e'--not to
the source itself, we reply that this explanation is inadmissible
because the source of all beings, which--in the clause, 'From the
Indestructible everything here arises'--is designated as the material
cause of all created beings, is later on spoken of as all-knowing, and
again as the cause of all created beings, viz. in the passage (I, 1, 9),
'From him who knows all and perceives all, whose brooding consists of
knowledge, from him is born that Brahman, name, form, and food.' As
therefore the Indestructible which forms the general topic of discussion
is, owing to the identity of designation, recognised (as being referred
to in the later passage also), we understand that it is the same
Indestructible to which the attributes of knowing and perceiving all are
ascribed.--We further maintain that also the passage, 'Higher than the
high Imperishable,' does not refer to any being different from the
imperishable source of all beings which is the general topic of
discussion. We conclude this from the circumstance that the passage, 'He
truly told that knowledge of Brahman through which he knows the
imperishable true person,' (I, 2, 13; which passage leads on to the
passage about that which is higher than the Imperishable,) merely
declares that the imperishable source of all beings, distinguished by
invisibility and the like--which formed the subject of the preceding
chapter--will be discussed. The reason why that imperishable source is
called higher than the high Imperishable, we shall explain under the
next Sutra.--Moreover, two kinds of knowledge are enjoined there (in the
Upanishad), a lower and a higher one. Of the lower one it is said that
it comprises the /Ri/g-veda and so on, and then the text continues, 'The
higher knowledge is that by which the Indestructible is apprehended.'
Here the Indestructible is declared to be the subject of the higher
knowledge. If we now were to assume that the Indestructible
distinguished by invisibility and like qualities is something different
from the highest Lord, the knowledge referring to it would not be the
higher one. For the distinction of lower and higher knowledge is made on
account of the diversity of their results, the former leading to mere
worldly exaltation, the latter to absolute bliss; and nobody would
assume absolute bliss to result from the knowledge of the
pradhana.--Moreover, as on the view we are controverting the highest
Self would be assumed to be something hi