In the Regeneration and Divinisation of Human Beings

Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (d). THE IDEA OF PROGRESS-4. The intellectual view of the world and Truth is always coloured by relative concepts. According to it, the world is a stage in the progressive and gradual ascending of the self to higher states of consciousness. Man begins from the physical body and ends in the imperishable Soul. He is born in Nature which is his dear and faithful friend and not an opposing enemy whose forces he must combat with. Man exists on this earth not that he may kick it aside as a dreadful ghost which tries to devour him but that he may climb up to the higher states of consciousness through the ladder of earthly consciousness and experience. Birth and death are the processes of the changing of the states of individual consciousness in order to reach superior states. The soul, through many such repeated experiences, exhausts the processes of change in consciousness caused by the momentum of past desires, and reaches the state of Pe...

Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (d). THE IDEA OF PROGRESS-3. The ultimately illusory nature of the multiple world is what is declared through illumination and insight, and the conception of the progressive evolution of the world towards the Infinite is a scientific necessity. Rationality is based on categories, and integral experience which is relationless cannot be explained by rationality. The world can be explained rationally without detriment to Reality, for insight or intuition is not irrational. But rationality has always a love for justifying the empirical consciousness by making it a necessary appearance of the Absolute, for rationality itself is empirical. It is in the position of the tailless fox advising its friends to have their tails also cut. It argues that the multiplicity of objects is not an illusion but their individual independence is unreal. It is found difficult to account for ethical necessity and self-effort towards Perfection if the entire ...

Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (d). THE IDEA OF PROGRESS-2. The relative intellect tries to find here a support for the concept that the world is a self-limitation of Brahman and that the world is the way to Reality. The individual is the footprint of the Absolute, and it is explained that just as one might find cattle through a footprint, so one finds this All, the Brahman, by its footprint or trace, the limited self. The individual is a copy or miniature of the cosmic. The Svetasvatara Upanishad (IV. 2-4) says that the Real has become all diverse things. The Sandilya-Vidya of the Chhandogya Upanishad (III. 14) declares that Truth is inclusive of everything in the world. The conception of the universe as a stage in the progressive evolution of the individual towards the Absolute seems to be a preparation for the more severe insight that the form in which we perceive the world is an illusion. The highest religion consists in a repudiation of manifoldness. The...

Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (d). THE IDEA OF PROGRESS-1. The above statements of fact are a declaration of the reality of things as pure existence, irrespective of what mortal man in his helplessness has to say in regard to it. The relative individual does not have such a love for Self-Integration as to dismiss the world of plurality and forms at once as an illusion. A tentative consolation is demanded by the empirical scientific view that the world is a necessary step in the progressive evolution towards Eternal Life. Support is sought from some passages of the Upanishads which declare that the world is a revelation of Brahman, even if a higher vision may repudiate this view. "All this is indwelt by the Divine Controller." —Isha. Up., 1. Appearance is indwelt by Reality. Truth persists even in the extreme of untruth. Untruth is a lesser truth and evil is a lesser degree of goodness. The whole universe is a progressive concealing of Reality by ...

Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (C): The World as Cosmic Thought : 5. "The One, other than which there is none." —Rigveda, X. 129. 2. "The Immortal is concealed by (empirical) reality." —Brih Up., I. 6. 3. "As it were he moves," "as it were another exists," "he goes to death after death who perceives here plurality as it were." —Brih. Up., IV. 3. 7; IV. 3. 31; IV. 4. 19. "With the knowledge of the Atman everything becomes known." —Brih Up., II. 4. 5. "One should know that prakriti is illusion." —Svet. Up., IV. 10. "The Atman is where the world is effaced out." —Mand. Up., 7. It follows that there can never be a reality outside the Eternal Self. This seems to be the end of philosophical thinking, beyond which there can be no further progress. The Upanishads assert as their main declaration of truth that the Atman or the Brahman is the sole reality, that with its knowledge all be...

Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (C): The World as Cosmic Thought : 4. "Everything, except That the Atman, is wretched." —Brih. Up., III. 4. 2. "There is nothing second to it." —Brih. Up., IV. 3. 23. "When one creates a difference, there is fear for him." —Taitt. Up., II. 7. There is no duality. All modification is illusory. Differentiation cannot be established. Where there is no duality there is no death. That which did not exist in the beginning (Ait. Up., I. 1.) and does not exist in the end (Brih. Up., II. 4. 14., Chh. Up., VII. 24), cannot exist in the present (Katha Up., IV. 11). Since Brahmam does not create a world second to it, the world loses its reality. The central tone of the Upanishads reveals everywhere a disbelief in the world of forms ever since the Rigveda declared that the sages give many names to that which is essentially One (Rigveda, I. 164. 46). This leads further to the conception that plurality is...

Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (C): The World as Cosmic Thought : 3. Since the subject is the correlate of the object, and vice versa, neither of them can be said to be more real than the other. And, as they are divided, they are not the Reality which is by nature differenceless. The validity of the double existence of the subject and the object, thus, automatically gets cancelled in being qua being. This does not lead to nihilism. Though no thing exists, it is not true that nothing exists, for consciousness exists. Consciousness cannot cease to be. Even the denial of everything allows the consciousness of existence of the one that denies. Consciousness of existence persists even if we think we are dead. This existence is the unlimited Absolute. "Modification is merely a name, a distinction of speech." —Chhandoghya . Upanishad., VI. 1. 4. It is asserted that the underlying substance alone is real and various methods are employed to pr...

Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (C): The World as Cosmic Thought : 2. The world exists because the mind functions on a dualistic basis. There is sound because there is the ear and there is colour because there is the eye. The individual exists as such because it thinks. The one universal vibration is received by the senses in the different forms in which alone they are capable of receiving it on account of their specific constitutions. Substance, quality and relation; name, form and action, endlessly dissipate themselves. All forms are hanging on one another without any basic intelligibility in their relations. No form is self-existent. One form cannot be distinguished from the other except in an artificial and unintelligible way. The connections of causes and effects and forms of existence are based on a temporary faith and not on true understanding. Transcendence of thinking annihilates the individual, which, then, rests as the Absolute, and together w...

Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (C): The World as Cosmic Thought : 1. We are led to conclude that the ideas of space and time, form and name are the contents of the cosmic creative Consciousness. There is objectively nothing but luminous Consciousness which appears to be split up into the diversity of a world due to the fluctuations in the knowing process. The process of objective knowledge has the ability to divest the Absolute, as it were, of the revelation of its essential nature, and give a presentation of a multitudinous variety, even as a prism has the property of diffusing the one mass of light into heterogeneous rays. We cannot say whether there is any objective world independent of the knowledge of which it is the object. It cannot even be said whether any world exists when duality is transcended in knowledge. What is the proof for the existence of the world when it is not known? How can we say that there is any world at all beyond the activity of co...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World  (b) .The Critique of Duality - 17. Hence the means becomes identical with the end in the case of knowledge of Reality. The experience of the Eternal is not independent of the effort exercised to attain it. All actions to reach the Real require a self-transformation which is the same as what they aim at through that. Cause and effect are intrinsically non-different. The exercise of the effort towards experiencing the Real, becomes itself the experience of the Real. Without knowing the Real we cannot move towards the Real, and knowing it is being it. Reaching the Real is not an action. All actions modify the subject of the act. Action is impossible without the differentiation of the subject by a non-being of the subject. It cannot be said that the subject, the Self, is absent at any place. If it is everywhere, no action is possible. If it is not everywhere, it is perishable. O...

The Realisation of the Absolute :  Chapter-2.The Nature of the World  (b) .The Critique of Duality - 16. The experience of external objects depends on the strong belief that they exist. This belief may be individual or universal. But the moment that belief is withdrawn, their reality is negatived. Mere belief or idealization does not make a thing really existent. All that glitters is not gold. All that appears to exist need not really exist as such. The Goal of human aspiration is the establishment of the self in the eternal Consciousness. It is sometimes believed that we penetrate the "Real" "through" this world, and therefore the world is real. But empirical experiences should not be taken as standards for judging the Real. The modification effected in a thought-process in knowing Reality is identical with what is experienced after the act, i.e., the attainment of Reality. Swami Krishnananda To be continued   .....

The Realisation of the Absolute :  Chapter-2.The Nature of the World  (b) .The Critique of Duality - 15. The Upanishads deny the reality of the form of the world of plurality and duality. According to them, except the non-dual Brahmam, nothing is. The universe is explained by them as the imagination of the Absolute-Individual. We can only understand that this absolute-imagination is merely figurative and it can have meaning only with reference to individuals in the world, and not in itself. The infinite Bhuma alone hails supreme. It is established on its own Greatness.  It is not dependent on anything else, for anything else is not. There cannot be imagination in the Absolute. Imagination may differ in degree or intensity, but even these degrees are but imagination. Even the acceptance of such a difference is ultimately invalid. Swami Krishnananda  To be continued  .....  

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 14. Space and time are swallowed up in the being of the Reality and plurality cannot exist unless there is something second to Brahmam, which persists eternally. Eternal duality or plurality is impossible, as can be seen from an examination of the nature of Consciousness, and we are compelled to admit the homogeneous character of Brahman's essence. If being and becoming are identical, the cause of the appearance of the world must be attributed to some mysterious and inscrutable ignorance and cannot itself be given a place in existence. Duality cannot survive and individuality cannot exist in the Truth of Brahmam. "Where there is duality, as it were, there one sees the other,— But where everything is one's own Self, then, whom would one see?" —Brih. Up., II. 4. 14. "Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else,...

The Realisation of the Absolute : Chapter-2.The Nature of the World (b) .The Critique of Duality - 13. It is further contended that even if the Atman is the sole reality, the existence of plurality cannot be denied. If the Atman is the sole reality, it is to be accepted that it is without internal or external differentiations. If there is thus no plurality in the Atman, and also if nothing exists but the Atman, there is no meaning in holding that existence is inclusive of plurality. If the Atman or Brahman is non-dual, there can be no plurality, because other than Brahman anything is not. The view that, because it is said that with the knowledge of Brahman "all" is known, Brahman-realisation does not destroy plurality but merely renders the person immune from objective attraction, and that "all" implies the existence of plurality, is a misunderstanding of this sentence. The word "all" does not refer to the reality of the plur...