ncapable of receiving any
accretion and eternally pure, 'He is the one God, hidden in all beings,
all-pervading, the Self within all beings, watching over all works,
dwelling in all beings, the witness, the perceiver, the only one; free
from qualities' (/S/v. Up. VI, 11); and 'He pervaded all, bright,
incorporeal, scatheless, without muscles, pure, untouched by evil'
(I/s/. Up. 8). But Release is nothing but being Brahman. Therefore
Release is not something to be purified. And as nobody is able to show
any other way in which Release could be connected with action, it is
impossible that it should stand in any, even the slightest, relation to
any action, excepting knowledge.

But, it will be said here, knowledge itself is an activity of the mind.
By no means, we reply; since the two are of different nature. An action
is that which is enjoined as being independent of the nature of existing
things and dependent on the energy of some person's mind; compare, for
instance, the following passages, 'To whichever divinity the offering is
made on that one let him meditate when about to say vasha/t/' (Ait.
Brahm. III, 8, 1); and 'Let him meditate in his mind on the sandhya.'
Meditation and reflection are indeed mental, but as they depend on the
(meditating, &c.) person they may either be performed or not be
performed or modified. Knowledge, on the other hand, is the result of
the different means of (right) knowledge, and those have for their
objects existing things; knowledge can therefore not be either made or
not made or modified, but depends entirely on existing things, and not
either on Vedic statements or on the mind of man. Although mental it
thus widely differs from meditation and the like.

The meditation, for instance, on man and woman as fire, which is founded
on Ch. Up. V, 7, 1; 8, 1, 'The fire is man, O Gautama; the fire is
woman, O Gautama,' is on account of its being the result of a Vedic
statement, merely an action and dependent on man; that conception of
fire, on the other hand, which refers to the well-known (real) fire, is
neither dependent on Vedic statements nor on man, but only on a real
thing which is an object of perception; it is therefore knowledge and
not an action. The same remark applies to all things which are the
objects of the different means of right knowledge. This being thus that
knowledge also which has the existent Brahman for its object is not
dependent on Vedic injunction. Hence, although impe