/arira and the pradhana are referred to as
the two 'others' (itarau) of whom the text predicates distinctive
attributes separating them from the highest Lord. The word 'itara' (the
other one) appears in several other passages (I, 1, 16; I, 3, 16; II, 1,
21) as a kind of technical term denoting the individual soul in
contradistinction from the Lord. The /S/a@nkaras indeed maintain that
all those passages refer to an unreal distinction due to avidya. But
this is just what we should like to see proved, and the proof offered in
no case amounts to more than a reference to the system which demands
that the Sutras should be thus understood. If we accept the
interpretations of the school of /S/a@nkara, it remains altogether
unintelligible why the Sutrakara should never hint even at what
/S/a@nkara is anxious again and again to point out at length, viz. that
the greater part of the work contains a kind of exoteric doctrine only,
ever tending to mislead the student who does not keep in view what its
nature is. If other reasons should make it probable that the Sutrakara
was anxious to hide the true doctrine of the Upanishads as a sort of
esoteric teaching, we might be more ready to accept /S/a@nkara's mode of
interpretation. But no such reasons are forthcoming; nowhere among the
avowed followers of the /S/a@nkara system is there any tendency to treat
the kernel of their philosophy as something to be jealously guarded and
hidden. On the contrary, they all, from Gau/d/apada down to the most
modern writer, consider it their most important, nay, only task to
inculcate again and again in the clearest and most unambiguous language
that all appearance of multiplicity is a vain illusion, that the Lord
and the individual souls are in reality one, and that all knowledge but
this one knowledge is without true value.

There remains one more important passage concerning the relation of the
individual soul to the highest Self, a passage which attracted our
attention above, when we were reviewing the evidence for early
divergence of opinion among the teachers of the Vedanta. I mean I, 4,
20-22, which three Sutras state the views of A/s/marathya, Au/d/ulomi,
and Ka/s/akr/ri/tsna as to the reason why, in a certain passage of the
B/ri/hadara/n/yaka, characteristics of the individual soul are ascribed
to the highest Self. The siddhanta view is enounced in Sutra 22,
'avasthiter iti Ka/s/ak/ri/tsna/h/' i.e. Ka/s/ak/ri/tsna (accounts for
the circumstan