Lights on Advaita: -3

Lights on Advaita:

Selected Teachings of

 V. Subrahmanya Iyer

CHAPTER 16. THE ULTIMATE AS TRUTH

(16.1) Vedantic Sadhana (discipline) can only remove your own ignorance; it does not

bring a new thing, for Brahman is here and now.

(16.2) The mind does not go, but it is kept quiescent, not agitated. This Asparsa Yoga is

the highest and is referred to in Mandukya Upanishad. It means "nonduality Yoga" and

is the real Gnana yoga, for nonduality is the true Gnana. In Asparsa yoga there is no

second. It is an ancient Buddhist term adopted by Gaudapada.

(16.3) The test of truth is to be able to see the whole world in you, not excluding even an

ant from your sympathies.

(16.4) Continuous reflection is necessary during the early stages of this path and it must

continue every time a new object is presented to one for cognition, until it becomes a

habit.

(16.5) In every form Brahman is seeking to know itself. In the rock which is crumbling,

in the grass which is growing and then decaying, in the yogi who is meditating, there is

Brahman in various stages of evolution gradually getting to know the truth of itself.

Hence everyone is really seeking truth. Only they apply this desire to truth of the stage

they are at. When they have a certain pleasure, they think this is nice and true

satisfaction. They do not realize they ought to go beyond and thus know a higher

satisfaction. If you face a cow with a stick it will turn aside in fear; if you face it with a

bunch of grass in your hand, it will approach. In both cases the cow sought to know the

truth for itself.

(16.6) For the oneness with all things cannot arise until after you have sought and

achieved the sense of their welfare. This self-realization may be achieved at first, as

Upanishads say, in lightning-flashes, in fleeting momentary glimpses, but later this must

be stabilized into permanency. And as the gnani knows the world to be an idea, a mental

construct, the sense of unification and love to all mankind is simultaneously its

materialization, for he knows no difference between idea and matter. Hence too the gnani

wishes all beings to be happy, loves even his enemy, wishes him no harm, for he knows

the truth of universal self-identification. Thus to the extent a man realizes the truth, he

can do good and no more.

(16.7) If God exists, as he does for religionists, and exists separately from them, then

there is duality, which always implies contradiction. Vedanta says God is an idea, a

thought, an object, therefore I, the Drg, contradict God. When there are two, one thought

contradicts another for one thought comes at one moment, and the other at another

moment, both moments contradict; you cannot say they are identical. You cannot find

non-contradiction in this world. We boldly say that God does not exist, because his

existence implies that I am different from Him. Any kind of difference means

contradiction. Nothing whatsoever other than the Atman exists. Non-duality means the

negation of all thought.

(16.8) Truth is not only that which is beyond contradiction, but also that in which is no

possibility of contradiction. Such a state can only be realized as non-duality, where there

are no two persons. The illustration for that is deep sleep but sleep is not the ultimate

reality. It is merely an analogy. Brihad Upanishad teaches, "if you think there is another

entity whether man or God there is no truth." This is the teaching since time immemorial

of those who have inquired into truth.

(16.9) That only which is permanent, unchanging in the changing world is reality.

(16.10) Everyone hears of Brahman. People can only imagine it.

(16.11) You require words only to distinguish between is there and not there, but you

can't posit either of Reality, because your saying so is only an idea, not reality. It is

beyond words. Words are of use, however, as a thorn to pull out the thorn of other words

that hinder knowledge.

(16.12) Intellectually knowing the truth is only an imagination, whereas realizing the

truth is knowing it as such.

(16.13) Yogis think that keeping out thoughts will give experience of Brahman. How can

you keep out a portion of Brahman of your mind? It is utterly impossible. To say that

such thoughtless experience is possible is rubbish, Moreover even if it were possible,

what is it that the yogi will keep out? They will only be keeping out Brahman! For the

mind is none other than Brahman, as everything is Brahman. The yogi has got the idea of

duality and therefore cannot realize truth. His experience of bliss is not Brahman, for

Bliss is something you have to experience, therefore it will have to go as it came; hence it

is only drsyam. Yogis seek bliss through ignorance.

(16.14) Intuition always implies knowing something, hence a second, hence it is rejected

as duality. Even if it is intuition of the infinite, of bliss, God, etc., it is still a pointer to

duality. Therefore I say the way to truth, i.e. Non-duality is not intuition, not mysticism

but reason.

(16.15) Yogis make the fundamental mistake of thinking that these are things (meditation

or actions) which are other than Brahman. The very idea they concentrate on is itself

Brahman and hence needs no special effort. It is impossible to treat your mind as

different from Atman. The AWARENESS i.e. Atman must be there PRIOR to all

attempts to control the mind: therefore it is a fallacy to believe that any yogic exercise

can create this awareness, this knowledge of self.

(16.16) It won't do to say Reality is only within you. You must know that this table, this

book is also Reality. All that you see is reality.

(16.17) ASPARSA YOGA: is the summit of Gnana yoga. Asparsa yoga is not the same

as Non-causality. It is the viewpoint of anything as reality, non-dual, whereas the latter

deals with the relation between two things.

(16.18) Atman cannot be known in the sense in which we know objects of thought. It can

be known only to the extent to which you know them, for you can only think of the

knower when you are in the presence of the known, i.e. objects, for the latter make you

aware that a knower must exist. Thus duality makes you think of the knower, but it

cannot make you know the knower. The knower is known in the world of duality only by

implication, as you cannot think without him. The knower is a concept, and cannot be

known in itself.

(16.19) Ultimate truth is known only in the negative way. You cannot make it an object

of knowledge. You can know that you cannot have an idea of an object unless you posit a

knower, unless the knower is implied already. The Drg itself is Gnana, that is, it knows

everything else. The self is known only when you see something else, for that other thing

reminds you of it. The self is unknowable as an object. Knowing the ultimate truth means

knowing that Brahman exists. The word ‘know’ implies duality, something known; on

the other hand Gnan does imply an object. Brahman knows the ego as an object. The

knowing powers, the Drg, the knower can have no statement made about it, other than

that its existence cannot be negated. The ultimate truth which you can know is that

Brahman is not something to be known.

(16.20) From the standpoint of the mind's working, you say that its thoughts are transient

and illusory; from the standpoint of ultimate result when you seek the essence of the

objective world you have to resolve it into the One mind. Is this mind also illusory,

although longer lasting than individual thoughts? To ask such a question is to think about

the mind i.e. to set it up as an object, to remain in the world of duality. Hence you cannot

get a correct answer about it--only a thought. The mind as knower cannot be known by

thought; only by non-thinking, by silence, questionless.

(16.21) Even the highest thought of Brahman must disappear in deep sleep. Thought is

changing and unreal. It passes away like dreams. It is impossible to eliminate thought

entirely in the waking state. No Yogi has ever succeeded in doing so. If he does he will at

once fall asleep.

(16.22) From the standpoint of worldly communication through words we say strive to

know Brahman: but from the highest standpoint words can only be applied to an object.

When you say 'I do not know Brahman,’ there must be something in you which knows

you do not know, a Witness, and which thus contradicts you.

(16.23) The seer in me, the seer in him, the seer in someone else, are all one and the

same; not separate from each other. Nobody has ever seen more than one seer.

(16.24) He who knows the Drg is Brahman, he remains satisfied. Not he who is

concerned with drsyam. Death is itself an imagination. Death is an idea, which you don't

even have in sleep. Death idea exists in waking and dream states only. Hence Atman is

immortal.

(16.25) Thought itself is mind. Mind sees itself as mountain in dream. "I" is also an

object of mind or Atman: Vedanta wants only to deal with certainty--the Mind alone we

know; all the rest are ruled out. "This duality that is cognized is mere Illusion (Maya).

This duality does not go, this Maya does not go. Causality itself is Brahman. Playing is

mind, I am Mind, tennis ball is mind--in my dream Tennis Play.

(16.26) There are three stages which succeed each other in the way human beings look at

life and the universe, first, ordinary materialism. This declares that there to nothing

beyond the physical matter. The second stage says that the world is an idea. This is a

higher step, but it is not final. The third stage the inquirer asks what is an idea, thus he

penetrates to the ultimate reality, summing up; stage one is confined to matter, stage two

is confined to mind, stage three liberates man into reality of the Overself.

(16.27) The world exists in Me; it is made of Me; it is Me therefore. Only ignorance

makes it seem separate, something different.

(16.28) If you constantly inquire into the nature of Brahman i.e. by discovering what is

non-Brahman, you are negating and what are you doing in yoga? You are keeping away,

i.e. eliminating all thoughts until in Nirvikalpa you negate all thoughts. The difference

between both is vital however: the Vedantin inquires into the world and then regards it,

arriving at Brahman ultimately: the yogi refuses to consider the world and therefore

arrives at a mere cipher, nothing, blankness, for he has not refunded the world into

Brahman.

(16.29) When you see the second thing and though seeing it know it to be none other than

Brahman, then you get Gnana. On the other hand, Nirvikalpa Samadhi is the non-seeing

of the second thing; hence cannot yield gnana, for the yogi does not see and does not

know what the world is.

(16.30) When science seeks to classify things or to generalize them, what is it doing? It is

unifying knowledge, it is unconsciously seeking unity. The human mind is always

restless until it finds unity: hence it is always seeking general ideas, unification. The

difference between the ass and man is that the former knows only variety whereas man

can and does know unity, if in limited spheres. Thus science finds that diamond and

lead-pencil, coal are all carbon, i.e. one and the same, i.e. unity. It is the ordinary animal

sense which everybody possesses to see the duality and multiplicity in the world, but

philosophy is needed to bring all this into oneness. Thus it justifies itself. When the

ancient philosophers reduced all things to five elements, they were unifying.

(16.31) If there is direct cognition of Brahman in Samadhi why don’t you go and sleep,

for sleep and samadhi are the same? Knowledge of Atma only is true knowledge and not

the absence of duality.

(16.32) The destruction of the world and Jiva does not mean that they should become

imperceptible to the senses but there should arise a determination of their unreal nature;

for if that were not the case, people may find emancipation without any effort on their

part as during dreamless sleep and fainting. That Atma remains as the sole real factor,

means that there should be a realization of Brahman as the sole unity and not a mere

absence of the cognition of the world; otherwise there would be no such thing as

emancipation in this life.

(16.33) If it is said that you get gnana in samadhi in which there is no duality, it is no

better than sleep. If it be said that there is a direct cognition in profound contemplation in

which there is no difference between the perceiver and the perceived and in which no

duality can occur; then why not admit the same in deep slumber. If it be objected that

there is no knowledge of the nature of Atman in deep sleep, then you admit that

knowledge of Atma only is true knowledge and not the absence of duality. That Atman

remains as the sole real factor, means that there should be realization of Brahman as the

sole entity and not a not a mere absence of the cognition of the world; otherwise there

would be no such thing as emancipation in this life.

(16.34) That alone is called Truth which is a fact that can never never be changed under

any circumstances.

(16.35) The common bearing of truth is agreement with the fact. But what is agreement?

How can you speak of one thing agreeing with another? The first theory, the idea (of the

building) is a copy (of the building), a photograph and the person photographed. If you

want to know that one thing is a copy of the other, you must have them together and see

them both alongside. But can you see the tree and the copy of the tree? The

Correspondence Theory is: the idea corresponds to the object. But how can you see the

object and the idea and their correspondence?

(16.36) Ask a man who claims to know it, "what is the meaning?" If he gives as meaning,

then he is wrong for he is in the realm of words, a meaning implies thought, word.

Advaita is beyond reach of both. What you imagine is only imagination and not reality.

Science begins to realize this by saying there is no such thing as matter, it is only a

concept, and a concept is not reality.

(16.37) The God seen in vision by mystics is only a mental projection. He may be seen

outside the mystic’s body, may appear as a totally distinct figure, yet still be only

imagined.

(16.38) Seeing nothing, having a blank in the mind, as in Nirvikalpa Samadhi is on a

level with deep sleep for value. The objective world is in the mind and must be

understood, and must be perceived to be understood.

(16.39) Man is not the creation of God; God is the creation of Man.

(16.40) No Hindu Sastric text says that Nirvikalpa Samadhi can get you gnan. It comes

only after samadhi, using the latter as a preparation. Hence Patanjali’s claim for

realization through yoga is merely a bait to seekers to adopt his preliminary state, but it is

not literally true. Yoga cannot give gnana. Those with weak minds tire soon and cannot

keep up the concentrated inquiry into truth, the three states etc. without which you cannot

see nonduality and their real meaning. Yoga helps you to keep out unnecessary ideas,

hence it helps to keep up a train of concentrated thought. This is its value as preparation

for Vedanta. Those who grasp quickly the Vedantic ideas, when explained to them have

gone through their yogic disciplines (preparatory) in former lives. Hence I needed only a

little yoga practice in this birth.

(16.41) By shutting your eyes in Samadhi you do not know the universe. Hence the

universe can't be known as Brahman through yoga alone. You are in a non-dual condition

in sleep or samadhi, One without a second, true, but you did not know it at the time. You

say only in the waking state afterwards. Hence there must be inquiry so that you find

non-duality whilst you are awake, so that you can see nonduality at the time not

afterwards. Hence too the need of inquiring into the universe and knowing it as Brahman

whilst you are awake, and not during sleep or samadhi. When can you say there is no

error in your knowledge? When you see all be beings in yourself; then there will be no

doubt--says scripture. Hence you must see the beings and objects, if you are to see them

in yourself. But sleep and Samadhi does not show them to you. Hence their knowledge is

not perfect, not free from error and doubt.

(16.42) Dhyana Yoga--steadying and concentrating the mind--must be first performed.

No other thought must interfere. This is done first, but after that you have to examine

world and see it as unity through this sharpened insight: after dhyana (study of matter)

you have to get Vijnana yoga in order to know this unity.

(16.43) When the yogi enters this highest Nirvikalpa (idea-less) samadhi, he will at once

enter deep sleep. This will make plain to him after he wakes, that the inner self he sought

and found, the Atman, is reached only when all his ideas are refunded into it, when there

is then all the features of non-duality, one without a second. However the yogi must later

wake up, emerge from samhadi and there is duality again, for world of objects confronts

him. So now he has to work on the next stage which is to find consciously in the waking

state the same non-duality that he unconsciously knew in sleep. This is done by learning

that the world is idea, and then refunding the world-idea back into its source, Brahman.

Only at this final stage dare he say "Atman is the same as Brahman." Now he knows it.

(16.44) Nirvikalpa has no duality, hence it cannot tell you about the universe. The yogi

who emerging from samadhi and says he found Gnana there, says it to a second man,

hence there is duality again. If he were a real Gnani, there would be nobody for him to

tell that he had experienced Gnana.

(16.45) There are two different samadhis, philosophic and sahaja samadhi (this is the

highest) in which you are in full wakefulness, and then you ask what is meant by this

world, the world is seen in this sahaja samadhi. Whereas Yogic or Nirvikalpa samadhi, is

just like swoon or deep sleep, where you are unaware of anything, not even the world.

See Tattireya Upanishad and Panchadeshi regarding this.

(16.46) All yogic visions, however wonderful will pass away; they go as they come. They

have the value of dreams. They are not truth which is unpassing and beyond change.

(16.47) We do not seek God in the quest; our only object is Truth. If we find that Truth

happens to be God, all right, we must accept it; but we cannot pre-judge the issue.

(16.48) We are not opposed to God, we are not atheists, but we want God free from our

or others’s imagination, as He is in truth, as he exists apart from human imaginations.

Imagined Gods cannot help us. We do not say God is not there, He is, but not as you

imagine him. We want the God above all imaginations. THAT which exists as truth.

Hence we do not use the word God. It will be misunderstood.

(16.49) The mystic who talks of finding himself in other forms thereby acknowledges

that there is otherness, that other exists whereas the Gnani knows only the One.

(16.50) So long as we are speaking we are in the world of duality: so long as we cease to

speak, we are in non-duality. Advaita means silence; no system of doctrine exists in that

silence. But the study and speaking of Advaita is helpful so long as we have not reached

wisdom. Advaita means philologically "not-two", the absence of a thinker and a thought.

He who thinks there is a God separate from him, cannot get truth. Show a hot poker to a

Jew, or Gentile, man or cow, child or woman and all will shrinks saying in union, "I shall

be burnt." This illustrates nature of truth, which is same for all people and as

uncontradictable as that red-hot poker burns all people. This shows that truth is

characterized by Universality, i.e. non-duality.

(16.51) Brahman can be realized as it is. Otherwise all this teaching would not have been

given in Mandukya.

(16.52) It is the attachment to the form of separate objects which keeps you from

apprehending their unity, not the seeing of them. How to think of both form and essence?

By practice you must get to the stage where you can think of both simultaneously. This is

done by knowing that the form is made of mind only. This requires sharp intelligence and

constant repetition of practices of seeing both form and essence at the same time.

(16.53) False and true knowledge exists only when you talk in the ordinary way: when

you know the truth, however, such classifications can not arise because everything is then

known to be the Mind and no questions of where and how or why can arise.

(16.54) When Vedas say: "That thou art" the meaning is that you must make an effort to

know the Brahman. Atman is there always. You have got it, there is nothing new to be

acquired, only have the sharp brain to see and understand it, when told about it. But there

is a difference between understanding and realization. Effort is required for this

understanding only, whereas once understood no special effort is needed to remember

your understanding: until then you only have an idea of Atman, you only partially

understand it. But once you thoroughly grasp what it is and that all these things are

Atman, you will then constantly find it present everywhere without further effort, because

you will perceive Brahman by understanding, even in the midst of worldly existence. For

when there is only one thing (Atman) known, there is nothing to change, nothing to

appear or disappear; when you speak of remembering or forgetting Atman that implies

you believe in the existence of something else, i.e. a second thing, which is to be

remembered. That would show you have not known that all is one. But knowing it, there

is no second, consequently no intermittent perception of Atman, but a permanent

effortless understanding that it alone is.

(16.55) When you get a glimpse of truth try to repeat it a number of times in order to

establish it. This is the meaning of Gita sentence: "The self must raise itself by the Self."

(16.56) The initiation of silence of Dakshina-moorti is the very final stage. Beginners and

intermediates must be helped by speech and discussion. Only after they have been

through the inquiry of reasoning and vichara are they ready for "silence" which

corresponds to “deep sleep.”

(16.57) When you say all these are imagination, you want to attain to a state when you

can negate all ideas and imagination--one thorn pulling out the other thorn and both

thrown away--that is the whole of Vedanta, and hence “think much, speak less, write

much less" as a tip against misleading others.

(16.58) I differentiate between a philosophical system and a philosophical truth. The

former can evolve or change; the latter is ultimate and final.

(16.59) There are two distinctions in logic: (1) contraries: Thus "All men are mortal." The

contrary to this is "No men are mortal." (2) "Contradictories": "Some men are mortal" is

the contradictory. The ultimate truth is non-contradictory, not non-contrary.

(16.60) Do not confuse the two factors (a) the capacity to understand which matures after

constant reasoning (b) the truth or knowledge of the world which arises from applying

this capacity to the world. This capacity is often what is meant by ‘intuition’ or by

‘insight.’ When Buddha used the latter word this is what he meant too.

(16.61) The word One is not understood anywhere except in Indian Vedanta. One always

means two when analyzed. Hence the Upanishads are careful to show they do not mean

this monism, but "One without a Second" i.e. Advaita. No Western philosopher has seen

this point. Monism is really pseudo-monism, i.e. duality.

(16.62) Make your mind capable of grasping the doctrine of unity; then when it is

expounded to you, you may grasp it in an instant. The long discipline is entailed by this

preparation of the mind; the understanding of truth may be swift as a lightning flash.

However this glimpse must thereafter be practiced continuously throughout the day until

it is permanently stabilized. The glimpse was the truth, and if it was genuine, this truth

can never be forgotten.

(16.63) The limitations and illusions of the world I have not seen anyone else impose on

my mind. Therefore I must conclude that they are self-imposed. I am infinite but in

dream I impose the limitation on myself in the form of a tiger which I see there but which

is only my mind, i.e. myself. Similarly in waking I impose other limitations in the form of

other objects and persons, we are all really Me. Therefore constantly reflect and practice

this exercise: viz. "I am not limited by the body, I am unlimited." Do not confine yourself

to your own body.

(16.64) Associate the idea of Brahman with all your activities--eating, working, pleasure.

Do this as a 24-hour daily exercise, practice. This is Gnana yoga. You must not think "I

am Brahman" and then regard your food as non-Brahman. You must practice every

minute the gnana yoga "I am only the witness, the seer, of all these things." With one true

Vedantic idea remove all false idea, then throw both ideas away and lay hold of that

which is beyond all ideas. This is Gnana yoga practice. Till this chapter, this is what we

have been doing, now the time has come to discard all Vedantic ideas and realize

Brahman, which cannot be described by thoughts or words.

(16.65) Why is Brahman beyond speech? Because whenever you use a word, it implies a

meaning, a thought. When you get a thought, there must be a witness of the thought apart

from it. The thought is not, cannot know and does not grasp its witness.

(16.66) The final stage of Vedanta Path is called realization because it involves making

real to oneself the ideas already studied, i.e. to experience them as such.

(16.67) Ask any professor of philosophy what is the meaning of ONE or whether ONE

exists, and invariably he will give the wrong answer. He does not know that One cannot

exist, it will always be two (the person who thinks of it and the idea of it, both thinker

and thought, seer and seen) and that therefore the ultimate is not Monism but not-two i.e.

non-duality. ONE is not monism but duality!

(16.68) Ignorance manifests itself as imaginations, ideas.

(16.69) The notion that it is true that intuition is used by the highest men but it is really

insight, matured after constant reasonings, is incorrect. There is no insight needed

because the Brahman is always there. When the clouds pass the moon is seen. No insight

will reveal the moon of truth, only the passing of the clouds of ignorance. Hence there is

no intuition or insight to be gained or matured, only a removal of something which

obstructs. Were there is something to be 'seen' by insight, then it would be a false

Brahman which is "without a second."

(16.70) To critic who objects of what use is a characterless abstract Brahman, we reply:

"You start with presumption that there must be a use; you are a worshipper of God use;

we however are primarily concerned only with whether it is true, and we want truth,

whether it is going to be useful to us or not."

(16.71) The practical method which leads to realization is the incessant inquiry into

reality, and the continual reminder that all, including yourself, is Mind, not body, pursued

in and through the daily experience of life. This practice must go on for a long period

until it becomes second nature, ingrained. Then it matures into realization.

(16.72) The individual does not exist in Advaita. Hence we do not assert that our own

system is true and others false: such a statement is the expression of egoism. We say that

at such a stage A is true, at another stage B is true, etc. Thus we do not cling to any

particular opinion, we are neither attached nor repelled by any system of opinion.

(16.73) The Vedantic use of term omniscient differs from the theological. For us it means

"knowing everything to be Brahman"; for them it means that God knows what is

happening everywhere or that he knows how to make U-boats and every thing else in the

world.

(16.74) The opposition of practical and philosophic viewpoints is irreconcilable only at

the beginning, when we have to effect a tentative separation of Drg from Drsyam. But

later on in our study both are reconciled when the drsyam on deeper enquiry turns out to

be nothing other than the Drg. Again so long as the drsyam is considered only as such,

causality must be held as true of it, but when it is eventually merged into the Drg, then

causality is seen to be inapplicable to it, because then it is seen to be the Drg. At this last

stage which is the Gnani's, there is no such thing as two viewpoints to be held

simultaneously because they are opposed to each other; both are united in him because he

has united all things, as Brahman. The continued and unremitting practice of regarding

the world as an idea must go on, until it becomes your very nature. Then only does theory

become realization.

(16.75) The Tibetan definition of non-dual as meaning neither of the two alternatives,

such as "existence" nor "non-existence," is correct only so far as your intellectual

conceptions go but not as an actuality or reality.

(16.76) Truth is completely unified knowledge.

(16.77) Any written description or verbal reference to Supreme Reality can only be your

imagination about it: hence the great Bhava kept silent when asked to tell of the

Brahman. Silence is the only correct way of speaking of It!

(16.78) The highest is to feel that the universe is myself, this is Gnana. To say the

universe is in myself is not the highest. A man enjoys natural samadhi when he attains

truth, not the sleep samadhi of the yogi.

(16.79) The real secret of Gnana yoga is that it is a continuous practice of enquiry

whereby you try to eliminate all those ideas and objects which constitute the field of

awareness, from the awareness itself. That is why it is called Gnana Yoga. That element

of awareness which is contained in all ideas etc. is what you should seek. It is the

unlimited element, not that which is limited to a particular thought or thing. Therefore we

do not use the term consciousness because that implies being conscious of something, of

a second. Even then, awareness is not quite the precise term, but there is no fit word

available. Hence Upanishads describe this state as indefinable, unseparable and

indescribable.

(16.80) By constantly inquiring all the 24 hours into the nature of Brahman, you will also

automatically get the control of all ideas, imaginations, emotions, etc. without practicing

yoga.

(16.81) If Brahman is beyond thought and speech, why study books or listen to lectures

on Advaita? Reply: On the principle of using one thorn to prick another out of the flesh

and then throwing both away, we use these books and lectures to remove wrong thoughts,

misleading words, to get rid of erroneous assumptions about Brahman, thus removing our

ignorance.

(16.82) Kena Upanishad gives the illustration of the lightning-flash of Gnan vanishing

from view instantly. However this flash has to be repeated many times perhaps hundreds,

until it becomes stable and a steady fixed light. Zen Satori is not the same, because based

on intuition, and hence not proved by reason and therefore open to each man's

misinterpretations. This illumination comes only after constant and frequent reflection,

thinking; hence the futility of Yoga to achieve it. Even the first single flash of

understanding is true Gnana, but it has passed away, and you must seek its repetition

constantly by such reflection until the light stays fixed and does not depart. However

even after the first illumination, you will never be mistaken again for you will understand

the true nature of things; although the permanent conviction may have to be established

when you imagine a Brahman, there is both imagination and you--a duality. Thus you

only get a thought in return--no more. You must keep aline the insight no matter what

you are doing. This demands constant concentration throughout the day--not merely

sitting to meditate for half hour. This flash is an absence of thought, like conscious sleep,

where duality disappears. The first flash is the beginning of realization and gradually

ripens into full realization. The process is to associate the insight gained by the first flash

with everything that you do--eating, working, talking,--with Brahman until it becomes

settled realization. You repeat what you saw in the first flash by associating it at every

moment henceforth--"This is Brahman, that is Brahman, this is Brahman etc."

(16.83) Nonduality ascertained by reason or after enquiry is alone Truth; and not the

nonduality which you get through sleep, chloroform, yoga etc. The non-duality must be

perceived in the waking state, by a sharpness of reason, of thinking--that moment in the

waking state in which you know that the three states, waking dream and deep sleep are

only states (coming and going), it is knowledge. By non-duality we mean, even when

there is duality, to know that there is only one thing, mind (as in dream) or Atman, in

waking state, after enquiry.

(16.84) In Asparsa yoga there is no second thing to be in touch with. If you realize

Brahman you will know that there is no other to be in contact with. --If you know

Brahman, you know it is Brahman. All other systems deal with duality.

(16.85) You must go on eliminating until all duality goes. Seeking yoga is the practice of

Neti, Neti, not seeking the positive Brahman.

(16.86) Liberation (Moksha) is not something to be got after death, it means liberation

from ignorance whilst alive.

(16.87) Truth is where no human mind can ever think of contradicting not merely my

mind alone; where there is no thought, no other being: no thinking, no second; that is

nonduality. There is nothing to be said about it; not even that we exist there, not even that

happiness and peace are there.

(16.88) How can there be any discussion, any difference of view in a state where there is

nobody else to argue with you or to oppose you. That is non-duality. How can any

question arise?

(16.89) We must get at the truth without imagination. All the philosophies of the world

are based on imaginations and hence they contradict each other. Let a thousand persons

imagine in a thousand different ways, but where is the proof? Each one hugs what he

imagines to be true. Even the Void being a mental idea is also an imagination. You do not

get truth because you are attached to particular peculiar ideas. Attachment is the root of

all evil.

(16.90) To say that a thing exists, there must be a second to say so or a mind to know it,

or a witness. This is objection made to making verbal statements about nonduality. Why

you say "My ideas are gone", "My memory of youth is gone", "My childhood is passed"

how could you know this unless there were something to say so. You must have been

aware of a thing's or thought's nonexistence, otherwise you could not say that it has come.

On the same principle pleasure must co-exist with pain and you could form no

understanding of one without the other. You must have white to know the meaning of

black. The mind cannot think except by differentiation. Hence mystic says "I have

achieved Ananda." It merely means that you have got something different from what you

have already got, hence when we say that no second thing exists we are positing that a

knower existed and then there is no non-duality, as when we awake from sleep.

(16.91) When we talk whether in affirmation or negation, to make a statement about

nonduality we imply the existence of one who says so. Only when nothing is said,

(silence) is there nonduality.

(16.92) Truth will eventually conquer, as mind evolves, because all its substitutes will

break down through their defects, but it will take a long time.

(16.93) It is called Gnana Yoga because the practice of discriminating between thought

and reality must be kept up for many years until it becomes habitual. This must even be

pursued until the sense of the ideality of the world persists even amid earthly and

personal sufferings.

(16.95) It is absurd to characterize Advaita as a negative philosophy because of its nondualism,

for it posits by negating, and declares all this to be Brahman hence it is not

nihilism. "Everything is Brahman" is only one aspect of Vedanta: there are two aspects,

the other being Neti, Neti: the latter is negative because we cannot reduce Brahman to

words, but the former is surely positive.

(16.96) When the gnani sees the outer forms of a book like others he does not and cannot

reject the form; for he knows immediately it is mind and Brahman. He has trained his

mind to couple both together instantaneously. There is thus no conflict in his mind.

(16.97) The Gnani thinks of both the individual personality he sees and the Brahman that

is in him: this is non-duality. He does not stop seeing John Smith, his nose ears etc. but

with all that he knows the Brahman from which John Smith is inseparable. This is

difficult to grasp, it is done by repeated practice over years; as Gnana yoga; had it been

easy we need only to read a text book of Vedanta and millions would now have been

gnanis.

(16.98) For one second or one minute you may attain glimpse of Gnana, but only he who

has disciplined and practiced can make it a permanent part of his nature.

(16.99) Men may know Vedanta intellectually but they may still have their weaknesses,

they still need to become fully convinced to the utmost: therefore realization of its truth

comes gradually.

(16.100) It is not enough to grasp the intellectual truth of non-duality; you must next fix

your mind continually in it. i.e. you will get in glimpses at first but you must not rest

there; you should stabilize them through constant reminder that the world is not separate

from yourself, in order to become a gnani. Knowing the Atman to be non-dual is first

stage, realizing it as such is second stage.

(16.101) The higher meditation comes at the stage after meditation at fixed hours has

been practiced and mastered. Then this is given up for self-recollectedness to be done

throughout the day wherever one is and without fixed times. That is the secret. It is

Gnana-Gnosis.

(16.102) The definition of truth according to Vedanta is nonduality.

(16.103) The Advaitin does not set up any position of his own because he knows

non-duality to be truth and hence cannot differ from others whom he regards as himself,

but shows the inconsistencies of all other positions. He sees the whole universe in

himself, as in a dream with the same mind existing in all, so how could he quarrel with

anyone.

(16.104) What is the difference between Atman and Brahman? When you dissolve all the

world into ideas and then the ideas into yourself, knowing they are ultimately in you, that

is Atman. When you actually see the universe before you and know that it is the same as

yourself, that is Brahman. When you are dreaming and know that the dream pictures of

cities friends etc. are yourself, that is Brahman. We have first to pass through the stage of

discovering Atman and then only can we attain the stage of discovering Brahman.

Nevertheless it must not be thought that the two are different both Atman and Brahman

are one and the same thing but viewed from two different angles.

(16.105) The nature of truth is to be free from contradictions. We approach nearer and

nearer truth as we find less and less contradictions. The only thing which is so free is

non-duality.

(16.106) Wherever there is impermanence and transiency, there is necessarily duality.

But that which knows these things are passing away, that is the pure non-dual

consciousness.

(16.107) The lightning-flash actually eliminates the ego but it lasts for the minutest

fraction of a second only; it is a kind of deep sleep in the midst of waking state, a return

to the Unconscious. For the rest of the day it is of course impossible to eliminate ego, for

we have to attend to personal affairs. Hence what we have to eliminate then is the

attachment to ego.

(16.108) Philosophical thinking leads ultimately to the understanding that there IS

something behind thought, the Witness itself. That is, there are two factors in thinking,

the idea or object and the awareness or consciousness which is the thinker of the idea.

Philosophy leads us to discover this latter factor and in this sense leads us to Truth. Even

Reason itself has to go in non-duality.

(16.109) The stages of teaching Advaita are (1) to reduce multiplicity to unity by

reducing everything to mind. This is Idealistic Monism. (2) To ask what is this One, and

to proceed to Nonduality, Brahman.

(16.110) When you want to know what wood is, you have mentally to negate the names

and forms of table, chair or door. This negation is an abstract affair, for the table, chair

and door still remain, they do not physically disappear. In the same way if you want to

know Atman you have mentally to negate all names and forms of objects but the objects

do not actually disappear.

(16.111) Every thought as thought is known only by distinguishing it from its opposite.

Pleasure (Ananda) implies pain. This is what Gita means by saying we must rise above

the pairs of opposites, i.e. we must rise above the dualities inherent in thinking into

nonduality. This is the real meaning of Advaita.

(16.112) If there are two entities there will be differences between them. If there are two

persons, or even individual and God, there will be difference of opinion. Hence truth can

only exist in non-duality. Hence the work of philosophy is to remove wrong ideas about

truth from the mind and to remove duality from the outlook.

(16.113) All such terms as change, non-existence, eternal, etc. imply each other. Hence

they are only ideas, mental constructions. Any word used will only be an idea that covers

the Atman and does not reveal it. They will only keep people in the realm of discussion

although it is quite necessary for practical truths which can never grasp reality; for it

yields only thoughts, i.e. drsyam and is necessarily devoid of reality. All discussions of

the nature of the Highest are mere imagination.

(16.114) "Duality ceases to exist"--means duality as two separate realities ceases to exist.

Duality still exists but the knower knows that they have not got separate existence in

Reality, i.e. the duality has not got existence separate from the only ultimate reality.

Unless you get at truth by inquiry, you have to take it for granted that there is duality (e.g.

distinction between teacher and taught.)

(16.115) Karma doctrine is irrefutable for those who believe in causality, i.e. for ordinary

people and scientists. We see in this world that every action brings results, that even if

you escape now from the consequences of telling a lie the time will come either in this

birth or another when you must suffer for it. But those who have given up belief in causal

law because they rise to ultimate, karma can also be given up.

(16.116) Non-Duality means not the non-existence of a second thing, but its nonexistence

as other than yourself. Mind must know it is of the same substance as the objects.

(16.117) Truth is possible only in duality when there is both a knower and a known.

Hence truth is your idea of a thing. Reality is the fact, the thing itself. Truth is used for

communication about the reality. Ultimate truth, beyond all doubt and contradiction, can

only be not your idea but the Reality itself. Hence ultimate truth and ultimate reality are

one and the same.

(16.118) How can we know that God is everywhere? It is not possible. Now what is God?

It has no meaning for me. It is a mere sound to me. This Atman is the seer. We cannot

prove the existence of any God which is everywhere apart from Atman.

(16.119) Knowledge of Atma only is true knowledge not the absence of duality.

Knowledge cannot destroy the world.

(16.120) Gnan requires constant looking into one's own mind, examining one's own

thoughts, testing if they lead to truth, widening one's sympathies, identifying with whole

world, and all this must be done for a long time, for it grows slowly.

(16.121) When you get convinced, certain, of the truth that the world is nothing but

Brahman, that there is no second thing, no egos, that very moment you become Brahman.

(16.122) See what is between two ideas. When you catch the mind between the two ideas

"horse--ox" then you catch the non-dual, but the mind should be sharp enough to do it.

(16.123) You have to practice thinking that you are neither the doer nor the enjoyer, and

thus you will gradually realize a state where whatever is seen is only Atman.

(16.124) The occasional "lightning-flash" glimpses are not enough. They must be

stabilized. The yogi may get such glimpses but only in the gnani are they stable.

CHAPTER 17: PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

(17.1) The problem of evil, pain and suffering exists whilst we do not perceive that

everything is Mind, unity, and particularly whilst we regard the body as real. It is

insoluble so long as the body is taken to be real. But when you see the body is only an

idea and that the reality is Mind, then the suffering merges into this mind. Like all ideas

the idea of body disappears back into the mind and really was the mind all the time.

Constant practice is needed to instill the outlook that everything is one, Mind, none other

than it, not a separate thing from it. When this is done the body is not thought of as being

different from Mind and so its pain is regarded as you would regard the pain of a

dream-body after you awaken. The reply to Joad's criticism that science reveals the

existence of animal suffering long before human race appeared on the planet is that he

over-looks that it is all Mind, and therefore in relation to oneself; we think this; they are

ideas relative to us and inseparable from us. To think of suffering is to think of separate

entities as being real and to forget that there is only One, Brahman, pure Mind.

(17.2) Why is Karma Yoga really based on Gnana yoga? Because, it is work without

expecting return. If you do expect, then it means you have not separated yourself from

the thing expected, i.e. duality. Also it teaches elimination of ego.

(17.3) Man ever seeks his happiness: this is quite natural. None--not even myself--is the

exception to this rule. All must seek it in some form or other.

(17.4) He who has to go to Kailas to find peace, knows nothing of Vedanta. Any man in

any place, if he has got the knowledge of truth can enjoy peace. Whether in palace or

cave, he knows both to be illusions (ideas) and does not depend on such.

(17.5) Advaita is finally to be judged from the point of view of the life we lead and not

mere words, the practical good it can do rather than abstract discussions, the reasoned

ethical guidance it can give rather than dogmatic injunction.

(17.6) "If thou art ignorant perform action to purify the self. If thou art wise and knowest

truth do thou perform action for the protection of the masses."--Shankara. It is because

this attitude is lost that India has been ruined.

(17.7) The difference between religions, science, art, etc. and philosophy is that the

former study only one aspect of life whereas philosophy studies the whole of life. The

truth and test of this is the results we witness all around us today. Religion has failed to

improve man's conduct towards his fellows of another religion. Science has turned

warfare into massacre and so on. Philosophy however wants all the aspects of life and is

comprehensive, and is everywhere, and wants all aspects to be considered costed and

weighed. It says let us put all these aspects together, use scientific methods of proof, gain

a synoptic view and know what life really is. Bacon said "Philosophy takes all knowledge

for its province."

(17.8) Do not make the mistake of prescribing mere religion as a cure for the world grief,

but point out that the only remedy is TRUTH and that the world is yet to find truth, and

that only by honest enquiry can truth be found.

(17.9) If you want to know the higher philosophy you must give up both love and hatred,

attraction and repulsion. But in the practical world and from the lower standpoint both are

essential, for you must hate vice and love virtue. From the ultimate standpoint, however,

love is not possible without an implication of hatred, and vice versa. Both are logical

opposites within a whole.

(17.10) Even eating vegetables is killing life, but it is one degree higher than meat-eating

and hence preferable for seeker.

(17.11) "Balance" is the essential teaching of Vedanta. Thought must be balanced by

action, solitude by service in society, Nature by cities.

(17.12) Spiritualism is true from the standpoint of ordinary man and material world, but

false from the Vedanta standpoint. Waking world and dream world, material world and

spirit world rise and fall together.

(17.13) Ordinary morality does not exist for Vedanta, neither virtue nor morality. Its test

is the wide one of the benefit of the ALL, all life whether animal or human, of

compassion to all.

(17.14) Truth rights negation, and implies absence of harmfulness, of contradiction and

conflicts. Where it is present there alone is harmony, whether between husband and wife,

Government and people, and nation and nation. This is the practical application of truth.

(17.15) REBIRTH: A man must be born a large number of times before he reaches satiety

with worldly births.

(17.16) REBIRTH: Samskaras31 of the mind can lie buried deep for many years and then

reappear suddenly into conscious life. Thus a man who met Swami Vivekananda for a

few minutes and was apparently unaffected by it, had a vision of the Swami 20 years later

and as a result gave up immoral life and donated much money to the Ramakrishna

Ashram at Bombay. Explanation is that Vivekananda's more powerful mind did deeply

plant some samskaras in the other man's but they lay in the subconscious for 20 years. It

is really the same thing as samskaras appearing out of former births and manifesting in

the present one.

(17.17) Transmigration means identification with one object at one time, with another at

another time. Disappearing is an impossibility. Because it is always real, it never

disappears. It is always Brahman and it cannot disappear, i.e. objects and ideas, the whole

universe, how can they cease to be Mind (as dream objects) or Brahman. It cannot

disappear, whether you see the dream mountain or if' you do not see it, everything is

mind. There is no such thing as going and coming.

(17.18) Highest ideal in Vedanta is to feel that the whole world is one, that if a man in

England is harmed you feel with him.

31 latent tendencies, habits or complexes

(17.19) Philosophy is all-comprehensive and deals with the totality of life. It rejects

nothing but asks, "'What is the profound meaning and value of this dancing, this

aesthetics, this religion, this science, this yoga, etc.? Why does this flower, music,

sculpture give me pleasure? Each of them has their value, also its limitations, so

philosophy will not limit itself to any one of them but views the whole.

(17.20) The Yogi shut their eyes, cut themselves off from the world and thus imagine

they have destroyed misery. It is like getting rid of pain by taking chloroform. The yogi

takes chloroform and is thus not aware of misery, but it to a temporary process, Gnana

alone faces the misery, penetrates, understands and conquers it by knowledge.

(17.21) The wider a man's sympathies as the nearer he is to truth, the narrower his

prejudices the farther from truth.

(17.22) The man who makes enquiry, questions everything. "What is pain, what is

pleasure?" etc. He asks and finally sees that everything is Brahman, including both

pleasure and pain. The Yogi however thinks that by making himself insensible to pain he

avoids it. He gets into a kind of sleep which he calls Samadhi and thus removes pain

temporarily. He shuts himself away from pain, whereas Gnani deliberately examines it.

(17.23) When I know all is Brahman I can help others who are suffering, because I

consider him as myself. And consider that I am suffering in him. I see a second person,

duality, but I know as a gnani that he is the same person as myself. If everyone sympathized

with everyone else then gnana would have been universal. Gnani knows truth and

always acts to help others whereas ordinary man may or may not help others. The Gnani

knows all life is one, ignorant man does not, that is the difference between them.

(17.24) There is no opportunity to develop your character if you run away to a cave. The

opportunity can come only when you have to deal with others, i.e. in society. Most of

those who run away are seeking personal satisfaction and fall deeper into the ego by this

absence of opportunity to uplift or unselfishly help someone; there must be a second

person present i.e. in society, to permit you to unfold character.

(17.25) Happiness is not a characteristic of Atman for it is merely an idea, an imagination

that comes and goes. It is only for beginners that we sugarcoat the pill of truth by saying

that if you get Brahman you will be blissful. Later they will learn to seek truth for its own

sake, irrespective of bliss or happiness.

(17.26) The reality is called "beyond suffering" because when you attain it, you have

nothing more to be sorry for as everything will be known to be there in the Real, and

cannot be lost.

(17.27) The existence of desire in man is a confession that he is seeking something

outside himself. This proves he does not know the truth of his self, because there all is

satisfied. The Atman-knowledge gives contentment.

(17.28) Non-duality alone is fearlessness and bliss. For even if there is God, there is a

second, and you may fear that God will get angry with you. When all imaginations are

taken away, there is only non-duality left. The best illustration is deep sleep, where there

is no fear. So if you attain a state where there is no second, you attain bliss and

fearlessness.

(17.29) If you think that eating and working are realities, separate from the Supreme

Reality, then you are dualistic, and will shrink from Brahman. We do not deny them but

say they too are Brahman.

(17.30) The Gnani's idea of service will comprehend that whilst he tries to relieve physical

suffering, to remove ignorance is still higher and more necessary service.

(17.31) When you realize that the ‘I’ does not exist, then you cease to want anything for

yourself, but you--may passionately, like Vivekananda, want it for the help of others.

(17.32) The real meaning of doctrine of non-violence is that if you harm others it is

equivalent to harming yourself.

(17.33) Unless Vedanta promotes the well-being of ALL, it should be thrown away: this

is the difference between it and all other philosophies. They may teach universal

brotherhood, but this is quite different from the feeling of oneness in Vedanta. There are

separate individuals in brotherhood but none apart in oneness, or identity.

(17.34) To learn by erring and suffering is the surest path to Truth.

(17.35) It is not enough to repeat Sanskrit wisdom like parrots, but it must be lived. And

the highest test of it is the universal sympathy which it produces. The greater the true

knowledge, the wider the sympathy, and as we rise higher, the less the distinctions which

we make.

(17.36) The Gnani can kill a snake to save a threatened child and not incur karmic sin,

because he will be acting without ego: it is being done for another, not for himself.

CHAPTER 18: ETHICS

(18.1) How can the question of altruistic sympathy rise when there is no second? This is

the erroneous criticism of Vedanta made by some. They have not grasped it. For the

student has to practice Vedantic ethics in order to realize Truth, and this means practicing

oneness with others. The critic has confused the two standpoints, the practical and the

philosophic.

(18.2) BIRTH CONTROL is ethically permissible, also by Sastras, but artificial abortion

is sinful and unethical. Re Abortion: Once the living has made its appearance we have to

accept the consequences and protect its existence. It will be making bad Karma to end its

existence.

(18.3) No man in this world is perfect; do you mean to say that there are not many faults

in me too. What we have to do is to weigh all the virtues as well as all the defects of a

man's character, and then if there are more of the former, he is entitled to be called a good

man. That is why I defended Duke of Windsor.

(18.4) The whole of ethics is based on the ego and its denial.

(18.5) Sin is private crime; crime is public sin. Sin may be merely mental whereas crime

is active.

(18.6) Morality based on custom is relative. Hindu women who are even touched by the

hand of a man regard it as immoral and are shocked--except among those modern girls

who have thrown themselves into Western style of life. Western women are touched and

held by different people during dances and they are not shocked but delighted.

(18.7) If you wish to test yourself and find what progress made, watch what happens in

the presence of a great temptation, such as receipt of money, or meeting beautiful

woman, as also at the advent of bad news, and note how you reflect. If you remain

unaffected, then you have achieved mental equilibrium, and liberation from ego. If you

are affected, then the ‘I’ is still there in you. To the degree that you pass this test you are

achieving, realizing. A moment’s anger you may have, but if immediately after you

practice recollection and understand that it is the presence of the ego which causes anger

then you will regain equilibrium. It is requisite for the seeker, however advanced he be, to

practice this self-examination constantly, to ask himself, "Is it for the sake of the ‘I’ that I

am doing this? Is it for the sake of the body I do this? etc.

(18.8) The enlightened man does not criticize or praise men, but he does criticize or

praise actions. He does not speak ill of persons, but he must condemn or discourage or

praise or support wrong or right actions. The ignorant however condemn or slander the

persons concerned. For he must set an example and guide people into the paths of right

action which are stages of discipline that will gradually lead them towards Brahman

whereas wrong actions lead them away from Brahman.

(18.9) When Brahman is known you do not feel anything as duty, although you will do it.

But the man who is still attached has the feeling of duty to be done.

(18.10) Vedanta teaches you to help others, not because their pains must necessarily be

felt inside your own mind too, but because you are your neighbor--Tat Twam Asi, just as

the tiger seen in dream is still your own mind.

(18.11) Love and compassion for all mankind is the result of finding truth.

(18.12) Philosophy is not different from life, or from the world. Unless you treat all

persons equally, there is no philosophy. Hence it adopts the welfare of all world and

serves humanity. It is not merely a spinning of words. It is truth. The Gnani sees every

object and person as of the same essence as himself, the Atman.

(18.13) If you think "I am a Jew, he is Gentile”, again you prevent yourself from getting

Gnana. Only when you put aside these distinctions and desires, can you obtain unity;

otherwise you obtain only misery. This idea of harmony between all religions is not ours,

because it presupposes the existence of different faiths, separate existences, which do not

exist for the gnani, but which exist for the adherents of these faiths and consequently

which prevent true genuine unity and harmony of mankind. So long as you have the idea

of distinction you can have no real idea of oneness. Truth is impossible so long as you

have multiplicity (Mandukya). The wife who feels completely for her husband's

sufferings has begun the path of Gnana but she will achieve Gnana fully only when she

feels the same for the whole world. The wider your sympathy, the greater your progress.

(18.14) Those who eat meat thereby reveal lack of sympathetic feeling for the slaughtered

animals. Hence they can never arrive at full gnana because their sympathy is not truly

universal; such a feeling is the result of or leads towards, true gnana, and it will not

permit flesh-eating.

(18.15) In exact opposition to the ascetics I teach the earning, making and spending of

money so that we may use it to help the deserving and to improve common welfare.

(18.16) Why do you feel sympathy with the sufferings of another person when you

behold them? Why does a mother feel for her child? Why do you have pity on the

persecuted? Answer: Because there is a common soul of all mankind, the Overself of

P.B.32 which is the unity behind life.

(18.17) It is the idea of money which gives you happiness. If you have money in the

Bank then it is the idea that money is there which brings happiness. It is not the money

itself. Similarly it is only the idea of the loss of money which brings misery. But the

Atman knows that ideas come and go, no idea can last for ever and hence it remains

unruffled. "Neti, neti" means negating all ideas and nothing more. But death, prosperity,

happiness, refer only to something seen i.e. an object, an idea. The Atman can in no way

be changed, or be happy or suffer. It is always the same. These ideas of wealth, pains

world etc. are all contained in the Atman, just as they are during deep sleep. Know this

and thus be a Gnani and remain untouched by anything.

(18.18) Contrary to the ascetics I advocate marriage and the sharing of life with a partner.

(18.19) Character--all the virtues taken and coordinated--is the highest of values. For the

power of good character lies in its influence to impress itself upon others. The

development of character is of supreme importance in the scale of social values.

Reliability of character is a thing which the world rightly appreciates.

32 Paul Brunton

(18.20) The vast universe was not directly created for man alone, but for all living things,

although they are still evolving to human stage, and although man alone can know truth

and although this knowledge is the chief end of man's life.

(18.21) Vedanta is utterly practical. It is not a matter of intellectual debate but of social

life and death. It has the well-being of the whole of mankind at heart for its chief teaching

is the oneness of all.

(18.22) The philosopher will know the limits of the pleasures of the flesh. He accepts

them so far as they go, but he is under no illusion about their proper place and value. He

will therefore make a good husband or lover without detriment to his philosophy.

(18.23) The growth of Vedantic social ideal of oneness is illustrated by change in method

of bee-keeping. Formerly when time came to collect honey, a fire was lit and the bees

smoked out, most of them falling suffocated and dead to the ground. Nowadays we are

more humane and a different method is used which does not kill the bees. We are

beginning to feel with and for the insects as well as for higher animals. That is practical

Vedanta.

(18.24) Christianity's highest ideal looks upon another man as a brother, but Vedanta

looks upon him as one's own self. Universal brotherhood is not the highest ideal, but

identity.

(18.25) (1) First know what this world is.(2) Then see what sufferings are (3) Seek to

free others from suffering. Nature herself is forcing nations to realize the Vedantic social

ideal of equality, sameness in all, that united they stand, but divided they collapse. This

ideal means that everything is Brahman.

(18.26) When you love anyone, whether your neighbor or your dog, it is Atman that you

love. This is an ideal which we should seek to possess; and to the extent we can succeed

in attaining it, we could be happier.

(18.27) Whatever happens to the wise, whether it be success or failure, pain or pleasure,

he will think on every occasion that it is Brahman and thus lift himself above material

experiences.

(18.28) Morality has no meaning when everything is One and consequently no question

of a second person can arise. How could a Gnani think of injuring another man when he

knows this other is not different from himself? All theories of ethics pale away before

this lofty attitude.

(18.29) When the thoughts of wanting wealth or fearing to lose it come, think: "I am the

indestructible, I am the One Self, I am the ever serene." This is given as an exercise to be

practiced.

(18.30) So long as you believe illusory objects to be real, you will be attached to them.

Thus when you see a woman, if you know she is only an appearance, a mirage, how can

you become attached to her? It is when she is mistaken for what she is not, through

ignorance of the Self, that you become entangled.

(18.31) Right action is really a matter of right understanding.

(18.32) There are four attitudes towards life (a) the lowest is the practical which seeks to

make money out of it, (b) next higher the aesthetic, which seeks to extract emotional

pleasure from it and which may be bracketed with religion, although the latter is

frequently mixed up with the practical outlook in its prayers or expectations of being

rewarded with material benefit for its piety: artists also sometimes mix pecuniary motives

with art. (c) still higher the scientific which seeks the truth about it; while highest of all is

(d) the philosophic which takes all these other attitudes the whole lot from point of view

of truth. We say bring your practical experience, your artistic, religious and scientific

experience and we shall value them all. This is the meaning of Vedanta saying that it

wants "the truth of all those truths."

(18.33) When we say Vedanta seeks the welfare of all, that also includes myself. I also

should be happy as much as other people.

(18.34) Vivisection from the Vedantic ethical standpoint is justified insofar as the lives or

health of a few may be destroyed in order to save those of many, but as far as possible it

should be avoided. On the same principle the profession of a soldier is justified because a

limited number fighters are killed, to save the lives of millions.

(18.35) Vedanta aims at the welfare of all beings, not only human beings.

(18.36) What is the use of Advaita? It is only the discussion of empty words. Life cannot

be separated from philosophy, and the latter if it is to have any value must have the

greatest bearing on the former. Philosophy leads to something practical in life, in the

world. For when you know there is no duality, that all human beings, all nations are one

body (Mandukya) although differing as the fingers from feet on the same body, the

welfare of the All will be sought in practical ethics. The mistake generally made is that

Advaita means the wiping out of the world and mankind and your own individual self

alone remaining. The truth is that the world remains for the Gnani, the Gnani wipes out

nothing, he is the most practical of men, he still sees the All of multiple objects and men,

but he sees also their Oneness, and their non-separateness from himself. He identifies

himself with everything, every one, even animals, their sorrow is his sorrow; their

happiness, his happiness and their well-being becomes his aim. The study of Advaita

must be repeated until you are absolutely convinced, your actions will be the test or

evidence of such conviction, which alone is realization.

(18.37) Every worldly happiness is something experienced; is a seen (Drsyam). All this

"seen" ultimately merges in the Self; suppose you enjoyed the best fruits yesterday. What

is that joy--an idea. Where did it go? Into the mind, i.e. into yourself. If you think it is a

joy separate from you, then you do not know truth. When you know everything is in you,

not apart from you, then you have the unchanging happiness and are not perturbed or

excited by the changes or worldly joy. To depend on any external object or person for

your happiness is to depend on another, on a second, on duality. It is an imperfect and

unreliable happiness for it may change or disappear at any moment. Only in Atman is

perfect happiness i.e. sameness of mind.

(18.38) The wall or the woman is only the Atman, yourself: therefore you need not run

after either. But when by inquiry and discrimination you know, realize, that whatever

appears before you is only Brahman then it will not much matter what you do. For then

you cannot turn away from Brahman. If, however, you think that a particular happiness is

something different from what you have now, something new, a second thing, then it is

not the Drg, the Atman, and you are lost. The Gnani says "Let me know the Brahman in

all this."

(18.39) We cannot live without killing and causing some pain to something. Science

knows this. Water contains millions of microbes, vegetables and fruits are living entities,

even air has germs. However the virtue of being a vegetarian is this: Consciousness is

more advanced in animals than in plants, hence where creatures are more conscious of

their pain than others, we ought not to eat the former. There is a ladder of evolution in

consciousness. Reaction to certain stimuli is greater in animals than in plants, science

proves this. Because animals have a lower grade of development (than man): it is a

question of causing the least pain.

(18.40) Do not think when I say the world is a dream or man but an idea, therefore both

are to be ignored as empty. For much as a dream person seems to be real and you also

seem real, both being on the same level i.e. you think others and yourself are real or

unreal together. Therefore do not think your own body to be real, demanding food for it,

and yet think that other's bodies are unreal, and their sufferings are not worth believing.

This is error. A further point is that in dream all the friends you see and yourself are made

of one stuff--Mind. Therefore the moment you make a distinction between yourself and

another man there is no Vedanta. The goal of Vedanta is to see the other man's sufferings

as your own. Because in dream all the scenes and all the people are made of the same

essence as yourself, they are as real as you are, Whatever I am, you are. I cannot be

dissociated from you, the whole world is one. Do not treat other people as mere ideas but

your own self as real. If they are ideas, so are you. If you are real so are they. Hence you

must feel for them all just what you feel for yourself.

(18.41) Although working selflessly for the welfare of others it is the natural fruition of

attaining Gnan, still even the aspirant on lower stages must also strive to emulate this

ideal because nobody jumps into selfless service in a single day, but he must keep on

trying to practice it even whilst he is yet imperfect. Thus he is learning how to be a gnani.

(18.42) Even the Gnani must use his ego to fight or deal with wicked people who

themselves manifest ego; thus be will use his own ego to remove another's ego, as one

uses a second thorn to pick out the first which is stuck in your flesh. But with harmless

people he will not show ego.

(18.43) The gnani is neither elated nor depressed by the vicissitudes of fortune because

he knows that everything is Atman, that in Reality he has neither experienced loss or

gain, that everything is as it is, unchanged Brahman.

(18.44) In the earlier stage of Gnana Yoga, whenever the thought “rush to relieve his

suffering” in order to overcome this feeling of duality by identifying yourself with the

other person. In the advanced stage or ultimate realization of Gnana however, you do not

see the suffering person as different from yourself, and therefore help is given as a part of

yourself. He is Brahman, you are Brahman, and there is neither he nor you at this stage,

although you see him still. It is like relieving pain of one finger when gnani relieves

another's pain.

(18.45) What is the fundamental reason why we should control the senses? Because their

characteristic is to make you think erroneously that the second thing is real, that the

objects are real.

(18.46) The attitude towards action is to act as though your body were another's. You

may have your I in your thinking, there is nothing wrong in that (see Ashtavakra); only

you should know that the ego is only a thought, an idea just like the ego you have in

dream.

(18.47) Men want to avoid adversity, peasants want to avoid rain at the wrong time,

nations want to avoid war, ambitious men try to become rich as Croesus, but all these

fail. Why? Such matters are not quite under our control. There is an element of

inescapable fate, of iron necessity, about them. Even Krishna could not stop the Mahabharata

war. The moral of this is, do not worry yourself over things you cannot control.

(18.48) Balanced life is a message of philosophy. It is called Samatva; i.e. equipoise.

(18.49) Sense-enjoyment will bring pain or reaction and thus bring about indifference

eventually. The wise man knowing the objects to be unreal, maya, treats them with

indifference in consequences too.

(18.50) Both the Gnani and the ignorant give in charity to the poor but the latter gives

because he believes in duality and regards the poor as another person, whereas the Gnani

gives because he regards the poor as himself.

(18.51) The craving to do good to others on the part of those even who are

unphilosophical arises from the unconscious truth which underlies everything. The

craving to injure others on the part of the brutal arises from the desire to get rid of trouble

or suffering caused or thought to be caused by the enemy, i.e. the desire to get rid of

duality: it is at bottom the same craving for non-duality as in the former case.

(18.52) Vedanta seeks not merely well-being of humanity but rather the well-being of all

that exists.

(18.53) Every time you take a meal you are seeking to unify the food with yourself, to

practice non-difference. This exists even in the practical world.

(18.54) Hatred is the very negation of oneness for it emphasizes separateness, hence it

must be overcome.

(18.55) (46.11) Do what you are obliged by duty to do, it does not matter so long as you

look upon the world as being only thought and within your mind.

(18.56) The notion that a Gnani should never get angry or never pretend to anger is

erroneous. He may do so if it is not in his egoistic interest, if he sees harm is being done

or if it is for the benefit of others. Krishna urged Arjuna to fight, even to slay.

(18.57) There was a philosopher near Nasik. A dog came, stole a piece of his bread and

ran away. The man ran after him for a long distance down the road. People stared,

thinking that he had gone mad through too much Vedanta. After a long chase, he caught

the dog, opened its mouth and took away the piece of bread, Then he produced a pat of

ghee he was holding in one hand, smeared the bread and put it back in the dog's mouth,

saying: "We are one. What I have is to be shared with others. I always take butter with

my bread. So you must have some on yours too. For we are one Atman."

(18.58) Critic objects that Hitler may have read Gita's statement that killing bodies is not

really killing! Hence he can justify file actions so. Reply: This is mere pedantry, juggling

with words, non-application of the great truth of Vedanta that all Mankind is one.

(18.59) Compassion should be shown to all creatures even worms; do them no harm, if

possible.

(18.60) Why does a parent love the child? Why do crows call each other when feed is

about? What does this sympathy mean? All this shows there is an actual trend toward

oneness.

(18.61) In our experience so long as the ego desires a thing, it may not come. If however

you give up the desire and forget it you are to that extent giving up the ego. And then the

Universal Mind not infrequently brings you the very thing that was formerly desired.

There seems to be a mysterious connection or law behind this. For we see it in the

subconscious solving problems later which conscious mind gives up in despair and

dismisses.

(18.62) The other persons are yourself; you cannot injure others without injuring

yourself, this is philosophically true and works out empirically true also through Karma.

(18.63) The man who is still believer in multiplicity, who is still held by the sense of

differences, will always condemn or strive with others. But the sage who sees

non-difference alone never condemns or strives with others for he sees them as himself.

(18.64) There is no end in this world to desire. Satisfaction can come only from being

satisfied with Brahma-knowledge which puts an end to all desires. All other desires are

followed by further ones.

(18.65) Ethics admonishes men to subordinate the ego from a practical standpoint, but

only philosophy explains why man should do so, for it proves that ego is unreal, passing

away every moment.

(18.66) The questions of optimism and pessimism have meaning only from some

individual’s standpoint. Those who are getting on very well in life will naturally favor

optimism.

(18.67) There is no real freedom for those who believe in God for their morality is based

on doing what God is supposed to communicate through conscience or otherwise; hence

they are not free. Nor is there freedom for those who base their ethics on pleasure for they

are compelled by their desires to seek pleasure.

(18.68) The sage will live as he pleases, above codes but this does not mean he will do

wrong, harm others or cause suffering. For his self-identification with them will prevent

this.

(18.69) The gnani feels no difference whether he is approached by an exceedingly

beautiful woman or by a dirty ugly old woman; he will be mentally the same,

undisturbed, neither attracted in one case nor repelled in the other. This is because his

analytical insight has become perfect and because he sees non-duality in all. To desire

sex is to seek a second thing which is ignorance.

(18.70) What is it you can renounce? Everything is Brahman. You can only give up

Brahman: Hence the gnani is above renunciation.

CHAPTER 19: KARMA

(19.1) The full truth about Karma doctrine can only be known when it is studied from

two aspects, the lower and the higher. The lower aspect is that which relates to the

individual, whereas the higher relates it to the whole of mankind. Let us compare the

individual person to a finger. Suppose you cut and poison the finger. The poisoned finger

sends by its blood circulating all over the body, poison thus affecting harmfully the heart,

the head and other organs. Why should thus other bodily parts suffer through no fault of

their own, through the existence of the finger? The reply is that because the body is a

unity composed of constituent parts, no constituent in this unity can be injured without

ultimately injuring the rest. In precisely the same way the acts of an individual affect not

only himself, but also his family, his community, his nation and ultimately all mankind,

because he and all other human beings constitute one great family. Just as the condition

of the finger cannot be scientifically considered apart from the condition of the rest of the

body, so the condition of any individual human being cannot be properly considered apart

from the rest of mankind. All form one family, one organization in which smaller and

larger unities are reacting continuously on other unities, just as at Hassan we saw an

illustration of this double working of Karma. Years ago the forest trees in Hassan District

were cut down. As a direct consequence the rain fall has now failed. This again has led to

the failure of the crops for animal and human consumption. This again led to the deaths

of thousands of cattle through lack of both fodder and water as well as starvation for

thousands of peasants. This physical calamity arose out of the mistake performed many

years ago by earlier generations in cutting down too many trees. Thus the present

generation has had to suffer for the mistakes of an earlier generation, showing that the

humanity of the present epoch cannot be artificially separated and considered. The unity

is like a flowing stream which moves through past present and future and retains its own

self-hood. The suffering of peoples through their own epoch should teach us the truth of

unity of all men because we feel for the sufferers. At such a time as at present the

universal Karma has given us the opportunity to be born in order to go to the relief of the

sufferers so that instead of selfishly bemoaning our own fate, we can look upon our

troubled time as an opportunity for service of the rest of mankind, who are none other

than our own self. Another illustration may be taken from contemporary events. Hitler

said that he had raised out of degradation and misery in which he found Germany. If that

be true, then the wealthier countries like England and France who permitted this

degradation to exist could have avoided their indirect responsibility for the appearance of

Hitler. It is useless for them to say that the poverty of Germany was her own affair, for

the law of universal Karma will not permit them to separate themselves entirely from

other nations. They should have gone to the help of Germany and then the necessity for

Hitler would not have occurred. Now they have to fight a bitter war to crush Hitler and

even though they will probably succeed in doing so, nevertheless they will have to bear

heavy loss and burden which war necessarily brings. Thus their Karma punishes them for

neglecting to go to the assistance of Germany before Hitler arose. Thousands of others

can be taken from history showing that we are all linked together and cannot afford to

stand apart selfishly from the misfortunes of others.

(19.2) Our circumstances and characters must be traced to causes in a world unseen

unknown and hidden from us: we can't help that. But the causes must have been there,

pre-existent.

(19.3) Karma is a scientific hypothesis, as scientific as any other accepted by science. We

find ourselves born with certain mental characteristics and capacities. We cannot see how

they were acquired. We see everywhere in life that every effect has a contributing cause,

that every point has been reached by prior evolution. Therefore we say that the ego must

have come from somewhere, in a manner unknown to us, where it had previously existed

and evolved.

(19.4) If we rise higher, we see that the bondage of Karma is due to our own will; that we

can negate that Karma and become free.

(19.5) Karma doctrine is reconciliation between freewill and necessity; it puts the two together

by saying your present has been determined by your past acts. Thus there is free

will but it is within the limits of determination. But it does not attribute present conditions

to any God: it does not shirk responsibilities. Man has got certain freedom and certain

limitations.

(19.6) Philosophy tells us that the world is imagined, your body is idea. Therefore you

create the world. This creation is Karma.

(19.7) The last thoughts and subconscious tendencies of the dying will help to determine

the nature of next body.

(19.8) Predestination really includes free-will. The two seem different only when we

adopt different points of view. But everything in this paramarthic world is pre-determined

because everything is causally linked together. The only true freewill is rising above

causality, karma, altogether. Absolute freewill, for ordinary individuals is an illusion.

(19.9) Karma is just as much applicable to mental as to physical acts, to thoughts as to

deeds.

(19.10) There are two aspects of Karma (1) for the sufferer, an opportunity to understand

that his woes are self-earned karma and to be careful not to create bad karma, and (2) for

others, an opportunity to come to help the sufferers. This explains why we are born today

in troubled times (1) to get rid of much bad Karma (2) to have more opportunity to be of

service to others.

(19.11) The idea that if you do wrong God will punish you, is anthropomorphic. Just as

one man punishes another for ill-doings so we transfer the same characteristic to our

notion of God. Religion transplants ordinary human qualities to supernatural beings

whereas Karma removes all need of this anthropomorphism.

(19.12) Anadi=beginningless. This is how karma and the individual soul's origin are

regarded. Science also says now you cannot say when consciousness came into man. If

you say he evolved from plant to animal thence to man, we now know that even plants

have consciousness. This is the same as the doctrine of Anadi, which confesses that we

do not know when or if things had a beginning.

(19.13) Karma has been much misunderstood because it was interpreted by an outlook

based on the reality of the ego and in ignorance of the Atman being the Sole Existent. So

long as we apply it only to individuals and not simultaneously to society, so long we do

not grasp it correctly. For there are two kinds of karma: Individual and Collective. What

an individual does reacts inevitably on society, but may or may not react upon himself

outwardly as a separate individual. A mother's conduct reacts upon her infant's welfare

whilst the infant's conduct reacts upon the mother's welfare; the two cannot be separated;

in addition, there may or may not be the reaction upon oneself outwardly although there

is always the reaction on one's own mind. Consequently karma means that one's acts will

always affect others and therefore we should be careful about them just as they will

somehow affect oneself too. Even if an individual escapes the physical effects of his evil

actions (he can never escape the mental effects and they, as tendencies, will lead him to

reproduce the same causes again and again until the physical effects are certain to catch

him eventually if only on the mathematical law of chances) he will have injured society

by his evil-doing. Into this same society he will sooner or later have to be reborn and thus

he will have to suffer its defects or limitations to the making of which his former acts

contributed! In this way, he reaps as member of society what he escaped from reaping as

an individual. The gnani, however having dismissed the illusion of causality, dismisses

karma with it as an illusion too. For him karma is of no use or purpose because he will

never injure others for he regards them as himself, but as he has a duty to help the society

around him to progress he will certainly confirm their belief in karma, until such time as

it can rise to the height of philosophy when he can reveal the truth and when they will

automatically be good because of the higher knowledge of mankind's unity. The highest

lesson of karma, in the practical world is also its introduction to the understanding of

karma philosophically; and that is to show (how) interdependent all humanity is, how

every act spreads like a ripple to affect others born or still unborn, and how we are all one

family and in injuring or benefiting the family we injure or benefit ourselves, either

indirectly or directly, either now or later. The Karma doctrine has value only up to the

scientific world, but in the highest flights of philosophy it has to be discarded along with

its twin--causality. Take the case of 90 children drowned by German sinking of British

ship. What benefit can these children have derived from such Karmic retribution? They

are too young to understand the purpose of their suffering and so derive no benefit front

it. Such doubts must arise and with them will come the beginning of philosophy as doubts

have arisen to science about causality. Both causality and Karma are useful in practical

world but untrue in highest philosophy. Why? Because Karma will then be found to be

only an idea, i.e. an imagination. The children will be seen as ideas too for then all will be

seen as One. The children's suffering will be ideas; they will be in oneself, their death

will not be meaningless for they will go on living in oneself, as other forms i.e. ideas.

Nobody and nothing, living or inanimate, exists or can exist alone. All are either

dependent or linked with others. A baby is utterly unable to live without help from

others--its parents; similarly every individual human being is in some way or other tied

up in fate and fortune with society. Hence Karma has a philosophic purpose which

reveals itself when its practical purpose breaks down when doubt arises about Karma's

justice or usefulness in such cases.

(19.14) It is not possible to go with a man to the next world and then to return with him to

this world again in a new body. How then can anybody know, prove the subsequent

reincarnations of any individual? Hence all such stories are mere speculation. Those who

speak of reincarnation and karma, without introducing science to show the continuity of

matter and energy in various forms, are dealing only in religion, not truth.

(19.15) When you know that world is mental construction, that Mind builds the body

idea, you will know that death does not end life for the mind will go on building further

body-ideas by its thought, i.e. re-incarnating. This is a scientific proof of rebirth.

Moreover science now says that you cannot distinguish Mind from matter, just as it

earlier said you cannot distinguish matter from energy. Therefore when you go to the root

of the matter, you always find non-duality at the end.

(19.16) Life is really a perpetual effort to get rid of sorrows, troubles, wants and desires!

Hence each bliss is really their removal, but it is a never-ending process if philosophy is

not practiced.

(19.17) Wherever possible use science as the basis for all teachings for illustrations and

proof, particularly making use of the Theory of Evolution in its application to the idea of

Rebirth with the ideal of ultimate perfection at the end, using Huxley's favorable

statement on the Theory of Rebirth.

(19.18) Evidence of Rebirth: Consciousness is a stream of continuity. It must have come

from somewhere before birth of body: body-heredity, true, but what of consciousness

heredity? We can't say where consciousness came from, but rebirth is logical. We can't

say when mind begins or at which point a being begins to reason for even animals show

an embryonic thinking power. Reason declares there must have been a cause for this, and

the cause can only have been pre-existence, past experience, reincarnation.

(19.19) There is no doubt that thought creates environment even though it may not

succeed in doing so till a later birth.

(19.20) Both fate and freewill are seen in life because the human mind thinks in dualities;

by getting rid of this contradiction as being a condition of human thoughts we rise above

causality and its failure.

(19.21) Why should you have this particular thought and not another? This is a question

which nobody can answer. Therefore if anybody says there is perfect freedom, he is

talking nonsense. For freedom has no meaning apart from necessity, and the latter has no

meaning in the absence of the former. The two come together.

CHAPTER 20: POLITICS

(20.1) Whoever realizes the Brahman as everywhere will not see men of other

nationalities as different from himself and will treat them accordingly. He will not

separate himself from them. The National and racial strife in the world is the result of

their ignorance which regards men by their bodies alone. Wars will not end as long as

history goes on; they will continue to inflict suffering on men until they learn the truth.

Thus Nature teaches man by bitter experience when he refuses to ascertain truth by

peaceful reflection.

(20.2) Those people who want us to conform fixedly, absolutely and unquestioningly to

the customs habits and ideas of antiquity, are talking absolute insanity. The world, life,

thought and men are different today. Nature does not keep quiet. She unsettles

everything. Our misfortune is, not that we are thrust into such uncertain times, but that we

do not want to think. It is most difficult and troublesome to unthink the old tendencies

and to doubt what we slavishly believe in, to make the admittedly hard exertion required

by strictly rational thinking to seek evidence and proof, to dispel its illusions.

(20.3) Communism being a method of external change only cannot succeed; there must

be education, persuasion and development of mind and outlook to precede it. The

capitalist countries like England already pursue a more enlightened policy by heavy death

duties, income taxes, property taxes etc. whilst the rich people there give so much in

charities. That is a better method than bloody violent forcible communism. It leaves

individual freedom and all that is needed is to teach the rich and the rulers their duty to

help the less fortunate people. Then they will of own accord carry out such duty.

Vedanta's teaching of oneness of mankind is the only lasting power to bring this about.

(20.4) Although it is impossible to teach philosophic truth to all mankind, nevertheless,

some step forward in this direction are certainly practicable. The most important and

most urgent of these is to give ethical instruction in every school either as a part of the

lessons in religion or as a part of moral instruction. And this teaching should be that all

humanity is one family and therefore all should be treated with goodwill. For without

such education people will merely drift into narrow selfish ways whereas with it the

young impressionable minds of children will be gradually guided towards unity.

Education is the most important instrument for effecting such improvements.

(20.5) We say that the unconscious cause of love is that both are Brahman. If you object

that we hate our enemies, the reply is that this is because our deep ignorance of this fact

that both of us are Brahman that leads to hatred. The less we are ignorant, the less we

hate.

(20.6) The value of a virtuous and ethical life is only in so far as it suppresses the ego and

thus fits a man for truth.

(20.7) In the controversy between those who would keep ancient forms of society,

politics, economics, education etc. unchanged and those who would destroy all that is old

and have only new customs, the philosopher espouses neither fully, but takes all factors

into consideration. He realizes the truth that the world is changing and that this change is

inevitable, a cosmic process. Therefore he regards as fools those who reject all modern

innovations. Take the case of India. We see caste system breaking down all around us.

Yet the Laws of Manu were enacted for a society which was based on rigid caste

arrangements. Today we have 80 million Muslims in India who were not here in Manu’s

time, we have some millions of Indian Christians; what is to be done with them? There

are many other factors existent today here which were non-existent in Manu's time in

economic political and other fields. But the greatest change of all is that we are living in a

democratic era when the very notion of caste is against the spirit of the times, whereas it

was the exact spirit of the times thousands of years ago. Hence the philosopher is flexible

in mind and would adapt social forms to the needs of the time in which he lives. It is

rubbish to talk of a social arrangement which must last till all eternity; there is no such

thing in Nature and man can't create it. Change, Maya, is continuous. The philosopher

will therefore seek out what is good for present use in ancient forms and then not hesitate

to reject the rest, whilst he will add new materials particularly suited to contemporary

needs. Where rulers are not wise and adaptable they risk revolution when the pressure of

new needs attacks worn-out forms. This is true of every department of practical life, that

wisdom lies in balancing new and old harmoniously but fearlessly. Hence the blind

adulation of ancient Hindu methods of life, education, society etc. is without regard to

modern outlook is nonsensical.

(20.8) The thirst for wars will go on repeating themselves until people learn the truth of

Vedanta. They think the spread of religion will help, but not so; religion will make

matters worse. The 1914 war has reappeared in a more formidable form, because the

method of treating grievances is the same. England should have gone earlier of her own

accord to Germany and other nations and discussed what could be done to remove these

grievances. War does not solve them. Buddha was right: Hatred will cease only by love,

never by returning hatred.

(20.9) The business of philosophy is to be concerned with sociology as "How to make

everyone happy?" and "What are the best ways to cause progress of the world?" whereas,

religio-mysticism is concerned with "I am happy, I don't care what happens to the world."

i.e. personal satisfaction.

(20.10) The fundamental test of philosophy is "Has it improved social life? What good

can it do to humanity?

(20.11) The process of identification with others proceeds slowly in an ever-widening

circle from family to tribe to nation to race and finally to all humanity in the case of a

gnani.

(20.12) No religion has yet succeeded since earliest antiquity until now in giving peace to

the world. The Muslims split into Sunnis and Shias, have often fought with each other.

The Christians are killing each other, today in Europe. Hence mere religion won't suffice

to bring peace on earth. Something more is needed: that is Gnan.

(20.13) The nearer the nations approach to oneness, the more will they attain prosperity

and happiness. This is also true for individuals; the more they achieve harmony with

other individuals the greater their worldly well-being. This is the practical proof and

illustration of Advaita.

(20.14) Society is constantly changing whether it likes it or not; this selfish interests are

being taught by nature. The Truth of non-attachment, non-desire, the greeds of capitalism

breeds communism, the greeds of monarchy brings republicanism.

(20.15) The immense practicality of Vedanta is hinted at in the Upanishads which assert

that prosperity and peace can come to the mankind only after it accepts the idea of its

oneness. All other ways are illusory and will fail.

(20.16) The value of history is to profit by the study of the mistakes of other individuals,

nations and races. The teaching of history is wrong. To say that the Battle of Plassy was

fought in 1757, that the warring generals were Clive and Suraj Dowlahl that 50,000

soldiers were engaged on one side and 80,000 on the other is not enough. Students should

be taught the cause of the war, the consequences, what led up to it, etc. the errors or

crimes committed and then results. That is why the leaders and rulers of the people

should be taught wisdom philosophy, and the patience to refrain from action until either

(a) he is wise enough to act correctly alone or (b) he is able to secure the guidance of a

wise man. This is the entire lesson of the Bhagavad Gita and is summed in the 18th

chapter where Krishna says to Arjuna: "Now that your doubts are dispelled, act." Krishna

wanted Arjuna to wait until he was fit to act, to fight, until he had been instructed in truth.

But until the 18th chapter, which means whilst Arjuna was still not a mature sage,

Krishna tells him to obey him only, i.e. take the advice of others who know the truth.

Here on the battle field, you have no time to consult others. Therefore obey me. In the

earlier chapters of the Gita Krishna teaches religion, mysticism and yoga largely, hence

he does not permit Arjuna to act on his own responsibility then.

(20.17) Nobody ought to be allowed to die of starvation, that is the duty of a government;

otherwise what is it for? No beggar should be found in a well-ruled country.

(20.18) Truth and peace and prosperity go together, are inseparable. This is what West

does not realize. They seek vainly to bring earthly happiness by disregarding truth.

CHAPTER 21: DOCTRINE OF NON-CAUSALITY

(21.1) Unless you know the meaning of non-causality, you cannot understand the

meaning of non-creation of the world. But one must develop intelligence first to

understand this.

(21.2) One thing becoming another is an impossibility. It remains the same forever. That

is proved by Chapter 4, Mandukya.

(21.3) The theory that world is illusion is better than theory that God created it, but it also

is erroneous from the highest standpoint. It should be adopted along with the Drg-Drsyam

theory, as a preliminary step, until you reach the doctrine of non-causality, but once the

latter is grasped then even the Mayavada33 doctrine is given up.

(21.4) Those who ask "Why did I get this delusion of the world?" do not understand that

because they are deluded, because they assume the truth of causality, therefore they ask

this question. They have already imagined there is an answer when in fact there is no real

problem. Nothing is produced or born, everything is already there as Mind.

(21.5) If you know the true meaning of causality, it is impossible to say there is such a

thing as wrong knowledge. If you know that everything is produced by the Mind, whether

it be a mirage or the sun, then you always know everything correctly, i.e. as mental in

33 The teaching that the world is a dream or illusion

nature, you will not get lost or confused in understanding the world. But those who are

still in the stage of causality, will get confused and say, the wall outside is real but the

wall inside my mind is only an idea, because they will seek a cause for the idea of the

wall. When you know there is no such thing as causal relation, you will know that it is

only the mind which appears and disappears as objects, and it will then be impossible to

ask any questions, for all questions depend on the delusion of causality, the causal

complex. All is then known to be mind, all is unity. Avidya34 disappears when causality

is given up.

(21.6) Evolution entirely depends on causality, you know also there cannot be an

evolution of the universe.

(21.7) The highest test of the fitness for initiation into Advaita is the grasp of the doctrine

of non-causality. Hence I regard Planck and Heisenberg as having been advaitins in a

former birth.

(21.8) Criticism: Creativity means or implies change. And change implies causal

connection. What is Creator or Lord? What does freedom mean? Where is the proof?

How can you prove that God has creativity in Him? If you do, you bring Hinduism to the

Law of Causality. Where then is His freedom? When you say God is creator, what you do

is to rely on your imagination and nothing more. It is an extension of or application of

causality. Thus creativity has no meaning. It is as good as saying “God is like me", as I

have a will, He has the will. How can you explain emergence? You are viewing the

Absolute from the particular, and then Brahman is only an idea--a duality. Hence it is that

Brahman is said to be untouched by tongue. To call It Absolute and then call it Cause is

absurd, since it is possible in the world of duality alone.

(21.9) God did not create a world. There has always been only the One, no diversity. But

do not tell this to all, only to those capable of understanding. Otherwise you will harm

them.

(21.10) Drg does not produce the Drysam. Ajatavada35 says there is no such thing as

cause and effect. There is no production of the universe; there is no such thing as

manifestation. “Fools think I am manifesting myself,” Says Krishna in the Gita. But there

is no appearance of reality. Everything is the same, is one. Hence there can be no

causality. This is the most difficult principle of Advaita.

(21.11) The ideas are constantly coming, hence you think, you imagine that there is

change going on, that there is causal connection, but in reality it is not so.

(21.12) Cause and effect theory is a super-imposition imposed by our minds on

phenomena. Those who praise God for answering their prayers or who attribute to some

yogi a benefit obtained through his blessings are people ignorant that causation does not

34 Veiling, ignorance

35 Non-causality school of Vedanta

exist as they think it, but is constructed by their own minds. Critics of our stand-point

usually have never stopped to think “Am I right?" They are deluded by the ego.

(21.13) Secret of Karma: It has no effect when “I,” the Aham disappears. When you talk

of multiplicity, karma and causality work, but in unity it disappears.

(21.14) In the study of truth, ultimately there is no Karma and no causality but in the

practical world they hold true.

(21.15) Hume denied cause by saying one sensation comes after another; we do not know

that the first was the cause of the other; we merely infer it.

(21.16) That there is an external object producing ideas in me, is based on the law of

Causality. The object is the cause of the idea. We reply that the causes are only ideas. I

had one idea before (a red hot poker) and I have another idea (warmth). I really infer the

first sensation causes the second. I merely imagine it. I do not know.

(21.17) Pandits say Maya is a shakti36 of God, which is almost the same as Berkeley’s

doctrine that objects are ideas created by God.

(21.18) Hume's position was correct: He said “I see two things: one follows the other. But

I cannot say one is the cause of the other. He said, therefore and Kant followed that the

causal relation is our human idea, not necessarily a fact. The causal idea is imaginary.

How gas is turned into water, we do not know. We cannot say that gas produces water,

only that both exist side by side.

(21.19) Whoever distinguishes between a cause and an effect is a dualist, even whether

he says world came from nothing or from something. Therefore Sankhyas and

Visistadvathins are dualists. Ramanuja says God has got all this universe as his body: that

the latter is changing whilst God remains unchanged, i.e. Purusha sees whilst Prakriti

remains. Hence he thinks there are three things externally, Purusha, Prakriti and Jiva. He

says wherever there is God there is always matter. Vedanta says who saw them always

there? The position is therefore unprovable and hence to us unacceptable. We can easily

create doubt in this position, and show it cannot be final. Where is the illustration from

human experience of life that the immortal has ever undergone a change. But the

common herd (average unreflective persons) take these things to be true because they are

quoted on the authority of some religious book, instead of ordinary experience as we do

in Vedanta.(Philosophy)

(21.20) God has produced plague, got angry with man, destroyed millions in the past.

How can we say whether he won’t change his mind again and produce more terrible

diseases than plague, greater evils than death? All this is only the conception of man, how

the human mind thinks of God. Whoever maintains that the immortal ever changes, is in

this false position. For (a) if you admit change in the nature of God, ultimate reality, there

36 Consort, creative power

are difficulties, contradictions unending (b) if you admit change and changeless there are

absurdities, (c) all we can truly say is that we know nothing about it, i.e. non-causality.

(21.21) At this moment you think of the mountains, rivers, towns and people of dream as

being the mind you have Ajativada. But when you think of them as having being created

by the mind, you fall into Vasistavada. The first is our Vedanta doctrine because it is

based on causelessness, things are as they are, and we leave it there. The second is based

on the idea of someone, an imaginer, who produces the world. Vivastavada, however is

the nearest step to Vedanta out of all the wrong teachings.

(21.22) "The existent cannot pass into birth" (Mand.) means cannot become an effect! It

is only our imagination that something produces an effect; we merely think so. Kant very

nearly reached this position when he said that causality was an idea, a mental framework

through which we see the world. Kant has not traced the relation between Noumenon and

Phenomenon, how the phenomena came into existence. Fichte and Schelling both

attacked him also (rightly) for not proving the existence of Noumenon: he only assumed

it (he could give no proof). That is why he was superseded by Hegel and others. Vedanta

goes straight and says fearlessly we can't trace an effect to any cause: we admit only that

we see both side by side: we deny proof of causality. Hume said everything (not only

causality) was an idea, but could not prove non-causality as Kant did: moreover he did

not know of the seer, only the seen. Kant said there was a something, a thing in itself,

which appears to our mind as a table. Vedanta says there is a Seer only who sees the idea

of a table in his mind. These are different positions Kant not only assumed a seer, but

also a second thing, a thing-in-itself apart from the mind of the seer, whereas Vedanta

accepts no second thing apart from the latter.

(21.23) Kant proved human mind is so constituted as to accept everything in terms of

time, space and cause. All human and animal minds think in the same way.

(21.24) Vivartavada's theory of world creation is not the highest, nor (is it) Vedanta; it is

illustrated by the magician producing illusory rope trick without being himself affected

by it. Vivartavada, says God imagines the world and sees it, Brahman ideates the world

with out being affected remaining himself unchanged. This is not our view. We say no

world at all has been produced, because when you know truth you can no longer talk of

cause and effect, as does the Vivartavada theory. Brahman is thus the cause of world in

Vivartavada. Sankara's Vedanta Sutras comment does not go beyond Vivartavada. The

highest is Ajatavada, where there is no causation at all. There can be no Moksha if you

believe in Causation. (Mandukya).

(21.25) No man has ever been able to show in what manner, how the gas form changed

into the water form, how hydrogen and oxygen became water. That water is produced is

admitted at once, but how water, or oxygen, were formed, is inadmissible and impossible

to show. Inadmissible because that causal relation exists in your imagination.

(21.26) How the seed grows into a mango tree, I have not seen, I do not know, says the

Advaitin. At one time I see the seed; followed by a sprout. How the cause becomes the

effect we do not see; but we see a sequence of water, when heated, changing into vapor.

When did the seed cease to be the seed, and become a plant. We do not see the two things

at all. If I examine anything, I see carefully, I see only Brahman. (Did you see how your

mind changed into the form of a mountain in your dream? Why are we not able to see the

change? Because there are no two things but mind or Atman alone.)

(21.27) There are two great schools of thought on Cause now in Europe and Ancient

India. One says that characteristics of tree already exist in the seed and merely come out;

the other says that they do not exist in the seed but evolve i.e. emergent evolution. Both

schools are really correct in their view but they are both incomplete. Both views may be

verified by fact. Thus produce an elephant out of nothing! You can’t. You need a parent

elephant to start with. Similarly the world cannot be produced out of nothing! On the

other hand if all the characteristics exist already in the cause, then why don’t you eat

seed, making it into a full-grown mango first! You can’t. Hence those theories are

imperfect.

(21.28) The notion that world is ever-changing precludes the notion of causality, because

it proves that there is only one stuff or substance in all objects; the causal changes being

illusory.

(21.29) There to no real causality in the notion that Sushupti is the ‘cause’ of the other

states because it was always present in them. It is the same as the mind which seems to

produce a dream, but really the dream-mountain is still nothing else than the mind.

However at the beginning of our studies we say mind produces dream-objects, and that

sleep produces dream and waking, but at a later stage we drop the tentative position with

the causality involved in it, because there is only unaltered oneness.

(21.30) When you believe the mind, in dream, has appeared as a mountain, it is the

Vivartavada view. When you know that the mind has not changed in any way, it is called

Ajativada.

(21.31) When you look upon everything whatever it be in the world as being nothing but

Mind then there is no duality and hence no production or causation.

(21.32) When you know there is no such thing as causal relation, then you will not ask

the question "Why?" of the world. This shows that causality is a complex working a

priori in the mind; psychology is useful here to explain power of complexes; the idea of

cause is in the mind previously and is unconsciously projected outwards.

(21.33) We do not deny that a succession of ideas, objects appear before us; what we

deny is that there is causal relation between them.

(21.34) The Advaitins who say cause and effect are the same, identical, and there is no

distinction between them, have gone high but still not reached the highest truth, which is

that causality itself is only an idea, meaningless, imaginary and not really existent. Go to

Reality. You will not find cause and effect. The mind constructs it.

(21.35) The external world is a construction of the mind--until you can grasp this, you

will never understand Vedanta. When you know that these forms, these ideas are only the

mind, you will know that the mind has neither changed nor disappeared. Suppose you see

a tiger in dream, which part of it is not the mind? Is the shape and substance and softness

of the tiger not the mind? Therefore inquiry shows that every part of the tiger is only

mind. This must be understood because the objection is often made "when you see the

external world is there not duality?” The point is Brahman is there even when you see

anything or everything in the objective world, even as the dream world being seen is not

real duality when the dreamer knows it is all one--mind. Thus alone can you see unity in

multiplicity.

(21.36) All you can say is "I saw a thing now. The next moment I saw a change." You

cannot say the one thing was caused by the other. Similarly you imagine your thoughts

are produced by the mind, but you could never prove or show that "did you see the mind

producing them?" You see only that they appear in succession. If you say mind produces

thoughts, I ask how is mind produced? You cannot answer because there is no such thing

as one thing producing another.

(21.37) The objective world being in the mind is the Mind; hence there is no causal

relation between them. Hence there is only one substance—mind, hence all is one.

Causality is in the realm of duality and disappears on deep thought.

(21.38) If no such thing as cause exists, and I bring a red hot poker and touch you with it,

you dislike it, dislike it because it produces the effect of pain. So how can causal relation

be a mere theory, asks the critic. The mind takes the color of whatever external object is

placed outside. That there are outside objects must be admitted as otherwise no such

objective variety of sounds sights smells etc. could have entered the mind--this the

objection raised by critics. These are strong arguments against Vedanta, which we meet

with as well as the most frequent. Unless the answer to these two objections is clearly

grasped you will never really understand Advaita but read and repeat it like a parrot. Kant

fully realized these difficulties, and Hume partly realized them. This is the essential

central problem of all philosophy. The reply requires most concentrated attention to

perceive. Whatever has produced a jar, i.e. clay, when this "cause" becomes the jar the

clay has not vanished: It is still there. Hence the cause is always found in the effect in the

external world and cannot be separated from it--no matter what changes of form it has

undergone. So when you speak of pain, the cause of the idea of pain must also be there

within it. All talk of cause and effect is inconsistent and imaginary, when deeply inquired

into and if you keep on asking for the cause you will go back in an infinite regress

without end, and never stop. Thus what is the cause of heat-fire, what is the cause of

fire—coal! What is the cause of coal--imbedded trees! What is the cause of the tree-seed.

What is the cause of the seed--tree. Hence you can never get at a final cause. Hence

Aristotle and the religiously-inclined European philosophers got tired and said “Let us

put a stop to it, adopt a first cause, and call it God!” But Kant refused to do this, and

found that the very notion of causality was human imagination. You may argue I do not

cause pain to myself. But have you ever thought of your dreams? Has not your mind

created tigers which attacked you, snakes which bit you, enemies who fought you, during

dream? This shows you have caused pain to your self. But Europeans cannot understand

this because they do not know Avastatraya. They must pass through yoga first. The next

stop will be the appeal to universal experience-the three states, to the higher reason. Is

there not perception of variety during dream? Is there not sensation of pain during dream?

But do not make mistake of confining Mind to your ego. That which knows the ego,

comes and goes, which sees it, that Mind is the substance itself of all your experiences, is

non-different from them as the clay is not separate from the jar; it is the same thing in the

end! Therefore only Mind exists, and no duality, no question of cause and effect can then

arise; when the mind thinks of illusion, ignorance then the latter exists; when it is not

thought of, it does not exist. Illusion means imagination. When imagination is gone, the

Mind is itself. Aren’t those perceptions and sensations illusory? Similarly these waking

experiences are seen to be illusory, apart from mind, which ignorantly looking for causes

infers an external world: Thus the whole question collapses with the collapse of the

independent existence of this world. You start with the preconceived idea that there must

be a cause, and then you seek it. Get rid of this idea, and you will not seek for one. You

have externality and internality in your dreams both being your mind, yourself: similarly

in waking you have external things and internal feelings but both are still your mind,

yourself. There is no proof that they are otherwise. You must ask why did this thought of

cause come to me and not blindly accept it like an ignorant man. Inquire into this feeling

of cause first before you yield to its pressure. When you examine, you find only one

substance, and you cannot speak of causality then.

(21.39) Vedanta does not say that we do not see causal relation, it says that when you

inquire into what you see, you then find that there is no causal relation. The superficial

view is not accepted as the ultimate truth. Inquiry into causality is the most difficult part

of Vedanta.

(21.40) The mind is really identical with these objects which appear as external. Hence

there cannot be a causal relation between them and mind.

(21.41) Those who have faith in causality will always go on believing that somehow the

world was produced by Brahman, But they start with a lie for causation is unproved. We

know only that one thing appears after another, which is not the same as “being created”

by the other.

(21.42) The mind has got this weakness that it wants to know the “how" and the "why".

Hence it seeks for causality and refuses to realize non-dual truth.

(21.43) Nobody knows nor can anybody ever know how a seed becomes a tree. We know

only one antecedent fact--the planting of the seed--and one consequent fact--the growing

of the tree. Hence we know no causes, only antecedents.

(21.44) Brahman can never be got by practice, whether yogic, samadhi etc. The reason is

there is no such thing as causal relation, hence no practice or effort will, as cause,

produce Brahman as effect. A limited cause cannot produce an unlimited effect. Brahman

is got by understanding only. But those who do not know the truth of non-causality will

advocate Yoga as a means of reaching Brahman; such is their ignorance.

(21.45) In the world of practical things you have causality, but not in the world of

ultimate truth.

(21.46) This thing comes before, that thing goes after--that is all we can truly say about

the so-called causal sequence; the notion of cause and effect is superimposed by the

human mind on both things.

(21.47) J.A. Thomson’s reference to the "totality of conditions" is a mistake. Nobody has

ever known or can know all the conditions comprising of a cause for anything; they may

know the immediate causes only.

(21.48) If A and B are in causal relation, then A comes first. Cause precedes effect. Now

what do you see first of the external objects? Why, you see the mental impression of

same, and no thing else at any time! Hence if the mental impression comes first, it must

be a cause! This is my reply to the objection that external world is the cause of our mental

impression of it. No, there is only the mental impression as cause; there is nothing

external in existence.

(21.49) All we can say is that the tree had already pre-existed in some form in the seed

that the human intelligence and mind had pre-existed in the amoeba. Evolution merely

brought out what was already there. We do not know what form this preexistence took.

(21.50) So long as you see an effect, there must be a cause. When you ask for the reason

of all this world,--multiplicity, you are in this position. So long as you have these ideas of

multiplicity, they must exist somewhere, there must be a perceiver of them. Where are

the rivers and stars you see in dream? Where do all these world-ideas exist? They must

exist in a Mind, otherwise how could you be aware of them? Unfortunately we have the

false idea that the mind is confined to the skull or head, and that the ideas are outside it.

In truth we can never say where the mind is limited! It exists within and without the head.

In dream you cannot limit minds for mountains appear within it; in waking you say "my

body" and thus force the mind to appear within the body; whereas it is the body that,

being an idea within the mind it actually exists inside mind. But if world is an idea, it

must have something to stand on, some support or substratum. It is existent in yourself.

The mountains and persons you see in dream were all within yourself and this proves the

mind can hold ideas even of gigantic size, such as the world. Now there must be a seer of

these ideas, an Atman wherein they live and have their being. As an illustration of this

take illusion created by a magician. The illusion must have a support. Someone to think

the thoughts which produce the illusion. You require a magician to produce magic.

(21.51) Kant's arguments to show that cause is only the construction of our mind would

say that the cause and effect series is infinite and unending process, the Noumenon being

outside our knowledge.

(21.52) Re: Karma Theory from Vedantic standpoint: If my tendency to goat-flesh in

former birth makes me do same now, my present tendency will make me do it in next

birth. Thus the cause of previous birth becomes the effect now: the effect now is the

cause of next birth tendency. The position is thus inconsistent, as cause here is also effect.

It has a beginning also not a beginning. Where is the beginning of the goat-flesh eating

tendency? It appears beginningless as cause and effect. Yet it must have begun

somewhere. This inconsistent position can disappear only for the Vedantin, who sees

both cause and effect as the result of imaginations, not real.

(21.53) Even in science the ultimate nature of matter is energy, but the energy can't be the

final for there must be something else which produced energy, and even that can't be the

ultimate. Hence we can only say there is a series of changes. We cannot posit that

anything in this world of duality is really ultimate. There will always be contradictions

here. Only in non-duality is there escape from this infinite and inexplicable regress.

(21.54) All you can say is that "I noticed this thing previously," You dare not say it is

therefore a cause."

(21.55) You must differentiate between immediate cause and ultimate cause. It is the

latter to which we refer in non-causality. The tree must have a seed as cause, but now you

are faced with the inability to trace any ultimate cause of the seed. The Advaitin admits

fully the causal relation so far as this world is concerned; i.e. so far as it is not fully

inquired into and as it is viewed by the ignorant.

(21.56) Causality is only an idea, nay imagination. There is no such thing, but habit not

only in this life but for many lives, has so accustomed us to thinking causally, that only

the few can give up this illusion.

(21.57) What is the meaning of God? If it is one thing becoming another, we prove it is

impossible for anything to change its nature. If it is something self-sufficient, how can

that which itself had no cause be the cause of some effect (the universe)?

(21.58) Supposing God does create: that would imply he has produced something new;

this means that He has changed to some extent. (for all things are He). If he has changed,

then He is not immortal or eternal, and may die tomorrow.

(21.59) The sum total of a cause cannot be ascertained. It is simple but incorrect to say a

bee is the cause of honey. For bee needs pollen, pollen needs flowers, flowers need water,

water needs clouds, and so one could go on ascertaining the true complete cause of honey

and never come to an end, even though the search drags you through a thousand different

things. Hence Vedanta says there is nothing new really born or produced or caused which

is not already existent; or in other words, Brahman alone is, even though it seems to

appear in a myriad forms.

(21.60) Mahabharata says that Brahman is uncreated: this means it is (a) uncaused, and

(b) without any causal relation with anything such as the world.

(21.61) To be exact, we must say that nobody has ever seen a Jiva born, it is only our

imagination. Did you see your own birth. "But my present existence proves it." No--your

existence is not denied, we are discussing birth. "But I have seen other people born?" Yes

that too is not being discussed, we are dealing with you, not others! Similarly you cannot

be present at your own death and witness it. Therefore we say neither birth nor death can

ever be proved. What is left? Only to imagine them! To say positively that you were

aware of your body's birth is therefore to tell a lie; much less were you aware of the birth

of your own self; and much less will your awareness of its death be possible. Objection:

But everyone can see that a son is born to a father: Reply: We agree but we are inquiring

whether the word and idea ‘birth’ is true or not. We have found that they are mere words,

imaginary things. There is no change really, only an imagination, an idea.

(21.62) If the soul is eternal, how could it be subject to change, such as reincarnation? If

eternal it is uncreate and unborn; how then can it get born again? If the cause is unborn,

how can the effect ever be born. This is what we ask the Sankhyas.

(21.63) To those who say God is cause of the world we reply: Before world is produced,

what is God? He is then neither cause nor effect (no world effect being existent). If he

was no cause then, he cannot be a cause now.

(21.64) Objection is made to causality because every idea must have external experience

or external object to cause it, such as a pin to cause pain of pin-prick or an elephant must

appear, to cause its mental impression. Reply: This is also a criticism of Idealism. It is the

strongest argument of the realists, this one of pain caused by a physical instrument. We

ask "Is the pain independent of the pin’s point or has it gone out of it? What is pain? Is it

something emerged from the pin or was it already in my body? If it came from the point

it must have existed in the pin. If it was in the body then it could not have come from the

cause (pin). If the pin had not come into contact with the body you would not have a pain.

Did the pin drop the pain into the body? These questions are unanswerable so long as you

set up a cause effect duality. Huxley deals with this problem using a rose for illustration

and asking whether its fragrance was dropped in your nose at the time of smelling.

Berkeley, however first put forward the principles of the same problem: can you really

separate the cause from the effect? We go to dreamlessness to show that external objects

are not seen outside self. We say that if pain is there, it must be caused by your own self

as in dream you may take a pin and have precisely the same experience of pain. The

dream-pin appears to be outside you and separate but it is not. Latest science too says

mind is inseparable from matter. Huxley asked, is the smell of the rose in your mind or in

the rose at the time when you are smelling it? It is not possible to say it is either wholly.

Only for language sake we say it is in the rose but analysis find it also in the mind i.e.

yourself. We go to the cause (rose) after we are aware of the smell, after we have it in our

own consciousness. Therefore we only infer the existence of the cause after having

discovered smell--not in the cause--but in our own self. The rose is thus an inference not

a direct experience. Putting this in simpler language, we merely imagine a cause, the

mind makes a construction of it. For what is an inferred and unseen cause (which is all

you have until the touch, sight, sensations arise) but an imagination? What does the mind

do in this case? Forms an idea!

(21.65) The hardest thing in Vedanta is to see that causation rises and falls with the ego.

That is the last secret of Vedanta. When you see that ego comes and goes, is unreal, that

Mind alone is, then ego is seen not other than Mind, no-two, and the question of its cause

and of world cause simply does not and cannot arise.

(21.66) In practical life, we cannot say that there is only determinism or that there is only

freewill. Both are there. But in the higher reality of paramartha there is neither fate nor

causality of any kind. For both are dualities, inseparably coupled: you cannot have

determinism without having freewill at the same time. For who is it that has either of

them. It is ego. Hence the getting rid of ego causes the whole question to collapse and

vanish. Hence the gnani is said to be free from karma for he is released from the dilemma

of fate versus freewill.

(21.67) Rebirth is a fact to you only so long as you think of yourself as an ego. So long as

your attitude is ''Now I am John Smith, last birth was Signor Malto, next birth I shall be a

monk." You are identifying yourself with the ‘I.’ But when you drop the ‘I’ how can

rebirth exist for you?

(21.68) Karma doctrine is good and true so long as you hold to the ego. But when ego

goes, then karma goes, rebirth goes for whole world is then in you, so how can you be

reborn?

(21.69) Instead of inquiring whether causality exists we start by assuming it. That

therefore is a fallacy. And once having assumed it, we begin to look for a cause of the

world i. e. a God.

(21.70) Causality is nonsensical when you consider how no one thing is really separate

and independent from other things, but all are connected together and in a sense merge

into a composite unit. Thus flower depends on earth, seed, water, heat, sun, manure,--all

joining together to produce the flower: hence neither one of these can be said to be the

ultimate cause of the flower. And each of these is in its own turn dependent on others. So

where are we to stop and say this is the cause? It is impossible to stop.

(21.71) That the same medicine will always have the same effect is only a probability.

Some are cured, others not. Sometimes it is successful, at other times a failure. Men take

only the successes, ignore failures and deduce the principle of causation from it. We deny

this is any proof that medicine is cause of which cure is effect. It remains unproved,

hence there is no certain principle of causality to be observed at work here. Similarly

fallacy of astrology is there is no proved connection between fulfilled prediction and

positions of stars. We hear of the successes and deduce that they are the consequences of

principle of causality. But we don't reckon numerous unfulfilled predictions which should

be taken as denying this principle. Vedanta doesn't deny successes of predictive astrology

but denies there is proof of the connection between them and aspects of planets. Similarly

too with cooking. We can't affirm that same cooked food will always produce precisely

the same effects on everyone. Sometimes it gives dysentery; some like it, others reject it.

Hence there is indeterminacy, uncertainty about its effects: hence too there can be no

proved causal principle always at work in cooking and eating: only probability. Vedanta

wants certainty, i.e. truth, hence it is forced to deny causality as sure truth, and accept it

only as a practical probability.

(21.72) "Cause" is what produces an effect; it is that which is followed by something

else, or it occasions something. But the idea of cause comes in only in ignorance. Cause

is ignorance. It is non-apprehension. Effect equals misapprehension. Both

non-misapprehension and misapprehension occur in waking state and dream state. Cause

and effect is not possible in the Drg since there is no duality in drg, and since drg is

knowledge itself. You think an idea different from the mind. It is not. Ideating when

regarded as different is a misunderstanding of the essence of the mind. Cause is the same

as effect but you think the effect is different from cause. Herein lies the misapprehension.

(21.73) When you can point out the time when the cause becomes an effect, you can

prove causality, but nobody can point out such a moment. Both are therefore the same.

(21.74) No connection between Drg and Drsyam has been proved. There is no causal

relation between them.

(21.75) The mind is wedded to cause as Kant has pointed out, and whenever it looks it

expects to find a cause because it presupposes things as effects.

(21.76) Cause and effect are found in the sense-world but God is said to be beyond this

sense world. How then can we ever know or prove that he created this world? It is not

possible to do so.

(21.77) The scientist can only say I had that idea then, I have this idea now, i.e.

succession but not causality.

(21.78) It is the weakness of men that they postulate a First Cause in order to escape from

the riddle of how the causal series began. Aristotle did this and all the theologians have

gone this way. But to more thoughtful minds, this problem indicates that there is

something wrong with causality itself.

(21.79) The idea of creation comes in naturally when we admit that there is

manifestation. But is there really any manifestation? Vedanta says that really speaking

there is no manifestation. Only if we once admit that there is manifestation do we have to

account for it.

(21.80) The conception of representing God to have created the maya illusion of this

world like the juggler performing an illusion which deceives all is not the highest. "When

you reach the top of this house, you will understand that everything, even the steps, are of

the same material" said Ramakrishna. The meaning is the mind creates the whole by mere

thought, and even in the case of material objects, the thought exists before the object.

Before building a house, we have to think about it and thus the idea exists first in our

mind.

(21.81) An effect seems different from cause. But really both are the same, both are

ideas; and ideas are in the ultimate analysis, mind. Thus effect is only a misapprehension

that it is something different from cause.

(21.82) Can we not say that the Atman creates the Jiva out of itself? Answer: We cannot

prove this statement. We have not seen the one creating the other. Because the ego

appears and disappears into the Atma just like the waves rising from and falling into the

ocean, we argue that both are one and the same.

(21.83) Sankara says that there is no causality from the ultimate standpoint. He does not

deny that there is cause and effect and that effect follows cause in the objective world.

(21.84) Causality cannot operate when there is no two. Cause and effect mean time. At

what time did the cause become effect?

(21.85) If God created the world, how could he have created something out of nothing?

You must have clay to produce a pot, a seed to produce a tree. If you say He produced it

out of Himself then He is subject to change, and is therefore not immortal. That which

does not change can never change. Hence we reject creation.

(21.86) He who says there is no God is a fool. He who wants to know God as He really is

ultimately is wise. My criticism is against peoples' idea of God, their imagination of God.

If you think of God as Creator, it is nonsense. Where is the proof? Did you see God

creating? Look for God as He is; he is not a creator. That is imagined. Creation and

causality cannot exist. Hence God cannot be creator. See Verse 23 Chapter II of

Mandukya Karika. "Those who are familiar with a person call God a person."

(21.87) One school says that God imagines, thinks the world first and thus creates it.

Another that he spun it out of his own being like a spider or changed a part of Himself

into world, a third that he created it out of nothing, a fourth says he took prakriti as a

potter takes clay and made the world. All these are more or less reasonable childish

stories of religionists, which are useful just as Arabian Nights stories are useful to give

delight to people.

The reply to those who say he made it out of his own substance is: How is it

possible for one part of him to be mortal and the other part remain immortal? (Mandukya

III, 22). Is this possible? Religious people say: Don't blaspheme by asking such

questions, but believe. For in this theory, one part of God is dying and being reborn,

whilst the other part remains unchanged. But is there any illustration in our experience of

the world where such a thing happens?

Take European pantheism with it’s immortal God in Nature. How can you prove

anything is immortal? How do you know that God will never die? He may have lived for

10,000 years but that does not prove he will continue for a similar period. Experience

tells me all things are subject to change. I am a part of experience; therefore I shall die.

Hence we cannot prove the eternality of God. Only religionists believe it, but we find

satisfaction only by reasoning--not believing. Similarly those who say the Atman

undergoes change cannot ever posit it as immortal.

To theory that God ideates the universe, reply is why should He think of creating

sorrows, sufferings; why should be imagine that which is painful to others. How wicked

such a God is! If he is all-merciful, why all this? How can we depend on him if He is so

changeable as to be kind to you one day and brutal the next? When you reason this theory

will not stand.

(21.88) If Atman is changing too by nature how can there be certainty of Moksha,

liberation or satisfaction? All these theories are absurd.

(21.89) As God alone was present at creation, as no angel or man had then come into

existence, nobody else could have witnessed the initial start of creation. Before creation

what must there have been? Obviously Unity, and when all creation has dissolved, what

will be left? Again Unity. Hence there was and will be only One, even on a religious

basis.

(21.90) When you identify the world with the One, then all this phenomena is the Atman,

and no notion of its being produced is called for.

(21.91) Non-duality means there is nothing else. There is no causality so far as Atman is

conceived. Hence it is unborn. But still higher level to which we must rise, as birth is

regarded as being distinguished from unborn; hence where nothing is born the use of

word unborn is meaningless has no reference to truth. It is best at this stage to

comprehend that you can say nothing true about the question. Hence to say Brahman is

eternal, unborn, unchangeable, omniscient is not done by the Advaitin. These words are

used only in the earlier stages in contrast with the transient, and to direct your attention to

a higher view.

(21.92) Unless you know that the world is an idea, and latter resolves into Atman, you

have to concoct religious or yogic creation-stories for the world, cycles of evolution etc.

(21.93) Evolution is an hypothesis: The West believes that there is progress; our Indian

pundits believe there is regress, that we are descending into Kali yuga. Both are stating

opinions. In life we find evolution plus involution and we really do not know which is

higher and which is lower.

(21.94) The fallacy of causality is that we have to ask what is the caused for the

ascertained given cause, and then again to ask what is the cause of that in turn. This leads

us to an infinite regress, as with time. This why Vedanta says causality does not explain

anything in the final analysis.

(21.95) No scientist knows what exactly happens when two events follow each other

regularly; he cannot say how a seed turns into a tree. The causal connection between

them is made in our mind, is made by our thinking, but we do not actually see the

connection; we only assume it. Therefore causation is meaningless.

(21.96) We, like Gaudapada and Sankara, make use of idealism to overthrow the realists.

But after this is done, then the idealists themselves are attacked when it is shown that

there are really no external objects, i.e. ideas, at all, as it is only the Mind itself which

takes all those different forms. The ideas have never really been produced and were only

illusory appearances of the Mind alone. When the question of causality is put to the

idealists, when they are asked how the mind came into existence, they cannot answer.

Here they cannot go farther and here Vedanta steps in to show there are no two things

and hence no causality.

(21.97) How can we know that man's ancestor was an ape? Evolution is only a

hypothesis. We were not there to witness it. Scientists can only form ideas, that is, mental

constructions, about earlier times, prehistoric evolutions, cosmology. But this is not truth,

only imagination. Hence we can only speculate, never know. It is and must remain a

mystery. There is no absolute certitude of fact. It will forever be wrapped in mystery.

This mystery is what India calls Avidya, Maya. It can only be understood when we grasp

that the world is Mind and that Mind is always constructing. Nobody knows how the

world was produced. Avidya, Maya is the ultimate mystery. It is not a shakti of Brahman

except for the primitive mentality.

(21.98) The critics of non-causality do not realize that during dream they also have the

same strong belief in cause and effect as during waking, yet when they awaken they

discover that the dream was only an imagination, unreal; hence its beliefs were also

unreal.

(21.99) The difficulty so many scientists find in accepting non-causality is chiefly due to

the fact that they fail to make a distinction between the practical unenlightened

(vyavaharic) standpoint and the profounder philosophic (paramarthik) standpoint. They

confuse the two. What is true in vyavahara need not be true in paramartika.

(21.100) We cannot say at what stage a cause becomes an effect, we cannot say when one

form (cause) is been changed into another form (effect). You can go on searching for a

final cause of anything which can be separated from its so-called effect but you will

never succeed. Nothing exists in independence and therefore no thing is separable from

anything else. Yet those who ask for a particular cause of a particular effect commit this

fallacy of believing that there is a line of separation between them. There is not. But if

there is not, then their duality disappears and the search for cause, being based on it,

becomes nonsensical. The fallacy arises out of your initial taking for granted that they do

exist separately. This so-called relation of causality is only your imagination. Hence the

great semantic need of not being carried away by mere meaningless words like the terms

'cause' or 'effect.' However they have vyavaharic meaning i.e. uninquired meaning.

(21.101) The objection that an idea must have a corresponding external object as cause

because no man would like the experience of pain, for instance, and were things only his

ideas, he would never create ideas of pain-bringing objects nor imagine what is harmful

to him, is replied by us thus: The Advaitic way of argument is to make the opponent stick

to his statement and then to show it leads to a fallacy. You are asking for a cause. This

contains a hidden fallacy. You take it for granted that there is such a thing as cause but

you have not proved there is a cause. It is equivalent to asking "Have you given up

beating your wife?" Try to draw a line between your idea of the wall and the wall itself

between the known wall and the existent wall. The first is a fact, the second is a

supposition, between the believed cause and the believed effect. The truth is that wall and

the thought of it are one and the same, just as the thread and the cloth are the same; one

cannot exist apart from the other.

(21.102) Why is time a question of such great importance? Because it involves the deeper

problem of causality. The cause comes first and the effect subsequently, hence time must

pass between them if they do exist. Therefore if time is shown to be illusory then

causality will have to be regarded as illusory too. When time collapses, causality

collapses with it. That is why Kant put them together. Hence too the study of time should

precede the study of causality.

(21.103) The failure of science to make a distinction between practical life and ultimate

truth accounts for its bewilderment, when dealing with Heisenberg's Principle of

Uncertainty in the microphysical study of the atom. For the laws which obtain in the

practical world gradually disappear and are exploded in the ultimate realm. Thus

causality which admittedly rules the practical world becomes less and less as science

probes deeper and ultimately vanishes.

(21.104) The relation between drg and drsyam is a non-causal one, so say that drg is the

cause of drsyam is to turn the former into the latter.

(21.105) If you say Brahman manifests itself as universe, that brings in idea that it is

active, i.e. the idea of cause and effect, the notion of God creating the world. To rise

above this error you should get to Ajativada, viz. I am witnessing the world. The world

appears and disappears. I remain untouched. There is no causal relation between us.

(21.106) Causality implies duality. i.e. one as the cause of the other. If there is only one

there is no causality. When the mind negates the three states, there is only Brahman and

there cannot be any causal relation there.

(21.107) A question as to the cause of creation of all the world means that you are

ignorant. When you look for the cause of the object it is Maya. Everybody describes the

theory of creation according to the stage in which he is. All these theories are due to their

own ignorance. Idea of creation is the lowest. That every individual is a ray from the

divine sun is the next higher stage. But what are these all except non-dual Brahman

alone. This is the highest stage.

(21.108) When the mind sees an object then only the mind asks for a cause. The causal

idea comes to you only when you are seeing something i.e. in the world of duality, i.e. in

waking and dream. It is the mind that makes you imagine that there is a cause. An

independent causal relation cannot be established. Bergson says that there is continuous

change. But what is it that sees the change. Causation is only in the drsyam world; we

should not superimpose this causation idea on Atman. But Gaudapada argues that we

cannot exactly say that this is the cause of that. When did the seed change into sprout?

When did the child become adult and the adult become the aged man? The change is

continuous process. The scientist only notes how much it grows or changes in an interval

of time. He cannot either give the exact time of change or how it changes.

(21.109) When you understand non-causality, you will then understand how there cannot

be change, how there is non-duality and all the highest advaitic teaching. When

everything is mind, there is no question of mental constructions. The moment you see

that the whole of the world is also Mind, you will see that mind does not really construct

as mind--nothing new has come; but viewed from the standpoint of ignorance, there are

ideas. Even when you see the world or know the ideas, they are still only Mind. In no

other way can Oneness be established.

(21.110) It was Max Planck that first proved to the world that there is no strict causality.

He affirmed that we cannot prove that there is strict causal relation in the world. For

scientific investigations it is assumed that there is causal relation between events but it is

only a working hypothesis, that is all. No scientist has proved that there is strict causal

relation. This does not mean that there is no cause and effect and that effect does not

follow cause. It means only that we cannot say for certain that one event will always be

followed by another event. Modern physics recognizes it is based only on probability. It

says that there is no strict determinism.

(21.111) There is nothing to show that there is any causal relation between two things,

yet we start with the unconscious assumption that the relation is there and hence seek to

put it there by imagination.

(21.112) There are three religious and mystical theories of universal creation. (i.) out of

nothing. This is Christian--Jewish. (ii.) out of a second substance. This is Sankhya tenet

of prakriti. (iii.) out of God's own self. This is the Upanishadic tenet of spider spinning a

web out of its own body. But all these are not Advaitic.

(21.113) The old scientific notion of causality was that there was a fixed and invariable

cause for everything; the modern notion of indeterminacy is that there may be other

causes for the existence of a thing besides the known one. In short, there may be

something which we do not know in operation. The old notion was strict determinism;

the modern notion is that a thing may or may not happen, i.e. non-causality. The latter

was known in India as ajatavada. Till now scientists said that Nature was causally

precise. Now they say there is no certainty. You may plant a seed and a tree may or may

not be the effect. For practical purposes i.e. ignorance through lack of inquiry we accept

the seed as a cause and a tree will probably result but for philosophic purposes of

absolutely certain, not probable knowledge, we must confess that there is no certainty

about the causality of the seed/tree.

(21.114) We do not finally accept vivarta. It implies causality in the end. For it says the

world is illusory superimposition, so it implies someone who is manipulating the illusion.

If so, what is the relation between him and the illusion? It is causal. Thus even though in

vivarta the substance is not changed but only the form or appearance, it is not the last

truth. It is overthrown by Ajata.

(21.115) Why has mind got this complex for causality? Because in seeking for cause it

has for the moment to drop, forget the effect. Similarly in seeking for the cause of the

world eventually it will have to drop, forget, negate, the world and thus it will arrive at

Brahman.

(21.116) What is the meaning of free will? It means doing something. Why do we do

anything? To produce an effect. Hence it is erroneous to presume that free will rises

above causality: the old controversy between determinism and liberty is nonsensical

because both are based on belief in cause and effect. Yet they delude themselves about

this pseudo-freedom.

(21.117) We cannot say that any one thing is the cause of any other thing but the whole

world combines to be the cause of the whole world, thus making it a unity. If you sow a

seed, it must be watered. Where does water come from? Clouds. But clouds do not come

without wind. How does the wind come? Thus you can go on endlessly, building up a

chain of causes in which ultimately the whole world cooperates, thus showing it to be

one. For this reason we say you cannot truthfully assert that the seed is the cause of the

tree, because everything else in the world is also cause and all these causes being joined

together, become as one thing with their so-called effects. Push the causal theory to its

logical end and it kills itself.

(21.118) Eddington gets confused between vyavahara and paramartha when he deals with

non-causality. We must have causality when we want to walk, eat or work, i.e. in the

practical world, but it is quite a different matter when you consider what is ultimate truth.

Science has got in a fix, through not grasping this fact. On one side i.e. vyavahara, it

cannot give up causality but on the other it is faced by indeterminacy.

(21.119) If there is no end to the causal series, as tree-seed chain, then does this not

indicate there is a defect in the notion of causality itself?

(21.120) Creation is a special kind of cause. All such dogmas as Brahman is the

origin of the world, Brahma is the First Cause of the world, Atman is the Creator of the

world, belong to the sphere of religion, not philosophy.

(21.121) Causal relation is only an inference, it can not be perceived.

(21.122) Mandukya demolishes causality by inquiring, what is meant by cause? What is

meant by effect? 'What is meant by relation? The modern scientific way is to ask, has the

word 'cause' meaning? Scholastic or mystic interpretations of non-causality such as that

of Brahma-Sutras do not examine causality here in this world but speculate on a dogmatic

Brahman not being the cause of the world: i.e. they start at the wrong end and do not

scientifically prove truth of meaninglessness of causal relation. They interpret

non-causality as identity in Brahman but this is wrong, for it posits two distinctly separate

things. How can two different things be one? The Scholastic method is interpretation: the

philosophic method is proof.

(21.123) The causal idea works in you unconsciously as a hidden complex. Only the

Mind is present all the time, everything seen by it whether objects or ideas is still only the

Mind and is not produced or caused by it.

(21.124) Mind does not create the external world, from the final standpoint. Nobody has

seen the process of production: it is only an inference. The world seen in dream is not a

creation because it is still only Mind, not a thing second to or different from Mind. There

is no causality. We do not tell lies, do not accept inference as fact. Similar to this is the

supposition that you know who your mother is. Did you witness your birth? No. Then

you can never say you know who your parent is: you only suppose it or believe others.

(21.125) So long as the belief in causality has not been transcended, we have to say with

Western Idealists that Mind has produced, created or constructed the world. But when

you rise to the highest level, and perceive there is no causality, then the world is seen as

being none other than Mind itself, no production being entailed.

(21.126) Things happen in a certain order but this does not prove there is any causal

connection between them, for the order is not invariable. We can say only that things

happen; there is no such thing as a causal law. This uncertainty is what we mean by

Maya. For ideas cannot be grasped: they are gone before you can get hold of one. So it is

impossible to bring them into connection causally. Bergson was right in saying there is

only a continuous flow. This flow of indeterminate ideas is Maya.

(21.127) The Vivartavadins who say because the spider spins the web out of itself

therefore they are the same and causality does not exist, are unable to answer the

criticism why if they are the same, do we see them as different? This argument for

non-causality fails because it does not offer any verification.

(21.128) You cannot get at the real cause of anything, nor at the whole series of its

causes. You may say that quinine (cause) is the cure (effect) of malaria but you cannot

possibly explain all the factors why quinine cures malaria. When we say of a bird which

cleverly builds its nest for the first time in its life, that it does so by instinct. We cannot

get the whole cause from physical factors alone; there is also its mind and what do we

know of that? We explain nothing by instinct. It is only a word; it is something which we

imagine. We do not know the totality of conditions which are needed to bring about an

event. All that you really know are your own ideas. What is behind or beyond your ideas

you never know.

(21.129) When the universe is reduced by philosophy to a single entity, then causality

must necessarily disappear because it depends on a duality of cause and effect.

(21.130) All that we can accurately say of Nature is that there are sequences. We cannot

correctly say there is cause and effect.

(21.131) The real is neither the cause nor the effect. To say that the union of hydrogen

and oxygen produces water and therefore they are causes of an affect does not explain

why gases should form a liquid but only how. Science says this is example of causality

reigning in practical world but it will not stand thought.

CHAPTER 22: PANCHADESI

(22.1) Panchadeshi’s author was Vidyaranya, who was also a Diwan of the Vijayanagara

Empire, which was the center of a vast united Hindu effort to resist Muhammedan

usurpation. He was also at one time a Guru of Sringeri Mutt (monastery), renowned for

his learning. He was also the author of "JIVAN MUKTI VIVEKA" and thus illustrates in

his person the truth that a Gnani can be a successful man of action.

(22.2) Panchadesi says you should inquire into the nature of the universe first, then into

the individual and finally, into the highest, the Atman. Don’t go on wasting your time in

imagining things; that is for the poet: let him do that if he wants to, but you should search

for truth which means you must examine what is before you. Yoga and religion omits this

important preliminary inquiry into the world and hence never reaches truth. He points out

that this does not mean the world should disappear in Samadhi but that its true nature

should be determined. If the yogis really got emancipation in Samadhi, then ordinary men

would also get it in deep sleep!

(22.3) Therefore we must always be engaged in an inquiry into the nature of this

universe, the individual personal self (jiva) and Atma. When the notions of reality of the

world and Jiva are destroyed, what remains is pure Atma. The destruction of the world

and Jiva does not mean that they should become imperceptible to the senses, but there

should arise a determination of their unreal nature: for if that were not the case people

may find emancipation without efforts on their part as during dreamless sleep, and

fainting (when percepts altogether disappear).

(22.4) This book says "The Yogi who moves unseeing through this world is not better

than a lump of clay in human form; it is not imperception of the world that is needed but

the intellectual realization that its substratum is idea.

(22.5) This verse is the TRUTH: "The mind is virtually the external world (giving rise to

pleasure and pain). Endeavors should be made to purify it. It is an ancient truth preserved

as a secret that the mind assumes the forms it is engaged in perceiving."

(22.6) What is lost is lost forever: it does not come back.. Every minute the world is

changing. In what way is this world different, then, from the momentary creations of the

mind? Both are continually vanishing, and vanish forever. Those objects or ideas which

seem to come back are really new creations; for all is imagination. Know that you are

only acting a part.

(22.7) "Though a direct knowledge of Brahman may be obtained by a study of the holy

texts (i.e. Upanishads) it does not become established..." It is therefore not enough to say

you understand the theories of Advaita; you may grasp idealism and Mandukya but it is

not enough. The next stage after this ultimate mastery is the constant final practice of

Gnana yoga. It involves ponder over and over again upon the subject until whatever

object you find before you is seen as Brahman: this must become so firmly rooted that

one’s body seems like the body of another person.

(22.8) Verse 218 means that everything you see must become Brahman. It is a most

difficult practice because every minute the mind is being drawn away from Brahman.

When you take tea you think only of the tea instead of the Brahman in the tea etc. The

contemplation or forming ideas of Brahman is the first and lower stage; the practice of

Brahman is next and higher stage.

(22.9) "Control of mind is more difficult than drinking the whole ocean." Here the first

three words mean mental blankness, absence of thoughts. This shows that despite the

statements of yogis, thoughts cannot be banished for more than a minute or two. The true

control of mind which is practicable and possible is to concentrate it quietly on one

subject, keeping all other subjects away--but the subject, the thoughts, must be there. It is

not the absence of duality which gives you knowledge of the Atman: for this absence

prevails during deep sleep or yogic samadhi. There is no difference between the two, only

sleep comes of its own accord whereas Samadhi is self-induced. The true knowledge

cannot come in samadhi but only through learning what the whole world really is. Yoga

should be used as a preliminary to such study. Then only can you understand that the

external world is unreal, a phenomenon. But this truth about yoga has been lost, and our

people misunderstand the scriptures, turning philosophy into religion and yogic blankness

into Brahman. The secret knowledge has disappeared.

(22.10) Even if your studies have brought no realization, do not give it up. Keep on

inquiring, everything that you do should remind you of Brahman. How do you know the

future? You must not predict that you will not get it. A man who is trying to memorize a

passage may succeed suddenly after failure, (subconscious mind at work). Seeds must

take time to mature into trees. Hence persevere despite disappointments.

(22.11) Once you know what a pot is, it is not necessary for you to see a pot again when

the word 'pot' is uttered and its meaning sought. Similarly once you know Brahman, its

true nature will always be known to you. Every thing that you see will be seen by you as

by ordinary people, but it will also be known to you in its true nature as Brahman.

(22.12) The more duality is disregarded in your actions and life, the clearer becomes

realization, the more you refrain from thinking of other people as separate from you, the

more sympathetic to others that you are to them, the easier will realization be possible.

Hence who ever scorns another because he is black-skinned, will never know Brahman.

The less you think of the difference between you and others the more will true knowledge

become fixed.

(22.13) The "I" comes and goes just as any other drsyam. You know that you are not the

"I" and yet you attach yourself to it. He who gets attached to this passing "I" let him

delude himself. The great majority want only this "I", with its satisfactions. You say that

there is the Universe or the Universe is made known to you only (and your knowership

by is) the Atman or Witness. If you say anything else knows Atman (c.f. my Atman

means the Atman becomes an object, coming and going) there is no proof. Whatever is

possessed by the Mind goes or perishes. By what can the knower be known? I cannot say.

"I know Atman" is an impossibility. Therefore we say we cannot use any words, Neti,

neti, yet we are led to say gradually leading up to point by association of ideas that Atma

is the knower or Witness.

(22.14) Without inquiry into the universe it is impossible to get Truth.

(22.15) You may see the world as unreal without destroying it.

(22.16) Verse 113: This statement proves that idealism was the great secret of Advaita.

This is why I say the external world must first be inquired into, and only after that should

the I be inquired. Mysticism does not grasp this point because men are more anxious

about themselves than about the world. That is to say, they are not fit for philosophy.

(22.17) Unless there is no unity of experience there can be no knowledge at all. We have

objective experience only in the waking and dream. Hence Panchadesi begins with

inquiry into the waking and dream experience, being an inquiry into the nature of truth.

Vidyaranya is the most practical of philosophers. He begins with objects. In sushupti no

object is experienced. Remembrance implies a previous act of experience. Knowledge

begins with experience, with the world. Consciousness is self-luminous: it never rises nor

sets. There is no proof that consciousness dies. The Nature of Consciousness is always to

be subject: It can never become an object. c.f. sleep where there is no object, yet there is

consciousness. The Westerner thinks only about that consciousness which is in relation to

an object, something else.

CHAPTER 23: SRIMAD BHAGAVATAM

(23.1) “AT THE POINT OF PASSING FROM SLEEP TO WAKING, HE SHOULD

TRY TO REALISE THE BRAHMAN.” Skanda 7, Adhyaya 13, Verses 3-5. THIS IS A

MOST IMPORTANT PASSAGE. WHOEVER UNDERSTANDS THIS, WILL

UNDERSTAND VEDANTA. AS SOON AS YOU WAKE UP, WHAT HAS

HAPPENED? WHAT IS IT THAT YOU SEE AROUND YOU? UNTIL YOU WAKE

UP YOU HAVE NO I IN SLEEP. THE IDEA OF ATMAN DOES NOT COME TILL

YOU WAKE UP. NOW IT BEGINS TO COME. AT THE JUNCTION PERIOD

BETWEEN SLEEP AND WAKING, JUST AS BETWEEN TWO THOUGHTS YOU

MAY GRASP THE TRUE NATURE OF ATMAN. PEOPLE GET CONFOUNDED;

THEY SEE UNCONSCIOUSNESS IN SLEEP AND EGO IN WAKING: SO THIS

EXERCISE IS EXCELLENT FOR IT GIVES AN OPPORTUNITY TO GET RID OF

THIS BEWILDERMENT.

(23.2) “He has nothing more to do” refers to himself but with Gnana he gains also

knowledge of life’s unity, so he has everything to do for the welfare of others, of all

creatures. This line therefore means he has no further effort to make to attain Gnan, as

context shows.

(23.3) PRAJNA is the deep sleep "mass of consciousness" in which everything is

dissolved and from which everything proceeds, or consciousness in itself like space, i.e.

formless.

Om Tat Sat

(Continued...)

(My humble salutations to Brahmasri Sreeman  V Subrahmanya Iyer  for the collection)