The Philosophy of Life

by Swami Krishnananda

21. Even when we deny all things by exposing the self-contradictory nature of their appearance and come to a void, as it were, as the only reality, we find that the assertion of this void requires a consciousness of there being a void. Consciousness is the subliminal essence of experience.
22. There is pain as long as a desire lurks in the mind and directs itself to an external object. The psychoses agitate the mind and peace ensues only when the psychosis of desire subsides on the possession and enjoyment of object of desire. The peace and joy that is thus felt is the consequence of the cessation of desire and the non-relatedness of the mind to external things, and not of the presence of certain pleasurable characters in them, as one ordinarily supposes; for it is seen that the object of one’s love may be a thing evoking hatred in another, and even to one and the same person the same object may appear to be desirable as well as undesirable under different conditions of mind. Freedom and happiness are rooted in one’s own Self, and all efforts to import them from outside prove futile.
23. The interval between the cessation of a desire and the rise of another desire is felt to be a state of joy. The joy does not come from outside but is the revelation of the truth within. If this state of resting in oneself continues for a long time one would experience a bliss which is higher than all the pleasures of the world.
24. Suppose there is a big light kept somewhere at night, and one happens to be standing at a distance from it. Suppose also that there stands between the observer and the light an obstruction, so that the observer cannot see the light. Yet he can see clearly the objects that are illumined by the light. Now, though one cannot see the light directly, one can conclude from the fact of the perception of objects that there must be a light somewhere on account of whose existence the objects are made visible. In a like manner, from the perception of the world with its variegated objects we infer the existence of the light of an intelligence by which alone will it be possible for us to account for the fact of perception.
25. A perfect law and order is seen to be working everywhere in the universe. Such uniformity as is observed in the operation of cosmic law can be accountable only if a unitary principle of consciousness exists as the unchanging substratum of the universe. Only an omniscient and omnipresent immanent principle existing everywhere can be responsible for the working of such a law.
26. When the sun has set, when the moon and the stars have set, when fire does not burn, when there is no lightning and no kind of light anywhere at night, one recognises oneself and identifies oneself with the light which is unique and which comes from one’s own Self within. This light of the Self burns eternally.
27. When, as a punishment for a certain crime committed by a person, he is informed that a limb of his body is to be cut off, he would rather prefer to have his hands cut off than the eyes removed. And if the time comes for it he would rather have his eyes removed than be executed. This indicates that the sense of knowledge is dearer to one than an organ of action. And dearer than even the senses is one’s own life. One wishes to live forever at any cost, for life eternal is the nature of the Self. But when one suffers from a very serious disease, a protracted ailment of a painful nature, when one sees gloom, and misery everywhere ahead, one wishes to give up one’s life, thereby demonstrating that happiness is superior to merely living somehow. The Self is not only eternal existence but eternal bliss.
28. The law of Karma and reincarnation establishes the eternity of the Self. The soul of man which survives after death remembers in the next astral life, through the force of Samskaras, certain conditions of its previous existence even after its separation from the physical body. The Society of Psychical Research has performed several experiments and has come to the conclusion that the soul exists after death and puts on an astral body which can materialise itself on the earth plane. There are cases where persons have correctly given information regarding several things pertaining to their previous life. The soul is imperishable.
29. Man generally argues at the time of his death: ‘I have undergone many sufferings, troubles and difficulties in life. I have done various good deeds. They may not go in vain. After all, is it for this one life alone that I have laboured so much? This cannot be. I shall be paid what is due to me.’ There is an urge from within which asserts itself in the form of an aspiration for immortal life. This immortal being is the Self.
30. Man was a child once playing on his mother’s lap. Then he grew up into a school-going boy. Then he became an adolescent. He grew into an adult. Lastly he became a veteran with grey hair. Every moment of life there is change in the growth of the cells of the body. In spite of this incessant change in the constitution of the body one identifies oneself with the same personality. This is due to a continuous consciousness running through all change undergone by the body, without which there could not be a recognition of the personality. This consciousness persisting behind all change is the Self.

The philosopher Kant repudiates Hume’s view that impressions and ideas are related to one another by the laws of association, by urging that the fact of the association of ideas points to a deeper unifying function of self, which he terms the ‘transcendental unity of apperception.’ Only this transcendental self should not be supposed to be totally abstracted from the empirical self. The former is immanent in the appearance of the latter. The aim of the empirical self is self-transcendence. “In order to do this, we must negate the merely individual self, which is not the true self. We must realise ourselves by sacrificing ourselves. The more fully we so realise ourselves, the more do we reach a universal point of view—i.e. a point of view from which our own private good is no more to us than the good of any one else” (Mackenzie: Manual of Ethics, p.274). Green observes that the relation of events to each other as in time implies their equal presence to a subject which is not in time. There could be no such thing as time if there were not a self-consciousness which is not in time.

Anvaya and Vyatireka

The absolute independence of the Atman is proved by the method of synthesis and analysis, conjunction and disjunction, called Anvaya and Vyatireka. In his Essence of Vedanta (pp.147-149) Swami Sivananda gives the following description of this method:

Anvaya means the presence of one thing along with a particular another, and Vyatireka means its absence when that other is absent. It is synthesis and analysis (positive and negative method). The names and forms are different and unreal, but the one underlying essence of the Atman is the same in all forms. It is the only reality. The forms should be negated and the essence has to be grasped by meditation on the Atman. The Atman is to be separated from the five sheaths, just as one draws out the pith of the Munja grass or a reed. Just as one takes out the small diamond that is mixed with different kinds of pulses and cereals by separating it from them, this Atman is to be taken out by separating it from the physical, vital, mental, intellectual and blissful sheaths. Where these five sheaths exist, there the Atman also exists. Where these five sheaths do not exist, even there the Atman exists. Therefore, the Atman is independent of the five sheaths.

In the state of dream there is no consciousness of the existence of the material body, but the presence of the Atman is felt; as without the Atman it is not possible to have the consciousness of what occurs in a dream. It thus follows that in the state of dream there is the presence of the Atman and the absence of the material body. The coexistence of the Atman with the material body in the waking state is called Anvaya and the non-coexistence of the material body with the Atman in the state of dream is called Vyatireka.

In the state of sound sleep one is not conscious of the existence of the subtle body, but the presence of the Atman is proved by the fact that, after waking, everyone has the consciousness that during sound sleep one was perfectly ignorant of everything. This consciousness is the result of previous experience, and in sound sleep there is no one else than the Atman to receive that experience. The coexistence of the Atman with the subtle body in waking and dream is called Anvaya, and the non-coexistence of the subtle body with the Atman in the state of sound sleep is called Vyatireka.

In the state of Samadhi, i.e. perfect absorption of thought in the one object of meditation, viz. the Supreme Self, there is the absence of the causal body, which is the same as ignorance, but the presence of the Atman or the Self is experienced. The coexistence of the Atman with the causal body in waking, dream and deep sleep is called Anvaya, and the non-coexistence of the causal body with the Atman in Samadhi is called Vyatireka. It has thus been shown that the Atman exists independently of the several bodies under certain conditions. It is an axiom that whatever exists apart from certain things is different from those things. The difference of the Atman from the three bodies means also its difference from the five sheaths, for the sheaths are contained in these bodies. The Atman is absolutely unconditioned and independent.

The Upanishads declare that the Atman is the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unknown knower. One cannot see the seer of seeing, one cannot hear the hearer of hearing, one cannot know the knower of knowing. The Atman has neither a subject nor an object. The subject and the object are both comprehended in the Atman in which all divisions appear and which is raised above them all. The ego and the non-ego have only a practical but not absolute reality, for they are contained in and appear on the basis of the Atman-consciousness. Consciousness is unconditioned, not limited by space, time, causality or individuality. The Mandukya Upanishad describes the Atman as that which is not internally conscious of the subjective world, not that which is externally conscious of the objective world, not that which is conscious of both simultaneously, not that which is a mass of consciousness, not that which is mere consciousness, not that which is unconsciousness. It is declared to be invisible, unapproachable, ungraspable, indefinable, unthinkable, indescribable, the sole essence of the consciousness of the one Self, the cessation of all phenomena, the peaceful, the blissful, the non-dual. It is extolled as the fourth state of consciousness, for from the point of view of the empirical subject it is the fourth, as distinguished from its manifestations in the three states of waking, dream and dreamless sleep. Acharya Sankara, in his invocatory verses to his commentary on this Upanishad, refers to this Turiya-consciousness in the following terms:

“I bow to that Brahman, which, after having experienced the gross by pervading all objects with its all-pervading consciousness-rays entering into the variety of all that is movable and immovable, and after again having drunk deep within itself all creations of the internal organ of knowledge propelled by the impressions of desires, sleeps ever soundly enjoying the sweetness of bliss, yet causing the fruition to us through Maya, and which, from the point of view of Maya, is reckoned as the fourth(state of consciousness). May that, the fourth, which, as the waking self, experiences the results of its actions in the form of gross objects, and then also the subtle ones called into being by its internal organs of knowledge and illumined by its own light, and lastly having drawn all these by degrees within itself, and casting aside all particularities, exists as the One free from all attributes,—may this protect us!”