Dear
All,
Let
us summarize the learning from the last chapter of this treatise.
Love.
-----
QUESTION
This
delusion of the objective world (samsara) overpowers
us, thick and strong, like the darkness of clouds in the rainy season.
What
is this mighty force that drags us along?
SWAMI ANSWERS:-
That,
which is attached to the body and feels as “I” is the individual soul (jiva). The soul is
outward-faced; it believes all this mutable creation (jagath) and objective
world; it is immersed in both. When the soul ignores and forgets its non-dual
embodiment (a-dwaitha-swarupa), we call it
ignorance (a-jnana)
Author’s note
- God
has created human beings as divine, verily as God Himself.
- Once
a human being gains conscience and starts sensing/ knowing this world, he ends
up looking the world and the body with which he is born as real.
- In
this way, Man forgets that he is created as divine by the God.
- This
forgetting of man’s reality as DIVINE, is Absence of wisdom or Avidya or Ignorance.
Veiling without appearance
Even when one’s divine identity is taught, it is denied /
one fails to grasp it. Lack in faith and steadfastness to Imbibe the teaching.
Veiling with
appearance
Even when someone believes by
study of the scriptures (sastras)
and by the grace of providence that there is non-dual Atma, one
can be carried away by cursory and superficial arguments and dismiss it as
non-existent.
Though one has the
consciousness (chit)
that is aware of the very thing that one denies, the delusion (moha)
makes one declare that it is non-existent. This is the sinister role of veiling
with appearance.
Vikshepa
Though
you are formless and changeless, and though your nature is bliss (ananda), one is deluded into believing, feeling, and acting as
if you are the body, which has form, which changes, and which is the seat of
pain and grief.
One
refers to your self as the doer and
enjoyer; you speak of I, you, they, this, that, etc., deluded into believing
variety and multiplicity where there is only One. This illusion of projecting
many on the one is called vikshepa-sakthi, or
superimposition.
Devotee:. What is the real, and what is the unreal?
Swami: The one and only, non-dual,
being-awareness-bliss (satchidananda) absolute Brahman
(Parabrahman) is the Real.
Just as the name and the form of the snake are superimposed on a rope, this
cosmos (jagath)
— inclusive of everything from Brahman to a blade of
grass, all creatures, all inert objects like the earth — is super-imposed on
that Absolute, Supreme Real. The cosmos is the unreal (a-vastu) — that is, the
superimposed thing.
Devotee:
This superimposition of the name-form cosmos on the non-dual Real, how is it
caused?
Swami: By illusion (maya).
Devotee:
Well how does that ignorance produce all this cosmos (jagath)?
Swami: The power of ignorance doesn’t allow
you to see the rope; instead it imposes the snake upon it; it makes you see the
cosmos where there is only Brahman.
What
is the distinction between the waking stage and the dream stage?
Swami: Both are of the nature of illusion.
The impressions operate in both. The cosmos (jagath) is the stable
illusion; the dream is the unstable illusion. This is the distinction, there
is no other.
Devotee:
Swami, how can it be said that this cosmos is unreal, when it is concrete and
capable of being experienced in a variety of ways?
Swami: It is a delusion that hides the
reality from the understanding, the cosmos is as much a superimposition on Brahman
as
a series of pictures on the wall.
This concludes the theme - Sandeha Nivarini.
