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Chapter
VI
Reality and the Cosmic Illusion
The Eternal is true; the world is a lie.
Vivekachudamani. 1
The Master of Maya creates this world by his Maya and within
it is confined another; one should know his Maya as
Nature and
the Master of Maya as the great Lord of all.
Swetaswatara Upanishad. 2
The Purusha is all this that is, what has been and what is yet to be;
he is the master of Immortality and he is whatever
grows by food.
Rig Veda. 3
Swetaswatara Upanishad 4
All is the Divine Being.
Gita. 5
BUT
so far we have only cleared a part of the foreground of the field of
inquiry; in the background the problem remains
unsolved and entire. It is the problem of the nature of the original
Consciousness or Power that has created or conceptively
constructed or manifested the universe, and the relation to it of our
world-cognition,—in sum, whether the universe is a
figment of consciousness imposed on our mind by a supreme force of
Illusion or a true formation of being experienced by us
with a still ignorant but an increasing knowledge. And the true
question is not of Mind alone or of a cosmic dream or a
cosmic hallucination born of Mind, but of the nature of the Reality,
the validity of the creative action that takes place in it or
is imposed upon it, the presence or absence of a real content in its or
our consciousness and its or our regard on the
universe. On behalf of Illusionism it can be answered to the position
put forward by us with regard to the truth of existence
that all this might be valid within the bounds of the cosmic Illusion;
it is the system, the pragmatic machinery by which Maya
works and maintains herself in the Ignorance: but the truths,
possibilities, actualities of the cosmic system are true and actual
only within the Illusion,
1 Verse 20.
2 IV. 9, 10.
3 X. 90. 2.
4 III. 15. 5 VII. 19.
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outside that magic circle they have no validity;
they are not abiding and eternal realities; all are temporary figures,
the works
of Knowledge no less than the works of Ignorance. It can be conceded
that knowledge is a useful instrument of the Illusion
of Maya, for escaping from herself, for destroying herself in the Mind;
spiritual knowledge is indispensable: but the one true
truth, the only abiding reality beyond all duality of knowledge and
ignorance is the eternal relationless Absolute or the Self,
the eternal pure Existence. All here turns on the mind's conception and
the mental being's experience of reality; for
according to the mind's experience or conception of reality will be its
interpretation of data otherwise identical, the facts of
the Cosmos, individual experience, the realisation of the supreme
Transcendence. All mental cognition depends on three
elements, the percipient, the perception and the thing perceived or
percept. All or any of these three can be affirmed or
denied reality; the question then is which of these, if any, are real
and to what extent or in what manner. If all three are
rejected as instruments of a cosmic Illusion, the farther and
consequent question arises: is there then a reality outside them
and, if so, what is the relation between the Reality and the
Illusion?
It is possible to affirm the reality of the percept, of the objective
universe, and deny or diminish the reality of the
percipient individual and his perceptive consciousness. In the theory
of the sole reality of Matter, consciousness is only an
operation of Matter-energy in Matter, a secretion or vibration of the
brain-cells, a physical reception of images and a
brain-response, a reflex action or a reaction of Matter to the contacts
of Matter. Even if the rigidity of this affirmation is
relaxed and consciousness otherwise accounted for, still it is no more
than a temporary and derivative phenomenon, not the
enduring Reality. The percipient individual is himself only a body and
brain capable of the mechanical reactions we generalise under the name
of consciousness: the individual has only a relative value and a
temporary reality. But if Matter
turns out to be itself unreal or derivative and simply a phenomenon of
Energy, as seems now to be the probability, then
Energy remains as the sole Reality; the percipient, his perception, the
perceived
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object are only phenomena of Energy. But an Energy without a Being or Existence possessing it or a Consciousness
supplying it, an Energy working originally in the void, — for the material field in which we see it at work is itself a
creation,—looks itself very much like a mental construction, an unreality: or it might be a temporary inexplicable outbreak of
motion which might cease at any time to create phenomena; the Void of the Infinite alone would be enduring and real. The
Buddhist theory of the percipient and the perception and the percept as a construction of Karma, the process of some
cosmic fact of Action, gave room to such a conclusion; for it led logically to the affirmation of the Non-Being, Void or Nihil.
It is possible indeed that what is at work is not an Energy, but a Consciousness; as Matter reduces itself to Energy seizable
by us not in itself but in its results and workings, so Energy could be reduced to action of a Consciousness seizable by us not
in itself but in its results and workings. But if this Consciousness is supposed to work similarly in a Void, we are exposed to
the same conclusion, that it is a creator of temporary phenomenal illusions and itself illusory; Void, an infinite Zero, an
original Non-Existence is alone the enduring Reality. But these conclusions are not binding; for behind this Consciousness
seizable in its works only there may be an invisible original Existence: a Conscious-Energy of that Existence could then be a
reality; its creations too, made out of an infinitesimal substance of being impalpable to the senses but revealed to them at a
certain stage of the action of Energy as Matter, would be real, as also the individual emerging as a conscious being of the
original Existence in a world of Matter. This original Reality might be a cosmic spiritual Existence, a Pantheos, or it might
have some other status; but in any case there would be, not a universal illusion or mere phenomenon, but a true universe.
In the classical theory of Illusionism a sole and supreme spiritual
Existence is accepted as the one Reality: it is by its
essentiality the Self, yet the natural beings of which it is the Self
are only temporary appearances; it is in its absoluteness the
substratum of all things, but the universe erected on the substratum is
either a non-existence, a semblance, or else in
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some way unreally real; it is a cosmic illusion. For the Reality is one without a second, it is immutable in eternity, it is the
sole Existence; there is nothing else, there are no true becomings of this Being: it is and must for ever remain void of name,
feature, formation, relation, happening; if it has a Consciousness, it can only be a pure consciousness of its own absolute
being. But what then is the relation between the Reality and the Illusion? By what miracle or mystery does the Illusion come
to be or how does it manage to appear or to abide in Time for ever?
As only Brahman is real, only a consciousness or a power of Brahman
could be a real creator and a creator of realities.
But since there can be no other reality than Brahman pure and absolute,
there can be no true creative power of Brahman.
A Brahman-consciousness aware of real beings, forms and happenings
would signify a truth of the Becoming, a spiritual
and material reality of the universe, which the experience of the
supreme Truth negates and nullifies and with which its sole
existence is logically incompatible. Maya's creation is a presentation
of beings, names, forms, happenings, things, impossible
to accept as true, contradictory of the indeterminable purity of the
One Existence. Maya then is not real, it is non-existent:
Maya is itself an illusion, the parent of numberless illusions. But
still this illusion and its works have some kind of existence
and so must in some way be real: moreover, the universe does not exist
in a Void but stands because it is imposed on
Brahman, it is based in a way on the one Reality; we ourselves in the
Illusion attribute its forms, names, relations,
happenings to the Brahman, become aware of all things as the Brahman,
see the Reality through these unrealities. There is
then a reality in Maya; it is at the same time real and unreal,
existent and non-existent; or, let us say, it is neither real nor
unreal: it is a paradox, a suprarational enigma. But what then is this
mystery, or is it insoluble? how comes this illusion to
intervene in Brahman-existence? what is the nature of this unreal
reality of Maya?
At first sight one is compelled to suppose that Brahman must be in some way the percipient of Maya, — for Brahman
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is the sole Reality, and if he is not the
percipient, who then perceives the Illusion? Any other percipient is
not in existence;
the individual who is in us the apparent witness is himself phenomenal
and unreal, a creation of Maya. But if Brahman is the
percipient, how is it possible that the illusion can persist for a
moment, since the true consciousness of the percipient is
consciousness of self, an awareness solely of its own pure
self-existence? If Brahman perceives the world and things with a
true consciousness, then they must all be itself and real; but since
they are not the pure self-existence, but at best are forms
of it and are seen through a phenomenal Ignorance, this realistic
solution is not possible. Yet we have to accept,
provisionally at least, the universe as a fact, an impossibility as a
thing that is, since Maya is there and her works persist and
obsess the spirit with the sense, however false, of their reality. It
is on this basis that we have, then, to face and solve the
dilemma.
If Maya
is in some way real, the conclusion imposes itself that Brahman the
Reality is in that way the percipient of
Maya. Maya may be his power of differentiating perception, for the
power of Maya consciousness which distinguishes it
from the true consciousness of sole spiritual Self is its creative
perception of difference. Or Maya must be at least, if this
creation of difference is considered to be only a result and not the
essence of Maya-force, some power of Brahman's
consciousness, — for it is only a consciousness that can see or create
an illusion and there cannot be another original or
originating consciousness than that of Brahman. But since Brahman is
also self-aware for ever, there must be a double
status of Brahman-Consciousness, one conscious of the sole Reality, the
other conscious of the unrealities to which by its
creative perception of them it gives some kind of apparent existence.
These unrealities cannot be made of the substance of
the Reality, for then they also must be real. In this view one cannot
accept the assertion of the Upanishads that the world is
made out of the supreme Existence, is a becoming, an outcome or product
of the eternal Being. Brahman is not the material
cause of the universe: our nature, — as opposed to our self, — is not
made of its spiritual substance; it is constructed out of the
unreal reality of Maya. But, on the
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contrary, our spiritual being is of that substance,
is indeed the Brahman; Brahman is above Maya, but he is also the
percipient of his creations both from above and from within Maya. This
dual consciousness offers itself as the sole plausible
explanation of the riddle of a real eternal Percipient, an unreal
Percept, and a Perception that is a half-real creator of unreal
percepts.
If there is
not this dual consciousness, if Maya is the sole conscious power of
Brahman, then one of two things must be
true: either the reality of Maya as a power is that it is a subjective
action of Brahman-consciousness emerging out of its
silence and superconscient immobility and passing through experiences
that are real because they are part of the
consciousness of Brahman but unreal because they are not part of its
being, or else Maya is Brahman's power of cosmic
Imagination inherent in his eternal being creating out of nothing
names, forms and happenings that are not in any way real.
In that case Maya would be real, but her works entirely fictitious,
pure imaginations: but can we affirm Imagination as the
sole dynamic or creative power of the Eternal? Imagination is a
necessity for a partial being with an ignorant consciousness;
for it has to supplement its ignorance by imaginations and conjectures:
there can be no place for such a movement in the
sole consciousness of a sole Reality which has no reason to construct
unrealities, for it is ever pure and self-complete. It is
difficult to see what in its own being could impel or induce such a
Sole Existence complete in its very essence, blissful in its
eternity, containing nothing to be manifested, timelessly perfect, to
create an unreal Time and Space and people it to all
eternity with an interminable cosmic show of false images and
happenings. This solution is logically untenable.
The other solution, the idea of a purely subjective unreal reality,
starts from the distinction made by the mind in physical
Nature between its subjective and objective experiences; for it is the
objective alone of which it is sure as entirely and
solidly real. But such a distinction could hardly exist in
Brahman-consciousness since here there is either no subject and no
object or Brahman itself is the sole possible subject of its
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consciousness and the sole possible object; there
could be nothing externally objective to Brahman, since there is
nothing
else than Brahman. This idea, then, of a subjective action of
consciousness creating a world of fictions other than or
distorting the sole true object looks like an imposition on the Brahman
by our mind; it imposes on the pure and perfect
Reality a feature of its own imperfection, not truly attributable to
the perception of a Supreme Being. On the other hand, the
distinction between the consciousness and the being of Brahman could
not be valid, unless Brahman-being and
Brahman-consciousness are two distinct entities, — the consciousness
imposing its experiences on the pure existence of the
being but unable to touch or affect or penetrate it. Brahman, then,
whether as the supreme sole Self-Existence or the Self of
the real-unreal individual in Maya, would be aware by his true
consciousness of the illusions imposed on him and would
know them as illusions; only some energy of Maya-nature or something in
it would be deluded by its own inventions, — or
else, not being really deluded, still persist in behaving and feeling
as if it were deluded. This duality is what happens to our
consciousness in the Ignorance when it separates itself from the works
of Nature and is aware within of the Self as the sole
truth and the rest as not-self and not-real, but has on the surface to
act as if the rest too were real. But this solution negates
the sole and indivisible pure existence and pure awareness of the
Brahman; it creates a dualism within its featureless unity
which is not other in its purport than the dualism of the double
Principle in the Sankhya view of things, Purusha and Prakriti,
Soul and Nature. These solutions then must be put aside as untenable,
unless we modify our first view of the Reality and
concede to it a power of manifold status of consciousness or a power of
manifold status of existence.
But, again, the dual consciousness, if we admit it, cannot be
explained as a dual power of Knowledge-Ignorance valid
for the Supreme Existence as it is for us in the universe. For we
cannot suppose that Brahman is at all subject to Maya,
since that would mean a principle of Ignorance clouding the Eternal's
self-awareness; it would be to impose the limitations
of our own consciousness on the eternal Reality. An Ignorance
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which occurs or intervenes in the course of
manifestation as a result of a subordinate action of Consciousness and
as part of
a divine cosmic plan and its evolutionary meaning, is one thing and is
logically conceivable; a meaningless ignorance or
illusion eternal in the original consciousness of the Reality is
another thing and not easily conceivable; it appears as a violent
mental construction which has no likelihood of validity in the truth of
the Absolute. The dual consciousness of Brahman must
be in no way an ignorance, but a self-awareness co-existent with a
voluntary will to erect a universe of illusions which are
held in a frontal perception aware at once of self and the illusory
world, so that there is no delusion, no feeling of its reality.
The delusion takes place only in the illusory world itself, and the
Self or Brahman in the world either enjoys with a free
participation or witnesses, itself separate and intangible, the play
which lays its magical spell only upon the Nature-mind
created for her action by Maya. But this would seem to signify that the
Eternal, not content with its pure absolute existence,
has the need to create, to occupy itself throughout Time with a drama
of names and forms and happenings; it needs, being
sole, to see itself as many, being peace and bliss and self-knowledge
to observe an experience or representation of mingled
knowledge and ignorance, delight and suffering, unreal existence and
escape from unreal existence. For the escape is for
the individual being constructed by Maya; the Eternal does not need to
escape and the play continues its cycle for ever. Or
if not the need, there is the will to so create, or there is the urge
or the automatic action of these contraries: but, if we
consider the sole eternity of pure existence attributed to the Reality,
all alike, need, will, urge or automatism, are equally
impossible and incomprehensible. This is an explanation of a sort, but
it is an explanation which leaves the mystery still
beyond logic or comprehension; for this dynamic consciousness of the
Eternal is a direct contradiction of its static and real
nature. A Will or Power to create or manifest is undoubtedly there:
but, if it is a will or power of the Brahman, it can only be
for a creation of realities of the Real or a manifestation of the
timeless process of its being in Time-eternity; for it seems
incredible that the sole power of the Reality should
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be to manifest something contrary to itself or to create non-existent things in an illusory universe.
There is so far no satisfying answer to the riddle: but it may be that
we err in attributing any kind of reality, however
illusory at bottom, to Maya or her works: the true solution lies in
facing courageously the mystery of its and their utter
unreality. This absolute unreality seems to be envisaged by certain
formulations of Illusionism or by certain arguments put
forward in its favour. This side then of the problem has to pass under
consideration before we can examine with confidence
the solutions that rest on a relative or partial reality of the
universe. There is indeed a line of reasoning which gets rid of the
problem by excluding it; it affirms that the question how the Illusion
generated, how the universe manages to be there in the
pure existence of Brahman, is illegitimate: the problem does not exist,
because the universe is non-existent, Maya is unreal,
Brahman is the sole truth, alone and self-existent for ever. Brahman is
not affected by any illusory consciousness, no
universe has come into existence within its timeless reality. But this
evasion of the difficulty is either a sophism which means
nothing, an acrobacy of verbal logic, the logical reason hiding its
head in the play of words and ideas and refusing to see or
to solve a real and baffling difficulty, or else it means too much,
since in effect it gets rid of all relation of Maya to Brahman
by affirming her as an independent absolute non-reality along with the
universe created by her. If a real universe does not
exist, a cosmic Illusion exists and we are bound to inquire how it came
into being or how it manages to exist, what is its
relation or non-relation to the Reality, what is meant by our own
existence in Maya, by our subjugation to her cycles, by our
liberation from her. For in this view we have to suppose that Brahman
is not the percipient of Maya or her works, Maya
herself is not a power of Brahman-consciousness: Brahman is
superconscient, immersed in its own pure being or is
conscious only of its own absoluteness; it has nothing to do with Maya.
But in that case either Maya cannot exist even as an
illusion or there would be a dual Entity or two entities, a real
Eternal superconscious or conscious only of itself and an
illusive Power that creates and is conscious of a false universe. We
are back on the horns of the
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dilemma and with no prospect of getting free from our impalement on it, unless we escape by concluding that since all
philosophy is part of Maya, all philosophy is also an illusion, problems abound but no conclusion is possible. For what we are
confronted with is a pure static and immutable Reality and an illusory dynamism, the two absolutely contradictory of each
other, with no greater Truth beyond them in which their secret can be found and their contradictions discover a reconciling
issue.
If Brahman is not the percipient, then the percipient must be the
individual being: but this percipient is created by the
Illusion and unreal; the percept, the world, is an illusion created by
an Illusion and unreal; the perceiving consciousness is
itself an illusion and therefore unreal. But this deprives everything
of significance, our spiritual existence and our salvation
from Maya no less than our temporal existence and our immersion in
Maya; all are of an equal unreality and unimportance.
It is possible to take a less rigid stand-point and hold that Brahman
as Brahman has nothing to do with Maya, is eternally
free from all illusion or any commerce with illusion, but Brahman as
the individual percipient or as the Self of all being here
has entered into Maya and can in the individual withdraw from it, and
this withdrawal is for the individual an act of supreme
importance. But here a dual being is imposed on Brahman and a reality
attributed to something that belongs to the cosmic
Illusion, — to the individual being of Brahman in Maya, for Brahman as
the Self of all is not even phenomenally bound and
does not need to escape from her: moreover, salvation cannot be of
importance if bondage is unreal and bondage cannot be
real unless Maya and her world are real. The absolute unreality of Maya
disappears and gives place to a very
comprehensive even if perhaps only a practical and temporal reality. To
avoid this conclusion it may be said that our
individuality is unreal, it is Brahman who withdraws from a reflection
of itself in the figment of individuality and its extinction
is our release, our salvation: but Brahman, always free, cannot suffer
by bondage or profit by salvation, and a reflection, a
figment of individuality is not a thing that can need salvation. A
reflection, a figment, a mere image in the deceptive mirror of
Maya cannot suffer a real bondage or profit by a real salvation.
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If it be said that it is a conscious reflection or
figment and therefore can really suffer and enter into the bliss of
release, the
question arises whose is the consciousness that so suffers in this
fictitious existence, — for there can be no real
consciousness except that of the One Existence; so that once more there
is established a dual consciousness for Brahman, a
consciousness or superconscience free from the illusion and a
consciousness subject to the illusion, and we have again
substantiated a certain reality of our existence and experience in
Maya. For if our being is that of the Brahman, our
consciousness something of the consciousness of the Brahman, with
whatever qualification, it is to that extent real, — and if
our being, why not the being of the universe?
It may finally be put forward as a solution that the percipient
individual and the percept universe are unreal, but Maya
by imposing itself on Brahman acquires a certain reality, and that
reality lends itself to the individual and to its experience in
the cosmic Illusion which endures so long as it is subject to the
illusion. But, again, for whom is the experience valid, the
reality acquired while it endures, and for whom does it cease by
liberation, extinction or withdrawal? For an illusory unreal
being cannot put on reality and suffer from a real bondage or escape
from it by a real act of evasion or self-extinction; it can
only seem to some real self or being to exist, but in that case this
real self must in some way or in some degree have
become subject to Maya. It must either be the consciousness of Brahman
that projects itself into a world of Maya and
issues from Maya or it must be the being of Brahman that puts forth
something of itself, its reality, into Maya and withdraws
it again from Maya. Or what again is this Maya that imposes itself on
Brahman? from where does it come if it is not already
in Brahman, an action of the eternal Consciousness or the eternal
Superconscience? It is only if a being or a consciousness
of the Reality undergoes the consequences of the Illusion that the
cycles of the Illusion can put on any reality or have any
importance except as a dance of phantasmagoric marionettes with which
the Eternal amuses himself, a puppet-show in
Time. We are driven back to the dual being of Brahman, the dual
consciousness of Brahman involved in the Illusion and
free from the Illusion, and a certain phenomenal
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truth of being for Maya: there can be no solution of our existence in the universe if that existence and the universe itself
have no reality, — even though the reality be only partial, restricted, derivative. But what can be the reality of an original
universal and fundamentally baseless Illusion? The only possible answer is that it is a suprarational mystery, inexplicable and
ineffable, — anirvacaniya.
There are, however, two possible replies to the difficulty, if we get
rid of the idea of absolute unreality and admit a
qualification or compromise. A basis can be created for a subjective
illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we
accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the
account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the
Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is
fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman,
but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its
being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor
unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is
a state of superconscience absorbed in its
self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the
status of a free Superconscient containing or basing
everything but involved in nothing. But there is also a luminous status
of sleep-self, a massed consciousness which is the
origin of cosmic existence; this state of deep sleep in which yet there
is the presence of an omnipotent Intelligence is the
seed state or causal condition from which emerges the cosmos; — this
and the dream-self which is the continent of all subtle,
subjective or supraphysical experience, and the self of waking which is
the support of all physical experience, can be taken
as the whole field of Maya. As a man in deep sleep passes into dreams
in which he experiences self-constructed unstable
structures of name, form, relation, happenings, and in the waking state
externalises himself in the more apparently stable but
yet transient structures of the physical consciousness, so the Self
develops out of a state of massed consciousness its
subjective and its objective cosmic experience. But the waking state is
not a true waking from this original and causal sleep;
it is only a full emergence into a gross external and objective sense
of the positive reality of objects of consciousness as
opposed to the subtle subjective dream-awareness of those
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objects: the true waking is a withdrawal from both
objective and subjective consciousness and from the massed causal
Intelligence into the superconscience superior to all consciousness;
for all consciousness and all unconsciousness is Maya.
Here, we may say, Maya is real because it is the self's experience of
the Self, something of the Self enters into it, is
affected by its happenings because it accepts them, believes in them,
they are to it real experiences, creations out of its
conscious being; but it is unreal because it is a sleep state, a dream
state, an eventually transient waking state, not the true
status of the superconscient Reality. Here there is no actual dichotomy
of being itself, but there is a multiplicity of status of
the one Being; there is no original dual consciousness implying a Will
in the Uncreated to create illusory things out of
non-existence, but there is One Being in states of superconscience and
consciousness each with its own nature of
self-experience. But the lower states, although they have a reality,
are yet qualified by a building and seeing of subjective
self-constructions which are not the Real. The One Self sees itself as
many, but this multiple existence is subjective; it has a
multiplicity of its states of consciousness, but this multiplicity also
is subjective; there is a reality of subjective experience of
a real Being, but no objective universe.
It may be noted, however, that nowhere in the Upanishads is it actually
laid down that the threefold status is a condition
of illusion or the creation of an unreality; it is constantly affirmed
that all this that is, — this universe we are now supposing to
have been constructed by Maya, — is the Brahman, the Reality. The
Brahman becomes all these beings; all beings must be
seen in the Self, the Reality, and the Reality must be seen in them,
the Reality must be seen as being actually all these
beings; for not only the Self is Brahman, but all is the Self, all this
that is is the Brahman, the Reality. That emphatic
asseveration leaves no room for an illusory Maya; but still the
insistent denial that there is anything other than or separate
from the experiencing self, certain phrases used and the description of
two of the states of consciousness as sleep and
dream may be taken as if they annulled the emphasis on the universal
Reality; these passages open the gates to the
illusionist idea and have been made the
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foundation for an uncompromising system of that nature. If we take this fourfold status as a figure of the Self passing from
its superconscient state, where there is no subject or object, into a luminous trance in which superconscience
becomes a massed consciousness out of which the subjective status of being and
the objective come into emergence, then we get according to our view of things
either a possible process of illusionary creation or a process of creative
Self-knowledge and All-knowledge.
In fact, if we can judge from the
description of the three lower states of Self as the all-wise Intelligence1, the Seer of the subtle and the Seer of the gross material existence, this sleep state and this dream state seem to be
figurative names for the superconscient and the subliminal which are behind and beyond our waking status; they are so
named and figured because it is through dream and sleep, — or trance which can be regarded as a kind of dream or
sleep, — that the surface mental consciousness normally passes out of the perception of objective things into the inner
subliminal and the superior supramental or overmental status. In that inner condition it sees the supraphysical realities in
transcribing figures of dream or vision or, in the superior status, it loses itself in a massed consciousness of which it can
receive no thought or image. It is through this subliminal and this superconscient condition that we can pass into the supreme
superconscience of the highest state of self-being. If we make the transition, not through dream-trance or sleep-trance, but
through a spiritual awakening into these higher states, we become aware in all of them of the one omnipresent Reality; there
need be no perception of an illusionary Maya, there is only an experience of the passage from Mind to what is beyond it so
that our mental structure of the universe ceases to be valid and another reality
1 prajna. Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad states very positively that there are two planes or
states of the being which are two worlds and that in the dream state one can see both worlds for the dream
state is intermediate between them, it is their joining-plane. This makes it clear that he is speaking of a
subliminal condition of the consciousness which can carry in it communications between the physical and the
supraphysical worlds. The description of the dreamless sleep-state applies both to deep sleep and to the
condition of trance in which one enters into a massed consciousness containing in it all the powers of being but
all compressed within itself and concentrated solely on itself and, when active, then active in a consciousness
where all is the self; this is, clearly, a state admitting us into the higher planes of the spirit normally now
superconscient to our waking being.
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of it is substituted for the ignorant mental knowledge. In this transition it is possible to be awake to all the states of being
together in a harmonised and unified experience and to see the Reality everywhere. But if we plunge by a trance of
exclusive concentration into a mystic sleep-state or pass abruptly in waking Mind into a state belonging to the
Superconscient, then the mind can be seized in the passage by a sense of the unreality of the cosmic Force and its creations;
it passes by a subjective abolition of them into the supreme superconscience. This sense of unreality and this sublimating
passage are the spiritual justification for the idea of a world created by Maya; but this consequence is not conclusive, since
a larger and more complete conclusion superseding it is possible to spiritual experience.
All these and other solutions of the nature of Maya fail to satisfy
because they have no conclusiveness: they do not
establish the inevitability of the illusionist hypothesis which, to be
accepted, needs to be inevitable; they do not bridge the
chasm between the presumed true nature of the eternal Reality and the
paradoxical and contrary character of the cosmic
Illusion. At the most a process is indicated that claims to make the
co-existence of the two opposites conceivable and
intelligible; but it has no such force of certitude or illuminating
convincingness effectively curing the improbability that its
acceptance would be obligatory on the intelligence. The theory of the
cosmic Illusion gets rid of an original contradiction, a
problem and mystery which may be otherwise soluble, by erecting another
contradiction, a new problem and mystery which
is irreconcilable in its terms and insoluble. For we start with the
conception or experience of an absolute Reality which is in
its nature eternally one, supracosmic, static, immobile, immutable,
self-aware of its pure existence, and a phenomenon of
cosmos, dynamism, motion, mutability, modifications of the original
pure existence, differentiation, infinite multiplicity. This
phenomenon is got rid of by declaring it to be a perpetual Illusion,
Maya. But this brings in, in effect, a self-contradictory
dual status of consciousness of the One to annul a self-contradictory
dual status of being of the One. A phenomenal truth of
multiplicity of the One is
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annulled by setting up a conceptual falsehood in the One creating an unreal multiplicity. The One for ever self-aware of its
pure existence entertains a perpetual imagination or illusory construction of itself as an infinite multiplicity of ignorant and
suffering beings unaware of self who have to wake one by one to awareness of self and cease individually to be.
In face of this solution of a perplexity by a new perplexity we begin
to suspect that our original premiss must have been
somewhere incomplete, — not an error, but only a first statement and
indispensable foundation. We begin to envisage the
Reality as an eternal oneness, status, immutable essence of pure
existence supporting an eternal dynamis, motion, infinite
multiplicity and diversity of itself. The immutable status of oneness
brings out of itself the dynamis, motion and
multiplicity, — the dynamis, motion and multiplicity not abrogating but
bringing into relief the eternal and infinite oneness. If
the consciousness of Brahman can be dual in status or action or even
manifold, there seems to be no reason why Brahman
should be incapable of a dual status or a manifold real self-experience
of its being. The cosmic consciousness would then
be, not a creative Illusion, but an experience of some truth of the
Absolute. This explanation, if worked out, might prove to
be more comprehensive and spiritually fecund, more harmonic in its
juncture of the two terms of our self-experience, and it
would be at least as logically tenable as the idea of an eternal
Reality supporting in perpetuity an eternal illusion real only to
an infinite multiplicity of ignorant and suffering beings who escape
one by one from the obscurity and pain of Maya, each
one by a separate extinction of itself in Maya.
In a second possible answer on the illusionist basis to the
problem, in the philosophy of Shankara which may be
described as a qualified Illusionism, an answer which is presented with
a force and comprehensiveness that are
extraordinarily impressive, we make a first step towards this solution.
For this philosophy affirms a qualified reality for
Maya; it characterises it indeed as an ineffable and unaccountable
mystery, but at the same time it does present us with a
rational solution, at first sight thoroughly satisfactory, of the
opposition which afflicts our mind; it accounts for our sense of
the persistent and pressing reality of the universe
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and our sense of the inconclusiveness,
insufficiency, vanity, evanescence, a certain unreality of life and
phenomena. For we
find a distinction made between two orders of reality, transcendental
and pragmatic, absolute and phenomenal, eternal and
temporal, — the former the reality of the pure being of Brahman,
absolute and supracosmic and eternal, the latter the reality
of Brahman in Maya, cosmic, temporal and relative. Here we get a
reality for ourselves and the universe: for the individual
self is really Brahman; it is Brahman who within the field of Maya
seems phenomenally to be subjected to her as the
individual and in the end releases the relative and phenomenal
individual into his eternal and true being. In the temporal field
of relativities our experience of the Brahman who has become all
beings, the Eternal who has become universal and
individual, is also valid; it is indeed a middle step of the movement
in Maya towards liberation from Maya. The universe too
and its experiences are real for the consciousness in Time and that
consciousness is real. But the question of the nature and
extent of this reality at once arises: for the universe and ourselves
may be a true reality though of a lesser order, or they
may be partly real, partly unreal, or they may be an unreal reality. If
they are at all a true reality, there is no place for any
theory of Maya; there is no illusory creation. If they are partly real,
partly unreal, the fault must lie in something wrong
either in the cosmic self-awareness or in our own seeing of ourselves
and the universe which produces an error of being, an
error of knowledge, an error in the dynamis of existence. But that
error can amount only to an ignorance or a mixed
knowledge and ignorance, and what needs to be explained then is not an
original Cosmic Illusion but the intervention of
Ignorance in the creative consciousness or in the dynamic action of the
Eternal and Infinite. But if universe and ourselves
are an unreal reality, if to a transcendental consciousness all this
has no truth of existence and its apparent reality ceases
once we step out of the field proper to Maya, then the concession
accorded with one hand is taken away by the other; for
what was conceded as a truth turns out to have been all the time an
illusion. Maya and cosmos and ourselves are both real
and unreal, — but the reality is an unreal reality,
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real only to our ignorance, unreal to any true knowledge.
It is difficult to see why, once any reality is conceded to ourselves
and to the universe, it should not be a true reality
within its limits. It may be admitted that the manifestation must be on
its surface a more restricted reality than the
Manifested; our universe is, we may say, one of the rhythms of Brahman
and not, except in its essential being, the whole
reality: but that is not a sufficient reason for it to be set aside as
unreal. It is no doubt so felt by mind withdrawing from itself
and its structures: but this is only because the mind is an instrument
of Ignorance and, when it withdraws from its
constructions, from its ignorant and imperfect picture of the universe,
it is impelled to regard them as nothing more than its
own fictions and formations, unfounded, unreal; the gulf between its
ignorance and the supreme Truth and Knowledge
disables it from discovering the true connections of the transcendent
Reality and the cosmic Reality. In a higher status of
consciousness the difficulty disappears, the connection is established;
the sense of unreality recedes and a theory of illusion
becomes superfluous and inapplicable. It cannot be the final truth that
the Supreme Consciousness has no regard upon the
universe or that it regards it as a fiction which its self in Time
upholds as real. The cosmic can only exist by dependence on
the supracosmic, Brahman in Time must have some significance for
Brahman in timeless eternity; otherwise there could be
no self and spirit in things and therefore no basis for the temporal
existence.
But the universe is condemned as ultimately unreal because it is
temporary and not eternal, a perishable form of being
imposed on the Formless and Imperishable. This relation can be
illustrated by the analogy of earth and the pot made out of
earth: the pot and other forms so created perish and go back to the
reality, earth, they are only evanescent forms; when they
disappear there is left the formless and essential earth and nothing
else. But this analogy can tell more convincingly the other
way; for the pot is real by right of its being made out of the
substance of earth which is real; it is not an illusion and, even
when it is dissolved into the original earth, its past existence cannot
be thought to have been unreal or an illusion. The
relation is not
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that of an original reality and a phenomenal
unreality, but of an original, — or, if we go back from earth to the
invisible
substratum and constituent ether, an eternal and non-manifest, — to a
resultant and dependent, a temporal and manifested
reality. Moreover, the pot form is an eternal possibility of earth
substance, or ethereal substance, and while the substance
exists the form can always be manifested. A form may disappear, but it
only passes out of manifestation into
non-manifestation; a world may disappear, but there is no proof that
world-existence is an evanescent phenomenon: on the
contrary, we may suppose that the power of manifestation is inherent in
Brahman and continues to act either continuously in
Time-eternity or in an eternal recurrence. The cosmic is a different
order of the Real from the supracosmic Transcendence,
but there is no need to take it as in any way non-existent or unreal to
that Transcendence. For the purely intellectual
conception that only the Eternal is real, whether we take it in the
sense that reality depends on perpetual duration or that the
timeless only is true, is an ideative distinction, a mental
construction; it is not binding on a substantial and integral
experience.
Time is not necessarily cancelled out of existence by timeless
Eternity; their relation is only verbally a relation of
contradiction; in fact, it is more likely to be a relation of
dependence.
Similarly, the reasoning which cancels the dynamics of
the Absolute, the imposition of the stigma of unreal reality on the
pragmatic truth of things because it is pragmatic, is difficult to
accept; for the pragmatic truth is after all not something quite
other, quite separate and unconnected with spiritual truth, it is a
result of the energy or a motion of the dynamic activity of
the Spirit. A distinction must, no doubt, be made between the two, but
the idea of an entire opposition can rest only on the
postulate that a silent and quiescent status is the Eternal's true and
whole being; but in that case we must conclude that
there is nothing dynamic in the Absolute and all dynamism is a
contradiction of the supreme nature of the Divine and
Eternal. But if a temporal or cosmic reality of any kind exists, there
must be a power, an inherent dynamic force of the
Absolute which brought it into being, and there is no reason to suppose
that the power of the
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Absolute can do nothing but create illusions. On the contrary, the Power that creates must be the force of an omnipotent
and omniscient Consciousness; the creations of the absolutely Real should be real and not illusions, and since it is the One
Existence, they must be self-creations, forms of a manifestation of the Eternal, not forms of Nothing erected out of the
original Void, — whether a void being or a void consciousness,—by Maya.
At the basis of the refusal to recognise the universe as real is the
concept or experience of the Reality as immutable,
featureless, non-active and realised through a consciousness that has
itself fallen into a status of silence and is immobile.
The universe is a result of dynamis in movement, it is force of being
throwing itself out in action, energy at work, whether
that energy be conceptive or mechanical or a spiritual, mental, vital
or material dynamis; it can thus be regarded as a
contradiction, — or a derogation from self, — of the static and
immobile eternal Reality, therefore unreal. But as a concept this
position of the thought has no inevitability; there is no reason why we
should not conceive of the Reality as at once static
and dynamic. It is perfectly rational to suppose that the eternal
status of being of the Reality contains in it an eternal force of
being, and this dynamis must necessarily carry in itself a power of
action and movement, a kinesis; both status of being and
movement of being can be real. There is no reason either why they
should not be simultaneous; on the contrary, simultaneity
is demanded, — for all energy, all kinetic action has to support itself
on status or by status if it is to be effective or creative;
otherwise there will be no solidity of anything created, only a
constant whirl without any formation: status of being, form of
being are necessary to kinesis of being. Even if energy be the primal
reality, as it seems to be in the material world, still it
has to create status of itself, lasting forms, duration of beings in
order to have a support for its action: the status may be
temporary, it may be only a balance or equilibrium of substance created
and maintained by a constant kinesis, but while it
endures it is real and, after it ceases, we still regard it as
something that was real. The principle of a supporting status for
action is a permanent principle, and its action is constant in
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Time-eternity. When we discover the stable Reality underlying all this movement of energy and this creation of forms, we
do indeed perceive that the status of created forms is only temporary; there is a stability of repetition of the kinesis in a
same persistent action and figure of movement which maintains substance of being in stable form of itself: but this stability is
created, and the one permanent and self-existent status is that of the eternal Being whose Energy erected the forms. But
we need not therefore conclude that the temporary forms are unreal; for the energy of the being is real and the forms made
by it are forms of the being. In any case the status of the being and the eternal dynamis of the being are both real, and they
are simultaneous; the status admits of action of dynamis and the action does not abrogate the status. We must therefore
conclude that eternal status and eternal dynamis are both true of the Reality which itself surpasses both status and dynamis;
the immobile and the mobile Brahman are both the same Reality.
But in experience we find that for us it is, normally, a quiescence
that brings in the stable realisation of the eternal and
the infinite: it is in silence or quietude that we feel most firmly the
Something that is behind the world shown to us by our
mind and senses. Our cognitive action of thought, our action of life
and being seem to overlay the truth, the reality; they
grasp the finite but not the infinite, they deal with the temporal and
not the eternal Real. It is reasoned that this is so because
all action, all creation, all determining perception limits; it does
not embrace or grasp the Reality, and its constructions
disappear when we enter into the indivisible and indeterminable
consciousness of the Real: these constructions are unreal in
eternity, however real they may seem or be in Time. Action leads to
ignorance, to the created and finite; kinesis and
creation are a contradiction of the immutable Reality, the pure
uncreated Existence. But this reasoning is not wholly valid
because it is looking at perception and action only as they are in our
mental cognition of the world and its movement; but
that is the experience of our surface being regarding things from its
shifting motion in Time, a regard itself superficial,
fragmentary and delimited, not total, not plunging into the inner sense
of
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things. In fact we find that action need not bind or
limit, if we get out of this moment-cognition into a status of
cognition of
the eternal proper to the true consciousness. Action does not bind or
limit the liberated man; action does not bind or limit the
Eternal: but we can go farther and say that action does not bind or
limit our own true being at all. Action has no such effect
on the spiritual Person or Purusha or on the psychic entity within us,
it binds or limits only the surface constructed
personality. This personality is a temporary expression of our
self-being, a changing form of it, empowered to exist by it,
dependent on it for substance and endurance, — temporary, but not
unreal. Our thought and action are means for this
expression of ourselves and, as the expression is incomplete and
evolutive, as it is a development of our natural being in
Time, thought and action help it to develop, to change, to alter and
expand its limits, but at the same time to maintain limits; in
that sense they are limiting and binding; they are themselves an
incomplete mode of self-revelation. But when we go back
into ourselves, into the true self and person, there is no longer a
binding or limitation by the limits of action or perception;
both arise as expressions of consciousness and expressions of force of
the self operative for a free self-determination of its
nature-being, for the self-unrolling, the becoming in time of something
that is itself illimitable. The limitation, which is a
necessary circumstance of an evolutive self-determination, might be an
abrogation of self or derogation from self, from
Reality, and therefore itself unreal, if it altered the essentiality or
totality of the being; it would be a bondage of the spirit and
therefore illegitimate if it obscured, by an alien imposition
proceeding from a force that is not-self, the Consciousness that is
the inmost witness and creator of our world-existence, or if it
constructed something contrary to the Being's consciousness
of self or will of becoming. But the essence of being remains the same
in all action and formation, and the limitations freely
accepted do not take from the being's totality; they are accepted and
self-imposed, not imposed from outside, they are a
means of expression of our totality in the movement of Time, an order
of things imposed by our inner spiritual being on our
outer nature-being, not a bondage inflicted
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on the ever-free spirit. There is therefore no
reason to conclude from the limitations of perception and action that
the
movement is unreal or that the expression, formation or self-creation
of the Spirit is unreal. It is a temporal order of reality,
but it is still a reality of the Real, not something else. All that is
in the kinesis, the movement, the action, the creation, is the
Brahman; the becoming is a movement of the being; Time is a
manifestation of the Eternal. All is one Being, one
Consciousness, one even in infinite multiplicity, and there is no need
to bisect it into an opposition of transcendent Reality
and unreal cosmic Maya.
In the philosophy of Shankara one feels the presence of a conflict, an
opposition which this powerful intellect has stated
with full force and masterfully arranged rather than solved with any
finality, — the conflict of an intuition intensely aware of
an absolute transcendent and inmost Reality and a strong intellectual
reason regarding the world with a keen and vigorous
rational intelligence. The intellect of the thinker regards the
phenomenal world from the standpoint of the reason; reason is
there the judge and the authority and no suprarational authority can
prevail against it: but behind the phenomenal world is a
transcendent Reality which the intuition alone can see; there
reason,—at least a finite dividing limited reason, — cannot
prevail against the intuitive experience, it cannot even relate the
two, it cannot therefore solve the mystery of the universe.
The reason has to affirm the reality of the phenomenal existence, to
affirm its truths as valid; but they are valid only in that
phenomenal existence. This phenomenal existence is real because it is a
temporal phenomenon of the eternal Existence, the
Reality: but it is not itself that Reality and, when we pass beyond the
phenomenon to the Real, it still exists but is no longer
valid to our consciousness; it is therefore unreal. Shankara takes up
this contradiction, this opposition which is normal to our
mental consciousness when it becomes aware of both sides of existence
and stands between them; he resolves it by obliging
the reason to recognise its limits, in which its unimpaired sovereignty
is left to it within its own cosmic province, and to
acquiesce in the soul's intuition of the transcendent Reality and to
support, by a
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dialectic which ends by dissolving the whole cosmic
phenomenal and rational-practical edifice of things, its escape from
the
limitations constructed and imposed on the mind by Maya. The
explanation of cosmic existence by which this is brought
about seems to be, — or so we may translate it to our understanding,
for there have been different expositions of this
profound and subtle philosophy,—that there is a Transcendence which is
for ever self-existent and immutable and a world
which is only phenomenal and temporal. The eternal Reality manifests
itself in regard to the phenomenal world as Self and Ishwara. The
Ishwara by his Maya, his power of phenomenal creation, constructs this
world as a temporal phenomenon,
and this phenomenon of things which do not exist in the utterly Real is
imposed by Maya through our conceptive and
perceptive consciousness on the superconscient or purely self-conscient
Reality. Brahman the Reality appears in the
phenomenal existence as the Self of the living individual; but when the
individuality of the individual is dissolved by intuitive
knowledge, the phenomenal being is released into self-being: it is no
longer subject to Maya and by its release from the
appearance of individuality it is extinguished in the Reality; but the
world continues to exist without beginning or end as the
Mayic creation of the Ishwara.
This is an arrangement which puts into relation with each other the
data of the spiritual intuition and the data of the
reason and sense, and it opens to us a way out from their
contradiction, a spiritual and practical issue: but it is not a
solution,
it does not resolve the contradiction. Maya is real and unreal; the
world is not a mere illusion, for it exists and is real in Time,
but eventually and transcendentally it turns out to be unreal. This
creates an ambiguity which extends beyond itself and
touches all that is not the pure self-existence. Thus the Ishwara,
though he is undeluded by Maya and the creator of Maya,
seems himself to be a phenomenon of Brahman and not the ultimate
Reality, he is real only with regard to the Time-world
he creates; the individual self has the same ambiguous character. If
Maya were to cease altogether from its operations,
Ishwara, the world and the individual would no longer be there; but
Maya is eternal, Ishwara and the world are eternal in
Time, the
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individual endures so long as he does not annul himself by knowledge. Our thought on these premisses has to take refuge in
the conception of an ineffable suprarational mystery which is to the intellect insoluble. But, faced with this ambiguity, this
admission of an insoluble mystery at the commencement of things and at the end of the process of thought, we begin to
suspect that there is a link missing. Ishwara is not himself a phenomenon of Maya, he is real; he must then be the
manifestation of a truth of the Transcendence, or he must be the Transcendent itself dealing with a cosmos manifested in
his own being. If the world is at all real, it also must be the manifestation of a truth of the Transcendence; for only that can
have any reality. If the individual has the power of self-discovery and entrance into the transcendent eternity and his
liberation has so great an importance, it must be because he too is a reality of the Transcendence; he has to discover himself
individually, because his individuality also has some truth of itself in the Transcendence which is veiled from it and which it
has to recover. It is an ignorance of self and world that has to be overcome and not an illusion, a figment of individuality and
world-existence.
It becomes evident that as the Transcendence is suprarational and
seizable only by an intuitive experience and
realisation, so also the mystery of the universe is suprarational. It
has to be so since it is a phenomenon of the transcendent
Reality, and it would not, if it were otherwise, be insoluble by the
intellectual reason. But if so, we have to pass beyond the
intellect in order to bridge the gulf and penetrate the mystery; to
leave an unsolved contradiction cannot be the final solution.
It is the intellectual reason that crystallises and perpetuates an
apparent contradiction by creating its opposite or dividing
concepts of the Brahman, the Self, the Ishwara, the individual being,
the supreme consciousness or superconscience and the
Mayic world-consciousness. If Brahman alone exists, all these must be
Brahman, and in Brahman-consciousness the
division of these concepts must disappear in a reconciling self-vision;
but we can arrive at their true unity only by passing
beyond the intellectual Reason and finding out through spiritual
experience where they meet and become one and what is
the spiritual reality of their
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apparent divergence. In fact, in the Brahman-consciousness the divergences cannot exist, they must by our passage into it
converge into unity; the divisions of the intellectual reason may correspond to a reality, but it must be then the reality of a
manifold Oneness. The Buddha applied his penetrating rational intellect supported by an intuitive vision to the world as our
mind and sense see it and discovered the principle of its construction and the way of release from all constructions, but he
refused to go farther. Shankara took the farther step and regarded the suprarational Truth, which Buddha kept behind the
veil as realisable by cancellation of the constructions of consciousness but beyond the scope of the reason's discovery.
Shankara, standing between the world and the eternal Reality, saw that the mystery of the world must be ultimately
suprarational, not conceivable or expressible by our reason, anirvacaniya;
but he maintained the world as seen by the
reason and sense as valid and had therefore to posit an unreal reality,
because he did not take one step still farther. For to
know the real truth of the world, its reality, it must be seen from the
suprarational awareness, from the view of the
Superconscience that maintains and surpasses and by surpassing knows it
in its truth, and no longer from the view of the
consciousness that is maintained by it and surpassed by it and
therefore does not know it or knows it only by its appearance.
It cannot be that to that self-creative supreme consciousness the world
is an incomprehensible mystery or that it is to it an
illusion that is yet not altogether an illusion, a reality that is yet
unreal. The mystery of the universe must have a divine sense
to the Divine; it must have a significance or a truth of cosmic being
that is luminous to the Reality that upholds it with its
transcending and yet immanent superconscience.
If the Reality alone exists and all is the Reality, the world also
cannot be excluded from that Reality; the universe is
real. If it does not reveal to us in its forms and powers the Reality
that it is, if it seems only a persistent and yet changing
movement in Space and Time, this must be not because it is unreal or
because it is not at all That, but because it is a
progressive self-expression, a manifestation, an evolving
self-development of That in Time which our consciousness cannot
yet see in its total or its essential
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significance. In this sense we can say that it is
That and not That, — because it does not disclose all the Reality
through any
form or sum of its forms of self-expression; but still all its forms
are forms of the substance and being of that Reality. All
finites are in their spiritual essence the Infinite and, if we look
deep enough into them, manifest to intuition the Identical and
Infinite. It is contended indeed that the universe cannot be a
manifestation because the Reality has no need of manifestation,
since it is for ever manifest to itself; but so equally it can be said
that the Reality has no need of self-illusion or illusion of any
kind, no need to create a Mayic universe. The Absolute can have no need
of anything; but still there can be, — not coercive
of its freedom, not binding on it, but an expression of its self-force,
the result of its Will to become, — an imperative of a
supreme self-effectuating Force, a necessity of self-creation born of
the power of the Absolute to see itself in Time. This
imperative represents itself to us as a Will to create, a Will of
self-expression; but it may be better represented as a force of
being of the Absolute which displays itself as a power of itself in
action. If the Absolute is self-evident to itself in eternal
Timelessness, it can also be self-manifest to itself in eternal motion
of Time. Even if the universe is only a phenomenal
reality, still it is a manifestation or phenomenon of Brahman; for
since all is Brahman, phenomenon and manifestation must
be the same thing: the imputation of unreality is a superfluous
conception, otiose and unnecessarily embarrassing, since
whatever distinction is needed is already there in the concept of Time
and the timeless Eternal and the concept of
manifestation.
The one thing
that can be described as an unreal reality is our individual sense of
separativeness and the conception of
the finite as a self-existent object in the Infinite. This conception,
this sense are pragmatically necessary for the operations
of the surface individuality and are effective and justified by their
effects; they are therefore real to its finite reason and
finite self-experience: but once we step back from the finite
consciousness into the consciousness of the essential and
infinite, from the apparent to the true Person, the finite or the
individual still exists but as being and power and manifestation
of the Infinite;
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it has no independent or separate reality. Individual independence, entire separativeness are not necessary for individual
reality, do not constitute it. On the other hand, the disappearance of these finite forms of the manifestation is evidently a
factor in the problem, but does not by itself convict them of unreality; the disappearance may be only a withdrawal from
manifestation. The cosmic manifestation of the Timeless takes place in the successions of Time: its forms must therefore be
temporary in their appearance on the surface, but they are eternal in their essential power of manifestation; for they are held
always implicit and potential in the essence of things and in the essential consciousness from which they emerge: timeless
consciousness can always turn their abiding potentiality into terms of time-actuality. The world would be unreal only if itself
and its forms were images without substance of being, figments of consciousness presented to itself by the Reality as pure
figments and then abolished for ever. But if manifestation or the power of manifestation is eternal, if all is the being of
Brahman, the Reality, then this unreality or illusoriness cannot be the fundamental character of things or of the cosmos in
which they make their appearance.
A theory of Maya in the
sense of illusion or the unreality of cosmic existence creates more
difficulties than it solves; it
does not really solve the problem of existence, but rather renders it
for ever insoluble. For, whether Maya be an unreality or
a non-real reality, the ultimate effects of the theory carry in them a
devastating simplicity of nullification. Ourselves and the
universe fade away into nothingness or else keep for a time only a
truth which is little better than a fiction. In the thesis of
the pure unreality of Maya, all experience, all knowledge as well as
all ignorance, the knowledge that frees us no less than
the ignorance that binds us, world-acceptance and world-refusal, are
two sides of an illusion; for there is nothing to accept
or refuse, nobody to accept or refuse it. All the time it was only the
immutable superconscient Reality that at all existed; the
bondage and release were only appearances, not a reality. All
attachment to world-existence is an illusion, but the call for
liberation is also a circumstance of the illusion; it is something
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that was created in Maya which by its liberation is
extinguished in Maya. But this nullification cannot be compelled to
stop
short in its devastating advance at the boundary fixed for it by a
spiritual Illusionism. For if all other experiences of the
individual consciousness in the universe are illusions, then what
guarantee is there that its spiritual experiences are not
illusions, including even its absorbed self-experience of the supreme
Self which is conceded to us as utterly real? For if
cosmos is untrue, our experience of the cosmic consciousness, of the
universal Self, of Brahman as all these beings or as
the self of all these beings, the One in all, all in the One has no
secure foundation, since it reposes in one of its terms on an
illusion, on a construction of Maya. That term, the cosmic term, has to
crumble, for all these beings which we saw as the
Brahman were illusions; then what is our assurance of our experience of
the other term, the pure Self, the silent, static or
absolute Reality, since that too comes to us in a mind moulded of
delusion and formed in a body created by an Illusion? An
overwhelming self-evident convincingness, an experience of absolute
authenticity in the realisation or experience is not an
unanswerable proof of sole reality or sole finality: for other
spiritual experiences such as that of the omnipresent Divine
Person, Lord of a real Universe, have the same convincing, authentic
and final character. It is open to the intellect which
has once arrived at the conviction of the unreality of all other
things, to take a farther step and deny the reality of Self and of
all existence. The Buddhists took this last step and refused reality to
the Self on the ground that it was as much as the rest a
construction of the mind; they cut not only God but the eternal Self
and impersonal Brahman out of the picture.
An uncompromising theory of Illusion solves no problem of our
existence; it only cuts the problem out for the individual
by showing him a way of exit: in its extreme form and effect, our being
and its action become null and without sanction, its
experience, aspiration, endeavour lose their significance; all, the one
incommunicable relationless Truth excepted and the
turning away to it, become equated with illusion of being, are part of
a universal Illusion and themselves illusions. God and
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ourselves and the universe become myths of Maya; for
God is only a reflection of Brahman in Maya, ourselves are only a
reflection of Brahman in illusory individuality, the world is only an
imposition on the Brahman's incommunicable
self-existence. There is a less drastic nullification if a certain
reality is admitted for the being even within the illusion, a
certain validity for the experience and knowledge by which we grow into
the spirit: but this is only if the temporal has a valid
reality and the experience in it has a real validity, and in that case
what we are in front of is not an illusion taking the unreal
for real but an ignorance misapprehending the real. Otherwise if the
beings of whom Brahman is the self are illusory, its
selfhood is not valid, it is part of an illusion; the experience of
self is also an illusion: the experience “I am That” is vitiated by
an ignorant conception, for there is no I, only That; the experience “I
am He” is doubly ignorant, for it assumes a conscious
Eternal, a Lord of the universe, a Cosmic Being, but there can be no
such thing if there is no reality in the universe. A real
solution of existence can only stand upon a truth that accounts for our
existence and world-existence, reconciles their truth,
their right relation and the truth of their relation to whatever
transcendent Reality is the source of everything. But this
implies some reality of individual and cosmos, some true relation of
the One Existence and all existences, of relative
experience and of the Absolute.
The theory of Illusion cuts the knot of the world problem, it does not
disentangle it; it is an escape, not a solution: a flight
of the spirit is not a sufficient victory for the being embodied in
this world of the becoming; it effects a separation from
Nature, not a liberation and fulfilment of our nature. This eventual
outcome satisfies only one element, sublimates only one
impulse of our being; it leaves the rest out in the cold to perish in
the twilight of the unreal reality of Maya. As in Science, so
in metaphysical thought, that general and ultimate solution is likely
to be the best which includes and accounts for all so that
each truth of experience takes its place in the whole: that knowledge
is likely to be the highest knowledge which illumines,
integralises, harmonises the significance of all knowledge and accounts
for, finds the basic and, one might almost say, the
justifying reason
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of our ignorance and illusion while it cures them; this is the supreme experience which gathers together all experience in the
truth of a supreme and all-reconciling oneness. Illusionism unifies by elimination; it deprives all knowledge and experience,
except the one supreme merger, of reality and significance.
But this debate belongs to the domain of the pure reason and the final
test of truths of this order is not reason but
spiritual illumination verified by abiding fact of spirit; a single
decisive spiritual experience may undo a whole edifice of reasonings
and conclusions erected by the logical intelligence. Here the theory of
Illusionism is in occupation of a very solid
ground; for, although it is in itself no more than a mental
formulation, the experience it formulates into a philosophy
accompanies a most powerful and apparently final spiritual realisation.
It comes upon us with a great force of awakening to
reality when the thought is stilled, when the mind withdraws from its
constructions, when we pass into a pure selfhood void
of all sense of individuality, empty of all cosmic contents: if the
spiritualised mind then looks at individual and cosmos, they
may well seem to it to be an illusion, a scheme of names and figures
and movements falsely imposed on the sole reality of
the Self-Existent. Or even the sense of self becomes inadequate; both
knowledge and ignorance disappear into sheer
Consciousness and consciousness is plunged into a trance of pure
superconscient existence. Or even existence ends by
becoming too limiting a name for that which abides solely for ever;
there is only a timeless Eternal, a spaceless Infinite, the
utterness of the Absolute, a nameless peace, an overwhelming single
objectless Ecstasy. There can certainly be no doubt of
the validity, — complete within itself, — of this experience; there can
be no denial of the overwhelming decisive
convincingness, — ekatma-pratyaya-saram,— with which this realisation seizes the consciousness of the spiritual seeker.
But still all spiritual experience is experience of the Infinite and it takes a multitude of directions; some of them, — and not
this alone, — are so close to the Divine and the Absolute, so penetrated with the reality of Its presence or with the ineffable
peace and power of the liberation from all that is less than It, that they carry with them this overwhelming sense of finality
complete
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and decisive. There are a hundred ways of
approaching the Supreme Reality and, as is the nature of the way taken,
so will
be the nature of the ultimate experience by which one passes into That
which is ineffable, That of which no report can be
given to the mind or expressed by any utterance. All these definitive
culminations may be regarded as penultimates of the
one Ultimate; they are steps by which the soul crosses the limits of
Mind into the Absolute. Is then this realisation of passing
into a pure immobile self-existence or this Nirvana of the individual
and the universe one among these penultimates, or is it
itself the final and absolute realisation which is at the end of every
journey and transcends and eliminates all lesser
experience? It claims to stand behind and supersede, to sublate and to
eliminate every other knowledge; if that is really so,
then its finality must be accepted as conclusive. But, against this
pretension, it has been claimed that it is possible to travel
beyond by a greater negation or a greater affirmation,—to extinguish
self in Non-Being or to pass through the double
experience of cosmic consciousness and Nirvana of world-consciousness
in the One Existence to a greater Divine Union
and Unity which holds both these realisations in its vast integral
Reality. It is said that beyond the duality and the non-duality
there is That in which both are held together and find their truth in a
Truth which is beyond them. A consummating
experience which proceeds by the exceeding and elimination of all other
possible but lesser experiences is, as a step
towards the Absolute, admissible. A supreme experience which affirms
and includes the truth of all spiritual experience,
gives to each its own absolute, integralises all knowledge and
experience in a supreme reality, might be the one step farther
that is at once a largest illuminating and transforming Truth of all
things and a highest infinite Transcendence. The Brahman,
the supreme Reality, is That which being known all is known; but in the
illusionist solution it is That, which being known, all
becomes unreal and an incomprehensible mystery: in this other
experience, the Reality being known, all assumes its true
significance, its truth to the Eternal and Absolute.
All truths, even those which seem to be in conflict, have their
validity, but they need a reconciliation in some largest
Truth
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which takes them into itself; all philosophies have
their value, — if for nothing else, then because they see the Self and
the
universe from a point of view of the spirit's experience of the
many-sided Manifestation and in doing so shed light on
something that has to be known in the Infinite. All spiritual
experiences are true, but they point towards some highest and
widest reality which admits their truth and exceeds it. This is, we may
say, a sign of the relativity of all truth and all
experience, since both vary with the outlook and the inlook of the
knowing and experiencing mind and being; each man is
said to have his own religion according to his own nature, but so too
each man may be said to have his own philosophy, his
own way of seeing and experience of existence, though only a few can
formulate it. But from another point of view this
variety testifies rather to the infinity of aspects of the Infinite;
each catches a partial glimpse or a whole glimpse of one or
more aspects or contacts or enters into it in his mental or his
spiritual experience. To the mind at a certain stage all these
viewpoints begin to lose their definitiveness in a large catholicity or
a complex tolerant incertitude, or all the rest may fall
away from it and yield place to an ultimate truth or a single absorbing
experience. It is then that it is liable to feel the
unreality of all that it has seen and thought and taken as part of
itself or its universe. This “all” becomes to it a universal
unreality or a many-sided fragmental reality without a principle of
unification; as it passes into the negativing purity of an
absolute experience, all falls away from it and there remains only a
silent and immobile Absolute. But the consciousness
might be called to go farther and see again all it has left in the
light of a new spiritual vision: it may recover the truth of all
things in the truth of the Absolute; it may reconcile the negation of
Nirvana and the affirmation of the cosmic consciousness
in a single regard of That of which both are the self-expressions. In
the passage from mental to overmind cognition this
many-sided unity is the leading experience; the whole manifestation
assumes the appearance of a singular and mighty
harmony which reaches its greatest completeness when the soul stands on
the border between Overmind and Supermind
and looks back with a total view upon existence.
This is at least a possibility that we have to explore and
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pursue this view of things to its ultimate
consequence. A consideration of the possibility of a great cosmic
Illusion as the
explanation of the enigma of being had to be undertaken because this
view and experience of things presents itself
powerfully at the end of the mental spiral where that reaches its point
of breaking or point of cessation; but once it is
ascertained that it is not the obligatory end of a scrupulous enquiry
into the ultimate truth, we can leave it aside or refer to it
only when needed in connection with some line of a more plastic course
of thought and reasoning. Our regard can now be
concentrated on the problem that is left by the exclusion of the
illusionist solution, the problem of the Knowledge and the
Ignorance.
All turns round
the question “What is Reality?” Our cognitive consciousness is limited,
ignorant, finite; our conceptions
of reality depend on our way of contact with existence in this limited
consciousness and may be very different from the way
in which an original and ultimate Consciousness sees it. It is
necessary to distinguish between the essential Reality, the
phenomenal reality dependent upon it and arising out of it, and the
restricted and often misleading experience or notion of
either that is created by our sense-experience and our reason. To our
sense the earth is flat and, for most immediate
practical purposes, within a limit, we have to follow the sense reality
and deal with the flatness as if it were a fact; but in
true phenomenal reality the flatness of the earth is unreal, and
Science seeking for the truth of the phenomenal reality in
things has to treat it as approximately round. In a host of details
Science contradicts the evidence of the senses as to the
real truth of phenomena; but, still, we have to accept the cadre
provided by our senses because the practical relations with
things which they impose on us have validity as an effect of reality
and cannot be disregarded. Our reason, relying on the
senses and exceeding them, constructs its own canons or notions of the
real and unreal, but these canons vary according to
the standpoint taken by the reasoning observer. The physical scientist
probing into phenomena erects formulas and
standards based on the objective and phenomenal reality and its
processes: to his view mind may appear as a subjective
result of Matter and self and spirit as unreal; at any rate he has to
act as if matter and energy alone
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existed and mind were only an observer of an independent physical reality which is unaffected by any mental processes
1 or any presence or intervention of a cosmic
Intelligence. The psychologist, probing independently into mind
consciousness
and mind unconsciousness, discovers another domain of realities,
subjective in its character, which has its own law and
process; to him Mind may even come to appear as the key of the real,
Matter as only a field for mind, and spirit apart from
mind as something unreal. But there is a farther probing which brings
up the truth of self and spirit and establishes a greater
order of the real in which there is a reversal of our view both of the
subjective mind realities and objective physical realities
so that they are seen as things phenomenal, secondary, dependent upon
the truth of self and the realities of the spirit. In this
deeper search into things mind and matter begin to wear the appearance
of a lesser order of the real and may easily come
to appear unreal.
But it is the reason accustomed to deal with the finite that makes
these exclusions; it cuts the whole into segments and
can select one segment of the whole as if it were the entire reality.
This is necessary for its action since its business is to
deal with the finite as finite, and we have to accept for practical
purposes and for the reason's dealings with the finite the
cadre it gives us, because it is valid as an effect of reality and so
cannot be disregarded. When we come to the experience
of the spiritual which is itself the whole or contains the whole in
itself, our mind carries there too its segmenting reason and
the definitions necessary to a finite cognition; it cuts a line of
section between the infinite and the finite, the spirit and its
phenomena or manifestations, and dubs those as real and these as
unreal. But an original and ultimate consciousness
embracing all the terms of existence in a single integral view would
see the whole in its spiritual essential reality and the
phenomenon as a phenomenon or manifestation of that reality. If this
greater spiritual consciousness saw in things only
unreality and an entire disconnection with the truth of the spirit, it
could not have—if it were itself a
Truth-Consciousness—any reason for maintaining them in continuous
1 This position has been shaken by
the theory of Relativity, but it must hold as a pragmatic basis for experiment
and affirmation of the scientific fact.
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or recurrent existence through all Time: if it so
maintains them, it is because they are based on the realities of the
spirit. But,
necessarily, when thus integrally seen, the phenomenal reality would
take on another appearance than when it is viewed by
the reason and sense of the finite being; it would have another and
deeper reality, another and greater significance, another
and more subtle and complex process of its movements of existence. The
canons of reality and all the forms of thought
created by the finite reason and sense would appear to the greater
consciousness as partial constructions with an element of
truth in them and an element of error; these constructions might
therefore be described as at once real and unreal, but the
phenomenal world itself would not become either unreal or unreal-real
by that fact: it would put on another reality of a
spiritual character; the finite would reveal itself as a power, a
movement, a process of the Infinite.
An original and ultimate consciousness would be a consciousness of the
Infinite and necessarily unitarian in its view of
diversity, integral, all-accepting, all-embracing, all-discriminating
because all-determining, an indivisible whole-vision. It would
see the essence of things and regard all forms and movements as
phenomenon and consequence of the essential Reality,
motions and formations of its power of being. It is held by the reason
that truth must be empty of any conflict of
contradictions: if so, since the phenomenal universe is or seems to be
the contrary of the essential Brahman it must be
unreal; since individual being is the contrary of both transcendence
and universality, it must be unreal. But what appear as
contradictions to a reason based on the finite may not be
contradictions to a vision or a larger reason based on the infinite.
What our mind sees as contraries may be to the infinite consciousness
not contraries but complementaries: essence and
phenomenon of the essence are complementary to each other, not
contradictory, — the phenomenon manifests the essence;
the finite is a circumstance and not a contradiction of the infinite;
the individual is a self-expression of the universal and the
transcendent, — it is not a contradiction or something quite other than
it, it is the universal concentrated and selective, it is one
with the Transcendent in its
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essence of being and its essence of nature. In the
view of this unitarian comprehensive seeing there is nothing
contradictory
in a formless Essence of being that carries a multitude of forms, or in
a status of the Infinite supporting a kinesis of the
Infinite, or in an infinite Oneness expressing itself in a multiplicity
of beings and aspects and powers and movements, for
they are beings and aspects and powers and movements of the One. A
world-creation on this basis is a perfectly natural
and normal and inevitable movement which in itself raises no problem,
since it is exactly what one must expect in an action
of the Infinite. All the intellectual problem and difficulty is raised
by the finite reason cutting, separating, opposing the power
of the Infinite to its being, its kinesis to its status, its natural
multiplicity to its essential oneness, segmenting self, opposing
Spirit to Nature. To understand truly the world-process of the Infinite
and the Time-process of the Eternal, the
consciousness must pass beyond this finite reason and the finite sense
to a larger reason and spiritual sense in touch with the
consciousness of the Infinite and responsive to the logic of the
Infinite which is the very logic of being itself and arises
inevitably from its self-operation of its own realities, a logic whose
sequences are not the steps of thought but the steps of
existence.
But
what has been thus described, it may be said, is only a cosmic
consciousness and there is the Absolute: the
Absolute cannot be limited; since universe and individual limit and
divide the Absolute, they must be unreal. It is self-evident
indeed that the Absolute cannot be limited; it can be limited neither
by formlessness nor by form, neither by unity nor by
multiplicity, neither by immobile status nor by dynamic mobility. If it
manifests form, form cannot limit it; if it manifests
multiplicity, multiplicity cannot divide it; if it manifests motion and
becoming, motion cannot perturb nor becoming change it: it
cannot be limited any more than it can be exhausted by self-creation.
Even material things have this superiority to their
manifestation; earth is not limited by the vessels made from it, nor
air by the winds that move in it, nor the sea by the waves
that rise on its surface. This impression of limitation belongs only to
the mind and sense which see the finite as if it were an
independent entity
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separating itself from the Infinite or something cut
out of it by limitation: it is this impression that is illusory, but
neither the
infinite nor the finite is an illusion; for neither exists by the
impressions of the sense or the mind, they depend for their
existence on the Absolute.
The Absolute is in itself indefinable by reason, ineffable to the
speech; it has to be approached through experience. It
can be approached through an absolute negation of existence, as if it
were itself a supreme Non-Existence, a mysterious
infinite Nihil. It can be approached through an absolute affirmation of
all the fundamentals of our own existence, through an
absolute of Light and Knowledge, through an absolute of Love or Beauty,
through an absolute of Force, through an absolute
of peace or silence. It can be approached through an inexpressible
absolute of being or of consciousness, or of power of
being, or of delight of being, or through a supreme experience in which
these things become inexpressibly one; for we can
enter into such an ineffable state and, plunged into it as if into a
luminous abyss of existence, we can reach a
superconscience which may be described as the gate of the Absolute. It
is supposed that it is only through a negation of
individual and cosmos that we can enter into the Absolute. But in fact
the individual need only deny his own small separate
ego-existence; he can approach the Absolute through a sublimation of
his spiritual individuality taking up the cosmos into
himself and transcending it; or he may negate himself altogether, but
even so it is still the individual who by self-exceeding
enters into the Absolute. He may enter also by a sublimation of his
being into a supreme existence or super-existence, by a
sublimation of his consciousness into a supreme consciousness or
super-conscience, by a sublimation of his and all delight of
being into a super-delight or supreme ecstasy. He can make the approach
through an ascension in which he enters into
cosmic consciousness, assumes it into himself and raises himself and it
into a state of being in which oneness and multiplicity
are in perfect harmony and unison in a supreme status of manifestation
where all are in each and each in all and all in the
one without any determining individuation, — for the dynamic identity
and mutuality have become complete; on the path
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of affirmation it is this status of the
manifestation that is nearest to the Absolute. This paradox of an
Absolute which can be realised through an absolute negation and through
an absolute affirmation, in many ways, can only be accounted for to the
reason if it is a supreme Existence which is so far above our notion
and experience of existence that it can correspond also
to our negation of it, to our notion and experience of non-existence,
but also, since all that exists is That, whatever its degree
of manifestation, it is itself the supreme of all things and can be
approached through supreme affirmations as through
supreme negations. The Absolute is the ineffable x overtopping and underlying and immanent and essential in all that we can
call existence or non-existence.
It is our first premiss that the Absolute is the supreme reality; but
the issue is whether all else that we experience is real
or unreal. A distinction is sometimes made between being and existence,
and it is supposed that being is real but existence
or what manifests as such is unreal. But this can stand only if there
is a rigid distinction, a cut and separation between the
uncreated Eternal and created existences; the uncreated Being can then
be taken as alone real. This conclusion does not
follow if what exists is form of Being and substance of Being; it would
be unreal only if it were a form of Non-Being, asat, created out of the Void, sunya. The states of existence through which we approach and enter into the Absolute must have
their truth, for the untrue and unreal cannot lead into the Real: but also what issues from the Absolute, what the Eternal
supports and informs and manifests in itself, must have a reality. There is the unmanifest and there is the manifestation, but
a manifestation of the Real must itself be real; there is the Timeless and there is the process of things in Time, but nothing
can appear in Time unless it has a basis in the timeless Reality. If my self and spirit are real, my thoughts, feelings, powers
of all kinds, which are its expressions, cannot be unreal; my body, which is the form it puts out in itself and which at the
same time it inhabits, cannot be a nothing or a mere unsubstantial shadow. The only reconciling explanation is that timeless
eternity and time eternity are two aspects of the Eternal and
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Absolute and both are real, but in a different order of reality: what is unmanifest in the Timeless manifests itself in Time;
each thing that exists is real in its own degree of the manifestation and is so seen by the consciousness of the Infinite.
All manifestation depends upon being, but also upon consciousness and
its power or degree; for as is the status of
consciousness, so will be the status of being. Even the Inconscient is
a status and power of involved consciousness in which
being is plunged into another and opposite state of non-manifestation
resembling non-existence so that out of it all in the
material universe may be manifested; so too the superconscient is
consciousness taken up into an absolute of being. For
there is a superconscient status in which consciousness seems to be
luminously involved in being and as if unaware of itself;
all consciousness of being, all knowledge, self-vision, force of being,
seem to emerge from that involved state or to appear in
it: this emergence, in our view of it, may appear to be an emergence
into a lesser reality, but in fact both the
superconscience and the consciousness are and regard the same Real.
There is also a status of the Supreme in which no
distinction can be made between being and consciousness, — for they are
too much one there to be thus differentiated, — but
this supreme status of being is also a supreme status of the power of
being and therefore of the power of consciousness; for
the force of being and the force of its consciousness are one there and
cannot be separated: it is this unification of eternal
Being with the eternal Consciousness-Force that is the status of the
supreme Ishwara, and its force of being is the dynamis
of the Absolute. This status is not a negation of cosmos; it carries in
itself the essence and power of all cosmic existence.
But still unreality is a fact of cosmic existence, and if all is the
Brahman, the Reality, we have to account for this
element of unreality in the Real. If the unreal is not a fact of being,
it must be an act or a formation of consciousness, and is
there not then a status or degree of consciousness in which its acts
and formations are wholly or partly unreal? If this
unreality cannot be attributed to an original cosmic Illusion, to Maya,
there is still in the universe itself a power of illusion of
Ignorance. It is
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in the power of the Mind to conceive things that are
not real, it is in its power even to create things that are not real or
not
wholly real; its very view of itself and universe is a construction
that is not wholly real or wholly unreal. Where does this
element of unreality begin and where does it stop, and what is its
cause and what ensues on the removal of both the cause
and the consequence? Even if all cosmic existence is not in itself
unreal, cannot that description be applied to the world of
Ignorance in which we live, this world of constant change and birth and
death and frustration and suffering, and does not the
removal of the Ignorance abolish for us the reality of the world which
it creates, or is not a departure out of it the natural
and only issue? This would be valid, if our ignorance were a pure
ignorance without any element of truth or knowledge in it.
But in fact our consciousness is a mixture of the true and the false;
its acts and creations are not a pure invention, a
baseless structure. The structure it builds, its form of things or form
of the universe, is not a mixture of reality and the unreal
so much as a half comprehension, a half expression of the real, and,
since all consciousness is force and therefore
potentially creative, our ignorance has the result of wrong creation,
wrong manifestation, wrong action or misconceived and
misdirected energy of the being. All world-existence is manifestation,
but our ignorance is the agent of a partial, limited and
ignorant manifestation, — in part an expression but in part also a
disguise of the original being, consciousness and delight of
existence. If this state of things is permanent and unalterable, if our
world must always move in this circle, if some
Ignorance is the cause of all things and all action here and not a
condition and circumstance, then indeed the cessation of
individual ignorance could only come by an escape of the individual
from world-being, and a cessation of the cosmic
ignorance would be the destruction of world-being. But if this world
has at its root an evolutionary principle, if our ignorance
is a half-knowledge evolving towards knowledge, another account and
another issue and spiritual result of our existence in
material Nature, a greater manifestation here becomes possible.
A farther distinction has to be made in our conceptions of
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unreality, so as to avoid a possible confusion in
our dealings with this problem of the Ignorance. Our mind, or a part of
it, has
a pragmatic standard of reality; it insists on a standard of fact, of
actuality. All that is fact of existence is to it real, but for it
this factuality or reality of the actual is limited to the phenomena of
this terrestrial existence in the material universe. But
terrestrial or material existence is only a part manifestation, it is a
system of actualised possibilities of the Being which does
not exclude all other possibilities not yet actualised or not
actualised here. In a manifestation in Time new realities can
emerge, truths of being not yet realised can put forth their
possibilities and become actual in the physical and terrestrial
existence; other truths of being there may be that are supraphysical
and belong to another domain of manifestation, not
realised here but still real. Even what is nowhere actual in any
universe, may be a truth of being, a potential of being, and
cannot, because it is not yet expressed in form of existence, be taxed
as unreal. But our mind or this part of it still insists on
its pragmatic habit or conception of the real which admits only the
factual and actual as true and is prone to regard all else
as unreal. There is then for this mind an unreality which is of a
purely pragmatic nature: it consists in the formulation of
things which are not necessarily unreal in themselves but are not
realised or perhaps cannot be realised by ourselves or in
present circumstances or in our actual world of being; this is not a
true unreality, it is not an unreal but an unrealised, not an
unreal of being but only an unreal of present or known fact. There is,
again, an unreality which is conceptual and perceptive
and is caused by an erroneous conception and perception of the real:
this too is not or need not be an unreality of being, it is
only a false construction of consciousness due to limitation by
Ignorance. These and other secondary movements of our
ignorance are not the heart of the problem, for that turns upon a more
general affliction of our consciousness and the
world-consciousness here; it is the problem of the cosmic Ignorance.
For our whole view and experience of existence
labours under a limitation of consciousness which is not ours alone but
seems to be at the basis of the material creation.
Instead of the original
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and ultimate Consciousness which sees reality as a
whole, we see active here a limited consciousness and either a partial
and unfinished creation or a cosmic kinesis that moves in a perpetual
circle of meaningless change. Our consciousness sees
a part and parts only of the Manifestation, — if manifestation it be, —
and treats it or them as if they were separate entities; all
our illusions and errors arise from a limited separative awareness
which creates unrealities or misconceives the Real. But
the problem becomes still more enigmatic when we perceive that our
material world seems to arise directly, not out of any
original Being and Consciousness, but out of a status of Inconscience
and apparent Non-Existence, our ignorance itself is
something that has appeared as if with difficulty and struggle out of
the Inconscience.
This then is the mystery, — how did an illimitable consciousness and
force of integral being enter into this limitation and separativeness?
how could this be possible and, if its possibility has to be admitted,
what is its justification in the Real and its
significance? It is the mystery not of an original Illusion, but of the
origin of the Ignorance and Inconscience and of the
relations of Knowledge and Ignorance to the original Consciousness or
Superconscience.
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