Preliminary
At the start let me write few words on ‘logical argument’ and its importance in the scheme of matters spiritual. Often, we as sadhakas encounter vexed spiritual conundrums which defy a credible explanation. Or, sometimes, we hang on to only seemingly true pet notions with tenacity, when some simple logic would show how erroneous those beliefs really were. This post picks up on one such conundrum. I have then tried to apply common-sense logic (from “first principles”!) to arrive at certain unusual conclusions.
Some Vexed Questions!
When I was much younger, much like many others I guess, one of the questions that plagued me was - why can I not ‘see’ Isvara, God? Everything that I see around me, this wonderful world with its fabulous beings seems so real; why then could I not see the most fabulous, the supposedly most ‘real’ being of all, Isvara? It did not matter that I would be told by elders that He is without form. My immediate reaction would be that in the scriptural stories ordinary people could see Him, form or no form. The line of thought would lead on to – if Lord Rama, Lord Krsna, Lord Siva, or Isvara in any form, have a 'history' as chalked out in our scriptures, then where is Vaikuntha (Heaven)? What happened to Siva’s great bow that was broken by Lord Rama in that great marriage hall? Where was the arrow that hit Lord Krsna’s foot preserved? Where was Siva’s great scimitar given to Ravana, and recovered by Lord Rama stored? What happened to the race of the great talking Vanaras (Apes) that lived in Kishkinda, the kingdom of Sugriva
Note that these questions are not asking for silly stuff like proof that Isvara exists. They take as given that Isvara ‘exists’, and that scriptural stories are literally true. All that I wanted to know was, much as I could see and touch the objects of this world, why was it not possible for me to see and touch Isvara and all the Divine Objects associated with Him? Needless to say no answer of any credibility was ever forthcoming from any number of elders, big-time swamis and holy people that I put it to. In fact, the best answers I ever got were those that simply said – believe; forget about how and why, it cannot be explained. I could live with that. But what if we were to try to attempt an answer? Actually, it is very useful to do. As immediately a veritable treasure trove of ideas have to be considered, offering an opportunity to clear our notions with respect to the nature of the world and Isvara.
For, the simple, innocuous questions posed by the youngster above, put their finger squarely on a fundamental issue in spirituality: that most of us take the ‘seen’ world as ‘real’, thereby establishing a standard of reality that an entity has to be seen, and touched and so on, to be called ‘real’. Then, this standard of reality by itself implies that Isvara too, necessarily, and all His Divine Objects of yore, have to be available to be ‘seen’ and ‘touched’ to be reckoned as being ‘real’. But then, of course, they are not.
Dualism & Advaita
A word at this point may be fitting on the 2 broad views in this context available to us from doctrine. First, there is the commonly held ‘Dualistic’ viewpoint wherein we believe that the Jiva (the individual) is real, Isvara is real and so is the seen World. This would be, after all, the natural conclusion to be drawn from our daily interactions with this world and which, over time, becomes a rigid mindset. For most of us then, even the mere suggestion of ‘all this’ being unreal, makes us view the proponent of such a supposedly absurd idea as somewhat mad.
But then there is this very ‘mad’ idea in Advaita, wherein this Trinity of the Jiva, Isvara and the World is held as unreal, analogous to a dream; or as in the “sarpa-rajju” analogy, like the snake seen in the rope in poor light. Only Brahman or the Supreme Self is real. It is not as if the Trinity is completely non-existent, like the ‘son of a barren woman’, or like a ‘square circle’, but is of an illusory nature. Something is viewed as something else by that very same something. So Brahman is the one reality, but is illusorily viewed as the Trinity due the operation of Maya. Everything that is seen, touched, or dreamt of in this world, exists in the mind/ego; and is of the nature of vrttis, mere thoughts, in this mind/ego complex.
Superficially then, given that Isvara too is ‘unreal’ in Advaita like everything else, the adherents of the philosophy often stand accused of being dry atheists who do not believe in Isvara, much less worship Him with any reverence. But we will try and examine how, ironically, Isvara is actually more ‘real’ to the Advaitist than to the Dualist, and Advaita is the only system able to provide a logically consistent answer to the conundrum posed by the questions above. In fact, the amazing conclusion reached via simple logic is that any approach which treats the world as ‘real’, like that of the Dualists, will necessarily condemn Isvara to be ‘unreal’.
The Usual Answers
How would you then, dear reader, answer the basic questions as above? Let us first consider Isvara alone. I ask: you who hold that this world that we see and touch and wake up to every day as ‘real’, why then can I not see and touch the supposedly most real entity of them all, Isvara?
The usual reply would be of the type – of course Isvara is real too, and can be seen and touched; but alas, you yourself are an ‘impure’ entity at present. So first you need to become adequately pure via tapas, then you may see, feel and touch Isvara. Unfortunately, this is quite the wrong answer coming from any person who holds that the world is ‘real’. For, immediately then you have split your ‘real’ reality into 2 different categories, a ‘real’ reality that is seen and touched by all without any qualifications – the world; and then there is another ‘real’ reality of another type that comes into perception after certain steps are taken, certain qualifications obtained – the ‘reality’ pertaining to Isvara. Who is there to say then, that we can stop only at 2 ‘real’ realities? Perhaps there is a third entity too, that will come into cognitive range, or a fourth, a sort of ‘super-Isvara’ and ‘super-super-Isvara’, as we add more and more qualifications on more and more intense tapas? At what point can we be certain that we have reached the pinnacle of Isvara-hood? Clearly then, basic common-sense logic shows that the moment we admit of multiple ‘real’ realities, it becomes an infinite expansion and not the optimum solution; and that the standard of reality has to be only one and one only, and only one of the two, the world or Isvara, can be ‘real’. Assuming then, that the charitable folks that they are, the Dualists would rather assign ‘real’ reality to Isvara rather than themselves and the world, this fact alone – that there is an Isvara that necessarily has to ‘real’ but cannot be seen, implies that the ‘seen’ world and the Jiva have to be ‘unreal’.
The foregoing simple argument also shows why the standard of ‘reality’ has to be – only that which is present always and exists always; and the reason why “Sat” is primarily defined as “that which IS”, or “Existence”, or “Beingness”, with a sense of permanency and unbroken continuity built into it. It will not do if that entity is sometimes present and ‘felt’, and sometimes not; if it is present, it should always be so, else it fails the basic test of reality. And it is not as if this is a hypothetical standard of sorts, with nothing available around us to fulfill the essential criteria of unbroken continuity. For, there is indeed one ‘entity’ that fulfils this criterion and which is evident to each one of us, the Self. Hence the great teaching in the Bhagavad Gita (verse 2.16): “Nâsato vidyate bhâvo, nâbhâvo vidyate satah” (translated in the anecdote below).
[From “Day by Day”, Pg 102 (26.1.1946 afternoon); Devaraja Mudaliar had the pamphlet on Madhva’s Philosophy, given to Sri Bhagavan by a visitor, in his hands. He writes …]I said, “… But I find that this author also asks, as I sometimes used to feel, ‘Why should we refuse to treat anything as real unless it exists always?’ Bhagavan said, ‘How can anything be said to be real which is only a passing show?’ ”. Balaram also quoted Bhagavad Gita (verse 2.16) which says, "That which exists never ceases to exist. That which does not exist (at any time) has no existence."
So, those folks out there who hold that the world is ‘real’, know that you condemn God, then, to be ‘unreal’. And you will not be able to convincingly explain and answer the questions as asked above. Because then, the standard of reality is set as this world with all its natural laws and history. Anything then that is even remotely ‘fantastical’ in relation to these natural laws and history, like a what a scriptural story is, immediately becomes unviable and unreal.
The Great Race of Vanaras
To carry the arguments further, from the ‘fantastical’ mythological stories referred to earlier, let us pick up one story only as characteristic of the lot – the existence of the fabulous race of Vanaras as described in the Ramayana by Sri Valmiki: the Great Apes living in cities, walking, talking, wearing clothes and living like humans, extremely intelligent and very powerful, more powerful than any other race on earth, possessing great supernatural powers and tremendous spiritual maturity. How could they have existed in this world with no physical evidence for them now traceable? Surely some fossilized remains should have been found? Where did they fit into the natural scheme of evolution of creatures? And if they really existed once, what happened to them? How could they have disappeared from earth without a trace?
Again, let us see how the Dualists would try to answer this. Remember, they have to provide an answer in relation to this, their ‘real’, visible world. Typically then the reply would be, perhaps, that the Ramayana is an epic set in the Satya Yuga, a “pure” era in which such fabulous beings as the Vanaras could exist. And in the decadent Kali Yuga that we are living now, such holy creatures cannot be present. But vide irrefutable physical evidence we know that the age of the earth is 4.6 billion years, of which multi-cellular life appeared in the last 1 billion years, simple animals like fish in the last 500 million, mammals in the last 200 million years, the species ‘homo’ in the last 2.5 million years, and humans as we understand them, only in the last 200,000 years. Rudimentary civilization began, perhaps, only 10,000 years ago. As per scripture, Satya Yuga began 4.32 million years ago and ended 2.592 million years ago. Even if we assume that there could have been apes like the great Vanaras in the Satya Yuga whose fossil records are still to be found, there could not have been any humans then, and hence no Lord Ram! Also, this same world in which we humans live now in the Kali Yuga, is the same physical world which featured the Satya Yuga as well. No one claims that this earth itself was a physically different world at any point of time. How could then a separate set of natural laws apply in this world now, and a different set 4.32 million years ago when ape-like creatures were able to grow hundreds of feet tall in an instant, and be able to talk? Thus any answers regarding the Vanaras that may be forthcoming, will always get tied up in knots, as long as the world is taken as real.
And so, if the standard of reality is taken as this world as done by the Dualistic systems, it then logically follows that such a ‘fantastical’ race as the Vanaras could never have actually existed at all, and it was all a fictional creation of Sri Valmiki. In fact, all scriptural stories are reduced to mere allegories employing ‘fantastical’ rather than ‘actual’ creatures to explain finer points of morality and religion; they all become basically untrue in a ‘literal’ sense.
Ironically, it is only out of Advaita a logically coherent answer is forthcoming. By the way, personally, as mentioned earlier, I am a staunch believer in all the scriptural stories like those of the great race of Vanaras in the Ramayana and I believe that they are ‘literally’ true. That there was a race of great Vanaras on earth once upon a time, that there was a Hanumanji, and a Sugriva who once led the battle against the evil empire of Ravana. That there was and is Lord Krishna still playing with His Gopis and Lord Siva seated somewhere in His abode on Mount Kailash
An Answer from Advaita
“The ‘un-realities’ can be multiple”! This is an enormously interesting idea:
Advaita holds that whatever we can see or otherwise apprehend, the Jiva, Isvara and the ‘seen’ world, all which seem so ‘real’ superficially, are nothing but a series of thoughts in the mind/ego, and essentially ‘unreal’. They are all ‘unreal’ because they fail the basic criterion of ‘reality’ that an entity has to exist always to be ‘real’, and it is the experience of each one of us that these entities “come and go”. Has anyone seen or apprehended herself / himself or the world when the mind is absent? If we ponder on our situation in deep sleep, when the mind is not, we should conclude that at that point we do not remember our problems, or personal history, not even our identity at all. The Jiva then simply disappears. So does the world, and all notions that we may have of Isvara. All that can be recalled on waking is that there was only the sense of “I”, accompanied by indefinable peace and bliss, and naught else. Note that between the Jiva, world and Isvara we could certainly say that the level of ‘unreality’ of each is different, as Isvara, for instance, is not seen or touched even during waking. Isvara could thus be held to have a superior level of ‘unreality’. But, notwithstanding the fact that the level of ‘unreality’ for the world and Isvara may be different, what is significant is that the sublation of the mind in the Self eliminates all unrealities at one stroke, howsoever close to reality some of them may be.
Dreams too are intrinsically just the same as the images of the world that we see in waking, all thoughts, except they arise in our minds without the intervention of our organs of perception. And, ‘fantastical’ scriptural stories are thoughts too, much like Isvara, and thus as ‘real’ or ‘unreal’ howsoever you prefer to put it, as you yourself and the world around you. The Vanaras exist much like Isvara, and just as Isvara is not seen or touched, neither are they. The standard of ‘unreality’, thus, is not that objects have to be ‘seen’ to be ‘unreal’. All thought is anyhow ‘unreal’. What then is ‘fantastical’, and what is ‘literal’? It all is relative to each other, and in absolute terms, it is all ‘unreal’ (‘fantastical’ and ‘literal’ throughout this post are therefore put within inverted commas to highlight this fact). Certain ‘thoughts’ come linked to our organs of perception, like those of the Jiva and the seen world, and this imparts to them certain characteristics of seeming permanency and continuity of history; and some not, like those of the stuff of dreams. And some thoughts, analogous to dreams, but of an infinitely higher category spiritually, are of the nature of Isvara and of the great scriptural stories. But in essence, they are identical, mere thoughts in the mind/ego complex.
A word here may be appropriate to highlight the fact that the foregoing does not in any manner diminish the “Godliness” of Isvara. Though technically it may be so, to refer to Him merely as the least ‘unreal’ being of all, is a bit like calling the Kohinoor diamond a lump of carbon. Once manifestation is, He controls the Jiva and the world according to His Will, or, if you prefer, according to His Divine Laws. The Jiva is beholden to worship Him and offer unto Him all devotion and love as is described in the scriptures. The entity Arvind then, as long as he feels his "Arvind-ness" as present and palpable, will worship Isvara, as Lord Siva or Lord Ram or as the great Vanara Hanumanji, with all the love and reverence possible. And when the Jiva, the ego/mind complex referred to as Arvind, extinguishes, the Supreme Self shines forth; whither then the Jiva, the world, or Isvara?
[That the world is naught but but an illusion is derived from science as well. We all know that the atom is 99% space. Of the rest 1% comprising of the sub-atomic particles, the theory is that, again, they may be 99% space themselves! And if we consider some of the cutting-edge developments in the field, “String theory” would reduce the entire universe to vibrations; that the basic electromagnetic force of nature vibrating in a particular plane becomes an electron, and if it vibrates in another plane would be a proton, and so on. It is just that certain electromagnetic radiations that we call light, bounce off certain other electromagnetic forces that surround the sub-atomic and atomic entities, which then being detected by our eyes causes us to ‘see’ the world as solid, which otherwise is essentially nothing but blank space. Or, to put it in another way, certain electromagnetic vibrations of a particular nature cause atoms and molecules to form and then come together in such specific ways so as to form a brain and eyes and bodies; and these organs then detect certain other vibrations surrounding them as the objects of the world; all out of nothing. What is basically blank space is illusorily viewed as solid objects, by the illusion of solidity and form that is us! Does that not sound very much like the world view from Advaita?]
Cut back to our primary question of the Vanaras. The discerning reader may point out that if everything is a thought and all thoughts are essentially equally ‘real’ (‘unreal’), shouldn’t it be then held that every fantasy of every person in the world too is ‘real’ (‘unreal’)? Should it not follow that every story written by anyone, any work of fiction in the world, is also as ‘real’ (‘unreal’) as the Ramayana, and should too have ‘happened’ once upon a time somewhere in the world? What then makes the Ramayana ‘real’ for the Advaitist, and the Harry Potter stories ‘unreal’, for instance?
Well, for a start, Harry Potter in the scheme of things here is ‘non-existent’ like the “horns of the hare” or the “square circle”. That is, ‘non-existent’ and ‘unreal’, as compared to Ramayana as being ‘existent’ and ‘unreal’. Let me elaborate further: the Ramayana is essentially a series of thoughts, vrttis, in the mind/ego of the Great Sage Sri Valmiki, who could peer into both levels of unreality as exemplified by Isvara and the world, and thereby witness the events of the great epic actually happening, whilst still living in the same world as known to you and me. The words of Sri Valmiki, the Great Sage, come with a credibility non-pareil, and in the Ramayana he confirms that the events of the Ramayana happened as told. Something out there, for want of a better term, created these special vrttis comprising the story of the Ramayana in the mind of the great sage, much like the objects of the world are seen by vrttis created in the minds of us ordinary folks like you and me. In essence, the Ramayana, and the ordinary ‘seen’ world, are both thoughts and equally ‘real’ (‘unreal’), the difference being that only a great sage like Sri Valmiki could ‘see’ the former. [So if Sri Valmiki had, for instance, also written a work of fiction, a story purely out of his imagination, that would be taken as materially different from the Ramayana, much as the Harry Potter stories are].
We have come about a full circle. For, these vrttis in the great sage’s mind, displaying to him the world of the Ramayana, are then quite similar to the Dualist’s original reply stating that Isvara will come into view once tapas reaches a certain level. Advaita will agree that only the great sage is at that elevated spiritual level to be able to get such special vrttis and witness the Divine events of the Ramayana. The Dualists answer given earlier was wrong, essentially, ONLY because they held that the world is ‘real’; because immediately then, it runs into a whole series of logical inconsistencies which resolve themselves only if the world and the Trinity as described earlier, are held to be ‘unreal’.
In Conclusion
The simple questions posed by the youngster led us squarely into doctrine concerning the nature of the world. But why all this hoo-hah about whether the world is ‘real’ or not, the reader may ask?
Well, personally, I believe that it is important for every one, whether a sadhaka or not, to at least have an open mind towards the idea that the world is unreal. Because, it is not possible for anyone to be consistently at peace or to enjoy any modicum of happiness, without holding that it all is unreal and illusory. If you hold the world as real, you will continue to be sucked into the sometimes wonderful, sometimes ugly objects and events that it keeps tossing up at you. You could be happy for a while and then be in the depths of despair following, an eternal flip-flop between the two poles. To build up the necessary vairagya (dispassion) to even out the wild swings between bliss and pain, and to find some measure of Shanti (peace), you have no option but to hold the wonderful or the dreadful things happening to you as equally welcome or unwelcome, sort of meaningful superficially but meaningless internally, and that can happen only if you believe that 'it all', is essentially ‘unreal’. And for sadhakas particularly, whether following the bhakti, yoga, or the meditation-based paths, I believe that this belief is mandatory for any sort of spiritual progress to be achieved.
[From the “Maharshi’s Gospel”, Chapter III, “The Jnani and the World”, Pg 58-59; Sri Bhagavan said ...]“There is no alternative for you but to accept the world as unreal, if you are seeking the Truth and the Truth alone.{Why so?}For the simple reason that unless you give up the idea that the world is real your mind will always be after it. If you take the appearance to be real you will never know the Real itself, although it is the Real alone that exists. This point is illustrated by the analogy of the ‘snake in the rope’. As long you see the snake you cannot see the rope as such. The non-existent snake becomes real to you, while the real rope seems wholly non-existent as such.”
In the posts that follow, I hope to post many anecdotes from Sri Bhagavan’s literature, and scripture in general, on this theme holding the world as ‘unreal’.
