The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c5.s6.t2.4

c5.s6.t2.4

This is the Samyagdarçanam, the Vidyâ in the stricter sense of the word, distinguished on the one side from empiric cosmology, and psychology, Avidyâ, and on the other from the doctrine of the aparam, saguṇam brahma, of its worship and the entering into it by the way of devayâna; this is the aparâ vidyâ, saguṇâ vidyâ, whose possessor can, however, also on occasion be called vidvân (p. 1095, 11. 1134, 11). Strictly viewed, this aparâ vidyâ is nothing but metaphysics in an empiric dress, that is Vidyâ as it appears, considered from the standpoint of Avidyâ (the realism innate in us). This definition is not, however, found in Çaṅkara, as in general the distinction of the esoteric and exoteric doctrine and the inner connection of the latter, as well as of the former, does not attain the clearness with which we express it and must express it here, unless we have to renounce a full comprehension of the system. What prevented our author from connecting together—as he did in the case of the parā vidyā—the aparā vidyā also, with his doctrine of the creation of the world and Samsāra, in the unity of an exoteric system, was firstly the excessive attention which, in Indian fashion, he paid to theological and eschatological questions, and, on the other hand, the apprehension of injuring the letter of the Veda, in which esoteric and exoteric teaching are interwoven, by a recognition of the contradictions between them. For this reason, for instance, he takes endless pains to maintain the teaching of the creation of the world through the Brahman, and to unify it with his better insight into the identity of the two, by trying to show that cause and effect are identical, and then constantly (e. g., p. 374, 12. 391, 10. 484, 2. 491, 1) asserting that the doctrine of creation had only the aim of teaching this identity of the world with the Brahman, a view which cannot be brought into harmony with the ample and realistic treatment which he himself bestowed on it.