]
The name, which in later writings is most frequently given to the "one
without a second,"[16] is Atman, which properly means self. Much is said
of the way in which the self in each man is to recover, or discover, its
unity with the supreme or real self. For as the one sun shining in the
heavens is reflected, often in distorted images, in multitudes of
vessels filled with water, so the one self is present in all human
minds.[17] There is not--perhaps there could not be--consistency in the
statements of the relation of the seeming to the real. In most of the
older books a practical or conventional existence is admitted of the
self in each man, but not a real existence. But when the conception is
fully formulated the finite world is not admitted to exist save as a
mere illusion. All phenomena are a play--a play without plot or purpose,
which the absolute plays with itself.[18] This is surely transcendent
transcendentalism. One regrets that speculation did not take one step
more, and declare that the illusion was itself illusory. Then we should
have gone round the circle, and returned to _sensus communis_. We must
be pardoned if we seem to speak disrespectfully of such fantastic
speculations; we desire rather to speak regretfully of the many
generations of men which successively occupied themselves with such
unprofitable dreams; for this kind of thought is traceable even from
Vedic days.
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