We create a division between the knower and the known, because it suits our practical needs and conveniences. It is the nature of reality to appear in a duality of the seer and the seen when it is made the object of individual perception. The dualist hypothesis would give strong support to the pragmatist theory that the notion of reality is relative to human interest. We are born in a world of duality, and the very fibre of our make-up is saturated with a consciousness of its tremendous significance. We think in terms of duality, feel and act in accordance with it. It is natural, therefore, that truth, to us, should be relative to our dualistic interests. The pragmatist attitude is the immediate result of our attachment to sense-perception. In its view, what is known is not the real as such, but our purposes objectified. We seem to abstract from the real what we need at the present state of our minds, and identify our needs with reality. We appear to be concerned with the meaning that things have for us in our day-to-day affairs, and not with the things themselves. The pragmatic method consoles us by returning to us our own desires in the form of truth, but not truth in itself. It is true that, for psychology, the subject is sharply distinguished from the object, but philosophy cannot be content with such a superficial attitude to knowledge. Psychology is concerned with mind and its behaviour on a dualistic basis, but it cannot validate the notion that there is a real distinction between the knower and the known, even if our surface-life may seem to demand it. An unquestioning clinging to the immediate sense-percepts is the cause of our blind belief in the ultimate division of things. There cannot be knowledge of truth or a correspondence between knowledge and fact, if the object is outside the jurisdiction of consciousness.

The relation of matter to consciousness can be explained only if an organic intimacy of the one with the other is accepted. A completely detached object cannot become a content of consciousness. The mind cannot know even the existence of matter, if they are ultimately different from each other. There can be relation between two terms only when they possess some qualities, at least, common to both. Matter and consciousness are, to the dualist, elements which are supposed to possess characters which have no relation of similarity. But, then, the existence of the object cannot become a content of the mind. Man cannot know that there is a world outside, if it is true that he is not a member in its constitution. Knowledge-relation always presupposes a third element which makes the connection between the subject and the object possible. Entities possessing dissimilar natures cannot come in contact with, or even know the presence of, each other. The acceptance of a principle relating the subject and the object in perception, and yet different from them both, takes us to the great truth of a consciousness that cannot be restricted by factors either external or internal. It appears to have an instantaneous existence, unconditioned, and at once timeless. When we accept such a principle, we come, perhaps, to the realisation of the highest end of all philosophical quest. Pure consciousness should naturally be omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. It gets identified with the ideal pointed out by the concept of God. God is the infinite. He is neither a knower nor a known, but transcendent being.

In the Vedanta, reality is conceived of in the various degrees of the manifestation of consciousness. However, all concepts of God accept the universality of His existence. The grossest manifestation of God is termed Virat, which is an appellation used to denote the divine consciousness animating the whole physical universe. The physical objects become the body of Virat, and the relation between the physical universe and Virat is one of body and soul. The cosmic physical body is the aggregate of all individual physical bodies. All states of the waking consciousness are included in Virat. The individual, in its contemplation of Virat, identifies the waking consciousness with it. The subtle universe, which is comparable to the subtle body of the individual, consisting of the vital energy, the senses and the psychological organs, is said to be animated by a subtler and higher consciousness, more pervasive than Virat. This is Hiranyagarbha, Sutratma or Mahaprana, the Soul of the invisible universe. The individual contemplating on it identifies the subtle body with its essence. The subtlest manifestation of the universe, however, is in its causal state, wherein distinctions of creation are not clearly expressed in space and time, but exist in a latent form. This is comparable to the causal body of the individual. The consciousness animating the causal universe is Isvara or the supreme Lord. The individual contemplating on Isvara identifies the causal body with His existence. In this process of self-identification, the individual transcends itself and becomes a cosmic person, as it were, above the trammels and turmoils of empirical life. “Virat, under the orders of Isvara, having entered this microcosmic body, and having the Buddhi (intellect) as His vehicle, reaches the state of Visva. Then He goes by the general names of Vijnanatma, Chidabhasa, Visva, Vyavaharika, as the one presiding over the gross body and one generated by Karma. Sutratma or Hiranyagarbha, under the orders of Isvara, having entered microcosmic subtle body, and having the Manas (mind) as His vehicle, reaches the Taijasa state. Then He goes by the names of Taijasa, Pratibhasika and Svapnakalpita. Then, Isvara, assuming His Power as Avyakta, the vehicle of Maya, having entered the microcosmic causal body, reaches the state of Prajna. He goes, then, by the names of Prajna, Avichhinna and Sushupti-Abhimani” (Jnana-Yoga: p. 116). “Vaisvanara is one with Virat on the physical plane. Taijasa is one with Hiranyagarbha on the astral or the subtle plane. Prajna is one with Isvara on the causal plane” (Principal Upanishads: Vol. I, p. 423). Unrelated to the universe in all the three manifestations of it, is Brahman.

The admission of an ultimate reality of a universal nature has appeared in different phases and forms in different philosophies. To the Nyaya philosophers, the omniscient God is not omnipresent, for He is extra-cosmic. Naturally, He cannot be omnipotent, too. God becomes, in the hands of the Naiyayikas and Vaiseshikas, a mechanical device invented to ward off the charge of atheism on their schools, but having no intrinsic significance in it. The same is the case with the God of Yoga. He is neither the creator of the universe nor the goal of the aspirations of the individual. He hangs loosely in the scheme worked out by this system. The introduction of such a God does not alter the position of Yoga from that of the non-theistic Sankhya. To the theistic Vedanta schools, the world is as much real as God. But they do not care to reflect on the impossibility of perfection on the part of God when there is an externally existing matter contending with Him as His rival. We cannot have two eternals, nor two infinities. If the world is eternal, God is not; and if God is eternal, the world cannot be so. If, at all, there is any such thing as perfection, it should be in a secondless Absolute, and such a one cannot be if there are real souls and a real world clamouring for being real, each in its own place.

The Idea of the Good contemplated by Plato is either to be understood in the sense of the Absolute of the Advaita or, if we accept Aristotle’s interpretation of Plato’s idealism as positing two realities—a temporal world and an intelligible order of eternal Ideas,—Plato’s Idea becomes analogous to the God of dualistic theism. The God of Descartes and, perhaps, even that of Hegel, is in no better plight. Spinoza makes thought and extension the necessary attributes of God and thus seems to take space, time and mental activity to God Himself. God ought to be non-spatial and non-temporal, and His thought cannot be an activity but luminous intelligence. Plotinus among Western mystics, and Bradley among Western philosophers, approximate to the Advaita-Vedanta. But Plotinus hesitates, at times, to merge the individual in God, though his inclination seems to be to do so. The defect of Bradley is that he makes the Absolute a system of relations. It is not indivisible and so loses the character of eternality. Whoever asserts the ultimate reality of the world has to limit his God to that extent. When the world is interpreted in terms of God, we have no God and world, but God as world. Even here, an independent reality is not ascribed to names and forms; only their essential existence is identified with God’s being.

An analysis of the nature of the world discloses its dependence on a reality higher than its own. It is subject to a teleological direction of its movements towards an end beyond itself. Dissatisfaction with the superficial experiences which one has in life is a tacit admission of a higher standard of reality. As Bradley puts it: “To think is to judge, and to judge is to criticize, and to criticize is to use a criterion of reality.” Acharya Sankara holds that, when we deny something as inadequate, we do so with reference to some norm which is adequate. Every want, every wish and ambition, every type of wonder, surprise or mystery, every sense of a ‘beyond oneself’ suggests the existence of something outside the limitations which it indicates. ‘Something is wanting’ means that what is wanted exists. That we are miserable shows that there is an ideal of happiness. The consciousness of imperfection implies the possibility of perfection. To recognise the finitude of oneself is to step at once into the realm of the infinite. When finitude is known, the fact of the contingency of the knower’s transcending it is implied in it. The finite has no significance except in contradistinction to the infinite. The moral argument based on the aspirations of man points to a reality in which they can be fulfilled. There is an urge in everyone to break the boundaries of imperfection and reach out to an unlimited existence, wherein is a promise of the satisfaction of all the sides of one’s nature. Man is never contented with anything that he possesses, for he feels, in spite of his possessions, an inherent sense of a serious lack of something which does not seem to be included in anything that he is blessed with in this world. Even the rulership over all things will leave behind a want of something higher and a yearning to obtain one knows not what. There is a longing for eternal life, for boundless knowledge, for unrestricted happiness, for light, freedom and immortality. This restless aspiration refuses to be cajoled by the poor presentation of earthly glory. The world seems to be busy, changing and moving, adjusting and adapting itself to conditions beyond itself, pointing to the weird vision of some wondrous essence at which it is aiming as its long desired destination. Union and separation, birth and death, struggle and aspiration, do not have any significance unless they imply a being which is beyond change and transformation. The contingent character of things seems to oppose one state of finitude to another, suggesting a self-expansion of the finite in an experience wider than its own, in which it includes the properties of the other finites, and by which it overcomes the lower oppositions in a higher harmony. Every perception is an ardent effort to attain a greater unity, in which the essences of all percepts are transmuted and absorbed. All created elements tend to find their solace in a fulfilment of their nature by an attempt to overcome all cramping situations that stand in the way of such development. The relational character of finite objects is determined by the action of other finite objects on them, which fact leads us to the discovery of the universe being an organism presided over by a supreme Intelligence. The existence of the finite as the finite is dependent on the conditions determining finitude as a whole, and so it has to rise from its lower conditioned state to more and more inclusive ones which reveal greater and greater coherence and harmony. Our life in the world can be accounted for only by the existence of the Absolute.