ious qualities
and powers, excepting only Brahman's power to emit, rule, and retract
the entire world.

The chief points in which the two systems sketched above agree on the
one hand and diverge on the other may be shortly stated as
follows.--Both systems teach advaita, i.e. non-duality or monism. There
exist not several fundamentally distinct principles, such as the
prak/r/iti and the purushas of the Sa@nkhyas, but there exists only one
all-embracing being. While, however, the advaita taught by /S/a@nkara is
a rigorous, absolute one, Ramanuja's doctrine has to be characterised as
visish/t/a advaita, i.e. qualified non-duality, non-duality with a
difference. According to Sankara, whatever is, is Brahman, and Brahman
itself is absolutely homogeneous, so that all difference and plurality
must be illusory. According to Ramanuja also, whatever is, is Brahman;
but Brahman is not of a homogeneous nature, but contains within itself
elements of plurality owing to which it truly manifests itself in a
diversified world. The world with its variety of material forms of
existence and individual souls is not unreal Maya, but a real part of
Brahman's nature, the body investing the universal Self. The Brahman of
/S/a@nkara is in itself impersonal, a homogeneous mass of objectless
thought, transcending all attributes; a personal God it becomes only
through its association with the unreal principle of Maya, so
that--strictly speaking--/S/a@nkara's personal God, his I/s/vara, is
himself something unreal. Ramanuja's Brahman, on the other hand, is
essentially a personal God, the all-powerful and all-wise ruler of a
real world permeated and animated by his spirit. There is thus no room
for the distinction between a param nirgu/n/am and an apara/m/ sagu/n/am
brahma, between Brahman and I/s/vara.--/S/a@nkara's individual soul is
Brahman in so far as limited by the unreal upadhis due to Maya. The
individual soul of Ramanuja, on the other hand, is really individual; it
has indeed sprung from Brahman and is never outside Brahman, but
nevertheless it enjoys a separate personal existence and will remain a
personality for ever--The release from sa/m/sara means, according to
/S/a@nkara, the absolute merging of the individual soul in Brahman, due
to the dismissal of the erroneous notion that the soul is distinct from
Brahman; according to Ramanuja it only means the soul's passing from the
troubles of earthly life into a kind of heaven or paradise wher