The Realisation of the Absolute: 2.3. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Sunday 02, February 2025, 10:10.

Vedanta: Upanishads

The Realisation of the Absolute: 2.

Chapter 2: The Nature of the World-3.

The Critique of Duality:

Swami Krishnananda.

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The Critique of Duality:

It is contended by some that the world is not such an utter negation of Reality, that the world of names and forms is in the being of Reality, that plurality cannot be a nothing, that diversity which is real is indwelt by the Supreme. It is also held that the individual is not the Absolute until it realises the Absolute, that the process of change and evolution is a perfect truth and not an appearance, and that the quality of the Absolute is not attributable to the individual at any time.

It is not difficult to note that indwelling is possible only when the Indweller is different from the indwelled, that is, when there is a second entity. To assert that God pervades the diverse beings and that God impels all actions is a trick played by the cunning individuals flowing with the current of instinct to get a license of objective indulgence. The self-expression called the world is not a deliberate objective act of the Absolute, for we cannot say that the Absolute acts. It is an undivided appearance without any ultimate logical reason for its existence or disappearance. Hence we often come to the conclusion that appearance, subsistence, disappearance, bondage, life and liberation are eternal! An undivided change is no change. Eternal transformation is changelessness, and it cannot be considered as any motion at all. Thus, appearance would become eternal like Reality, and two eternals contradict the Absolute. This proves the invalidity of the existence of appearance.

To assert diversity is to deny absoluteness. It does not, however, mean that the Absolute excludes the diverse finitudes, but the finite is eternally dissolved in or is identical with the Absolute, and therefore, it does not claim for itself an individual reality. It is argued that to ignore differences is to reduce the Absolute to a non-entity. The Absolute does not depend upon the reality of egoistic differences. By cancelling the relative we may not affect the Absolute, but we, so long as we are unconscious of the fundamental Being, improve thereby our present state of consciousness. Individuality is in every speck of space and these egos must be so very undivided that diversity becomes an impossible conception and homogeneity persists in every form of true reasoning in our effort to come to a conclusion in regard to the nature of the Absolute. We may blindly assert difference, but it is not possible to establish it through any acceptable reasoning.

To say that we are not yet the Reality, and we have yet to "become" it, may be true with partiality to empirical consciousness, but it is not the highest truth. Perfection or Absoluteness is not something to be got or acquired from somewhere, but is only a "realisation" of what actually and eternally "is", a mere "knowledge" of the fact that "exists". The individuals are in essence the Absolute itself, which is beyond all contradiction. This truth is not to be grasped through dull metaphysics or idle intellectual quibbling, but through realisation and experience. The form of the world can never have a substantial existence as it is not independent of the Absolute. The reality of the forms of the world is based on the working of the ego-sense or the idea of separateness in the individual. Realisation is not an actual "becoming", but an unfolding of consciousness, an experience of Truth, Truth that already is, Truth that is eternal. The essential existence can never change. We cannot become what we actually are not at present. We have no right to claim what we do not really possess. The Self is not really bound by space and time. Compromising philosophers make a false distinction between the individual and the Absolute, between becoming and being, between the finite self and the ultimate Brahman. The words "ultimate" and "relative" have no basis outside simple misapprehension of what is really unchanging and eternal. The Upanishads do not simply mean that duality is not final, but that it has no basis at all in the region of Reality. The Absolute of the Upanishads is the only Reality, and all forms must, therefore, be non-existent from the point of view of its exact nature.

"Truth alone triumphs; not falsehood." —Mund. Up., III. 1. 6.

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Continued

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