This means--owing to the essential nature of modification (parinâma).
The modification taught in our system is not such as to introduce
imperfections into the highest Brahman, on the contrary it confers on it
limitless glory. For our teaching as to Brahman's modification is as
follows. Brahman--essentially antagonistic to all evil, of uniform
goodness, differing in nature from all beings other than itself, all-
knowing, endowed with the power of immediately realising all its
purposes, in eternal possession of all it wishes for, supremely blessed--
has for its body the entire universe, with all its sentient and non-
sentient beings--the universe being for it a plaything as it were--and
constitutes the Self of the Universe. Now, when this world which forms
Brahman's body has been gradually reabsorbed into Brahman, each
constituent element being refunded into its immediate cause, so that in
the end there remains only the highly subtle, elementary matter which
Scripture calls Darkness; and when this so-called Darkness itself, by
assuming a form so extremely subtle that it hardly deserves to be called
something separate from Brahman, of which it constitutes the body, has
become one with Brahman; then Brahman invested with this ultra-subtle
body forms the resolve 'May I again possess a world-body constituted by
all sentient and non-sentient beings, distinguished by names and forms
just as in the previous aeon,' and modifies (parinâmayati) itself by
gradually evolving the world-body in the inverse order in which
reabsorption had taken place.
All Vedânta-texts teach such modification or change on Brahman's part.
There is, e.g., the text in the Brihad-Âranyaka which declares that the
whole world constitutes the body of Brahman and that Brahman is its Self.
That text teaches that earth, water, fire, sky, air, heaven, sun, the
regions, moon and stars, ether, darkness, light, all beings, breath,
speech, eye, ear, mind, skin, knowledge form the body of Brahman which
abides within them as their Self and Ruler. Thus in the Kânva-text; the
Mâdhyandina-text reads 'the Self' instead of 'knowledge'; and adds the
worlds, sacrifices and vedas. The parallel passage in the Subâla-
Upanishad adds to the beings enumerated as constituting Brahman's body
in the Brihad-Âranyaka, buddhi, ahamkâra, the mind (kitta), the Un-
evolved (avyakta), the Imperishable (akshara), and concludes 'He who
moves within death, of whom death is the body, whom death does not know,
he is the inner Self of all, free from all evil, divine, the one god
Nârâyana. The term 'Death' here denotes matter in its extremely subtle
form, which in other texts is called Darkness; as we infer from the
order of enumeration in another passage in the same Upanishad, 'the
Unevolved is merged in the Imperishable, the Imperishable in Darkness.'
That this Darkness is called 'Death' is due to the fact that it obscures
the understanding of all souls and thus is harmful to them. The full
text in the Subâla-Up. declaring the successive absorption of all the
beings forming Brahman's body is as follows, 'The earth is merged in
water, water in fire, fire in air, air in the ether, the ether in the
sense-organs, the sense-organs in the tanmâtras, the tanmâtras in the
gross elements, the gross elements in the great principle, the great
principle in the Unevolved, the Unevolved in the Imperishable; the
Imperishable is merged in Darkness; Darkness becomes one with the
highest Divinity.' That even in the state of non-separation (to which
the texts refer as 'becoming one') non-sentient matter as well as
sentient beings, together with the impressions of their former deeds,
persists in an extremely subtle form, will be shown under II, 1, 35. We
have thus a Brahman all-knowing, of the nature of supreme bliss and so
on, one and without a second, having for its body all sentient and non-
sentient beings abiding in an extremely subtle condition and having
become 'one' with the Supreme Self in so far as they cannot be
designated as something separate from him; and of this Brahman Scripture
records that it forms the resolve of becoming many--in so far, namely,
as investing itself with a body consisting of all sentient and non-
sentient beings in their gross, manifest state which admits of
distinctions of name and form--and thereupon modifies (parinâma) itself
into the form of the world. This is distinctly indicated in the
Taittirîya-Upanishad, where Brahman is at first described as 'The True,
knowledge, infinite,' as 'the Self of bliss which is different from the
Self of Understanding,' as 'he who bestows bliss'; and where the text
further on says, 'He desired, may I be many, may I grow forth. He
brooded over himself, and having thus brooded he sent forth all whatever
there is. Having sent forth he entered it. Having entered it he became
sat and tyat, defined and undefined, supported and non-supported,
knowledge and non-knowledge, real and unreal.' The 'brooding' referred
to in this text denotes knowing, viz. reflection on the shape and
character of the previous world which Brahman is about to reproduce.
Compare the text 'whose brooding consists of knowledge' (Mu. Up. I, 1,
9). The meaning therefore is that Brahman, having an inward intuition of
the characteristics of the former world, creates the new world on the
same pattern. That Brahman in all kalpas again and again creates the
same world is generally known from Sruti and Smriti. Cp. 'As the creator
formerly made sun and moon, and sky and earth, and the atmosphere and
the heavenly world,' and 'whatever various signs of the seasons are seen
in succession, the same appear again and again in successive yugas and
kalpas.'
The sense of the Taittirîya-text therefore is as follows. The highest
Self, which in itself is of the nature of unlimited knowledge and bliss,
has for its body all sentient and non-sentient beings--instruments of
sport for him as it were--in so subtle a form that they may be called
non-existing; and as they are his body he may be said to consist of them
(tan-maya). Then desirous of providing himself with an infinity of
playthings of all kinds he, by a series of steps beginning with Prakriti
and the aggregate of souls and leading down to the elements in their
gross state, so modifies himself as to have those elements for his body--
when he is said to consist of them--and thus appears in the form of our
world containing what the text denotes as sat and tyat, i.e. all
intelligent and non-intelligent things, from gods down to plants and
stones. When the text says that the Self having entered into it became
sat and tyat, the meaning is that the highest Self, which in its causal
state had been the universal Self, abides, in its effected state also,
as the Self of the different substances undergoing changes and thus
becomes this and that. While the highest Self thus undergoes a change--
in the form of a world comprising the whole aggregate of sentient and
non-sentient beings--all imperfection and suffering are limited to the
sentient beings constituting part of its body, and all change is
restricted to the non-sentient things which constitute another part. The
highest Self is _effected_ in that sense only that it is the ruling
principle, and hence the Self, of matter and souls in their gross or
evolved state; but just on account of being this, viz. their inner Ruler
and Self, it is in no way touched by their imperfections and changes.
Consisting of unlimited knowledge and bliss he for ever abides in his
uniform nature, engaged in the sport of making this world go round. This
is the purport of the clause 'it became the real and the unreal':
although undergoing a change into the multiplicity of actual sentient
and non-sentient things, Brahman at the same time was the Real, i.e.
that which is free from all shadow of imperfection, consisting of
nothing but pure knowledge and bliss. That all beings, sentient and non-
sentient, and whether in their non-evolved or evolved states, are mere
playthings of Brahman, and that the creation and reabsorption of the
world are only his sport, this has been expressly declared by Dvaipâyana,
Parâsara and other Rishis,'Know that all transitory beings, from the
Unevolved down to individual things, are a mere play of Hari'; 'View his
action like that of a playful child,' &c. The Sûtrakâra will distinctly
enounce the same view in II, 1, 33. With a similar view the text 'from
that the Lord of Mâya sends forth all this; and in that the other is
bound by Mâyâ' (Svet. Up. IV, 9), refers to Prakriti and soul, which
together constitute the body of Brahman, as things different from
Brahman, although then, i.e. at the time of a pralaya, they are one with
Brahman in so far as their extreme subtlety does not admit of their
being conceived as separate; this it does to the end of suggesting that
even when Brahman undergoes the change into the shape of this world, all
changes exclusively belong to non-sentient matter which is a mode of
Brahman, and all imperfections and sufferings to the individual souls
which also are modes of Brahman. The text has to be viewed as agreeing
in meaning with 'that Self made itself.' Of a similar purport is the
account given in Manu, 'He being desirous to send forth from his body
beings of many kinds, first with a thought created the waters and placed
his seed in them' (I, 8).
It is in this way that room is found for those texts also which proclaim
Brahman to be free from all imperfection and all change. It thus remains
a settled conclusion that Brahman by itself constitutes the material as
well as the operative cause of the world.