Note (return) — INTRODUCTION. (continued 2)

Adhik. XXX (53, 54) treats, according to Sa@nkara, in the way of digression, of the question whether to the Self an existence independent of the body can be assigned, or not (as the Materialists maintain).—According to the Srî-bhâshya the adhikarana does not refer to this wide question, but is concerned with a point more immediately connected with the meditations on Brahman, viz. the question as to the form under which, in those meditations, the Self of the meditating devotee has to be viewed. The two Sûtras then have to be translated as follows: 'Some (maintain that the soul of the devotee has, in meditations, to be viewed as possessing those attributes only which belong to it in its embodied state, such as jñatritva and the like), because the Self is (at the time of meditation) in the body.'—The next Sûtra rejects this view, 'This is not so, but the separatedness (i.e. the pure isolated state in which the Self is at the time of final release when it is freed from all evil, &c.) (is to be transferred to the meditating Self), because that will be18 the state (of the Self in the condition of final release).'