The Realisation of the Absolute: 2.2. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday 24, January 2025, 09:30.

Vedanta: Upanishads

The Realisation of the Absolute: 2.

Chapter 2: The Nature of the World-2.

The Dissertation on Experience:

Swami Krishnananda.

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The world is made up of forms. The forms of things disclose their unreal nature when subjected to a careful examination of their composition and working. A thing is a member of the society of diverse phenomenal centres appearing to divide against itself a basic Noumenon. A thing is an object of thought, an internal form, and an external form is known through thought itself, which is consciousness objectified. A form is differentiated from existence as a whole by a particular mode characterising it. It cannot be said that a thing is defined by a mode or that it has a definite form unless it becomes an object of thought. Thought itself is conditioned by forms, and it is thought, again, that knows external forms and determines their nature. The laws governing the modes of thinking shall have sway over its objects also, for the rules that regulate the process of knowledge and restrict its operations determine all the contents thereof, which, therefore, cannot be known independent of and free from the conditions to which the knowing process is subject. All forms of objective knowledge are, thus, deceptive and give to the knower nothing of reality. 

The truth of the object of thought can be known only when it is freed from the modes of thought, and the truth of thought itself can be known only when it is not conditioned by the forms which it takes. Neither the mind nor its object, taken independently, can be said to truly exist. That the mind exists cannot be proved unless there is a modification of the modal consciousness, which is called a psychosis or a mental transformation, which, again, is not possible without the mind's taking the form of an object or an objective condition. That objects exist also cannot be proved unless there are minds to cognise and know them. Each is explained only by the other and not by itself. Nothing in this world, neither the subject nor the object, is independent and self-existent. 

The test of reality is non-dependence, completeness and imperishability. When things are judged from this standard of truth, the phenomenal subjectivity and objectivity in them are found to break down and reveal their ultimate unreality. The appearance of the subject-object-distinction has to be finally attributed to the creative activity of consciousness itself, though the relation of consciousness and change in the form of any activity is beyond understanding and explanation. As the idea of causality itself is an effect of the want of real knowledge, a question as to the cause of this want has no meaning. But the affirmation of consciousness has to objectify itself in the form in which it is desired to manifest itself, as all forms are contents of consciousness. 

Whatever an individual affirms must ultimately happen or be materialised into effect, because each centre of consciousness has infinity at its background. Misery or suffering and pleasure or happiness are experiences relative to the understanding of the individual, and are of such a character and degree as is the condition of the individual consciousness in relation to the Absolute Being. There is really one experience which is absolute, and it can be styled neither a misery nor a pleasure. That One Experience is diversely felt as variety, and is fictitiously termed as either this or that, and of this nature or of that. The form of the world is found to be a magical appearance when subjected to the test of severe discrimination. 

The world and the Atman or Brahman neither exclude nor include each other, but are non-related, for relation is possible only between two demarcated objects, and the possibility of duality or any relation is annulled in the being that is "one alone without a second". Pure Experience is attributeless, and all "existence" is "experience". Ethical virtues and immoral vices are the effects of the different mental modes reacting variegatedly to the one changeless consciousness in different ways, leading respectively to the experience of Unity-consciousness and diversity-delusion. All our experiences are relative, and neither the relative experiencer nor the experienced can stand the test of reality. They present an appearance, though the reality in them transcends them and exists as an indivisible unity. 

This one Reality appears as the knower as well as the known. It is one and the same thing that appears as the earth to certain states of consciousness, as heaven to some, as hell to certain other, as men and creatures to still some other, and as Eternal Consciousness to another that is integrated. The Substance is One and it is felt by different modes of mentation in their own fashion, as good, bad, sweet, bitter, beautiful, ugly and the like. The Substance by itself does not change; only the mode of perception changes. The truth therefore remains that Eternal Existence is without any evolution or involution within itself. From this it follows that the world of space and time is an appearance, a shadow of Reality. Even immortality and death are relative to the individual. In order to have the Experience of Reality we have to discard the forms as mere appearances.

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Continued

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