These and other texts teach that the highest Brahman is essentially free
from all imperfection whatsoever, comprises within itself all auspicious
qualities, and finds its pastime in originating, preserving, reabsorbing,
pervading, and ruling the universe; that the entire complex of
intelligent and non-intelligent beings (souls and matter) in all their
different estates is real, and constitutes the form, i.e. the body of
the highest Brahman, as appears from those passages which co-ordinate it
with Brahman by means of terms such as sarira (body), rupa (form), tanu
(body), amsa (part), sakti (power), vibhuti (manifestation of power),
and so on;--that the souls which are a manifestation of Brahman's power
exist in their own essential nature, and also, through their connexion
with matter, in the form of embodied souls (kshetrajna);--and that the
embodied souls, being engrossed by Nescience in the form of good and
evil works, do not recognise their essential nature, which is knowledge,
but view themselves as having the character of material things.--The
outcome of all this is that we have to cognise Brahman as carrying
plurality within itself, and the world, which is the manifestation of
his power, as something real.

When now the text, in the sloka 'where all difference has vanished' (Vi.
Pu. VI, 7, 53), declares that the Self, although connected with the
different effects of Prakriti, such as divine, human bodies, and so on,
yet is essentially free from all such distinctions, and therefore not
the object of the words denoting those different classes of beings, but
to be defined as mere knowledge and Being; to be known by the Self and
not to be reached by the mind of the practitioner of Yoga (yogayuj);
this must in no way be understood as denying the reality of the world.--
But how is this known?--As follows, we reply. The chapter of the Purana
in which that sloka occurs at first declares concentration (Yoga) to be