We therefore advance the following final refutation of the opponent’s objection.—The declaration of the difference of the embodied Self and the internal ruler has its reason in the limiting adjunct, consisting of the organs of action, presented by Nescience, and is not absolutely true. For the Self within is one only; two internal Selfs are not possible. But owing to its limiting adjunct the one Self is practically treated as if it were two; just as we make a distinction between the ether of the jar and the universal ether. Hence there is room for those scriptural passages which set forth the distinction of knower and object of knowledge, for perception and the other means of proof, for the intuitive knowledge of the apparent world, and for that part of Scripture which contains injunctions and prohibitions. In accordance with this, the scriptural passage, ’Where there is duality, as it were, there one sees another,’ declares that the whole practical world exists only in the sphere of Nescience; while the subsequent passage, ’But when the Self only is all this, how should he see another?’ declares that the practical world vanishes in the sphere of true knowledge.
21. That which possesses the attributes of invisibility and so on (is Brahman), on account of the declaration of attributes.
Scripture says, ’The higher knowledge is this by which the Indestructible is apprehended. That which cannot be seen nor seized, which is without origin and qualities, without eyes and ears, without hands and feet, the eternal, all-pervading, omnipresent, infinitesimal, that which is imperishable, that it is which the wise regard as the source of all beings’ (Mu. Up. I, 1, 5; 6).—Here the doubt arises whether the source of all beings which is spoken of as characterised by invisibility, &c. be the pradhana or the embodied soul, or the highest Lord.


