Related LinksContents of BookA Treatise on the Vedanta Philosophy and Its Methodology
by Swami Krishnananda
P. 9. Even the creatorship or destroyership of the universe,....etc. - The State of Ishvara is not an eternal one, for it is related to the universe which is perishable. Ishvara merges in Brahman when the consciousness of the universe is transcended.
Pp. 13-14. Degrees in empirical reality.- The degrees of Reality are only the degrees of the perception of Reality. There can be no degrees or planes in Reality as such, for it is non-objective and undivided. Progress, downfall, degrees, and change of every kind are not parts of the Absolute, but form the varying phases of the objectified consciousness which is associated with the means or the instruments of changeful knowledge in the universe. However, these steps or stages of relative consciousness are experienced as true in their own realms, and have to be passed through by all those who have an individuality separating them from pure being; for, these objective stages or degrees are as real as the subjects experiencing them in the cloaks of phenomenality.
P. 13. That great fiery method of attaining immediate Self-Experience, .... etc. - The Method of Pure Knowledge (Vide P. 115.)
Pp. 16-42. The world of experience.- The philosophy of the Vedanta is not solipsism or the lower mentalism. Nor does it affirm the absolute reality of the world. The method of approach of the Vedanta is integral. It does not say that the subjective idea alone is real or that the objective world alone is real. Nor does it hold that there is nothing real at all. It does not say that the Real is transcendent alone or immanent alone. It does not also say that between the subject and the object one is superior to the other. The two are correlative to each other. The Vedanta does not lean towards any dogmatic notion, to any one side or aspect, but takes into its view the whole of true being. The Upanishads, the ground of the Vedanta philosophy, do not make a mere subjective or individualistic approach to Truth and do not land themselves in individualistic subjectivism. They know that the individual is imperfect. Nor do they commit the blunder of taking a view of a mere objective side of existence and landing in materialism. In fact nothing objective can be proved to be real, for no object is really known independent of the categories of knowing, which limit knowledge to their own sphere of comprehension. The nature of the world existing outside the knower cannot be determined for want of the necessary means of knowledge. Objective observation of things, however acute it may be, cannot give us absolutely correct knowledge of them, for in every form of observation there is left unbridged a gulf between the knower and the known. The wider one extends his power of observation the wider still seems the range of existence. There is no hope of fathoming the infinite by using the sense-powers or even the mental faculty, which are all engaged in the knowledge of fleeting forms. The Spirit appears objective and material and in a transient mode the moment it is beheld through the mind and the senses. The Sankhya philosophy used the method of objective observation and consequently fell into the deep chasm of Purusha and Prakriti, which it was obliged to hold as two eternal realities. The existence of two realities is obviously unwarranted, and contradicts the very urge for philosophising, which is the experience of unchallenged existence. The yoga philosophy, basing itself on the Sankhya, brought forth an Ishvara who hangs loosely in the scheme of existence, and there is actually no way at all of finding any meaning in its Ishvara who is neither the creator of the universe nor the goal of the aspiration of anyone. This is hardly better than to say that there is no Ishvara at all. The Nyaya and the Vaiseshika philosophies, too, followed the erroneous method of objective perception in their search for true knowledge and posited several absurdities like ultimately independent substances, and a transcendental Fashioner of the universe, who has really no hand to reach the universe that is fashioned. The Mimamsa, also, because of its objective outlook, is made to admit the reality or the outward forms of the world, the deities, the heavenly region, etc. All these objective philosophies have also tried to view existence from the subjective side and have come to the conclusion that there is a plurality of Atmans or souls; some of these schools went even to the extent of saying that the essential nature of the Atman is not pure consciousness. In all these philosophies the dualism that is posited between the experiencer and the experienced is a great bar to the realisation of absolute freedom, for that which is limited by an object cannot be absolute. A purely objective approach is blind and would lead to the perception of even the Spirit as mere material phenomena, while a purely subjective approach is narrow and leads to agnosticism, scepticism, etc. Only a complete view of life can give us a sound philosophy and a satisfactory religion.
The Vedanta is the celebrated science of the Absolute, which is Divinity and Perfection. The Upanishads are called the Vedanta because they are the concluding and crowning parts of the Vedas, and give the highest essence of the teachings of the Vedas. The Upanishads view existence as adhyatma, adhibhuta and adhidaiva, as the individual, the world and Ishvara or God, and they declare the existence of Brahman which comprehends all these in its transcendent Being. They do not say that the adhyatma alone is real; that would be subjectivism. They do not also say that the adhibhuta alone is real; that would be materialism. To them the adhyatma, the adhibhuta and the adhidaiva are phases of Brahman or Paramatman; the three are a triadic appearance of the really indivisible Brahman. These three - jiva, jagat and Ishvara - with the Ground, Brahman, exhaust the possible principles of all experience. This, in fact, is the entirety of experience. In several ways the Upanishads give expression to the oneness of life, the unity of the individual and the cosmic. "He who is in the individual here is the same as He who is in the sun there" says the Taittiriya Upanishad. The Chhandogya Upanishad identifies the ether in the heart within with the cosmic ether outside. The microcosm and the macrocosm are one. Uddalaka gives to Svetaketu an objective description of the Reality, as the ekam sat, the One Real, the source and basis of all beings, and then with artistic dexterity identifies this One Real with the Self of Svetaketu. There is a wonderful dramatic beauty in the way in which the Upanishads portray the Reality of the life of the universe. The sages of the Upanishads were absolutely practical persons who were concerned with living and being, and not with mere fantastic day-dreaming. They directly realised the Absolute Truth and knew that distinctions, even of the individual, world and God, are relative, and anything has a meaning only because it is a phase of the Supreme Being.
When reason is based on the srutis it gives us strength to love Truth. It unveils Truth by disclosing the errors of empirical life. The material world of experience is not real. Matter, energy (life), mind, intellect, etc. are not substances, things or essences having absolute reality, but are modes or categories of knowing. Matter is Reality discerned by the senses and the mind. Consciousness objectified appears as matter. Energy, mind and intellect, too, are Reality itself known by degrees. Space, time, causation and objectness, which are the categories of the knowing process, are solely responsible for the perception of Reality as manifoldly divided into intellect, mind, energy, matter, and the like. Apart from these objective categories there is no universe. What is real in space, time, causation and substance or individuality is Brahman or the Consciousness-Absolute. It is the Absolute that appears as the universe on account of these categories or relations which the inscrutable knowing process has projected into experience. The universe freed from these categories is Brahman. These categories, again, are not objective facts subsisting in the universe as a reality in itself, but conditions, ways, modes, devices, for knowing Reality in terms of an individual knower. The knowledge of the universe is based on the fundamental hideous error of the notion of the reality of the separateness of the knower from the known and from the connecting process of knowledge. This knowledge which is bound by the belief in causality cannot be real knowledge. As a resume of all examination what becomes clear is that there is no world except categories of knowing superimposed upon Reality, which the individual vainly tries to objectify, and that the value and the reality perceived or known to be present in the world is but Brahman. Matter-ness is a fiction; similarly, the distinctive natures of energy, life, mind and intellect are fictions. But the truth about matter, the substantiality of matter, is the Absolute itself. The truth of energy, life, mind and intellect is, in the same manner, the very same Absolute. When the word 'Brahman' or 'the Absolute' is uttered, everything is said. Attributes are only limiting adjuncts and do not add to the perfection of the Absolute.
P. 32. If the world is a means, the world is also the end, etc. - The forms are not in the Real, but the Real is in the forms. The individual has the potentiality to realise the Absolute, not because there is any relation between the Absolute and the form of the individual or the factors which constitute the individuality independent of the Real, but because the Real is present in the individual as its essence or being. That the individual takes the help of its lower individualistic experiences in attaining the Absolute is not an argument that can favour the view that the world is real in itself. The lower experiences have a value because of the consciousness which is their reality, and this consciousness is not in any way a part or a content of the world of forms. Consciousness is never identical with any form or condition. But still it is consciousness that gives reality to any value that is in any form or condition. It is true that in this world we take one thing as the end and another thing as the means thereto. The world is a long chain of causes and effects which have neither a beginning nor an end. This vicious circle is called samsara. But nothing in this wheel can ever touch the taintless Brahman or Pure Consciousness, and the individual, as long as it is revolving in this world-cycle, cannot have a comprehension of Brahman. What is reached through the world is the world itself, and not anything different from it. The Absolute is beyond the relation between causes and effects, means and ends. That anything of this world can be of use in the Absolute or is a means to the knowledge of the Absolute is not true. "Verily, that Eternal is not to be attained through the non-eternal" says the Katha Upanishad. "That which is Not-Created is not (to be reached) through what is created" says the Mundaka Upanishad. We cannot jump from one realm to another unless there is something which is commonly real for both. The individual in the world reaches the Absolute because the Absolute is the reality of both the individual and the world. The individuality or the worldly character in the individual does not reach the Absolute and is never a means to it, but the reality of the individual, which is eternal, is what realises the Absolute, and is the real means to it. In the case of such realisation, the means should not be different from the end in any way. Even a broken needle or a piece of straw from this world cannot be taken to the Absolute. The world of forms is not a means to Knowledge, for form and Knowledge are contrary to each other.
But, then, does it mean that the world is completely estranged from Brahman? Definitely not. If there is no relation of the world to Brahman, there would be no such thing as the individual's attainment of Immortality. The truth of Brahman is present in every form of the world, and the world exists because of the existence of Brahman. It is the reality in the world and not the form of the world that is the link between the world and the Absolute. We reach Brahman through the reality of Brahman present in us and in the world, and not through the constitution of our individuality which is a group of forms, or through the world which is also a huge mass of forms. It was already observed that when the world is denied as unreal, it is its form, and not its essence or fundamental being, that is thus denied. The essence of the world is Brahman.
Pp. 32-36. The world as cosmic thought - The categories of space, time, causation and individuality are in relation to all the beings of the cosmos and are not the figments of any particular discrete being. The Cosmic Mind which comprehends within itself all the individual minds is the generator of the whole universe independent of superimposed values. The likes and dislikes, the pleasures and pains, the passion, the greed and the evil which each one experiences in himself are, however, attributable to the particular experiencer alone. The values that are found to be present in the objects of the universe are the experiencing psychological reactions to these objects. But the existence of a thing in its unrelated form is not the creation of any other thing different from it. (That the nature of a thing unrelated to anything else can only be consciousness has been explained elsewhere in this book.) Each one brings forth his own form of individuality through his special potentialities of experience, these being divided into the three primary modes of existence, viz., sattvika (pure and conscious), rajasika (passionate and active) and tamasika (dark and inert). As long as one experiences himself as a localised being, he will perforce be made to perceive the external universe and the other individuals therein as existing independent of himself and to feel the need for and the presence of a cosmic Ishvara or Creator-consciousness; but when the individual transcends its individuality, it is at once freed from the bond of the causal chain of the universe, and exists as the Supreme Truth, to which there is neither the universe that is created nor any separate creator involved in it.