11. The Highest ... on account of primariness of meaning

11. The Highest, Gaimini thinks; on account of primariness of meaning.

The teacher Gaimini is of opinion that those deities lead on the souls of those only who meditate on the highest Brahman. For in the text 'a person not human leads them to Brahman' the word Brahman is naturally taken in its primary sense (i.e. the highest Brahman); the secondary sense (i.e. the effected Brahman) can be admitted only if there are other valid reasons to refer the passage to the effected Brahman. And the alleged impossibility of the soul's going is no such valid reason; for although Brahman no doubt is present everywhere, Scripture declares that the soul of the wise frees itself from Nescience only on having gone to some particular place. That the origination of true knowledge depends on certain conditions of caste, âsrama, religious duty, purity of conduct, time, place, and so on, follows from certain scriptural texts, as e.g. 'Brâhmanas desire to know him through the study of the Veda' (Bri. Up. IV, 4, 22); in the same way it follows from the text declaring the soul's going to Brahman that the final realisation of that highest knowledge which implies the cessation of all Nescience depends on

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the soul's going to some particular place. The arguments founded on texts alleged to declare that the soul of the wise does not pass out of the body at all we have refuted above. The argument that the specification implied in the text which mentions Brahman-worlds clearly points to the effected Brahman, i.e. Hiranyagarbha, is equally invalid. For the compound 'the Brahman-world' is to be explained as'the world which is Brahman'; just as according to the Pûrva Mîmâmsâ the compound 'Nishâda-sthapati' denotes a sthapati who is a Nishâda (not a sthapati of the Nishâdas). A thing even which is known as one only may be designated by a plural form, as in a mantra one girdle is spoken of as 'the fetters of Aditi.' And as to the case under discussion, we know on the authority of Scripture, Smriti, Itihâsa, and Purâna, that the wonderful worlds springing from the mere will of a perfect and omnipresent being cannot be but infinite.