Up.  II, 4, 6); ’There is no other seer but he’ (B/ri/.  Up.  III, 7, 23); ’There is nothing that sees but it’ (B/ri/.  Up.  III, 8, 11).—­It is likewise confirmed by Sm/ri/ti; compare, for instance, ‘Vasudeva is all this’ (Bha.  Gi.  VII, 19); ‘Know me, O Bharata, to be the soul in all bodies’ (Bha.  Gi.  XIII, 2); ‘He who sees the highest Lord abiding alike within all creatures’ (Bha.  Gi.  XIII, 27).—­The same conclusion is supported by those passages which deny all difference; compare, for instance, ’If he thinks, that is one and I another; he does not know’ (B/ri/.  Up.  I, 4, 10); ’From death to death he goes who sees here any diversity’ (B/ri/.  Up.  IV, 4, 19).  And, again, by those passages which negative all change on the part of the Self; compare, for instance, ’This great unborn Self, undecaying, undying, immortal, fearless is indeed Brahman’ (B/ri/.  Up.  IV, 24).—­Moreover, if the doctrine of general identity were not true, those who are desirous of release could not be in the possession of irrefutable knowledge, and there would be no possibility of any matter being well settled; while yet the knowledge of which the Self is the object is declared to be irrefutable and to satisfy all desire, and Scripture speaks of those, ’Who have well ascertained the object of the knowledge of the Vedanta’ (Mu.  Up.  III, 2, 6).  Compare also the passage, ’What trouble, what sorrow can there be to him who has once beheld that unity?’ (I/s/.  Up. 7.)—­And Sm/ri/ti also represents the mind of him who contemplates the Self as steady (Bha.  Gi.  II, 54).

As therefore the individual soul and the highest Self differ in name only, it being a settled matter that perfect knowledge has for its object the absolute oneness of the two; it is senseless to insist (as some do) on a plurality of Selfs, and to maintain that the individual soul is different from the highest Self, and the highest Self from the individual soul.  For the Self is indeed called by many different names, but it is one only.  Nor does the passage, ’He who knows Brahman which is real, knowledge, infinite, as hidden in the cave’ (Taitt.  Up.  II, 1), refer to some one cave (different from the abode of the individual soul)[249].  And that nobody else but Brahman is hidden in the cave we know from a subsequent passage, viz.  ’Having sent forth he entered into it’ (Taitt.  Up.  II, 6), according to which the creator only entered into the created beings.—­Those who insist on the distinction of the individual and the highest Self oppose themselves to the true sense of the Vedanta-texts, stand thereby in the way of perfect knowledge, which is the door to perfect beatitude, and groundlessly assume release to be something effected, and therefore non-eternal[250]. (And if they attempt to show that moksha, although effected, is eternal) they involve themselves in a conflict with sound logic.

23. (Brahman is) the material cause also, on account of (this view) not being in conflict with the promissory statements and the illustrative instances.