Mandukya_Upanishad

assertion of this nature, the total “I” becomes reconcilablewith “That” – “This is That”. All becomes That – sarvamhyetad brahma.How can many things be one thing, is another question.Sarvam brahma: All is Brahman. A multitudinous varietyseems to be unified with a single entity. This is intriguingbecause we have never seen many things being equatedwith one thing. Many things are many things and one thingis one thing. The manifold variety of the universe isperceived by us because of the differentiating characters ofobjects. What about this differentia, then? What happens tothe differentia when we try to identify all things with asingle reality? Here, again, we have to apply the samemethod of bhāga-tyāga-lakṣhana, of shedding somethingand taking something else, in the act of understanding. Justas you recognise a person who was there and who is nowhere by a method of sublimation of characters, all thismanifold universe is recognised as one single Being by themethod of elimination of redundant characters which arenot essential to the structure of the variety, which cannot becalled the essence of the variety and which are onlyaccidental to the particulars. That which is accidental is tobe abandoned and that which is essential is to be taken.Brahman is essence and therefore it can be equated onlywith essence. The essential Brahman cannot be identifiedwith the accidental attributes of the objects of the world.The name and the form, the structural distinctions that weobserve in the things of the world are accidental in thesense that they persist only as long as there is space andtime. As was pointed out in the first mantra itself –34