by Sri Bmal Mohanty
VOL No. 27
March / April. 2003

ATTEMPTS TO DESCRIBE BRAMHAN - Part 1

"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

Our seers of the past were indeed very practical and very farsighted people to say the least. By denying any other source as to be an alternative, they not only fore-stalled any controversies and arguments but also maintained for eternity the purity of the Bramhan concept in its most unadulterated pure form. A supra-conceptual subject like Bramhan - if allowed to - can easily lend itself to anything and everything.

The belief here is that the srutis are indeed direct utterances by the Bramhan Himself and not created by any other agency. Therefore none else has the knowledge to contradict it. Bhasyas or elaborations and explanations are always welcome. But the central theme is unquestionable and unalterable.

Because Bramhan is not a concept of mind. It is The Truth experienced.

Satyam Satye pratisthitam

The truth is itself truth's only foundation.

Yah pasyati sah pasyati

He only sees, whoever sees it that way.

So, to know about Bramhan one has to fall back on Sruti alone.

Each of the Srutis, or especially the Upanishads, practically have only one central subject that they deal with. That is Bramhajnana or the knowledge about Bramhan. From this angle and that angle, from all possible view points, through affirmations and contradictions, through arguments and indications, the srutis try to give us glimpses of that all illusive concept. They are the best and the highest intellectual property that the world possesses - the knowledge supreme.

Having said this, we should also address ourselves to another apparently controversial observation which is often misunderstood and interpreted in a wrong way.

Can the srutis tell us everything about Bramhan really?

Paradoxically, the answer to this question is negative. No they can never. How can it be otherwise? If anything can tell us everything about Bramhan, it will be indeed contradiction in terms. It is foolish to capture Bramhan by any images of mind and foolish still to give verbal description of a subject which one of the upanishads -The Taittiriya itself admits :

Yato vaaco nivartante apraapya manasaa saha

From where the speech returns along with the mind without knowing it.

Bramhan is beyond definition - anirvacaniya, beyond limits of knowledge, beyond comprehension- acintya. Nobody knows from where to begin and nobody knows where its end is- anadi, and ananta. It remains ever beyond the limits of our limited faculties aparimeya, finer than the finest bigger than the biggest - anuraniyan mahatomahiyan, and, can not be described in totality, because no body knows what is its totalness.

It is beyond the highest stage of human comprehension and is revealed only by himself when HE, takes you unto himself, and the knower eventually becomes one with the knowledge itself, ceasing to exist without any kind of separate state of existence.

Bramhaveda Bramheiva bhavati.

The knower of Bramhan becomes Bramhan Himself. You know Bramhan only when you surrender your very existence. So who remains to tell what Bramhan is? Who is this Bramhavit ?

So if one can never know Bramhan until he becomes Bramhan himself, what do our Srutis do?

They simply open our eyes to stray, limited, minuscule few facets of the unlimited array of facets of that entity to assist us to probe further on our own.

In spite of the common perception the srutis - the vedas, the upanishads et all- are incapable of making us realise Bramhan. They only catalyse our Yoga leaving us and to us alone, to probe further ahead.

But probe we must otherwise the very purpose of our existence, our goal, our ascent is all lost. So the exercise goes on from time immemorial till the goal is reached encompassing lives after lives, yugas after yugas, manvantaras after manvantaras, kalpas after kalpas . This is the unstoppable journey of the jiva.

So when we venture to discuss about Bramhan, the objective can not be to get an absolute view, but to go through some vital slokas from our important srutis to get some glimpses only. That is all there to it.

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