In the Regeneration and Divinisation of Human Beings

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 12. A God who changes Himself is not a permanent being. God's self-revelation requires a change in the total existence itself, which process is logically inadmissible. Divine revelation is in relation to the consciousness of the individual and is not an eternal fact of existence. Existence is itself full and perfect and dissipation within it is not admitted by reason. The denial of multitudinousness does not, as it is sometimes supposed, reduce the rich life of the world to a dream-shadow. It is not known how variety in existence adds to the richness of the Absolute. The richness of the part is not equal to the magnificence of the Whole. The grandeur of the relative world is dependent on the imagination of the individual. To a person who has opened his eye of true consciousness the world does not appear as such. We cannot see any cogency in ...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 11. It is argued that the artistic poet-souls of the Upanishads lived in the world of diversity and did not fly out of it. This does not mean that the sages were tied to the plurality-consciousness of the temporal world. They transcended earthly consciousness and realised that the earth is Brahman itself illumining. But in such a realisation there is no concession given to the reality of diverse appearances in any case. The conception that the world is God's revelation of Himself does not fare better. Revelation again presupposes the operation of the play of space, time and causation, the final validity of which is already repudiated. Swami Krishnananda To be continued  .....

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 10. There is a difference among individuals in their perception and thinking. It is impossible to have a knowledge of anything that does not become a content of one's own consciousness. Everyone is inside the prison of his own experience and knows nothing outside his consciousness. The world is rooted in the belief in its existence. The form of the world changes when the consciousness reaches the different relative planes of the various degrees of reality. When consciousness expands into the truth of Pure Being, the world discloses its eternal nature of Pure Consciousness alone. Swami Krishnananda To be continued  .....

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 9. The form of the world is the projection of the objective force of the Universal Consciousness or the World-Mind. Everything in the world is a network of unintelligible relations. Things are not perceived by all in the same fashion. The perceptions of a chair by many individuals are not of the same category of consciousness. They differ in the contents of their ideas which are the effects of the particular modes of the tendency to objectification potentially existent in the individuals. The forces of distraction which constitute the individual consciousness are not of the same quality in everyone. Swami Krishnananda To be continued  .....

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 8. Brahman which is the cause and the world which is the effect are basically identical, and hence change and causation lose their meaning. The phenomenal world is caught up in space, time and causation, which scatter themselves without a past or a future. One thing is in relation to the other, and the world-process seems to be eternal. An eternal multiplicity is an impossibility, and an individual cannot be an enduring being. The world, thus, proves itself to be a naught and gives way to the being that is one and that does not change. Since samsara as a whole has neither a beginning nor an end, except with reference to the individuals, the ideas of a real creation and destruction fall to the ground. Absolutism satisfactorily solves all the problems of life. Swami Krishnananda To be continued  .....

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 7. When space and time, the subtlest aspects of physical manifestation, are nothing but the being of the Brahman itself, it becomes difficult to imagine the expression of Brahman into a world of diversities. There can be no diversity without space. Change demands a spatial emptiness where changing subject is not. It cannot be said that space at present is not Brahman but afterwards it will become Brahman. What is real, now at present, can never be changed subsequently. If we are not Brahman at present, we can never be That at any time in future. Swami Krishnananda To be continued  .....

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 6. There is no reasonable evidence for the existence of an eternal plan and purpose underlying the evolutionary scheme of the world-process, except the fact that it serves as the required objective field of training and self-transcendence for individuals whose constitution is in consonance with the constitution of the world in which they find themselves. Truth being one, it cannot be classed as absolute and relative, except for the sake of human convenience and with reference to subjective changes. It is a sanction of the inability to apprehend Truth, and is not valid with stricter and saner perception. If the one is true, the other must be false. If we cannot experience the Absolute, we have to admit our defeat and ignorance, but we cannot thereby take advantage of our limited consciousness and try to prove that what we experience at present also is real independ...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 5. The Absolute does necessarily and obviously cancel the validity of the existence of the fictitious relative and the finite. The form of the world is not simply less real than the Absolute but a distortion of the characteristic nature of the Absolute. Progress and downfall in life are not an actual process but an appearance of the states of the one Consciousness. The form of the process of the world seems to be rigidly determined when looked from the point of view of the corresponding subjective intellects or the individuals in the same grade of reality, but it appears otherwise when we are open to the fact that the perceiving subjects are not made of the same processes of the psychological stuff, that all are not in the same grade of reality, and that cognising subjects are also infinite in number. The form of the world has no authoritative existence and does no...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 4. Compromising philosophers make a false distinction between the individual and the Absolute, between becoming and being, between the finite self and the ultimate Brahmam. The words "ultimate" and "relative" have no basis outside simple misapprehension of what is really unchanging and eternal. The Upanishads do not simply mean that duality is not final, but that it has no basis at all in the region of Reality. The Absolute of the Upanishads is the only Reality, and all forms must, therefore, be non-existent from the point of view of its exact nature. "Truth alone triumphs; not falsehood." —Mund. Up., III. 1. 6. A faithfulness to diversity must necessarily end in a failure in the practical walk of life. The discord of the material universe is kept up by the belief in actual separateness in life, which has deluded the consciou...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 3. To say that we are not yet the Reality, and we have yet to "become" it, may be true with partiality to empirical consciousness, but it is not the highest truth. Perfection or Absoluteness is not something to be got or acquired from somewhere, but is only a "realisation" of what actually and eternally "is", a mere "knowledge" of the fact that "exists". The individuals are in essence the Absolute itself, which is beyond all contradiction. This truth is not to be grasped through dull metaphysics or idle intellectual quibbling, but through realisation and experience. The form of the world can never have a substantial existence as it is not independent of the Absolute. The reality of the forms of the world is based on the working of the ego-sense or the idea of separateness in the individual. Realisation is no...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 2. To assert diversity is to deny absoluteness. It does not, however, mean that the Absolute excludes the diverse finitudes, but the finite is eternally dissolved in or is identical with the Absolute, and therefore, it does not claim for itself an individual reality. It is argued that to ignore differences is to reduce the Absolute to a non-entity. The Absolute does not depend upon the reality of egoistic differences. By cancelling the relative we may not affect the Absolute, but we, so long as we are unconscious of the fundamental Being, improve thereby our present state of consciousness. Individuality is in every speck of space and these egos must be so very undivided that diversity becomes an impossible conception and homogeneity persists in every form of true reasoning in our effort to come to a conclusion in regard to the nature of the Absolute. We may blin...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 1. It is contended by some that the world is not such an utter negation of Reality, that the world of names and forms is in the being of Reality, that plurality cannot be a nothing, that diversity which is real is indwelt by the Supreme. It is also held that the individual is not the Absolute until it realises the Absolute, that the process of change and evolution is a perfect truth and not an appearance, and that the quality of the Absolute is not attributable to the individual at any time. It is not difficult to note that indwelling is possible only when the Indweller is different from the indwelled, that is, when there is a second entity. To assert that God pervades the diverse beings and that God impels all actions is a trick played by the cunning individuals flowing with the current of instinct to get a license of objective indulgence. The self-expression call...