(the universe) confine not me, for I am like one who sitteth aloof uninterested in them all.’  The universe is therefore all illusion, holding a position between something and nothing.  It is real as an illusion, but unreal as being.  It is not true, because it has no essence; but not false, because its existence, even as illusion, is from God.  The Vedanta declares:  ’From the highest state of Brahma to the lowest condition of a straw, all things are delusion.’” Chunder Dutt, however, contradicts Bunsen’s assertion that the soul also is an illusion according to the Vedanta.  “The soul,” he says, “is not subject to birth or death, but is in its substance, from Brahma himself.”  The truth seems to be that the Vedanta regards the individuation of the soul as from Maya and illusive, but the substance of the soul is from Brahma, and destined to be absorbed into him.  As the body of man is to be resolved into its material elements, so the soul of man is to be resolved into Brahma.  This substance of the soul is neither born nor dies, nor is it a thing of which it can be said, “It was, is, or shall be.”  In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjun that he and the other princes of the world “never were not."[68]

The Vedantist philosopher, however, though he considers all souls as emanations from God, does not believe that all of them will return into God at death.  Those only who have obtained a knowledge of God are rewarded by absorption, but the rest continue to migrate from body to body so long as they remain unqualified for the same.  “The knower of God becomes God.”  This union with the Deity is the total loss of personal identity, and is the attainment of the highest bliss, in which are no grades and from which is no return.  This absorption comes not from good works or penances, for these confine the soul and do not liberate it.  “The confinement of fetters is the same whether the chain be of gold or iron.”  “The knowledge which realizes that everything is Brahm alone liberates the soul.  It annuls the effect both of our virtues and vices.  We traverse thereby both merit and demerit, the heart’s knot is broken, all doubts are split, and all our works perish.  Only by perfect abstraction, not merely from the senses, but also from the thinking intellect and by remaining in the knowing intellect, does the devotee become identified with Brahm.  He then remains as pure glass when the shadow has left it.  He lives destitute of passions and affections.  He lives sinless; for as water wets not the leaf of the lotus, so sin touches not him who knows God.”  He stands in no further need of virtue, for “of what use can be a winnowing fan when the sweet southern wind is blowing.”  His meditations are of this sort:  “I am Brahm, I am life.  I am everlasting, perfect, self-existent, undivided, joyful.”

If therefore, according to this system, knowledge alone unites the soul to God, the question comes, Of what use are acts of virtue, penances, sacrifices, worship?  The answer is, that they effect a happy transmigration from the lower forms of bodily life to higher ones.  They do not accomplish the great end, which is absorption and escape from Maya, but they prepare the way for it by causing one to be born in a higher condition.