lse-minded[281]? Another scriptural passage ('from death to death goes
he who perceives therein any diversity,' B/ri/. Up. IV, 4, 19) declares
the same, by blaming those who perceive any distinction.--Moreover, on
the doctrine, which we are at present impugning, release cannot result
from knowledge, because the doctrine does not acknowledge that some kind
of wrong knowledge, to be removed by perfect knowledge, is the cause of
the phenomenal world. For how can the cognition of unity remove the
cognition of manifoldness if both are true?

Other objections are started.--If we acquiesce in the doctrine of
absolute unity, the ordinary means of right knowledge, perception, &c.,
become invalid because the absence of manifoldness deprives them of
their objects; just as the idea of a man becomes invalid after the right
idea of the post (which at first had been mistaken for a man) has
presented itself. Moreover, all the texts embodying injunctions and
prohibitions will lose their purport if the distinction on which their
validity depends does not really exist. And further, the entire body of
doctrine which refers to final release will collapse, if the distinction
of teacher and pupil on which it depends is not real. And if the
doctrine of release is untrue, how can we maintain the truth of the
absolute unity of the Self, which forms an item of that doctrine?

These objections, we reply, do not damage our position because the
entire complex of phenomenal existence is considered as true as long as
the knowledge of Brahman being the Self of all has not arisen; just as
the phantoms of a dream are considered to be true until the sleeper
wakes. For as long as a person has not reached the true knowledge of the
unity of the Self, so long it does not enter his mind that the world of
effects with its means and objects of right knowledge and its results of
actions is untrue; he rather, in consequence of his ignorance, looks on
mere effects (such as body, offspring, wealth, &c.) as forming part of
and belonging to his Self, forgetful of Brahman being in reality the
Self of all. Hence, as long as true knowledge does not present itself,
there is no reason why the ordinary course of secular and religious
activity should not hold on undisturbed. The case is analogous to that
of a dreaming man who in his dream sees manifold things, and, up to the
moment of waking, is convinced that his ideas are produced by real
perception without suspecting the