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16. Because it denotes the world.
The Sankhya comes forward with a further objection. Although the Vedanta-texts teach an intelligent principle to be the cause of the world, they do not present to us as objects of knowledge anything that could be the cause of the world, apart from the Pradhana and the soul as established by the Sankhya-system. For the Kaushîtakins declare in their text, in the dialogue of Balaki and Agatasatru, that none but the enjoying(individual) soul is to be known as the cause of the world, 'Shall I tell you Brahman? He who is the maker of those persons and of whom this is the work (or "to whom this work belongs") he indeed is to be known' (Kau. Up. IV, 19). Balaki at the outset proposes Brahman as the object of instruction, and when he is found himself not to know Brahman, Agatasatru instructs him about it, 'he indeed is to be known.' But from the relative clause 'to whom this work belongs,' which connects the being to be known with work, we infer that by Brahman we have here to understand the enjoying soul which is the ruler of Prakriti, not any other being. For no other being is connected with work; work, whether meritorious or the contrary, belongs to the individual soul only. Nor must you contest this conclusion on the ground that 'work' is here to be explained as meaning the object of activity, so that the sense of the clause would be 'he of whom this entire world, as presented by perception and the other means of knowledge, is the work.' For in that case the separate statements made in the two clauses, 'who is the maker of those persons' and 'of whom this is the work,' would be devoid of purport(the latter implying the former). Moreover, the generally accepted meaning of the word 'karman,' both in Vedic and worldly speech, is work in the sense of good and evil actions. And as the origination of the world is caused by actions of the various individual souls, the designation of 'maker of those persons' also suits only the individual soul. The meaning of the whole passage therefore is 'He who is the cause of the different persons that have their abode in the disc of the sun, and so on, and are instrumental towards the retributive experiences of the individual souls; and to whom there belongs karman, good and evil, to which there is due his becoming such a cause; he indeed is to be known, his essential nature is to be cognised in distinction from Prakriti.'
And also in what follows, 'The two came to a person who was asleep. He pushed him with a stick,' &c., what is said about the sleeping man being pushed, roused, &c., all points only to the individual soul being the topic of instruction. Further on also the text treats of the individual soul only, 'As the master feeds with his people, nay as his people feed on the master, thus does this conscious Self feed with the other Selfs.' We must consider also the following passage--which contains the explanation given by Agatasatru to Balaki, who had been unable to say where the soul goes at the time of deep sleep--' There are the arteries called Hitas. In these the person is; when sleeping he sees no dream, then he (or that, i.e. the aggregate of the sense-organs) becomes one with this prana alone. Then speech goes to him with all names,&c., the mind with all thoughts. And when he awakes, then, as from a burning fire sparks proceed in all directions, thus from that Self the pranas proceed each towards its place, from the pranas the gods, from the gods the worlds.' The individual soul which passes through the states of dream, deep sleep and waking, and is that into which there are merged and from which there proceed speech and all the other organs, is here declared to be the abode of deep sleep 'then it (viz. the aggregate of the organs) becomes one in that prana.' Prana here means the individual soul in so far as supporting life; for the text continues 'when that one awakes' and neither the vital breath nor the Lord (both of whom might be proposed as explanations of prana) can be said to be asleep and to wake.
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