when examining the doctrine of the Sûtras, viz. the question whether the
Upanishads acknowledge a higher and lower knowledge in /S/a@nkara's
sense, i.e. a knowledge of a higher and a lower Brahman. Now this we
find not to be the case. Knowledge is in the Upanishads frequently
opposed to avîdyâ, by which latter term we have to understand ignorance
as to Brahman, absence of philosophic knowledge; and, again, in several
places we find the knowledge of the sacrificial part of the Veda with
its supplementary disciplines contrasted as inferior with the knowledge
of the Self; to which latter distinction the Mu/nd/aka Up. (I, 4)
applies the terms aparâ and parâ vîdyâ. But a formal recognition of the
essential difference of Brahman being viewed, on the one hand, as
possessing distinctive attributes, and, on the other hand, as devoid of
all such attributes is not to be met with anywhere. Brahman is indeed
sometimes described as sagu/n/a and sometimes as nirgu/n/a (to use later
terms); but it is nowhere said that thereon rests a distinction of two
different kinds of knowledge leading to altogether different results.
The knowledge of Brahman is one, under whatever aspects it is viewed;
hence the circumstance (already exemplified above) that in the same
vidyâs it is spoken of as sagu/n/a as well as nirgu/n/a. When the mind
of the writer dwells on the fact that Brahman is that from which all
this world originates, and in which it rests, he naturally applies to it
distinctive attributes pointing at its relation to the world; Brahman,
then, is called the Self and life of all, the inward ruler, the
omniscient Lord, and so on. When, on the other hand, the author follows
out the idea that Brahman may be viewed in itself as the mysterious
reality of which the whole expanse of the world is only an outward
manifestation, then it strikes him that no idea or term derived from
sensible experience can rightly be applied to it, that nothing more may
be predicated of it but that it is neither this nor that. But these are
only two aspects of the cognition of one and the same entity.