The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c8.s6.t1.2

c8.s6.t1.2

This is not so from the standpoint of Ignorance. For just as a man whose eyes are affected sees two moons where there is in reality only one—or as the sun is reflected in the water in a thousand images, each of which is not a part but the whole of the sun, though in truth a mere phantom without real existence,—so the Ignorant sees instead of one Brahman without a second (which is his own Self) a plurality consisting of 1) a God (*īçvara*) whose office is that of dispensing retribution, 2) a world which is the scene of this retribution, and 3) a given number of souls subject to the limitations of individuality; they wander from eternity and in each new existence suffer retribution for the works of the previous life; for this purpose after each death a new body, corresponding exactly to the merits and faults of the previous life, arises out of the seed of the body with which the soul is inseparably connected; and this happens again and again without cessation during all eternity.—It is true these souls are in reality neither individual nor wandering; each one of them is on the contrary the *Âtman* (besides which nothing else exists), *i.e.*, the omniscient and omnipotent *Brahman* itself in his completeness. But the soul does not know that this is so, because it has not the proper knowledge of its own Self, in that its own nature is hidden from it. What prevents this self-knowledge, in which the soul is at once the perceiving subject and perceived object, is *Avidyâ*; *Avidyâ* puts itself between the soul as subject and the soul as object; and is sometimes characterised subjectively as defective intellectual force, sometimes objectively as defective perceptibility. The soul is from the subjective point of view compared to a blind man (above p. 87), whose lost sight can only be restored by the remedy of grace; objectively it is the *Upâdhis* by which the divine nature of the soul is disguised and as it were rendered latent like fire which slumbers hidden in the wood: