Brahma Sutras (Shankaracharya)
by George Thibaut | 1890 | 203,611 words
English translation of the Brahma sutras (aka. Vedanta Sutras) with commentary by Shankaracharya (Shankara Bhashya): One of the three canonical texts of the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy. The Brahma sutra is the exposition of the philosophy of the Upanishads. It is an attempt to systematise the various strands of the Upanishads which form the ...
IV, 4, 11
11. The presence (of a body and senses) Jaimini (asserts); because the text records option (of the released person multiplying himself).
The teacher Jaimini is of opinion that the released person possesses a body and sense-organs as well as a mind. For passages like 'He is onefold, he is threefold' (Ch. Up. VII, 26, 2) declare that the Self has the option of manifold existence which cannot be brought about without manifoldness of body.--The capability of optionally multiplying one's self is, indeed, mentioned in the knowledge of plenitude (bhūman) which refers to Brahman as devoid of qualities, but this lordly power which is valid only for the qualified state is there mentioned only in order to glorify the knowledge of the (unqualified) plenitude; and it therefore presents itself as constituting the fruit of qualified knowledge[1].
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
Manifoldness of the Self is mentioned in a vidyā referring to the highest Brahman; but its introduction there is not due to the wish of teaching something about that state, but merely of, rhetorically, glorifying it. We, therefore, are entitled to view that passage as teaching something about him who possesses the lower knowledge.