The co-ordination of the two words 'the world' and 'He' thus rests on
that relation between the two, owing to which the world is the body of
Brahman, and Brahman the Self of the world. If, on the other hand, we
maintained that the sastra aims only at inculcating the doctrine of one
substance free from all difference, there would be no sense in all those
questions and answers, and no sense in an entire nastra devoted to the
explanation of that one thing. In that case there would be room for one
question only, viz. 'what is the substrate of the erroneous imagination
of a world?' and for one answer to this question, viz. 'pure
consciousness devoid of all distinction!'--And if the co-ordination
expressed in the clause 'and the world is he' was meant to set forth the
absolute oneness of the world and Brahman, then it could not be held
that Brahman possesses all kinds of auspicious qualities, and is opposed
to all evil; Brahman would rather become the abode of all that is impure.
All this confirms the conclusion that the co-ordination expressed in
that clause is to be understood as directly teaching the relation
between a Self and its body.--The sloka, 'From Vishnu the world has
sprung: in him he exists: he is the cause of the subsistence and
dissolution of this world: and the world is he' (Vi. Pu. I, 1, 35),
states succinctly what a subsequent passage--beginning with 'the highest
of the high' (Vi. Pu. I, 2, 10)--sets forth in detail. Now there the
sloka,'to the unchangeable one' (I, 2, 1), renders homage to the holy
Vishnu, who is the highest Brahman in so far as abiding within his own
nature, and then the text proceeds to glorify him in his threefold form
as Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Sankara, as Pradhana, Time, and as the
totality of embodied souls in their combined and distributed form. Here
the sloka, 'Him whose essential nature is knowledge' (I, 2, 6),
describes the aspect of the highest Self in so far as abiding in the
state of discrete embodied souls; the passage cannot therefore be
understood as referring to a substance free from all difference. If the