But, if anything is at all to be said about the Ideal and Goal of life of an individual, we cannot get on with such a perplexing conception of Reality. To us Reality is what can be the highest in the strict logical sense. Though Reality transcends logic and reason, philosophy cannot do so, for nothing in this world is possible without the functioning of thought in some way or the other. We are thinking beings, and to us all that is real must be intelligible. If anything is unintelligible, we can have no relations with it. The Real is, therefore, Being, rather than non-being, Consciousness, rather than unconsciousness, Bliss, rather than pain. There is no sense in non-being, for non-being also must at least "be" Consciousness itself is being, and unless even non-being and unconsciousness are objects of consciousness, there can be no meaning in them.

"How can being be produced from non-being?" -Chh. Up. VI. 2. 1. 

"The sacred teaching is that It is Being of being." -Brih. Up. II. 1. 20. 

It is Being that gives existence even to non-being. Being covers non-being from both sides. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (V. 5. 1), the word "satyam" is explained as constituting the three syllables 'sa', 'ti' and 'yam', the first and the last syllables being truth and the middle one untruth, thus, truth covering untruth from both sides, and the unreal world acquires the semblance of truth by being within the Truth which is incorruptible Being. And, further, Truth alone is said to triumph, not untruth (Mund. Up. III 1. 6), thus giving a distinct reality to what "is" as contrasted from what "is not". That which changes is untrue and that which is constant is true. Non-being vanishes into Being which comprehends in itself the highest possible values which are the aim of the general aspirations of all individuals. No one wants not-to-be, everyone wishes to exist in some form or the other. The truth of Being as the highest principle is ingrained in the consciousness that underlies all cogitating beings. The Maitrayani Upanishad says that Brahman is "One and limitless, limitless to the east, limitless to the south, limitless to the west, limitless to the north, and above and below, limitless in every direction; for it directions like east exist not, no across, no below, no above; this Paramatman is incomprehensible, infinite, unborn, not to be reasoned about" (VI. 17). Such a one cannot be a non-being. It is existence in its greatest completeness. Extreme and intense existence appears as non-existence. The extreme of positivity of the Real appears as a negation of everything. It is dark due to the excess of Light. It is imperceptible, for it alone is the perceiver. It is unknowable, for it alone is the knower. It appears to be nowhere, because it alone is everywhere. It appears to be nothing, for it alone is everything.

Brahman is established "on its own Greatness, or, rather, not on greatness at all" (Chh. Up. VII. 24). It is the divisionless, partless, mass of plenitude - on what can it establish itself? The Self-existent Brahman is supported by nothing, for everything is supported by it. It is childish to say that it has established fame, though its Name is "Great Fame" (Svet. Up. IV. 19). "Here, on earth, people call cows and horses, elephants and gold, servants and wives, fields and houses as constituting greatness"; but Brahman is not of the greatness of this type, because here greatness is dependent on an external object. The greatness of Brahman lies in its own Being, and not on anything second.

"Brahman alone, the Greatest, is this whole universe." -Mund. Up. II. 2. 11.

"Verily, that Great, unborn Self, undecaying, undying, immortal, fearless, is Brahman." The whole of Reality is not exhausted in this world-process. "Encompassing the whole universe He extends beyond it to infinity. Whatever is here is this Purusha alone, whatever was and whatever will be. He is the Lord of immortality. Such is His greatness yet the Purusha is greater still. All beings are one-fourth of Him, His three-fourths hail as the immortal beyond the dust of the earth" (Rig Veda, X. 90). "Unmoving, it is swifter than the mind", for the I Real which is the Self is presupposed by all forms of thought. "The senses fall back in trying to reach it." "Ahead of others running, it goes standing." "It moves, and it moves not", it is other than what is static and kinetic. "It is far, and it is near; it is within all this, and it is outside all this." It is the Self, the being of all. "Sitting, it goes far. Lying, it moves everywhere." "It is manifest and hidden." Such metaphorical definitions of Reality point to the central meaning of its absoluteness of character. That which does everything does nothing in particular. All speculations about the nature of the Ultimate Principle finally lend themselves to the unanimous conclusion that it is eternal, infinite, unconditioned, non-dual, absolute, existence. "It is without an earlier and without a later, without an inside and without an outside, the Being of the Self of all, the Experiencer of everything." Yajnavalkya describes the Supreme Being thus: "An Ocean, the One, the Seer, without duality it is. This is the State of Brahman. This is the supreme goal. This is the supreme prosperity. This is the supreme abode. This is the supreme bliss. On a part of this bliss other creatures are living." "It does not become greater by good action, nor inferior by bad action." In the words of the famous Nasadiya Sukta of the Rig Veda, the original condition of existence was a total absence of the world, the sky and all manifestation. There was neither death nor immortality, for both of these are correlates which have no valid recognition in Reality. There was neither night nor day, but That One, the source of light existed without motion and change. It existed as identical with its Power, there was no difference between temporality and eternity. Other than it there was nothing. Even the gods cannot say how this creation was caused, for even they were born after creation. That Source from which the universe sprang, That alone can sustain it, none else. That One alone knows the truth of its creation, or else, who can know it? The Real alone knows the Real. None else can know it. To know the Real is to be the Real. We cannot stand apart from it and at the same time know it. The moment we undertake the task of seeking the Real, we simultaneously start digging the grave for our separate individual existence. The glorious consciousness of the supreme Truth is the complete transcendence of the niggardly clinging to forms which appear to be other than one's own Self, and to one's own apparently individual localised life. To live in the Absolute which is real is to die to the individual which is unreal.

"He becomes non-existent, who knows that Brahman is non-existent. Who knows that Brahman exists, is said to exist truly." -Taitt. Up. II. 6.

Not to know the Whole is to be limited to the part-consciousness which is not truly existent, which is mortal, and hence, equal to non-being in the absolute sense. To truly live is to be conscious of the Real Existence which is without the disease of transformation and death. "All creatures have Existence as their root, Existence as their abode, Existence as their sole support." All forms are shadows of Pure Existence which alone endures in past, present and future, while the shadows perish like bubbles in the ocean. In the Real existence and content are identical. Hence, everything is mere existence, which alone is real. "As birds resort to a tree for a resting place, even so it is to this Supreme Being that all here resort for their existence." "Not by speech, not by mind, not by sight can it be grasped. How can it be known except by admitting that it simply 'is'?" (Katha Upanishad VI. 12). It is the hard Reality, "the great Terror, the raised-up Thunderbolt, through fear of which the fire burns, the sun gives heat, the wind blows, Indra showers, Death does its duty! " "The Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas serve as its meal, and death itself is its condiment." "At the command of that Imperishable, the sun and the moon, the earth and the sky are held in their respective positions. At the command of that Imperishable, the moments, the instants, the days, the nights, the fortnights, the months, the seasons, the years, stand differentiated in their own places. At the command of that Imperishable, some rivers flow from the snowy mountains to the east, some to the west, in whatever direction each may flow. Whatever great actions one does in this world, even for thousands of years, without the knowledge of this Imperishable, is finite. Whoever dies without the knowledge of this Imperishable, is miserable" (Brih. . Up.). "This Imperishable is Satyam, True Being." "'Sat' is the immortal and 'ti' is the mortal. 'Yam' is that which holds the two together" (Chh. Up. VIII. 3. 5). It rises above the mortal and the immortal, both of which are relative conceptions. The highest is ritam and brihat, real and great.

Thus, Being alone is the unavoidable basic experience, which is the fundamental concept in philosophy. We can think away everything, but we cannot think away that we are. Being is the very nature even of one who denies it. All constituents of our thinking, all forms of existence, all modes of knowledge, presuppose being. Being cannot lead us to non-being, for, the moment non-being is known, it becomes being itself. But being is not an object of our immediate empirical experience, for it is always a particular mode of being or, rather, becoming that is the object of our relative experience. To us, individuals, there can be no such thing as experience of existence-in-general. But eternal being is general or absolute existence which cannot be confused or identified with becoming which is a process. Brahman is not a process or a collection of many particulars, not a multitude of many finites. No amount of accumulation of relatives, however vast that may be, can make up the Absolute. An aggregate of finites can give us a huge mass of finites, but not the Infinite - spatial immensity or vastness is not infinitude. The Absolute transcends all finites, but includes everyone of them. It does not become. It is. Becoming is not completeness of existence, whereas perfect Being implies Fullness. The Absolute does not grow or evolve. It is not a process stretching beyond itself. If it were so, the Absolute would be involved in space, time and causation, and would cease to be the Absolute. The Absolute is perfect Oneness and not a system of plural beings co-existing as reals with action and reaction among themselves. It is not a complex mass of relations. If the Absolute is considered as a system, then its parts must be either identical with it or different from it. If they are identical, their individualities are lost; if different, the relation between them becomes unintelligible. The Absolute can only be Being free from all kinds of differences. It must be Partless, Eternal, Homogeneous Existence, "One only without a second." Existence is the most universal concept which leaves nothing whatsoever outside it.

Existence is what is invariably present in all the processes of knowing. Everything is known to exist, though the existence of a thing may be qualified by the limiting factors which constitute the individuality of that thing. There can be no idea or knowledge, no action and no value, not even life itself, without existence. In the objective universe of names and forms there is the permanent principle of existence underlying all names and forms. Even if everything dies and is lost, the existence which supported that condition which is no more, cannot die or be lost. Since existence cannot change, there can be no death or birth for existence. Existence is eternal. The physical form of an external object is subject to transformation, and this transformation is called the process of birth and death. There is birth and death of forms, states, conditions, modes, but not of existence. Existence is what enables us to know that there is birth and death, that there is change and modification, etc. If existence itself is not, nothing can be. Everything is in some state or the other. Though everything is destroyed, the existence therein is not destroyed. Since existence is the general reality of everything, it must be infinite. Existence can have no limitations, boundaries or divisions either within itself or outside itself. Existence is indivisible and is its own explanation. Existence cannot be defined since it has no specific characteristics, and since it never becomes an object of knowledge. It is the reality of the object as well as of the subject. The body, the vital energy, the senses, the mind, the intellect and even the very condition of all these objective manifestations have as their reality this supreme Existence. The realm of the knower and the known, i.e., the entire universe in all its aspects and states, is ultimately found to be based on Existence which is imperishable. The universe is a condition, a mode of experience, and this mode can have meaning only when it is rooted in Existence which is at once eternal and infinite. Existence, pure and perfect, is the Absolute, the supreme Brahman proclaimed in the Upanishads.