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Only a creative, divine mind, that gives it reality at the same time that it thinks it, can have power truly to know it. “ Things-in-themselves do not conform themselves 1. Lewes* Ewgraphical History of Philosophy, pp. 546-557. 2. See Dr. Schwegler*s Handbook of the History of Philoso- phy, pp. 319-20. 215 to the foi'm of human knowledge, because human perception is not free from subjective ele- ments, is not “intellectual intuition/'' Nor do the forms of human knowledge conform themselves to things-in-themselves, Hence we can know empirical objects or phenomena, but only these.”^ In order to show Creation in successive order, and to describe the True underlying it. Brahman, certain attributes and qualities, which in reality do not belong to Brahman, are super-imposed on It, to be withdrawn at a further stage of instruction, and then the true knowledge arises that the residuum is the undifferenced Absolute, Brahman. This method is styled Ad]iydropa-A2)avQ,da ( ) which means Imputation and Rescission. It is employed in accomodation to the intelligence of the uninitiated and consists in holding for true for some time that which is phenomenal and when the time arrives for propounding the noumenal, the True, Brahman, it is gainsaid or rescinded. In accordance with this it is surmised that : — From Brahman, the one rvithout a second, proceeds, as it were, Maya ; from Mdya, the union ( ) ( the beginning of Avhich is unknown ) between Brahman and Mdyd; from this union proceeds the resultant procession of Is'vara, the Lord, and Jivas, the individual souls, and the whole universe. Brahman pet' sc is the principle of reali- ty. This principle of Reality, Brahman, seems, through nescience, associated with an inexplicable principle of unreality, M^yA; and it is from the 1. See Dr. F, Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy. Vol. II, p. 156 216 fictitious union of these principles, Brahman and that the spheres and migrating forms of life, the external and internal world, proceed. Though- M^lya is thus assumed, through nescience ( ) associated with Brahman, Brahman is not there- by any the less the one and the only Being. M^y&, though unconscious, energises through her proximity to, and the immanence and the reflection of. Brahman in her, as the unconscious iron is set in motion by the load-stone. Out of this union emanate all things. The world, with its duality of subject and object, is the figment of this union. They are super-imposed by nescience on the Real, like the snake seen in a piece of rope by the belated wayfarer. These manifestations are not cssence- less appearances, but appearances that are filled-up, full-filled, implemented by essence. For the enlightened and truly awakened person these appearances, the non-beent, cease to be, and the Essence, the Beent, Brahman, becomes self- evident. The highest end of man is gained when through right knowledge he knows the Absolute, Brahman, and I'ecovers his Self in the highest Self.^ 1. In her Introduction to Theosophy, Annie Besant says: — “ The identity of the origin of religions may be proved by the identity of their fundamental teachings, both as to the spiritual nature and as to ethical obligations : that the universe has its source in One Life ; that man’s spirit is the offspring of that Life ; that man may therefore rise to his source and re-become one with It ; that human life on earth is a means to an end, and that end the perfecting of the soul ; that man is an immortal spirit linked with a lower nature, and that the purification of the lower nature and its union with the spirit are the means where- by the lower may share the immortality of the higher j that all men are brethren, and that the law of love is the law of progress ; 217 Virgil ainga: — “One Life tlirough all the immense creation runs, One Spirit is the moon’s, the sea’s, the sun’s ; Each breathing thing obeys one Mind’s control, And in all substance is a single Soul Tlien since from God those lesser lives began, And the eager spirits entered into man, To God again the enfranchised soul must tend, m is her home, her Author is her end ; No death is hers ; when earthly eyes grow dim Starlike she soars and Godlike melts in Him.” , Georgies, Book IV., 223. To glance back on the road that has been travell- ed, the'task of the VedA.nta is to teach the cognition of Sachchiddnanda Brahman It {Brahma- jndna) is the only road to the pei'fect beatitude, the highest aim of man, the final release ( ). It establishes that Jtva, the indi- vidual Self, is, in reality, identical with Brahman, the highest Self, and is separated from It, as it were, only by a false surmise due to Nescience (srfMlT)- The Vedanta assumes the doctrine of Mdy^ from which successive emanations proceed, to enable the student to understand more easily the such are some of the truths that will be found in every religion, however great may be the diflferences in the intellectual present- ment of them as dogmas, or in the rites and ceremonies used in different communities. As the same water may be held in vessels differing in size, in shape, in decoration, but drawn from any of them, quenches the thirst of men, so may the water of spiritual life be found in all religious vessels, and may be drawn from them for the refreshment of the soul athirst.” pp. 15-16. 19 218 inscrutable problem of Creation, and Ml is superimposed on Brahman by Nescie#^^i^ but when the higher knowledge 11^^ 1 becomes sublated, and the identity of the i^lf-<-;W Divine in man and the Divine in the universe*— w* ^ the Highest Self becomes self-evident. The Vedanta is very decided on the true knc | ledge of Brahman, but makes many conceswouf rl treating of Jagat and Jiva, the universe and the.^ dividual soul, they being products of M&ydi whiiii very nature is to be inexplicable. P^loSophj’’ j described as the offspring of the cf ii'- ’• rjs deavour to reconstruct the given world of \ " experience— the world found constructed in — accoi’ding to its possibility ; or, to be essentially conscious and reasoned effort to explain the univers^ Its leading problem is Theory of Knowledg<’^ To discover the conditions under which knowled^, or experience, is possible, in order to reconstruct hi the forms of abstract thought according to Its '©la- ments, the world given as constructed in intuition,^ and to accommodate the mental state of some of its learners, the Vedanta adopts propounds various doctrines on the Jug^. the Jitra, and utilizes such illustrations as ni(l^ :l||i familiar to the student from his other or individual impressions. Thus, like a kind psienl^ the Ved&nta sometimes stoops but to lift uyp flvd student. One of them, called the metapl^ o! Eeflexion is, in very brief, as follows;— Brahman, the Absolute Existence-Intelligence* 1. Bee £. B. Box’s Handbtok of the History qf Phiiotqph/j4 pp. 1-7. 219 ) is the reflected object, it idwaTs remains, like the solar orb, nnohanged and tiniform unrelated i Till) Eleatic school, whose speculations are said to have risen to a higher regicn of abstraction or pure thought than other ecian r^hools, and which is characterised as dialectical, had Aiiophanes ifcs founder. The antithesis around which the iole EltJatic philosophy revolves and gravitates is the antithesis ^tbe one and the many, the permanent and the changeable, the Riversal and the particular. Xanophanes dwells on the concep- of the oiH unity as the essence of all things. He holds f th® everywhere. I ^ there is a unity in all things, rad that \ >yrrv i It is in a: *d through God that the universe The one permanent and unchangeable in all things, ||>d, is the ground of all, the ultimately and absolutely real. !|ds alone is the certain and the true. In antithesis whatever f?edicafco is applied to one of its terms, the counter-predicate Sj^st be applied to the other term. It follows, then, that if we ^ the unchangeable, or the one, real, we must call the change- or the many, unreal. In short, if we say that the one, the ^toanenfc, or the unchangeable, is, we must say that the many, fltiotuating, the changeable, are not. The former is the world I ireason, the latter the world of sense, and the former is repre- , seated as the sphere of reality, the latter that of unreality. |The latter is a mere subjective phenomenon, and possesses no V truth as that which reason compels us to attribute to the oanent one, God. Xanophanes’ tenet on this point is illus- as follows: — ^‘Suppose that the sun ( Brahman or Atman of the Vedanta ) [lining on the sea, ( MayH or Samsdra including Jtva-Ja^at, \ sentient beings and the world, of the Ved&nta ) and that his bt is broken by the waves into a multitude of lesser lights, of |colours and of all forms ; and suppose that the sea is conscious, cious of this multitude of lights, this diversity of shifting ours, this plurality of dancing forms ; would this consciousness ^tain or represent the truth, the real ? Certainly, it would not. i objectively true, the real in itself, is in this case the sun in 220 variously described, is the reflecting me- dium and material cause ( ) of the phe- nomenal world. When viewed as a whole, it is call- ed M&y4: her numberless small parts are called AvidyQ,. She has two powers, viz., to conceal what exists and to project what exists not (3n^?:Q[- ). Miyi is a previous stage ( ) of the world dependent on the highest Self ( !R: ), who, without her, could not be conceived as Creator. She is neither being nor non-being, but rather a becoming, causal potentiality ' having Brahman for her substance. On her limit- ing adjuncts are based all the practical distinctions of life.