Vedantasara-14.

131. Another school of Buddhists says that the Self is identical with the void, on account of such Sruti passages as, “In the beginning there was non-existence” (Ch. Up. VI-2-1), owing also to the fact that there is an absence of everything during dreamless sleep, and further because of the experience, regarding his non-existence, of a man who has just awakened; as when he says to himself, “During the dreamless sleep I was non-existent.”

132. Now it will be shown that all these items from the son to the void are not the Self.

 133. Since in all these fallacious citations of scriptural passages, arguments and personal experiences, made by the different classes of people enumerated above beginning with the extremely deluded, in support of their respective views about the Self, the subsequent view contradicts the previous one, it becomes quite clear that all these items from the son to the void are not the Self.

 134. Moreover none of the items from the son to the void is the Self, because all those fallacious citations of scriptural passages, arguments, and personal experiences in support of them are all nullified for the following reasons: first because they contradict strong scriptural passages which describe the Self as not gross, without eyes, without the vital force, without the mind, not an agent, but Consciousness, Pure Intelligence and Existence; secondly because they are material and are illumined by Pure Consciousness and as such are unreal, like a pot etc., and lastly because of the strong intuition of the man of realization that he is Brahman.

 135. Therefore the innermost Consciousness which is by nature eternal, pure, intelligent, free and real, and which is the illuminer of those unreal entities (such as the son etc.,) is the Self. This is the experience of the Vedantists.
 136. The above is an account of superimposition of unreality on the Real.


4. DE-SUPERIMPOSITION:


137. As a snake falsely perceived in a rope is ultimately found out to be nothing but the rope; similarly the world of unreal things, beginning with ignorance, superimposed upon the Reality, is realized, at the end, to be nothing but Brahman. This is known as de-superimposition (Apavada).

 138. Thus it has been said: Vikara is the actual modification of a thing altering into another substance; while vivarta is only an apparent modification.

 139. To illustrate: The four kinds of physical bodies which are the seats of enjoyment; the different kinds of food and drink etc., which are the objects of enjoyment; the fourteen planes such as Bhur etc., which contain them and the universe (Brahmanda) which contains these planes -- all these are reduced to their cause, the five gross elements.

 140. These five gross elements, together with the five objects such as sound etc., and the subtle bodies – all these are reduced to their cause – the uncompounded elements.

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