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View Full Version : 'adhyAtmavidyA' in Synthesis: 5. The Mutual Relation of the Self and the Not-Self



saidevo
03 February 2008, 07:30 AM
Seeing the unvarying continuity of the 'universal' Ego, the Pratyag-atma, through and amidst the endless flux of 'particulars', of not-selves, we have 'abs-tract-ed,' separated, it out and identified ourselves with it, and so derived a certain sense of absence of limitation, of immortality. But the separation now begins to seem to us to be merely 'mental' and not 'real'.

The 'I' as we see it, continues unchanged through changing things, but then it does so only in these things and never apart from them; and if it must do so, is it not, after all, limited by some inherent want and defect, so that it is dependent for its manifestation, its existence in fact, upon these things, just as much as these things may depend upon it? So we come back to the old difficulties of two eternals-infinites.

We must reconcile these two eternals-infinites:

• indeed we must derive the one from the other;
• and also maintain, all the while, their coevalness, their simultaneity;
• for it is not in our power to deny the beginninglessness and endlessness of either.

How to perform this most impossible task, to combine all the statements of the first and the second answers, and also obviate all the possible objections to them?

How relate Self and Not-Self so that Self--'my-Self'--shall no longer feel bound, small, dependent, helpless, at the mercy of any Other-than-Self?

Change-less is why-less

We do not want to know how and why and whence the Self. When we come to a true eternal infinite One, further search for causes ceases. To ask for a cause of that which is unlimited and changeless is meaningless. None really and sincerely does or can do so.



'Whence' is asked for the limited in space; 'when', for that in time; 'how', for that in condition (motion); 'why', for that which is limited by and in purpose, design, desire.

We have found, by the thinking done so far, that the Self is not limited in or by space, time, condition, desire, change. Why is appropriate only when there is a change, a new event, concerned. 'Why has this happened?' 'Why do you wish this to happen?' Where there is no change, there can be no 'why'.

Sankhya declares that the concrete-seeing, 'intelligence' and its 'argumentation' can never come to a finality, tarka-a-prati-shthAnAt. The reason is plain. All such argument starts with a limited datum; and with a limited datum, there must be an endless regressus and progressus of why's and how's, and because's and thus's, and why's and how's to these last two again.

But with an unlimited datum, unlimited in time and space, motionless, there is no further how and why; we have finality. The Self is such an unlimited finality; it is absolutely certain; it is the Absolute It-Self.

The difference between intellectuality and spirituality--various aspects of which are manas and buddhi-mahat of Sankhya, buddhi and chitta of Vedanta, present cognition and memory, conscious and sub-and-supra-conscious, intelligence and intuition, patence and latence, willed attention and dormant tendency, knowledge and wisdom, individual and universal, understanding and reason, discrete and continuous, (personal) I and (all-personal) We or the 'I'--that difference is but this: that the former deals with the Limited and the latter with the Unlimited.

The same Jiva, in one mood, is intellectual and limited, in another, Spiritual and Unlimited. It may be said that it is not impossible to ask: "Why does the Self exist?" But on scrutiny, it will be found that, if the questioner has any meaning behind his words, it is only this: 'Why has the Self come to be here, or why has it begun to exist." And the changes involved in these interpretations are obviously out of place in connection with the Self, motionless, spaceless, timeless, including all times, spaces, and motions within Itself, within Consciousness.


All enquiry starts with a certain standard; when we have found such and such a One, we shall toil and seek no further and no longer; and Uncausedness, Self-existence, is, on the very face of it, part of the standard of the enquiry after the Unlimited.

We do not want to engage in an endless pastime of asking "Why" after every answer, without considering whether the answer is, or is not, complete and final. What we want is to derive all and everything from One True, unchanging and unlimited something, which something shall be my-Self, our-Self. But we must do this and nothing less.

We must prove conclusively to ourselves

• that our Self is the true eternal and unlimited;
• that it is not based in any way on the Not-Self;
• but that from it is derived the Not-Self;
• and a countless, boundless, endless series too of not-selves.

We have to create everything, all things, out of the 'I', and not only everything and all things but an endless series of such.

We have to create, in a rational and intelligible manner, not only something but an infinite something, viz., the second of two co-infinites, and create it out of nothing;

or, which is the same thing, out of the first co-infinite, without changing this first infinite in the very minutest; for then, its unlimitedness is lost; it is subject to finiteness, to change, to beginning and end.

Impossible, truly, to all appearance! Yet until this so impossible task is done, there is no final peace, no final satisfaction.



The words infinite and eternal have been used, so far, from the standpoint of the enquirer who has not yet made the technical and profoundly significant distinction between the true eternal and infinite, on the one hand, and the merely in-numer-able, count-less, endless, on the other, which distinction will appear later on. This false or pseudo-infinite has been called 'spurious' and 'bastard' infinite, by Hegel...


Amass worldly wealth and glories, amass endless particulars upon particulars of science, amass occult knowledge and powers of high and low degree, for a thousand years, for a thousand thousand years, and do not this, set not at rest this doubt and there will be no peace for you. Secure this, and all else will follow in its proper time, serenely, certainly, and peacefully.

The gods have suffered from this doubt, as Yama said. Indra, king of the gods, found no pleasure in his heavenly kingdom, and, forsaking it, studied the Science of this Peace, adhyAtma-vidyA, the Science of the Self, for a hundred years and one, in all humility, at the feet of Prajapari. (Chhandogya-Upanishad, VIII.) Even Vishnu had to master it before he could become the ruler of a system. (Devi-Bhagavata, I.xv.)

Let us then set our hearts on mastering it.

The first result: Dvaita

The first result of this last effort is a return to the first answer on a higher level. The universal Self, the One-without-a-Second, by its own inherent power of Will-Desire, creates the Not-Self, at the same time dividing it-Self into many selves, assuming names and forms by combination with the Not-Self.

"It willed: May I become many, may I be born forth;" (Chhandogya-Upanishad, VI.ii.3)

"Having created all this it entered thereinto itself." (Taittiriya-Upanishad, II.vi.)

Such are the first of the scripture-texts which seek to sum up the World-Process in one single act of consciousness, and bring it all within the Self.

This first result, corresponding to the Dvaita or dualistic form of the Vedanta, is only the theory of creation on a higher level, with a new, added, and important significance.

• Instead of a personal, extra-cosmical, separate God, the universal Self, immanent in the universe, has been reached.

• Instead of craftsman and knick-knacks, potter and pots, builder and houses, we have en-Soul-ing Life and Organisms.

• The world is, though vaguely, included in the being of the One; the sense of Unity is greater, and that of irreconcilable difference and opposition less.

• The universe, made up of countless world-systems, with their endlessly repeated beginnings and endings, is without beginning and without end, as much as the Self, and individual selves;

• and the karma of the latter is without beginning, but may have an end by "the grace of God".

Where the Dvaita is not satisfactory

As to what is the exact relation between that universal Self and the individual selves and living material organisms and so-called dead inanimate matter, there is, as yet, no really satisfactory idea.



The five kinds of separateness and relationship, referred to in the Dvaita-Veganta, are:

jIva-jIvabheda (difference between Jiva and Jiva), jIva-Ishvarabheda (between Jiva and Ishvara), jIva-jagadbheda (between Jiva and the world or inanimate matter), jagad-Ishvarabheda (between the world and Ishvara), jaDa-jaDabheda (between inanimate matter and inanimate matter).


It appears in a general way, at this stage, that the three--God, individual spirits or 'Man', and 'Nature'--are all eternal, and ever distinct from each other, but yet that the latter two are entirely subordinate to the first, and that the relation between God and Jiva is that of an indivisible conjunction, the individual Jiva being unable to exist without the energising support of the universal Spirit, as the tree cannot live and subsist without its sap.

But this transmuted form of the theory of creation fails and falls short of final satisfaction, for reasons the same as those that demolish that theory:

• It explains the beginning of the World-Process as being dependent on, and the result of, the desire, the will, of the Self. It thus explains motion, change.

• But it does this by means of a mysterious Power which itself requires rational explanation. Also, there is no reason assigned for the exercise of such power.

• Finally, it does not explain and contain Changelessness. The Perfect, the Supreme, must be Changeless. What changes, desires, feels want, is imperfect, is limited, is less than the Supreme (Shariraka-bhashya, II.i.32.).

Our final search is for that which shall be Changeless, and yet shall explain and contain all the multiplicity of endless Change within itself.

The second result: Vishisht-advaita

The next step, the second result of the last effort, is the Vishisht-advaita form of the Vedanta: One substance, eternal, infinite, changeless, 'Ishvara', has two aspects, is animate and inanimate, chit and achit, conscious and unconscious, Self and Not-Self; and by its power, Maya, Shakti, this 'sove-reign Lord' causes interplay of the two, for its own high pleasure which there is none other to question, without any compulsion from without.

"It has two natures; one, Formless, the other Form; ... It became husband and wife; ... It is Being, also No-thing."

द्वे वाव ब्रह्मणो रूपे, मूर्तं चैव अमूर्तम् च.

dve vAva brahmaNo rUpe, mUrtaM caiva amUrtam ca;

"It has two natures; one, Formless, the other Form;"
-- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad , II.iii.1

स वै नैव रेमे, तस्माद् एकाकी न रमते, स द्वितीयम् ऐच्चत्, आत्मानं द्वेधा अपातयत्; ततः पतिश् च पत्नी च अभवतां;

sa vai naiva reme, tasmAd ekAkI na ramate, sa dvitIyam aicchat, AtmAnaM dvedhA apAtayat; tataH patiS ca patnI ca abhavatAM;

"He was not at all happy. Therefore people (still) are not happy when alone. He desired a mate. He became as big as man and wife embracing each other. He parted this very body into two. From that came husband and wife."
-- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I.iv.3

सद् असच् च;

sad asaca ca;

"This god is the gross and the subtle,"
-- Prasna Upanishad, ii.5

सद् असत् च अहं अर्जुन;

sad asat ca ahaM arjuna;

"I am also both the Sat and the Asat, O Arjuna!" --Bhagavad Gita, ix.19

Such is the second series of scripture texts that correspond to this stage.

This second result, it is clear, is again only the second answer, the theory of transformation, on a higher level.

• Two factors are recognised, but subordinated to, made parts and aspects of, a third, which is not a third, however; and the two are thus rather forcibly reduced to a pseudo-unity.

• Instead of the complete separateness of seer and seen, instead of the Sankhya doctrine of Purusha and Prakrti, Subject and Object, as commonly understood, we have a complete pantheism of ensouling life and organism.

• The two are not only seer and seen, subject and object, desirer and desired, actor and acted on, but also soul (i.e., Jiva or mind) and body, force and 'receiver', cause and instrument, knowledge and organ of knowing, desire and tool of desire, actor and means of action.

Where the Vishisht-advaita is not satisfactory

But the objections to the original form of the transformation theory hold good, with only the slightest modifications, against this subtler form of it also.

• Why the need for, the want of, amusement and manifestation and interplay?



'Sir! Revered Teacher! how can specific qualities, attributes, actions, touch, appear in, the Supreme, Which is Changeless, Pure Consciousness, even in sport? Sport, Play, is the activity of children, who Wish to play with another or others, (for 'play' means playing with another or others); how can there be the action, the motion, of Play, in the Supreme, Which is always ever Self-Contained, Self-Content, Motionless, Actionless. eternally turned-away-from (negat-ive, repudiative, of) An-Other?' How the answer is hidden in the words of the question itself, how the Sport, Lila, of the Supreme, is motionless, actionless, will appear later. -- Bhagavafa. Ill, vii, 3.


• Why so much evil and misery instead of happiness in the course of the manifestation?

• And what, after all, is the duality? Are there two, or are there not two? If two, and there must be two if there is interplay, as there self-evidently is, nothing has really been explained. Prove that one of the two is Not, Naught, Nothing, and then you will have said something!

• What is this mysterious Maya, Shakti, 'Might', which brings about the interplay? What is this unexplained secret?

• How am I, the individual enquirer, to feel the satisfaction of being the owner, possessor, master, not the slave, of that Power? How does this explanation assure me of my own freedom?

• Where is the law, the regular method, the reliable process, in all this manifestation and interplay and unrestrained power, which may assure me of orderliness and sequence, assure me against caprice, i.e., at least against all caprice other than My own, and also be in accord with what I see in the world around? I, as an individual, do not feel my assonance with this explanation.

• It does not yet lead me to the heart of the World-Process. It does not explain my life, in reference to and in connection with the world around me, systematically, satisfactorily.

• The laws of, Karma and compensation, the law of rebirth, do not fit into it quite plainly.

• To say that I am (i.e., the 'I' is) feeling happy in a billion forms, and also feeling miserable in another billion, does not assimilate readily with the constitution of my being. I feel the statement as something external to me.

• In order to be satisfied, I must see the identity of the countless individual 'I's', including my 'I', not only in essence but in every detail and particular.

Such are the doubts and difficulties that vitiate the second result, and show it as of no avail. Such is the final Crux of philosophy--to reconcile the Changeless One, Self, Subject, with the Changeful Many, Not-selves, 'This-es', Objects; to explain the Relation between the Two; and in such a manner that the Two shall be One only.

He who will mount and surmount the Crux, the Cross, on which is sacrificed the 'small self', of egoism, to the 'Great Self, the Universal Self', of altruism and Universalism, shall win 'Christ'-hood, the full understanding that belongs to him who is 'anointed with wisdom.'