dualistic trait of the world of matter and Brahman as its controller,
though in other places we find it asserted most emphatically that
these are but names and forms, and when Brahman is known
everything else is known. No attempts at reconciliation are made
for the sake of the consistency of conceptual utterance, as
S'a@nkara the great professor of Vedânta does by explaining away
the dualistic texts. The universe is said to be a reality, but the
real in it is Brahman alone. It is on account of Brahman that
the fire burns and the wind blows. He is the active principle in
the entire universe, and yet the most passive and unmoved. The

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world is his body, yet he is the soul within. "He creates all,
wills all, smells all, tastes all, he has pervaded all, silent and
unaffected [Footnote ref 1]." He is below, above, in the back, in front,
in the south and in the north, he is all this [Footnote ref 2]." These
rivers in the east and in the west originating from the ocean, return
back into it and become the ocean themselves, though they do not know
that they are so. So also all these people coming into being from the
Being do not know that they have come from the Being...That which
is the subtlest that is the self, that is all this, the truth, that self
thou art O S'vetaketu [Footnote ref 3]." "Brahman," as Deussen points out,
"was regarded as the cause antecedent in time, and the universe
as the effect proceeding from it; the inner dependence of the
universe on Brahman and its essential identity with him was
represented as a creation of the universe by and out of Brahman."
Thus it is said in Mund. I.I. 7:

As a spider ejects and retracts (the threads),