Sutra 3.3.42

42. Just as in the case of the offerings. This has been explained.

In the daharavidyā (Ch. Up. VIII, 1 ff.) the text, 'those who depart having known here the Self, and those true desires,' declares at first a meditation on the small ether, i.e. the highest Self, and separately therefrom a meditation on its qualities, viz. true desires, and so on. The doubt here arises whether, in the meditation on those qualities, the meditation on the highest Self—as that to which the qualities belong—is to be repeated or not.—It is not to be repeated, the Pūrvapakshin maintains; for the highest Self is just that which is constituted by the qualities—freedom from all evil, and so on—and as that Self so constituted can be comprised in one meditation, there is no need of repeating the meditation on account of the qualities.—This view the Sūtra sets aside. The meditation has to be repeated. The highest Self indeed is that being to which alone freedom from evil and the other qualities belong, and it forms the object of the first meditation; yet there is a difference between it as viewed in its essential being and as viewed as possessing those qualities; and moreover, the clause 'free from evil, from old age,' etc. enjoins a meditation on the Self as possessing those qualities. It is therefore first to be meditated on in its essential nature, and then there takes place a repetition of the meditation on it in order to bring in those special qualities. The case is analogous to that of 'the offerings.' There is a text 'He is to offer a puroḍāsa on eleven potsherds to Indra the ruler, to Indra the supreme ruler, to Indra the self-ruler.' This injunction refers to one and the same Indra, possessing the qualities of rulership and so on; but as, through connexion with those several qualities, the aspects of Indra differ, the oblation of the puroḍāsa has to be repeated. This is declared in the Sānkarshaṇa, 'The divinities are different on account of separation.'—Here terminates the adhikaraṇa of 'offerings.'