Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/108

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THE LIFE AND SAYINGS OF RÂMAKRISHNA.

that brings bliss, finding peace and rest in the invisible, the immaterial, the inexpressible, the unfathomable. So long as anything else is left, hidden anywhere, there is no peace and no rest, however wise a man may think himself. Or, as Yd^avalkya says : c He who knows this, knows everything.' Every name that can be imagined for ex- pressing what is really inexpressible, is assigned in the Upanishads to Brahman. Brahman is neither long nor short, neither subtile nor gross ; he is without parts, without activity, still, without spot, without fraud, he is unborn, never growing old, not fading nor dying, nor fearing any- thing; he is without and within.' Whether such a being can be called he, is very doubtful, for he is neither he nor she; he is It in the very highest sense of that un- differentiated pronoun.

We thus see that both methods, the first that started from the postulate that the true Self must be one, without a second, and the second, which holds that the true Self must be unchanging, eternal, without beginning or end, arrive at the same final result, viz. that the Self of the world can be nothing that is perceived in this changing world, and that our own Self too can be nothing that is perceived as changing, as being born, as living and dying. Both may, in one sense of the word, be called nothings ; though they are in reality that in comparison with which everything else is nothing. If the world is real the Self is riot, if the Self is real the world is not