BOOK I.—­BRAHMAN, THE SUM AND SUBSTANCE OF EVERYTHING

The ego and the non-ego differ in themselves and in their attributes.  It will be found, however, that the non-ego depends on the ego, and is its product.  Individual souls, on the other hand, representing so many egos, are themselves but manifestations of the supreme universal soul—­Brahman; that is, Brahman and the Atman [the individual soul] are identical, the latter being the product of the self-revealing of the former. [With this one may compare the “ontological ideas” of Plato, the “absolute substance” of Spinoza, and the “absolute idea” of Hegel; all of them standing for the One only existing Being which manifests itself to thought and to sense in various forms.]

“What, then,” asks the Vedantist, “is Brahman”?

The word comes from brih, “to be great.”  Hence Brahman is something, or someone, transcendently great.  The word may be defined as connoting that whence all things proceed.  This implies absolute, unoriginated origin, absolute subsistence, and also reabsorption, for as all things go forth from Brahman, so shall all things return to that whence they started forth.

The Scriptures [Vedas] lay most stress on Brahman as the source and origin of all things.  What qualities there are in the world inhere in Brahman, or they could not be in the world which has sprung from him.  There could be no intelligent souls without a previously existing intelligent Brahman.  That Brahman, the Supreme Being, is all-knowing is proved from the fact that the Veda itself, the source and centre of what is knowable, proceeds from Him as its one, only author.

This Brahman, as set forth in the Vedanta texts as the cause of the world, is therefore intelligent, and by no means to be identified with the non-intelligent Pradhana (Prakriti) which the Sankhya [atheistic] philosophy makes to be the world’s cause.  What looks like a separate, conscious, individual soul or mind is really but the outworking of Brahman, the highest and first of beings.

The difference is apparent, but not real.  So teaches Sankara; but his rival commentator, Ramanuga, endeavours to show that Brahman, the supreme self of the universe, is absolutely free from the effects of conduct.  But the individual selves, which we call souls, are not, for it is the effect of conduct in a previous state of existence [Karma] that decides the character and form of the new life to be lived, or whether there is to be a new life lived at all, since conduct sufficiently good entitles to absorption in the one all—­Brahman.

It may be objected that Brahman cannot be the creator of this actual world, for there is in it suffering, injustice, and cruelty.  He could not be the author of these.  To which the commentator Sankara answers:  “Brahman is himself, with all his greatness, subject to the operation of the great moral laws according to which virtue is rewarded and vice punished.  All men are free, and it is their self-chosen conduct that determines their destiny.  This is a law that pervades all existence, conditions existence, and without which there could be no existence.”