The Analogy of Selfhood

Abstract

In attempting to understand and elucidate within an immanental framework Brahman’s transcendent being, all Vedantins were obliged to take their cue from those passages in their sources which point to selfhood as the most appropriate model for this. Many of these passages use the terms Ātman and Puruṣa (usually translated Self and Person) almost interchangeably with the name Brahman. No doubt the two Vaisnava Vedantins, Ramanuja and Madhya, found this person-model peculiarly fitting to their theistic position, in that the name Puruṣa-uttama, the highest Person, is a favourite name for Viwu. Thus their predilection for speaking of the divine transcendence in terms of supreme personal qualities arose naturally out of the doctrinal symbolism of their religious tradition. On the other hand, their concern that Brahman should be recognised as supreme Lord, distinct from all finite selves, made it impossible for them to think of him merely as individual soul writ large. Such crude anthropomorphism was even more impossible to Sankara, with his radical view of Brahman’s transcendence.