The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s8.6

v2.c40.s8.6

The cause of the appearance in this restricted form of the supreme soul is given by Çaṅkara as the effect of ignorance, and with him that explanation ends the matter, since it is impossible to go further than this. In the Upaniṣads, apart from the many creation legends which yield no philosophic result, the actual nature of the problem is rarely expressed and very slightly explained. The view of the Praçna ⁴ is that breath is born from the self, and it is likened to the shadow on a man. Unhappily the rest of its explanation is obscure: if rendered according to grammar, it distinctly says that the position is involuntary (*manokṛta*) on the part of the self: the version of Sāyaṇa, which is defiant of grammar, takes it that the result is produced by the previous acts of the will of the man in question; it is possible that we must amend so as merely to say that the mind attaches itself to the breath, but this suggestion of Böhtlingk's ⁵ is doubtful, and the best plan seems to be to recognize that the process is not voluntary, which is in agreement with the Vedānta view. In the Maitrāyaṇīya,¹ which is influenced by the Sāṅkhya views of the constituents of nature, the doctrine is laid down that the self is overcome by the Guṇas, and falls into an illusion in which it becomes weak, disordered, sensual, and believes in the separate existence of the self, fettering itself by its own action like a bird by its nest, while an addition² to that text gives the different conception, that the supreme soul becomes individual, in order to experience life in the world as well as eternal verity.