, annihilates his desires, and subjects
his passions, he understands that Spirit is the One and the Eternal. The
wise man annihilates all sensible things in spiritual things, and
contemplates that one Spirit who resembles pure space. Brahma is without
size, quality, character, or division."

According to this philosophy (says Bunsen) the world is the Not-Being. It
is, says Sankara, "appearance without Being; it is like the deception of a
dream." "The soul itself," he adds, "has no actual being."

There is an essay on Vedantism in a book published in Calcutta, 1854, by a
young Hindoo, Shoshee Chunder Dutt, which describes the creation as
proceeding from Maya, in this way: "Dissatisfied with his own solitude,
Brahma feels a desire to create worlds, and then the volition ceases so
far as he is concerned, and he sinks again into his apathetic happiness,
while the desire, thus willed into existence, assumes an active character.
It becomes Maya, and by this was the universe created, without exertion on
the part of Brahma. This passing wish of Brahma carried, however, no
reality with it. And the creation proceeding from it is only an illusion.
There is only one absolute Unity really existing, and existing without
plurality. But he is like one asleep. Krishna, in the Gita, says: 'These
works (the universe) confine not me, for I am like one who sitteth aloof
uninterested in them all.' The universe is therefore all illusion, holding
a position between something and nothing. It is real as an illusion, but
unreal as being. It is not true, because it has no essence; but not false,
because its existence, even as illusion, is from God. The Vedanta
declares: 'From the highest state of Brahma to the lowest condition of a
straw, all things are delusion.'" Chunder Dutt, however, contradicts
Bunsen's assertion that the soul also is an illusion according to the
Vedanta. "The soul," he says, "is not subject to birth or death, but is in
its substance, from Brahma himself." The truth seems to be that the
Vedanta regards the individuation of the soul as from Maya and illusive,
but the substance of the soul is from Brahma, and destined to be absorbed
into him. As the body of man is to be resolved into its material elements,
so the soul of man is to be resolved into Brahma. This substance of the
soul is neither born nor dies, nor is it a thing of which it can be said,
"It was, is, or shall be." In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjun that he and
the oth