rahman.

Thus /S/a@nkara.--According to Ramanuja, on the other hand, the teaching
of the Upanishads has to be summarised as follows.--There exists only
one all-embracing being called Brahman or the highest Self of the Lord.
This being is not destitute of attributes, but rather endowed with all
imaginable auspicious qualities. It is not 'intelligence,'--as
/S/a@nkara maintains,--but intelligence is its chief attribute. The Lord
is all-pervading, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful; his nature is
fundamentally antagonistic to all evil. He contains within himself
whatever exists. While, according to /S/a@nkara, the only reality is to
be found in the non-qualified homogeneous highest Brahman which can only
be defined as pure 'Being' or pure thought, all plurality being a mere
illusion; Brahman--according to Ramanuja's view--comprises within itself
distinct elements of plurality which all of them lay claim to absolute
reality of one and the same kind. Whatever is presented to us by
ordinary experience, viz. matter in all its various modifications and
the individual souls of different classes and degrees, are essential
real constituents of Brahman's nature. Matter and souls (a/k/it and
/k/it) constitute, according to Ramanuja's terminology, the body of the
Lord; they stand to him in the same relation of entire dependence and
subserviency in which the matter forming an animal or vegetable body
stands to its soul or animating principle. The Lord pervades and rules
all things which exist--material or immaterial--as their antaryamin; the
fundamental text for this special Ramanuja tenet--which in the writings
of the sect is quoted again and again--is the so-called antaryamin
brahma/n/a. (B/ri/. Up. III, 7) which says, that within all elements,
all sense organs, and, lastly, within all individual souls, there abides
an inward ruler whose body those elements, sense-organs, and individual
souls constitute.--Matter and souls as forming the body of the Lord are
also called modes of him (prakara). They are to be looked upon as his
effects, but they have enjoyed the kind of individual existence which is
theirs from all eternity, and will never be entirely resolved into
Brahman. They, however, exist in two different, periodically
alternating, conditions. At some times they exist in a subtle state in
which they do not possess those qualities by which they are ordinarily
known, and there is then no distinction of individual name and form