additional to, or different from, the individual soul,
since Scripture declares the two to be different.
Analogously I, 2, 20 lays stress on the fact that the
sarira is not the antaryamin, because the Madhyandinas,
as well as the Ka/n/vas, speak of him in their texts
as different (bhedena enam adhiyate), and in 22 the
sarira and the pradhana are referred to as
the two ‘others’ (itarau) of whom the text
predicates distinctive attributes separating them
from the highest Lord. The word ‘itara’
(the other one) appears in several other passages
(I, 1, 16; I, 3, 16; II, 1, 21) as a kind of technical
term denoting the individual soul in contradistinction
from the Lord. The
Sa@nkaras indeed maintain
that all those passages refer to an unreal distinction
due to avidya. But this is just what we should
like to see proved, and the proof offered in no case
amounts to more than a reference to the system which
demands that the Sutras should be thus understood.
If we accept the interpretations of the school of
Sa@nkara, it remains altogether unintelligible
why the Sutrakara should never hint even at what
Sa@nkara
is anxious again and again to point out at length,
viz. that the greater part of the work contains
a kind of exoteric doctrine only, ever tending to
mislead the student who does not keep in view what
its nature is. If other reasons should make it
probable that the Sutrakara was anxious to hide the
true doctrine of the Upanishads as a sort of esoteric
teaching, we might be more ready to accept
Sa@nkara’s
mode of interpretation. But no such reasons are
forthcoming; nowhere among the avowed followers of
the
Sa@nkara system is there any tendency to
treat the kernel of their philosophy as something
to be jealously guarded and hidden. On the contrary,
they all, from Gau/d/apada down to the most modern
writer, consider it their most important, nay, only
task to inculcate again and again in the clearest
and most unambiguous language that all appearance
of multiplicity is a vain illusion, that the Lord
and the individual souls are in reality one, and that
all knowledge but this one knowledge is without true
value.
There remains one more important passage concerning
the relation of the individual soul to the highest
Self, a passage which attracted our attention above,
when we were reviewing the evidence for early divergence
of opinion among the teachers of the Vedanta.
I mean I, 4, 20-22, which three Sutras state the views
of A/s/marathya, Au/d/ulomi, and Ka/s/akr/ri/tsna
as to the reason why, in a certain passage of the
B/ri/hadara/n/yaka, characteristics of the individual
soul are ascribed to the highest Self. The siddhanta
view is enounced in Sutra 22, ‘avasthiter iti
Ka/s/ak/ri/tsna/h/’ i.e. Ka/s/ak/ri/tsna
(accounts for the circumstance mentioned) on the ground
of the ’permanent abiding or abode.’
By this ‘permanent abiding’ Sa@nkara
understands the Lord’s abiding as, i.e.