Page:The Advaita philosophy of Śaṅkara.pdf/11

 The Advaita philosophy of ،‫؛‬ANKARA. 105 impossibility, a contradiction IQ terms. Tboaght (Jiidna) can never transcend itself, and it is in thought that we find that something which is at once related and not related, conditioned and not con ditioned; and in which everything is lield together. That method of false abstraction which can result either in anthropomorphic deism

or pure atheism, Sankara. completely renounced; and postulated a something, which I am afraid to call an Entity, and yet which is an Entity in all entities, in which all relations melt away, all conditions

become annulled, the notions of matter and mind are held in one com pact unity. This something is nothing and everything, beyond thought and yet within it. It, indeed, is the very basis of individual consciousness, or individual consciousness is rather its manifestation in organised matter.

It is the permanent substratum of material manifestations, with whose variety of changes it has, however, nothing to do. Thus though always

in matter, mundane existence can effect no change either for weal or for woe, in it. He accepted material evolution in the widest sense of the term, accompanied even by psychical evolution, but all this had

nothing to do with the unchangeable witness of them all — Atman or Brahman. In fact so indescribable is this ultimate factor that it may be noted even äa-äkara never describes it but by the impersonal It. Even the Upanishads, at their best, declare it to be, not this, nor

that, nor that; and say that speech and mind are alike unable to lay hold of it. ^ankara directed the attention of man to his own consciousness, and taught that it is nothing but the universal con sciousness speaking through him, and that it has no share in the changes to which its material coil is subject, and of which it is conscious. The universe is Brahma — something very great, com bining all thought and being —; and this Brahma is ever free, ever

happy, ever existent, ever enlightened. Thus to speak, even at the risk of being misunderstood, in clear language, Sankara recognises matter as full of life — a life on which all phenomena of matter

are hung as upon a string;‫ ؛‬life ever love and blessedness, never सूत्रे मणिगणा इव, .،،Bh. Gi ,٢١٢ ‫آآآسأآ‬

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