Brahma-Sūtra 1.3.14

English of translation of Brahmasutra 1.3.14 by Roma Bose:

“The small (ether) is Brahman, on account of what follows.”

Nimbārka’s commentary (Vedānta-pārijāta-saurabha):

The “small” ether, mentioned in the passage: ‘In this city of Brahman is a small lotus, a chamber; small is the ether within it’ (Chāndogya-upaniṣad 8.1.1^[1]), can be the Highest Self alone. Why? “On account of what follows”, i.e. on account of the peculiar qualities of the Highest Self, which are designated subsequently in the passage: ‘As large is this ether, so large is that ether within the space. In it both the heaven and the earth are contained. This soul is free from sins, ageless’ (Chāndogya-upaniṣad 8.1.3^[2]) and so on.

Śrīnivāsa’s commentary (Vedānta-kaustubha)

Thus, on the ground of the text: ‘He sees the Person lying in the city’ (Praśna 5.5), Tying within the city’, as well as ‘being the object which one sees’, fit in on the part of the Highest Self as possessing a manifest auspicious form. In the very same manner, smallness, too, fits in on His part as residing in the abode, viz. the heart-lotus. With this in his mind, the reverend author of the aphorisms says now:

We find the following text in the Chāndogya immediately after the doctrine of the Plenty^[3]: ‘Now what is within this city of Brahman is a small-lotus, a chamber; small is the ether within it. What is within that should be searched for; that, verily, should be enquired into’ (Chāndogya-upaniṣad 8.1.1). The meaning of the text, according to us, is as follows: ‘what is’ within ‘this city of Brahman’,—i.e. within the body which is the abode where the individual soul, a part of Brahman, enjoys the fruit of its karmas and which is the place where it realizes Brahman,—is a “small”, i.e. a tiny ‘lotus’, viz. the heart, well-known from Scripture; that very thing is a chamber as it were. In that same chamber, there is a “small”, i.e. a tiny, or one who has manifested himself in a subtle form in accordance with the wish of his own devotees who are devoted to none else, ‘ether’, i.e. one who is pervasive by nature. In that heart-lotus, the small Brahman who is denoted by the term ‘ether’ ‘should be searched for’, i.e. should be discriminated as different from the enquirer, as well as from the body; and ‘should be enquired into’, i.e. should be meditated on repeatedly through the ‘hearing’ of the Vedānta.

Here a. doubt arises, viz. whether by the term ‘small ether’ the elemental ether is to be understood, or the Highest Self. If it be suggested: The elemental ether, because the term ‘ether’ is well-known to denote the elemental ether, and because the term ‘small’ too, as implying a subtle object, may be applied to it. It cannot be said that in the text: ‘As large is this ether, so large is the ether within the heart’ (Chāndogya-upaniṣad 8.1.3), one and the same thing (viz. the ether) cannot reasonably be both the object compared and the object (upameya and upamāna) with which it is,—because it can appropriately be so on the ground of the distinction of the external and the internal.^[4] Or, let the embodied soul, like the point of a spoke only, be the small ether, because it, too, is known from the passage: ‘Now this serenity (i.e. serene being) having arisen from this body’ (Chāndogya-upaniṣad 8.3.4). Being atomic by nature, it can be fittingly termed ‘small’; and, being undefiled by the body, the sense-organs and the rest, it can be fittingly compared to the ether^[5]—

We reply: “The small”, i.e. the small ether, is none but the Highest Self. Why? “On account of what follows”, i.e. on account of the reasons contained in the concluding text, i.e. on account of the peculiar qualities of the Highest Self, viz. ‘being comparable to the ether’, ‘being the support of all worlds, beginning with the earth’, ‘being the soul’, ‘being free from sins’—and the rest. Thus, in the passage: ‘As large is this ether, so large is that ether within the heart’ (Chānd, 8.1.3) the small ether, i.e. the Supreme Being alone, is compared to the well-known ether, since when two different things can be reasonably held to be the object with which the thing is compared and the object compared, it is unreasonable to suppose one and the same thing to be both (viz. upamāna and upameya). ‘Being the supporter of all effects’ too, mentioned in the passage: ‘In it both the heaven and the earth are contained’ (Chāndogya-upaniṣad 8.1.3), fits in on the part of the Highest Self alone. The attributes like ‘being the soul’, ‘being free from sins’ and the rest, mentioned is the passage: ‘This soul is free from sins, ageless, deathless, sorrowless, without hunger, without thirst, possessed of true desires, possessed of true resolves’ (Chāndogya-upaniṣad 8.1.5), fit in only if the Highest Self be understood. Moreover, after having designated the non-permanency of the fruits of works and their incapacity of knowing Him in the passage: ‘As here the world won by work perishes, so hereafter the world won by merit perishes’ (Chāndogya-upaniṣad 8.1.6), Scripture concludes: ‘Now, those who depart, having known the soul here and those true desires, come to have free movement in all the worlds’ (Chāndogya-upaniṣad 8.1.6). That is, those worshippers who ‘depart’ to the other world, ‘having known’, i.e. having realized ‘the soul’, i.e. the Supreme Lord called ‘the small’, and ‘those’, i.e. His qualities, come to have free movement in all the worlds. Accordingly, the small ether is the Highest Self, since then alone free movement is explicable on the part of those who know the nature and qualities of the ‘small one’.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Quoted by Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, Bhāskara, Śrīkaṇṭha and Baladeva.

[2]:

Op. cit.

[3]:

Vedānta-kaustubha, 1.3.8.

[4]:

That is, as the external ether it is the upamāna, as the internal ether the upameya. Hence no contradiction is involved.

[5]:

That is, as the ether remains aloof from the impurities of the world, though connected with it, so the soul remains aloof from the impurities of the body and the rest, though connected with them. Hence the latter may be compared with the former.