Page:The Vedanta-sutras, with the Sri-bhashya of Ramanujacharya.djvu/28

 unqualified existence alone is real, and that, in as much as this compounded experience too persists like existence in all perceptive cognitions, experience also constitutes the reality and has to be the same as existence itself (pp. 44-46.). And the experience which thus constitutes the reality is there- : after declared to be so self-evident as to be the cause of its own knowability as well as of the realisation that it is knowable (pp. 46-48.). Then it is shown that this experi- ence or what is otherwise called consciousness is, on account , of its self-evident nature, eternal, unoriginated, immodi- fiable and undifferentiated, and that it is the same entity as the alman or the self (pp. 49-51.). Finally the question of personality is taken up for consideration, and it is argued that the alman or the self is not the same as the knowen in as much as the idea of knowership in relation to the self is the result of the limitation imposed upon the intelli- gent principle of consciousness by the material principle of egoity known as ahankdra, and in as much as again self-experience is possible even when there is no no- tion of egoity, as during dreamless sleep, swoon, &c. It is further argued that the internal self is a mere witness, and as such must be different from the knower which is the same as the ego or the thing '!'; and it is then shown that this limitation of personality cannot be an attribute of the self which is pure and undifferentiated intelligence, and that in the beatific state of final release the self is free from the limitation of personality, even as it is found to be so free in the condition of dreamless sleep. The one intelligent and undifferentiated principle of con- sciousness being thus shown to be the only reality, it is " arrived at that the reason for undertaking the study of the Vcdanta is to understand the nature of this reality, other- wise known as the Brahman, and to realise that everything