else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else, that is the Infinite’ (Ch.  Up.  VII, 24, 1); ’But when the Self only has become all this, how should he see another?’ (B/ri/.  Up.  II, 4, 13.) In this manner the Vedanta-texts declare that for him who has reached the state of truth and reality the whole apparent world does not exist.  The Bhagavadgita also (’The Lord is not the cause of actions, or of the capacity of performing actions, or of the connexion of action and fruit; all that proceeds according to its own nature.  The Lord receives no one’s sin or merit.  Knowledge is enveloped by Ignorance; hence all creatures are deluded;’ Bha.  Gi.  V, 14; 15) declares that in reality the relation of Ruler and ruled does not exist.  That, on the other hand, all those distinctions are valid, as far as the phenomenal world is concerned, Scripture as well as the Bhagavadgita states; compare B/ri/.  Up.  IV, 4, 22, ’He is the Lord of all, the king of all things, the protector of all things; he is a bank and boundary, so that these worlds may not be confounded;’ and Bha.  Gi.  XVIII, 61, ’The Lord, O Arjuna, is seated in the region of the heart of all beings, turning round all beings, (as though) mounted on a machine, by his delusion.’  The Sutrakara also asserts the non-difference of cause and effect only with regard to the state of Reality; while he had, in the preceding Sutra, where he looked to the phenomenal world, compared Brahman to the ocean, &c., that comparison resting on the assumption of the world of effects not yet having been refuted (i.e. seen to be unreal).—­The view of Brahman as undergoing modifications will, moreover, be of use in the devout meditations on the qualified (sagu/n/a) Brahman.

15.  And because only on the existence (of the cause) (the effect) is observed.

For the following reason also the effect is non-different from the cause, because only when the cause exists the effect is observed to exist, not when it does not exist.  For instance, only when the clay exists the jar is observed to exist, and the cloth only when the threads exist.  That it is not a general rule that when one thing exists another is also observed to exist, appears, for instance, from the fact, that a horse which is other (different) from a cow is not observed to exist only when a cow exists.  Nor is the jar observed to exist only when the potter exists; for in that case non-difference does not exist, although the relation between the two is that of an operative cause and its effect[289].—­But—­it may be objected—­even in the case of things other (i.e. non-identical) we find that the observation of one thing regularly depends on the existence of another; smoke, for instance, is observed only when fire exists.—­We reply that this is untrue, because sometimes smoke is observed even after the fire has been extinguished; as, for instance, in the case of smoke being kept by herdsmen in jars.—­Well, then—­the objector will say—­let us add to smoke a certain qualification enabling us