabling us to infer that the promissory declaration according to which through the knowledge of one thing everything is known is well established. If the individual soul were not identical with Brahman in so far as it is the effect of Brahman, then the knowledge of the soul—being something distinct from Brahman—would not follow from the knowledge of the highest Self. There are the texts declaring the oneness of Brahman previous to creation, such as 'the Self only was this in the beginning' (Ait. Âr. II, 4, 1, 1), and on the other hand those texts which declare that the souls spring from and again are merged in Brahman; such as 'As from a blazing fire sparks being like unto fire fly forth a thousandfold, thus are various beings brought forth from the Imperishable, and return thither also' (Mu. Up. II, 1, 1). These two sets of texts together make us apprehend that the souls are one with Brahman in so far as they are its effects. On this ground a word denoting the individual soul denotes the highest Self as well.