In the Regeneration and Divinisation of Human Beings

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (a).The Dissertation on Experience-9. That One Experience is diversely felt as variety, and is fictitiously termed as either this or that, and of this nature or of that. The form of the world is found to be a magical appearance when subjected to the test of severe discrimination. The world and the Atman or Brahman neither exclude nor include each other, but are non-related, for relation is possible only between two demarcated objects, and the possibility of duality or any relation is annulled in the being that is "one alone without a second". Pure Experience is attributeless, and all "existence" is "experience". Ethical virtues and immoral vices are the effects of the different mental modes reacting variegated to the one changeless consciousness in different ways, leading respectively to the experience of es  of Unity-consciousness and diversity-delusion. All ou...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (a).The Dissertation on Experience-8. The appearance of the subject-object-distinction has to be finally attributed to the creative activity of consciousness itself, though the relation of consciousness and change in the form of any activity is beyond understanding and explanation. As the idea of causality itself is an effect of the want of real knowledge, a question as to the cause of this want has no meaning. But the affirmation of consciousness has to objectify itself in the form in which it is desired to manifest itself, as all forms are contents of consciousness. Whatever an individual affirms must ultimately happen or be materialised into effect, because each centre of consciousness has infinity at its background. Misery or suffering and pleasure or happiness are experiences relative to the understanding of the individual, and are of such a character and degree as is the condition of th...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (a).The Dissertation on Experience-7. The laws governing the modes of thinking shall have sway over its objects also, for the rules that regulate the process of knowledge and restrict its operations determine all the contents thereof, which, therefore, cannot be known independent of and free from the conditions to which the knowing process is subject. All forms of objective knowledge are, thus, deceptive and give to the knower nothing of reality. The truth of the object of thought can be known only when it is freed from the modes of thought, and the truth of thought itself can be known only when it is not conditioned by the forms which it takes. Neither the mind nor its object, taken independently, can be said to truly exist. That the mind exists cannot be proved unless there is a modification of the modal consciousness, which is called a psychosis or a mental transformation, which, again, is n...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (a).The Dissertation on Experience-6. The world is made up of forms. The forms of things disclose their unreal nature when subjected to a careful examination of their composition and working. A thing is a member of the society of diverse phenomenal centres appearing to divide against itself a basic Noumenon. A thing is an object of thought, an internal form, and an external form is known through thought itself, which is consciousness objectified. A form is differentiated from existence as a whole by a particular mode characterising it. It cannot be said that a thing is defined by a mode or that it has a definite form unless it becomes an object of thought. Thought itself is conditioned by forms, and it is thought, again, that knows external forms and determines their nature. Swami Krishnananda To be continued  .....

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (a).The Dissertation on Experience-5. Sense-perception, cogitation and understanding are messengers of the fact that there exists a fundamental substratum of a uniform and enduring Consciousness. Cognition is impossible without a pre-existent link between the subject and the object. Thought cannot spring from emptiness, for emptiness is itself nothing. Activity is possible because there is creative imagination and imagination is a moving objectified shadow of Consciousness. The denial or assertion of something presupposes the awareness of the thinking subject and the subject cannot stand apart from self-awareness. Self-consciousness is, thus, unavoidable in being. It is an eternal fact. The perception of an object reveals the conscious relation that is between the subject and the object. This relation should be based on a fundamentally changeless being, without which even a relatio...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (a).The Dissertation on Experience-4. This permanent Verity is the supreme object of quest through the cosmical endeavour in creation, wherein alone all further impulses for externalisation of forces are put an end to. The desire to become the All terminates in the experience of Infinitude. This aspiration to transcend states and things points to the unreal character of the universe. "The one Being, the wise diversely speak of." —Rigveda, I. 164. 46. "There is nothing diverse here." —Katha Up., IV. 11. "Existence is One alone without a second." —Chh. Up., VI. 2.1. The life of every individual bears connections with the lives of other individuals in varieties of ways, in accordance with the degree of its awareness of Reality. Every thought sets the surface of existence in vibration and touches the psychic life of other individuals with a creative force the...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (a).The Dissertation on Experience-3. The whole cosmos seems to be a restless field where dynamic powers are arrayed in battle as if to extirpate themselves for a nobler cause. Tranquillity can well be said to be non-existent in the history of the space-time world. Struggle is the meaning of phenomenal endurance. The Upanishads solve the riddle of relative strife through the intuitive perception of the Essence. The heroic leap of the individual into the unknown is the expression of the want of a superior joy. The dissatisfaction with limitedness in life directs the soul to catch the fullness of perfection in the truth of its Integrality, with which the individualised condition is not endowed. Hence, universal movement and individual effort, though differing in their altruism of nature, can be understood as a reflection of the tendency to Self-Perfection of Being. The pressure of the trut...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (a).The Dissertation on Experience-2. The universe rolls on ceaselessly in the cycle of time, and reveals a newer characteristic of itself every moment. Things do not rest in themselves but ever pass away into something else. Everything in this universe is change. Change is the law of life. Nothing is without changing itself. An inadequacy felt in the attainments of the current state of existence is the forerunner of all enterprises in the life of the individual. Action is impossible unless the self feels in itself a deficiency which can be filled up by an active endeavour to possess the missing part that would contribute to the completion of its nature. A felt necessity for a fuller state of experience is the mother of all attractions and repulsions. Swami Krishnananda To be continued  .....

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (a).The Dissertation on Experience-1. The world is a presentation of outward variety and seeming contradiction in existence. It is a disintegrated appearance of the Absolute, a limited expression of Infinitude, a degeneration of the majesty of immortal Consciousness, a diffused form of the spiritual Completeness, a dissipated manifestation of changeless Eternity. Each of such separated entities of the world claims for itself an absolutely independent existence and regards all objective individuals as the not-Self. The not-Self is always considered to be in absolute contradiction to or at least absolutely distinguished from the self's own localised being. The exclusion of other limited objective bodies from one's own subjective self involves a relation between the two, and this relation is the force that keeps intact the network of diverse consciousness. Everything hangs on the other ...

The Realisation of the Absolute : 1. Introduction : (d). Way to Blessedness : 2. Humanity has to be cent-per-cent spiritual. Those who think that they are doing injustice to the world through their act of Self-realisation have naturally to be regarded as having not gone above the credulity of childhood. For, they have forgotten that the Self which is the Absolute includes the whole universe, and far transcends it. It is the obtaining of everything, and not the losing of anything. The welfare of society rests in its spirituality. Society is a formation of bodies effected through the unconscious spiritual bond existing among beings belonging to the same genus or species. The social bond is stronger among those who think alike and who practise the same conduct. This bond is the strongest among those who are in the same level of the depth of consciousness. All this is a feeble reflection of the essential nature of the indivisibility of Existence which is O...

The Realisation of the Absolute : 1. Introduction : (d). Way to Blessedness : 1. This important factor is forgotten by the modern man, howevermuch educated he may be. He has refused to walk freely with the workings of the Spiritual Nature and has attempted his best to centre himself in the state of individualised existence. The misery of the present-day world may be attributed to this constrictive tendency in the human being, which is ever trying to block the way of the expansion of the spiritual consciousness. The case of the half-baked material science and psychology may be specially mentioned here as being one of the forces obstructive to the happy process of Truth-realisation. The ills caused by wrong methods of education, the social and political strifes, the individual evils and the world-degeneration are all effected by the one terrible fact that humanity has turned against the law of the Spiritual Reality. So long as this self-destructive tendency...

The Realisation of the Absolute : 1. Introduction : (c). Degrees in Empirical Reality  - 1. The capability for such an expansion differs by degrees in different beings, according to the extent of the Reality manifested through them. Beings are higher or lower according to the degree of Intelligence that lights up their nature. Entities in the universe are differentiated through their modes of mentation, which are controlled by the intensity of the Truth presented by them. Nature appears to be Spirit distorted in multitudinous ways and expressed in different degrees of revelation. Individuals marked off within themselves, limited by space and time, bear a variegating relation among one another, in proportion to the depth of the Consciousness realised by them. The deeper the Consciousness realised by an individual, the nearer it is to the Eternal. The separative force is the power of individualisation and of the rootedness of the ego-sense. The greater...

The Realisation of the Absolute : 1. Introduction : (d)Truth and Its Quest : 3. The Upanishads affirm in several ways that there is no meaning in taking the phenomenal diversity as a permanent reality, and that Truth is Infinity. The common impulse to express, unfold and realise one's Self is present in all beings in different degrees or intensity. The whole process of conscious exertion to realise Truth lies in the manifesting of this deepest impulse in man and a flowing with it to expand oneself into the Infinite. As the background of every struggle in life there is this urge to get oneself established in the changeless Consciousness. Even when one struggles blindly in one's attachment to personal life for acquiring external gains, one is indeed moved, though unconsciously and wrongly, by this urge to expand oneself to Completeness. The Realisation of the Absolute : (d)Truth and Its Quest : ENDS. Next : The Realisation of the Absolute : ( e ) ...

The Realisation of the Absolute : 1. Introduction : (d)Truth and Its Quest : 2. The Truth, "knowing which everything becomes known" is the subject of enquiry and the object of quest in the Upanishads. The Seers dived into the very depth of Existence and tasted the nature of the Limitless Life. They entered into the Root of the universe and the branches could easily realise their inner being through an investigation into the essential workings of the Great Root of Life. When the root is watered, the branches are automatically watered; when gold is known, all the ornaments also are known; when Truth is realised, everything is realised; for, Truth is One. Whatever system of philosophy may be derived from the Upanishads, the obvious truth goes without saying that they propound a theory that holds Reality to be indivisible, objectless and transcendent. They assert that belief in diversity is an ignorance of consciousness, and Truth is essentially a ...