Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s19.3

v2.c26.s19.3

Īśvara is all-comprehensive and contains within himself all that exists, potentially in pralaya and actually in creation. There does not seem to be much point in Deussen’s observation, that Śaṃkara did not carefully distinguish Brahman, the undifferentiated, from the phenomenal world on the one hand, and Īśvara on the other. He says: “This undifferentiated Brahman has two contraries: first the forms of the phenomenal world, as Brahman, conditioned by upādhis, appears; then the imperfect figurative ideas, which we form of the Godhead, in order to bring it nearer to our understanding and our worship. It is strange that between these two contraries of the undifferentiated Brahman, however wide apart they naturally are, Śaṃkara draws no sharp distinction, and even if, according to one passage, it seems as if he saw in the phenomenal forms the basis (ālambanam) of the presentation forms, yet from the continual intermingling of the two . . . it follows that our author never became clearly conscious of the difference between them.”¹ Deussen agrees that Śaṃkara referred to this distinction in one passage² and dismissed it as meaningless (vyartha). The whole phenomenal world is the appearance of Brahman. Brahman, on which all rests, becomes Īśvara, which includes all, when shaped by the phenomenal forms. The distinction between the infinite Īśvara on the one side and the individual souls on the other is a distinction of different members of a whole, analogous to that between the kingdoms of Magadha and Vaideha, which belong to the same world.³ When Brahman the real is conceived as Brahman the saṃsāra, God, man and the world (Īśvara, jīva, prapañca) become the chief elements.