ement further that through the
knowledge of the Self everything becomes known can be taken in its
direct literal sense only if by the Self we understand the highest
cause. And to take it in a non-literal sense (as the purvapakshin
proposes) is inadmissible, on account of the explanation given of that
statement in a subsequent passage, viz. 'Whosoever looks for the Brahman
class elsewhere than in the Self, is abandoned by the Brahman class.'
Here it is said that whoever erroneously views this world with its
Brahmans and so on, as having an independent existence apart from the
Self, is abandoned by that very world of which he has taken an erroneous
view; whereby the view that there exists any difference is refuted. And
the immediately subsequent clause, 'This everything is the Self,' gives
us to understand that the entire aggregate of existing things is
non-different from the Self; a doctrine further confirmed by the similes
of the drum and so on.--By explaining further that the Self about which
he had been speaking is the cause of the universe of names, forms, and
works ('There has been breathed forth from this great Being what we have
as /Ri/gveda,' &c.) Yaj/n/avalkya again shows that it is the highest
Self.--To the same conclusion he leads us by declaring, in the paragraph
which treats of the natural centres of things, that the Self is the
centre of the whole world with the objects, the senses and the mind,
that it has neither inside nor outside, that it is altogether a mass of
knowledge.--From all this it follows that what the text represents as
the object of sight and so on is the highest Self.

We now turn to the remark made by the purvapakshin that the passage
teaches the individual soul to be the object of sight, because it is, in
the early part of the chapter denoted as something dear.

20. (The circumstance of the soul being represented as the object of
sight) indicates the fulfilment of the promissory statement; so
A/s/marathya thinks.

The fact that the text proclaims as the object of sight that Self which
is denoted as something, dear indicates the fulfilment of the promise
made in the passages, 'When the Self is known all this is known,' 'All
this is that Self.' For if the individual soul were different from the
highest Self, the knowledge of the latter would not imply the knowledge
of the former, and thus the promise that through the knowledge of one
thing everything is to be known would not be fulfilled.