by Sri Bmal Mohanty
VOL No. 18
April.. 2002

CHAPTER Nineteen- LOOKING FOR GOD BETWEEN REAL AND UNREAL - an approach

"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

But no one at the same time can ignore the reflection as totally unreal. The reflection belongs to you. There is something of you definitely in that reflection. Your reflection can not be my reflection. It belongs only to you. of the sun as it also illumines its surroundings. But it is far from being the real sun.

So the unreal phenomenon can not be totally devoid of the real entity. This is the paradox of mithya and satya- false and true, which foxes the sadhaka all the time. Even knowledgable sadhakas keep pondering over it. Our seers say Jagatmithya Bramhan satya. The phenomenal world is false. Bramhan is true. And again they say Isavasyam idamsarvam yat kinca jagatyam jagat. All that you see as the phenomenal world houses the Bramhan and He is inseparable from it. Lord Krishna also declares "I am the great source of everything. All these have come out of me.

How do both exist in the same? This is the great vedantic paradox often misunderstood

The vedantin mind says that both are same really, when looked from different levels of perception. All depends on which level or from what position of mental consciousness you are looking at it.

The one and only one, can look as many and of multiplicity of variants from different levels of the mind.

Take another example of the case of the rising sun. In the morning if you look at the sun in the horizon you see the sun rising. We call it the rising sun. Yet some one standing at the opposite longitude on the globe will see the same sun as the setting sun. Both are right. The sun does not change, yet it is both the rising sun as well as the setting sun at the same time. The rising sun is getting manifested or becoming vyakta and the setting sun is vanishing and becoming avyakta. Yet again, is the sun really rising or setting? Both statements are true yet so false.

It is all the play of our perception - the maya. The apparent multiple perception is known as vivarta or unsubstantiated existence.

Similar logic of perception is applicable to Bramhan also. He is something from one perception, one consciousness level, one degree of mind and another thing ( may be very opposite) from another perception and consciousness level.

In a little more practical level, take our own religious beliefs. What does the sanatan spirituality preaches? You may be a devotee of Krishna, I may be of Durga. He may be of Allah and someone else may be a devotee of Jesus or Rama. Yet all intelligent people subscribe to the fact that it is the same Lord, the Bramhan, the pure consciousness which, with certain perceived qualities appeals to me as Rama. With another set of perceived qualities it appeals to some as Krishna or Jesus and something else to some one else.

The truth of the matter is that the Bramhan is none of these things, yet everything and all of these things.

These different concepts or variants are superimposed on Bramhan and is the work of our senses, our indriyas, our mind, our intellect and our ego. They are indeed imaginative creations of our mortal senses, our mortal mind and our mortal intellect.

Earlier we have discussed many times that these senses of ours are all limited in their capabilities. Therefore logically what is produced by our senses will also give only a limited view and therefore these are far removed from the real unlimited source of all things.

We also know that whatever be the functioning of our senses, they derive this power of their functioning from the same source - the Bramhan. Therefore by virtue of their functioning, whatever projections they make, Bramhan lies at the root of all that. That is what is to be understood as the mahatyoni the `great source' from which everything originates and having originated are projected by our senses.

There is another beautiful explanation that will make our understanding even clearer. I would like to borrow from Swami Chinmayananda, his example of the burning joss stick, or the aromatic incense stick.

If in a fairly dark room you light up a joss stick, and then rotate the burning stick round and round rapidly- as you do during the arati-, what do we see?. We see a ring of light, a golden circle.

This phenomenon explains many things to help us understand the nature of Bramhan.

To anyone watching this golden circle, it is absolutely real. If you ask him if he sees a golden circle or not, his answer will definitely be `yes'. But is it really real? Can one hold it or take it somewhere? Then how can it be real?

On the other hand it is really visible and right in front of you. How can you disbelieve your own eyes?

How is this golden ring manifested? It is by the play of our sense organs. That is how we perceive the ring.

Further is it really a ring? If we take a photograph of the ring with a very high speed camera, we shall see that the ring is indeed a series of separate points of light. They look like a continuous ring because our eyes can not differentiate one point from another. This fact underlines not only the limitations of our sense organs, but also that the real truth to be understood one has to go beyond the reach of the sense organs.

Consider also further, that you can see this golden ring only when there is fair amount of darkness. In the bright sunlight the unreal ring shall vanish.

Each of the above observations help us to understand Bramhan and this creation.

Earlier we have discussed that in Bramhan, both passivity as well as action are inherent, like the deep calm ocean and the turbulent surface waves.

We have, like the burning tip of the joss stick, the existence of pure consciousness glowing steadily with its self knowledge. That is sat or real or dhruva the constant factor. This consciousness is the primordial energy source for all things and beings. When motion is superimposed, our sense organs perceive all these forms and objects that we call jagat., the universe or the creation. It is aptly called jagat - something that now shows up but not there in the next moment. Jayate meaning coming to exist and gaccati meaning goes away.

The golden ring is also visible to us because of the darkness surrounding us. We also see this unreal creation because of our darkness of ignorance - the ajnana timira.

The eyes saw the golden ring and because of their limitations they could not fix themselves on the burning point of the joss stick. Likewise perception of Bramhan is beyond the capability of our sense organs. If we rely entirely on them, they always give a false unreal picture. An absolute picture is indeed beyond the realm of our mortal sense organs. If the power of the eyes could be transcended, one could fix the burning tip of light. In other words when we rise to a higher level of knowledge, when the mind becomes a higher mind, we are able to fix our vision on the light source - the Bramhan.

So the unreal is like an extension of the real, both being the same. From the real the unreal originates, but being unreal themselves they are without substance.