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 cosmic thought? We cannot see and sense the world and its contents in the same form when the organs of sense and the mind are differently constituted. 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 with it the vast world is exalted to Pure Being. When water is disturbed, the sun seems to shake; when the consciousness that is objectified fluctuates, the One appears as the many. The dance of ideas is the world of experience. These ideas are the phases of the cosmic creative force. Space is a special mode of particularisation and is within the constructive consciousness. The whole phenomenal world is a particularisation by the apparently active and perceiving universal consciousness.

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." -Chh. Up., VI. 1. 4.

It is asserted that the underlying substance alone is real and various methods are employed to prove the invalidness of the form of the world of diversity (Chh. Up. VI. 1. 4-6). Being alone exists (Ibid., VI. 2. 1). A thorough-going non-dualism is propounded by Uddalaka, Sanatkumara and Yajnavalkya. The Supreme Brahman is matchless and secondless. Aught else than the Absolute is a mere tinsel show.

"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." -Tait. 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 (Aittareya Upanishad 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 Brahman 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 Rig-Veda declared that the sages give many names to that which is essentially One (Rig-Veda, I. 164. 46). This leads further to the conception that plurality is only an idea and that Unity alone is real.

"The One, other than which there is none." -Rig-Veda, 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 becomes known, and that there is no plurality whatsoever. The form of the world of plurality is an illusion. though the ultimate essence of the world is real. Even transmigration is a dream of consciousness. The world is not a creation of or an emanation from Brahman, nor is it pervaded by Brahman as by something which is not itself, but here and now, everything is Brahman.

"Verily, all this is Brahman." -Chh. Up. III. 14. 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 degrees.

"The Inner Soul of all things, the One Controller, makes his one form manifold." -Katha Up. V.12. 

"Whoever worships one or another of these, knows not (the Truth); for he is incomplete with one or another of these,.... the self is the footprint (trace) of this All, for by it one knows this All." -Brih. Up. I. 4. 7. 

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 empirical reality of the world, however, demands a sanction of the view that progress is from a lesser truth to a higher truth, and not from error to truth, though the prayer is to lead us

"From the unreal to the Real." -Brih. Up. 1. 3. 28.

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 world is an illusion. Absolutistic metaphysics seems to make life itself difficult, and we are compelled to take recourse to a relative reality of the world and the individual. The scientist follows the method of the intellect.

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 Perfection, where is no more change and evolution. The entities of the world are not lures to sin and are not meant to be considered an evil, but are a remedy of Nature provided to man to mould him and help him in desisting from objective attraction and centring himself in the Truth of Infinity, and thus form steps in the ladder of development. Objective contact is meant to effect an escape out Of faith in pluralistic independence. The body has to be kept well as long as the individual is in the process of spiritual evolution. If the body which is meant to effect a particular process of evolution in a particular stage of life is destroyed before the fulfilment of its duty, Nature will take a revenge against that individual and will compel the same to hang on in a condition necessary for the manifestation of another suitable body demanded by the need for continuing the previous work left unfulfilled. The systematic Nature does not have discord within itself, and, hence, is not filled with conflicting forces. The forces of life are the different urges for a unification of the self with the all-inclusive Reality. The universe with its inhabitants is transforming itself every moment with an inconceivably tremendous speed in order to exist as the absolutely conscious and harmonious Being. Hence, the forces that work inside man and outside in the world are always harmonious and brotherly, and never inimical. The senses work and demand their respective objects, the mind thinks of objective existence, life persists with its unceasing breaths, there is love and affection, hatred and battle, all because the Eternal Being is expressing itself in its Indivisible Multiplicity of Nature. Life is a dramatic struggle for Self-realisation and Truth-experience. Every event that occurs is for that purpose. Even apparent contradictions are a sporting of the Absolute within itself. Life is not a mistake of the soul or a delirium of spirit. samsara is not a curse but the process of the expansion of the self into Absoluteness. Every act of existence is a turning for the better until the Absolute is realised. The state of Perfection is neither an Indivisibility nor a Multiplicity but an Indivisible Multiplicity. Diverse experiences in life are not contradictions but the multiple form of the one Nature felt diversely by different ego-centres due to their attachment to particular forms of experience. The moment they begin to embrace the entirety of Nature, diversity will be experienced as a Self-revelation of the Absolute. The world is not an illusion but a form of the Absolute. The lower forms are steps to reach higher forms of experience and are not to be rejected as apparitions. All forms, speeches and actions are the expressions of the Infinite Plenum in itself. One has got only to "realise" the meaning of its workings which appear to be conflicting in the unconscious plane but are in fact a harmonious and happy play of the Absolute. Even materialism is a step in the path to Perfection. Diverse experiences stimulate activity to achieve Truth-realisation. Death is the beginning of a better life. Evil is the starting point of a state leading to good. Nothing is independent by itself. All are interrelated and are knit together to form the Eternal Whole. Everything is only a part of the Infinite Completeness.

This is what will appear to the individual situated in a world of relativity, for the relative individual cannot help conceiving the Absolute in relative terms. We cannot know anything except in terms of what we are. Because everything changes, change itself is classed as a separate category of Reality. It is true that, strictly speaking, there can be no such thing as a complete wrong or error, falsehood or evil, or any kind of pure negative of truth, but only a lesser truth or a higher truth, that the negative is not "existence" and so is not, that all is one positive indivisible Truth, though it may appear to have degrees when it is objectively experienced. But, nevertheless, it has to be remembered that to hold that Truth really undergoes a change can have no meaning. Evolution is not an absolute category but an experiential interpretation.

The decision of the intellect that Reality is a process is the effect of its trying to compromise with what fundamentally presents itself as a self-contradiction. However reasonable this view may be from the standpoint of man, it cannot be held that the intuitional Upanishads declare as their essential proposition that the Infinite Whole is a constantly changing process attempting to reach itself, a doctrine which contradicts reason itself. To them the form of the world is in the main an appearance and there is nothing but Brahman. We have already dismissed the possibility of evolution in Eternal Existence as self-contradictory. Evolution is change, and change is becoming, which would mark the transient nature of Existence itself. But Existence is eternal. Nothing that is perfectly real can be said to change or evolve. Brahman, therefore, does not change. If it is something else than Brahman that changes, we have to create a second to the secondless Brahman. In any case, change and evolution are impossible as ultimate truths. Empirical facts have their place in one's life, but they have to be brushed aside as finally untrue, if one wishes to have a perfect realisation of the essential nature of Being or Brahman. It is easy to trot out the shibboleth that a teaching on the unreality of all phenomena may itself be unreal. True. But the consciousness of its being unreal cannot itself be unreal. After all negation, and the negation of even this negation, consciousness remains, still, the Absolute, not as a bare featureless transparency, but the wondrous Abode of Divine Perfection.