BOOK II
III
THE JNANI AND THE WORLD
D: Is the world perceived by the jnani [?]?M: From whom is the question? Is it from a jnani or
ajnani [?]?
D: From an ajnani, I admit.
M: Is it the world that seeks to decide the issue about its
reality? The doubt arises in you. Know in the first instance who the doubter is, and then you may consider if the world is real or not.
D: The ajnani sees and knows the world and its objects, which affect his senses of touch, taste etc. Does the jnani experience the world in like manner?
M:
You talk of seeing and knowing the world. But without knowing yourself, the knowing subject, (without whom there is no knowledge of the object), how can you know the true nature of the world, the known object? No doubt, the objects affect the body and the sense organs, but is it to your body that the question arises? Does the body say "I feel the object, it is real"? Or is it the world that says to you "I, the world, am real"?
D: I am only trying to understand the jnani's point of view about the world. Is the world perceived after Self-realization?
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M: Why worry yourself about the world and what
happens to it after Self-realization? First realise the Self. What does it matter if the world is perceived or not. Do you gain anything to help you in your quest by the non-perception of the world during sleep? Conversely, what would you lose now by the perception of the world? It is quite immaterial to the jnani or ajnani if he perceives the world or not. It is seen by both, but their viewpoints differ.
D: If the jnani and the ajnani perceive the world in like manner, where is the difference between them?
M: Seeing the world, the jnani sees the Self which is the
substratum of all that is seen; the ajnani, whether he sees the world or not, is ignorant of his true Being, the Self.
Take the instance of moving pictures on the screen in the cinema-show. What is there in front of you before the play begins? Merely the screen. On that screen you see the entire show, and for all appearances the pictures are real. But go and try to take hold of them. What do you take hold of? Merely the screen on which the pictures appeared so real. After the play, when the pictures disappear, what remains? The screen again!
So with the Self. That alone exists; the pictures come and go. If you hold on to the Self, you will not be deceived by the appearance of the pictures. Nor does it matter at all if the pictures appear or disappear.
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Ignoring the Self the ajnani thinks the world is real, just as ignoring the screen he sees merely the pictures, as if they existed apart from it. If one knows that without the seer there is nothing to be seen, just as there are no pictures without the screen, one is not deluded. The jnani knows that the screen, the pictures and the sight thereof are but the Self. With the pictures the Self is in its manifest form; without the pictures It remains in the unmanifest form. To the jnani it is quite immaterial if the Self is in the one form or the other. He is always the Self. But the ajnani seeing the jnani active gets confounded.
D: It is just that point that prompted me to put my first question, whether one who has realised the Self perceives the world as we do, and if he does, I should like to know how Sri Bhagavan felt about the mysterious disappearance of the photo yesterday…
M: (Smiling) You are referring to the photo of the
Madurai temple. A few minutes earlier it was passing through the hands of the visitors who looked at it in turn. Evidently, it was mislaid among the pages of some book or other they were consulting.
D: Yes, it was that incident. How does Bhagavan view it? There was anxious search for the photo which, in the end, could not be found. How does Bhagavan view the mysterious disappearance of the photo, just at the moment when it was wanted?
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M: Suppose you dream that you are taking me to your
distant country, Poland. You wake up and ask me, "I dreamt so and so. Did you also have some such dream or know in some other way that I was taking you to Poland?" What significance will you attach to such an enquiry?
D: But, with regard to the missing photo, the whole incident took place in front of Sri Bhagavan.
M: The seeing of the photo, its disappearance as well
as your present enquiry are all mere workings of mind.
There is a Puranic story which illustrates the point. When Sita was missing from the forest hermitage, Rama went about in search of her, wailing, `O Sita, Sita!' It is said that Parvati and Parameswara saw from above what was taking place in the forest. Parvati expressed her surprise to Siva and said "You praised Rama as the Perfect Being. See how he behaves and grieves at the loss of Sita!" Siva replied "If you are sceptical about Rama's perfection, then put him to the test yourself. Through your yoga maya transform yourself into the likeness of Sita and appear before him". Parvati did so. She appeared before Rama in the very likeness of Sita, but to her astonishment Rama ignored her presence and went on as before, calling out `O Sita, O Sita!', as if he were blind.
D: I am unable to grasp the moral of the story.
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M: If Rama were really searching for the bodily presence
of Sita, he would have recognised the person who was standing in front of himself as the Sita he had lost. But no, the missing Sita was just as unreal as the Sita that appeared before his eyes. Rama was not really blind; but to Rama, the jnani, the prior being of Sita in the hermitage, her disappearance, his consequent search for her as well as the actual presence of Parvati in the guise of Sita, were all equally unreal. Do you now understand how the missing photo was viewed?
D: I cannot say it is all clear to me. Is the world that is seen, felt and sensed by us in so many ways something like a dream, an illusion?
M: There is no alternative for you but to accept the
world as unreal, if you are seeking the Truth and the Truth alone.
D: Why so?
M: 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 as 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.
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D: It is easy to accept tentatively that the world is not ultimately real, but it is hard to have the conviction that it is really unreal.
M: Even so is your dream world real while you are
dreaming. So long as the dream lasts, everything you see, feel, etc., therein is real.
D: Is then the world nothing better than a dream?
M: What is wrong with the sense of reality you have
while you are dreaming? You may be dreaming of something quite impossible, for instance, of having a happy chat with a dead person. Just for a moment you may doubt in the dream saying to yourself, `Was he not dead?', but somehow your mind reconciles itself to the dream vision, and the person is as good as alive for the purposes of the dream. In other words, the dream as a dream does not permit you to doubt its reality. Even so, you are unable to doubt the reality of the world of your wakeful experience. How can the mind which has itself created the world accept it as unreal? That is the significance of the comparison made between the world of wakeful experience and the dream world. Both are but creations of the mind and so long as the mind is engrossed in either, it finds itself unable to deny the reality of the dream world while dreaming and of the waking world while awake. If, on the contrary, you withdraw your mind completely from the world and turn it within and abide thus, that is, if you keep awake always to the
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Self, which is the substratum of all experience, you will find the world, of which alone you are now aware, just as unreal as the world in which you lived in your dream.
D: As I said before, we see, feel and sense the world in so many ways. These sensations are the reactions to the objects seen, felt etc., and are not mental creations as in dreams, which differ not only from person to person but also with regard to the same person. Is that not enough to prove the objective reality of the world?
M: All this talk about inconsistencies and their
attribution to the dream world arises only now, when you are awake. While you are dreaming, the dream was a perfectly integrated whole. That is to say, if you felt thirsty in a dream, the illusory drinking of illusory water did quench your illusory thirst. But all this was real and not illusory to you so long as you did not know that the dream itself was illusory. Similarly with the waking world; and the sensations you now have, get coordinated to give you the impression that the world is real.
If, on the contrary, the world is a self-existent reality (that is what you evidently mean by its objectivity) what prevents the world from revealing itself to you in sleep? You do not say you have not existed in your sleep.
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D: Neither do I deny the world's existence while I am asleep. It has been existing all the while. If during my sleep I did not see it, others who are not sleeping saw it.
M: To say you existed while asleep, was it necessary to
call in the evidence of others so as to prove it to you? Why do you seek their evidence now? Those `others' can tell you of having seen the world (during your sleep) only when you yourself are awake. With regard to your own existence it is different. On waking up you say you had a sound sleep, so that, to that extent you are aware of yourself in the deepest sleep, whereas you have not the slightest notion of the world's existence then. Even now, while you are awake, is it the world that says "I am real", or is it you?
D: Of course I say it, but I say it of the world.
M: Well then, that world, which you say is real, is really
mocking at you for seeking to prove its reality while of your own Reality you are ignorant.
You want somehow or other to maintain that the world is real. What is the standard of Reality? That alone is Real which exists by itself, which reveals itself by itself and which is eternal and unchanging.
Does the world exist by itself? Was it ever seen without the aid of the mind? In sleep there is neither mind nor world. When awake there is the mind
and there is the world. What does this invariable concomitance mean? You are familiar with the principles of inductive logic, which are considered the very basis of scientific investigation. Why do you not decide this question of the reality of the world in the light of those accepted principles of logic?
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Of yourself you can say `I exist'. That is, yours is not mere existence, it is Existence of which you are conscious. Really, it is Existence identical with Consciousness.
D: The world may not be conscious of itself, yet it exists.
M: Consciousness is always Self-consciousness. If you
are conscious of anything you are essentially conscious of yourself. Unselfconscious existence is a contradiction in terms. It is no existence at all. It is merely attributed existence, whereas true Existence, the sat [?], is not an attribute, it is the Substance itself. It is the vastu [?]. Reality is therefore known as sat-chit [?], Being-Consciousness, and never merely the one to the exclusion of the other. The world neither exists by itself, nor is it conscious of its existence. How can you say that such a world is real?
And what is the nature of the world? It is perpetual change, a continuous, interminable flux. A dependent, unselfconscious, ever-changing world cannot be real.
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D: Not only does Western empirical science* consider the world real, but, the Vedas [?] etc., give elaborate cosmological descriptions of the world and its origin. Why should they do so if the world is unreal?
M: The essential purpose of the Vedas etc., is to teach
you the nature of the imperishable Atman, and to declare with authority "Thou art That".
D: I accept. But why should they give cosmological descriptions spun out at great length, unless they consider the world real?
M: Adopt in practice what you accept in theory, and
leave the rest. The sastras [?] have to guide every type of seeker after Truth, and all are not of the same mental make-up. What you cannot accept treat as artha vada or auxiliary argument.
* NOTE
In the last analysis, the world of sense-perception resolves itself into the two categories of time and space, and here is what Sir James Jeans writes in his book, The New Background of Science, as the conclusion drawn from experiments based on Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
"We find that space means nothing apart from our perception of objects, and time means nothing apart from our experience of events. Space begins to appear merely as a fiction created by our own minds (our physical bodies are merely things in space — see verse 16, Ulladu Narpadu),
an illegitimate extension to Nature of a subjective concept which helps us to understand and describe the arrangement of objects as seen by us; while time appears as a second fiction (without the past and the future, time as generally conceived is but a myth — see verse 15, Truth Revealed [?]), serving a similar purpose for the arrangement of events which happen to us".
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The reader should note that when time and space, are considered by modern science as mere fictions created by our own minds, objects and events become ipso facto mere creations of the mind (see verses 17 & 18 Truth Revealed ) because they cannot be without time and space.
As to the solidity attributed by the layman to matter, the following conclusions drawn from modern experimental physics furnish the answer.
1. Science knows nothing about the real nature of
the constituents of the atom. It knows only the radiations that come out of it, but never the source itself.
2. Since the atom continually radiates energy, the
electron at one time can never be identified with the electron at another time.
3. `The electron ceases altogether to have the
properties of a "thing" as conceived by common sense; it is merely a region from which energy may radiate'. (Outline of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell).
The following is the conclusion Bertrand Russell draws: "Now owing chiefly to two German physicists,
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Heisenburg and Schrodinger, the last vestiges of the old solid atom have melted away, matter has become as ghostly as anything in a spiritualist seance".
Let the reader now judge for himself in what way the waking world of sense-perception is fundamentally different from the dream-world, reminding himself of what has been stated above in the body of the chapter and of the following from `Who Am I?': "Except that the wakeful state is long and the dream state is short, there is no difference between the two". This truth, echoed by modern science, is expressed by Dr. Eddington thus: "The frank realization that physical science is concerned with the world of shadows is one of the most significant advances… In the world of physics we watch a shadow-graph performance of the drama of familiar life (the picture show on the screen, as Sri Bhagavan calls it). The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over shadow paper". (The Nature of the Physical World).