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BRAHMANISM
is beyond thought and speech. In this state there is nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard. Everything is lost in the Infinite."
The fundamental thought of Advaita Vedānta is that the lifemonad or embodied soul (jira) is in cssence the Self (utman), which, being beyond the changing, transient, phenomenal apparitions of our cmpirical experience, is none other than Brahman, the sole and universal Etcrnal Reality, which is beyond change, self-effulgent and ever free, and defined as “one-without-a-sccond" (a-dvitiya), “really cxisting" (sat), "purely spiritual" (cil) and "sheer bliss" (ānanda). The life-monad is in error about its own true character. It regards itself as bound. But this error vanishes with the dawn of realization. The lifemonad (jīva) then discovers that it is itself the Self (ātman). Bondage thereupon is non-existent. Indeed, with reference to that which is always free such terms as bondage and liberation are inappropriate. They seem to have meaning only during thic preliminary stages of spiritual apprenticeship, when the pupil has still to make the critical discovery. The term "liberation" is used by the guru only in a preliminary sense, as addressed to one in a state of bondage that exists only in his own imagination.
Or, as the ancient Gaudapāda states the case in his celebrated commentary to the Māņdūkya Upanișad: “There is no dissolution, no beginning, no bondage, and no aspirant; there is neither anyone avid for liberation nor a liberated soul. This is the final truth." 222
"Only the one who has abandoned the notion that he has re
222 Gauda pada-karika 2. 32. Gauda pada is supposed to have been the tcacher of Govinda, who was the teacher of Sankara. A translation of his commentary (karika). together with Sankara's commentary on the commentary as well as on the Upanisad, will be found in Swami Nikhilānanda, The Mandukyopanishad with Gauda pada's Karika and Sankara's Commentary, Mysore, 1936, where the above quotation, Kürikā 2. 82, appcars on p. 136.
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