तदेष श्लोको भवति ।
तदेव सक्तः सह कर्मणैति
लिङ्गं मनो यत्र निषक्तमस्य ।
प्राप्यान्तं कर्मणस्तस्य यत्किञ्चेह करोत्ययम् ।
तस्माल्लोकात्पुनरैत्यस्मै लोकाय कर्मणे ॥
इति नु कामयमानः; अथाकामयमानः—योऽकामो
निष्काम आप्तकाम आत्मकामो न तस्य प्राणा उत्क्रामन्ति,
ब्रह्मैव सन्ब्रह्माप्येति ॥ ६ ॥tadeṣa śloko bhavati |
tadeva saktaḥ saha karmaṇaiti
liṅgaṃ mano yatra niṣaktamasya |
prāpyāntaṃ karmaṇastasya yatkiñceha karotyayam |
tasmāllokātpunaraityasmai lokāya karmaṇe ||
iti nu kāmayamānaḥ; athākāmayamānaḥ—yo’kāmo
niṣkāma āptakāma ātmakāmo na tasya prāṇā utkrāmanti,
brahmaiva sanbrahmāpyeti || 6 ||6. Regarding this there is the following verse: ‘Being attached, he, together with the work, attains that result to which his subtle body or mind is attached. Exhausting the results of whatever work he did in this life, he returns from that world to this for (fresh) work.’ Thus does the man who desires (transmigrate). But the man who does not desire (never transmigrates). Of him who is without desires, who is free from desires, the objects of whose desire have been attained, and to whom all objects of desire are but the Self—the organs do not depart. Being but Brahman, he is merged in Brahman.
Regarding this subject there is also the following verse: Being attached, i.e. with his desire for it roused, he, the man who transmigrates, together with the work that he did with attachment to its result, attains that result to which his subtle body or mind is firmly attached, i.e. for which it yearns, since he did the work out of a desire for that.—The mind is called the subtle body, Liṅga, because it is the principal part of the latter; or the word ‘Liṅga’ may mean a sign, that which indicates the self.—Therefore, only on account of this attachment of his mind, he attains the result through that action. This proves that desire is the root of transmigratory existence. Hence a knower of Brahman who has rooted out his desires may work, but it will produce no (baneful) result; for the Śruti says, ‘For one who has completely atta ìned the objects of his desire and realised the Self, all desires dissolve in this very life’ (Mu. III. ii. 2).
Further, exhausting the results of work—what kind of work?—whatever work he did in this life, by experiencing them, he returns from that world to this for work, for work holds the foremost place in this Avorld. Hence the text says, ‘For work,’ i.e. to work again. After working again, he, owing to attachment to results, again goes to the next world, and so on. Thus does the man who desires transmigrate. Since ît is this man of desire that transmigrates thus, therefore the man who does not desire, does not transmigrate anywhere.
It has been said that only the man who is attached to results transmigrates. Since one who has no desires cannot perform (ritualistic) work, the man who does not desire necessarily attains liberation. How does a man cease to desire? He who is without desires is the man who does not desire. How is this absence of desire attained? This is being explained: Who is free from desires, i.e. whom desires have left. How do they leave? The objects of whose desire have been attained. How are they attained? Because he is one to whom all objects of desire are but the Self—who has only the Self, and nothing else separate from It that can be desired; to whom the Self alone exists— the Pure Intelligence without interior or exterior, entire and homogeneous; and neither above nor below nor in the middle is there anything else but the Self to be desired. What should a person desire who has realised: ‘When everything has become the Self to one, what should one see, hear, think or know, and through what? For a thing that is known as other than oneself may become an object of desire. But such a thing does not exist for the knower of Brahman, the objects of whose desire have all been attained. He to whom all objects of desire, being but the Self, are already attained, is alone free from desires, is without desires, and does not desire any more; hence he attains liberation. For he to whom everything is the Self, has nothing else to desire. It is contradictory to say that he has something other than the Self to desire, and again, that to him everything is the Self. Since a man who has realised his identity with all has nothing to desire, he cannot perform rites.
Those who hold that even a knower of Brahman must perform rites in order to avoid evil,[8] cannot say that to him everything is the Self, for they regard the evil that they wish him to avoid as different from the Seif. Whereas we call him a knower of Brahman who constantly knows the Self which is beyond hunger etc. and untouched by evil; he constantly sees the Self which is beyond hunger and so forth. Work can never touch him who does not see anything other than the Self to be avoided or received. But one who is not a knower of Brahman must perform rites to avoid evil. Hence there is no contradiction. Therefore, having no desires, the person who does not desire is no more born; he attains only liberation.
Since the man who does not desire has no work and therefore has no cause to go to the next world, his organs such as that of speech do not depart or go up from the body. That man of realisation who has attained all the objects of his desire, since they are but the Self to him, has become Brahman in this very life, for as an illustration of the Infinite Brahman the following form was pointed out: That is his form—in which all objects of desire have been attained and are but the Self, and which is free from desires’ (IV. iii. 21.) Now that of which the above is an illustration is being concluded in the words, ‘But the man who does not desire,’ etc. How does such a man attain liberation? This is being stated: He who sees the Self, as in the state of profound sleep, as undifferentiated, one without a second, and as the constant light of Pure Intelligence—only this disinterested man has no work and consequently no cause for transmigration; therefore his organs such as that of speech do not depart. Rather this man of realisation is Brahman in this very life, although he seems to have a body. Being but Brahman, he is merged in Brahman. Because he has no desires that cause the limitation of non-Brahmanhood, therefore ‘being but Brahman he is merged in Brahman’ in this very life, not after the body falls. A man of realisation, after his death, has no change of condition—something different from what he was in life, but he is only not connected with another body. This is what is meant by his becoming ‘merged in Brahman’; for if liberation was a change of condition, it would contradict the unity of the Self that all the Upaniṣads seek to teach. And liberation would be the effect of work, not of knowledge—which nobody would desire. Fuither, it would become transitory, for nothing that has been produced by an action is seen to be eternal, but liberation is admitted to be eternal, as the Mantra says, ‘This is the eternal glory (of a knower of Brahman),’ etc. (IV. iv. 23).
Moreover, nothing but the inherent nature of a thing can be regarded as eternal. If liberation is the nature of the self, like the heat of ñre, it cannot be said to be a consequence of human activity. The heat or light of fire is surely not a consequence of the activity of fire; it is a contradiction in terms to say that they are, and yet that they are the natural properties of fire. If it be urged that they are an outcome of the activity of combustion, the answer is, no, because they depend on manifestation by the removal of obstructions to one’s perception. That fire is manifested through its qualities of heat and light by the process of combustion etc., is due not to the fire itself, but to the fact that those qualities, not being connected with anybody’s vision, were hidden, and are manifested when the obstructionś. to vision are removed by the process of combustion. This leads to the error that the qualities of heat and light are produced by the combustion. If heat and light are not admitted as the natural properties of fire, well then, we shall cite as examples whatever be its natural properties. Nobody can say that things have no natural properties at all.
Nor can liberation be a mere negative something—the cessation of bondage, like the breaking of fetters, for the Supreme Self is supposed to be the only entity that exists. As the Śruti says, ‘One only without a second’ (Ch. VI. ii. 1.). And there is no other entity that is bound, whose freedom from bondage, as from fetters, would be liberation, for we have spoken at length of the absence of any other entity but the Supreme Self. Therefore, as we have also said, the cessation of ignorance alone is commonly called liberation, like the disappearance of the snake, for instance, from the rope when the erroneous notion about its existence has been dispelled.
Those who hold that in liberation a new knowledge and bliss are manifested, should explain what they mean by manifestation. If it means ordinary perception or the cognition of objects, they should state whether the knowledge or bliss that is manifested is existent or non-existent. If it is existent, it is the very self of that liberated man to whom it is manifested; hence, there being possibly no bar to the perception, it will always be manifest, and for this reason it is meaningless to specify its being manifest to the liberated man. If, however, it is manifest only at certain times, then because of the obstacles to its perception, it is different from the self, and therefore there arises the question of its manifestation through some other means; hence there will be the necessity of these means also. But if the knowledge and bliss in question have the same support as the perception, then, there being no possibility of obstacles, they will either be always manifest or always hidden; there is no warrant for conceiving an intermediate stage between the two. Now attributes that have the same support, and are a part and parcel of the same substance, cannot have the relation of subject and object to one another. Besides, the entity that is subject to transmigration before the manifestation of knowledge and bliss, and liberated after it, must be different from the Supreme Self, the eternally manifest Knowledge Absolute, for the two are totally different from each other, like heat and cold; and if differences are admitted in the Supreme Self, the Vedic position will be abandoned.
Objection: If liberation makes no difference from the present state, it is unreasonable to make a particular effort for it, and the scriptures too become useless.
Reply: No, for both are necessary to remove the delusion created by ignorance. Really there is no such distinction as liberation and bondage in the self, for it is eternally the same; but the ignorance regarding it is removed by the knowledge arising from the teachings of the scriptures, and prior to the receiving of these teachings, the effort to attain liberation is perfectly reasonable.
Objection: There will be some difference in thé self that is under ignorance, due to the cessation or continuance of that ignorance.
Reply: No; we have already (p. 477) said that it is admitted to be the creation of ignorance, like a rope, a desert, a mother-of-pearl and the sky appearing as a snake, water, silver, and blue respectively.
Objection: But there will be some difference in the self due to its being or not being the cause of ignorance, as in the case of man affected with the eye-disease called Timira or free from it.
Reply: No, for the Śruti denies that the Ātman by itself is the cause of ignorance, as in the passage, ‘It thinks, as it were, and shakes, as it were’ (IV. iii. 7); and the error we call ignorance is due to a combination of diverse activities. Another reason is that ignorance is an object witnessed by the self. He who visualises the error of ignorance as something distinct from his own self, like a jar etc., is not himself under that error.
Objection: Surely he is under that error, for one feels that one sometimes has the notion, ‘I do not know, I am confused.’
Reply: No, for that too is distinctly perceived. He who distinctly perceives a thing cannot surely be said to be mistaken about it; it is self-contradictory to say that he perceives it distinctly, and at the same time, that he is mistaken about it.
You say that a person feels, ‘I do not know, I am confused’: thereby you admit that he visualises his ignorance and confusion, in other words, that these become the objects of his experience. So how can the ignorance and confusion, which are objects, be at the same time a description of the subject, the perceiver? If, on the other hand, they are a description of the subject, how can they be objects and be perceived by the subject? An object is perceived by an act of the subject. The object is one thing, and the subject another; it cannot be perceived by itself. Tell me how under such circumstances the ignorance and confusion can be a description of the subject. Moreover, a person who sees ignorance as something distinct—perceives it as an object of his own cognition—does not regard it as an attribute of the perceiver, as is the case with thinness, colour, and so forth in the body. (Similarly the effects of ignorance also are not attributes of the self).
Objection: But everybody perceives pleasure, pain, desire, effort, etc. (as belonging to himself).
Reply: Even then the man who perceives them is admittedly different from them.
Objection: Well, we have referred to the person who says, ‘I do not know what you say, I am confused.’ What do you say to that?
Reply: Let him regard himself as ignorant and confused; we, however, accept one who sees like this as knowing and possessed of a clear perception. For instance, Vyāsa has said that the owner of the field (the self) reveals the entire held (body and mind), including desire. And there are hundreds of texts like the following: ‘(He truly sees who) sees the Supreme Lord living the same in all beings—the immortal Principle in the midst of things perishable’ (G. XIII. 27). Therefore the Ātman by itself has no difference due to bondage or liberation, knowledge or ignorance, for it is admitted to be always the same and homogeneous by nature.
Those, however, who, considering the reality of the self to be different, reduce the scriptures dealing with bondage and liberation to mere plausible statements, would dare to find the foot prints of birds in the sky, to pull it with their clenched hands, or to cover it as with a skin. But we can do no such thing. We hold that it is the definite conclusion of all the Upaniṣads that we are nothing but the Ātman, the Brahman that is always the same, homogeneous, one without a second, unchanging, birthless, undecaying, immortal, deathless and free from fear. Therefore the statement, ‘He is merged in Brahman’ (this text), is but a figurative one, meaning the cessation, as a result of knowledge, of the continuous chain of bodies for one who has held an opposite view.
Transmigration, which was the thing that was sought to be explained by the example of going into the waking and dream states, has been described; so also its causes—knowledge, work and past experience. Those limiting adjuncts, the elements comprising the body and organs, surrounded by which the self experiences the transmigratory existence, have also been mentioned. After stating, as a prima facie view, that their immediate causes are good and bad deeds, the cause has finally been decided to be desire. Having described bondage and its cause by showing that the decision of the Brāhmaṇa on this point agrees with that of the Mantra, the Śruti has concluded the topic with the words, ‘Thus does the man who desires (transmigrate)’ (IV. iv. 6). Then beginning with, ‘But the man who does not desire (never transmigrates)’ (Ibid.), liberation consisting in the identity with all, which is the thing that was sought to be explained by the example of the state of profound sleep, has been described. And the cause of liberation has been stated to be the attainment of all objects of desire through their becoming the Self. But since this state is unattainable without Self-knowledge, the cause of liberation has by implication been stated to be the knowledge of Brahman. Therefore, although desire has been said to be the root of bondage, it is ignorance that, being the opposite of what leads to liberation (knowledge), has virtually been stated to be the cause of bondage. Here also liberation and its means have been dealt with by the Brāhmaṇa. To strengthen that, a Mantra, called Śloka, is being quoted:
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