37. For one and the same highest divinity ... is the subject of that meditation

37. For one and the same (highest divinity), called the 'truly being,' and so on (is the subject of that meditation).

For the highest divinity, called there that which is--

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which was introduced in the clause 'that divinity thought,' &c.--is intimated by all the following sections of that chapter. This is proved by the fact that the attributes--'that which truly is' and so on--which were mentioned in the first section and confirmed in the subsequent ones, are finally summed up in the statement, 'in that all this has its Self, that is the True, that is the Self.'

Some interpreters construe the last two Sûtras as constituting two adhikaranas. The former Sûtra, they say, teaches that the text, 'I am thou, thou art I,' enjoins a meditation on the soul and the highest Self as interchangeable. But as on the basis of texts such as 'All this is indeed Brahman,' 'all this has its Self in Brahman,' 'Thou art that,' the text quoted is as a matter of course understood to mean that there is one universal Self, the teaching which it is by those interpreters assumed to convey would be nothing new; and their interpretation therefore must be rejected. The point as to the oneness of the individual and the highest Self will moreover be discussed under IV, I, 3. Moreover, there is no foundation for a special meditation on Brahman as the individual soul and the individual soul as Brahman, apart from the meditation on the Self of all being one.--The second Sûtra, they say, declares the oneness of the meditation on the True enjoined in the text, 'whosoever knows this great wonderful first-born as the True Brahman' (Bri. Up. V, 4), and of the meditation enjoined in the subsequent passage (V, 5. 2), ' Now what is true, that is the Âditya, the person that dwells in yonder orb, and the person in the right eye.' But this also is untenable. For the difference of abode mentioned in the latter passage (viz. the abode in the sun and in the eye)establishes difference of vidyâ, as already shown under Sû. III, 3, 21. Nor is it possible to assume that the two meditations comprised in the latter text which have a character of their own in so far as they view the True as embodied in syllables, and so on, and which are declared to be connected with a special result ('he who knows this destroys evil and leaves it'), should be identical with the one earlier meditation which has an independent

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character of its own and a result of its own ('he conquers these worlds'). Nor can it be said that the declaration of a fruit in 'he destroys evil and leaves it' refers merely to the fruit (not of the entire meditation but) of a subordinate part of the meditation; for there is nothing to prove this. The proof certainly cannot be said to lie in the fact of the vidyâs being one; for this would imply reasoning in a circle, viz. as follows--it being settled that the vidyâs are one, it follows that the fruit of the former meditation only is the main one, while the fruits of the two later meditations are subordinate ones; and--it being settled that those two later fruits are subordinate ones, it follows that, as thus there is no difference depending on connexion with fruits, the two later meditations are one with the preceding one.--All this proves that the two Sûtras can be interpreted only in the way maintained by us.--Here terminates the adhikarana of 'being within.'