Vivekananda Mailing List-8/10/03

[Guest guest]

If this quality of ruling the universe be a quality common even to the

liberated then this text would not apply as a definition of Brahman

defining Him through His rulership of the universe. The uncommon

attributes alone define a thing; therefore in texts like — 'My beloved

boy, alone, in the beginning there existed the One without a second.

That saw and felt, " I will give birth to the many. " That projected

heat.' — 'Brahman indeed alone existed in the beginning. That One

evolved. That projected a blessed form, the Kshatra. All these gods are

Kshatras: Varuna, Soma, Rudra, Parjanya, Yama, Mrityu, Ishâna.' —

'Atman indeed existed alone in the beginning; nothing else vibrated; He

thought of projecting the world; He projected the world after.' —

'Alone Nârâyana existed; neither Brahmâ, nor Ishana, nor the

Dyâvâ-Prithivi, nor the stars, nor water, nor fire, nor Soma, nor the

sun. He did not take pleasure alone. He after His meditation had one

daughter, the ten organs, etc.' — and in others as, 'Who living in the

earth is separate from the earth, who living in the Atman, etc.' — the

Shrutis speak of the Supreme One as the subject of the work of ruling

the universe. . . . Nor in these descriptions of the ruling of the

universe is there any position for the liberated soul, by which such a

soul may have the ruling of the universe ascribed to it. "