Mandukya_Upanishad

the jīva’s knowledge is sensory, perceptual and cognitional,Īsvara’s knowledge is intuitional. While the jīva’sknowledge cannot be identified with the existence of itsobjects, Īsvara’s knowledge is identical with the existence ofeverything. While ‘sat’ and ‘chit’ unite in the Being ofĪsvara, they get separated in the case of the jīva. This is thereason why the jīva is neither sarvajña nor sarveśvara, thereason being that the world is outside the knowledge of thejīva, though the jīva seems to have a cognition of the objectsby a process artificially brought about through the relationof space and time. The knowledge of Īsvara is above spaceand time, and is non-relational. The jīva’s knowledge isrelative; Īsvara’s knowledge is absolute. Īsvara is, and HisBeing itself is all knowledge and power, while the jīva’sbeing cannot be equated with knowledge and power. Thejīva’s existence is separated from its knowledge, andknowledge from power, while all these are one in the case ofĪsvara. So, it is only Īsvara who can be called sarveśvara andsarvajña; and the Māndūkya Upanishad, while describingthe third pāda or phase of the Ātman as the cause of allthings and qualifying it with the epithets sarveśvara andsarvajña, obviously refers to the Universal Īsvara.Eṣha yonih sarvasya prabhāvapyayau: He is the wombof all things. All things come from Him as the tree comesfrom a seed. The tree may be vast in its extent in space; yet,it is all hidden in its potentiality in the seed. The futurestructure or the shape and the nature of the tree is alreadydetermined by the content of the seed. It is not that somenew thing comes up when there is germination of the seed.Whatever was in the seed, that alone comes out in the form94