(Feb 18,2014) Spiritual Message for the Day – The Structure of the Universe by Swami Krishnananda

The Structure of the Universe

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 3 The Philosophy of Religion by Swami Krishnananda

What Is Reality?

There are two aspects of experience – the real and the unreal; and everything can be divided into two camps – that which really is, and that which is an appearance. That which does not partake of the characteristics of reality is called appearance. Reality is that which persists in the three periods of time, that which existed in the past, that which exists in the present, and that which shall exist in the future also, without any change. But, with our eyes, we have not seen any such thing. There is nothing in the world which will stand this kind of a test of indestructibility, unchangeability, and permanence. The inherent instinctive feeling of man that there exists such a reality, along with the urge to find a solution to the human predicament, motivates the search for reality, which starts with the analysis of the immediately available human experience, which is the world.

The World Is Mechanistic in Nature

The material world is the reality before man - the physical world of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air and ether. The world, or the universe, under the definition of being constituted of basic physical molecules, was defined as mechanistic in its nature. We can precisely say how the machine works by a study of its parts. The whole can be studied by a study of the parts. This led to materialist science, and behaviorist psychology.

The mechanistic notion of the universe was confirmed scientifically and mathematically by such thinkers as Newton and his follower Laplace, who thought that the whole astronomical universe is capable of interpretation, almost like the working of a clock – and everyone knows how a clock works. It has no life, yet it works. So, the whole universal action is a lifeless action, and bodily action is similar to that. If it appears that human beings have life, it is only an epiphenomenon, a projection, a sort of appearance including even the intelligence and the mind; so they believed.

The Presence of Consciousness Needs Explanation

The relationship between two things matter and consciousness has to be explained. Matter is the cause of intelligence: that is the thesis. But matter is everywhere. Therefore, the effect, which is intelligence, also, has to be everywhere, wherever matter is. This implies matter and consciousness are everywhere simultaneously. How can this be possible? Even if this position is accepted, another difficulty arises, which is not easily solved: viz., the relationship between effect and cause.

There can be an identity or a difference between two things. A can be the same as B, or A is not the same as B. There cannot be a third relationship between two things. If A is the same as B, it is useless to call it A; unnecessarily another name is given to it. But if A is not B, it has no connection with B. Hence, it bears no relation to it. Therefore, it cannot be an effect of the cause.

Consciousness cannot be an effect of matter if it does not bear any relationship to matter. Thus, the relationship, if it obtains at all, has to be one of identity or difference. If it is identical, materialism falls in one second. The whole matter which is the universe would be aglow with consciousness. But if it is different, it does not follow that consciousness is exuded by matter. It stands as a separate identity. Then, its relationship to matter remains unexplained.

Samkhya, or Dualistic Philosophy

People felt a difficulty of their own in identifying consciousness with matter. So they created a philosophy of their own called Samkhya – "I cannot be the same as the body, and the body cannot be the same as me; consciousness is not matter, matter is not consciousness; yet both exist; I can see the body, and I can see that I have intelligence, also. So, intelligence is different from matter; Purusha is different from Prakriti."

A new genie was created, a kind of a goblin, as it were, viz., the individual Jiva, the mixture of Purusha and Prakriti, a little of consciousness and a little of matter, by an imaginary relationship brought about between the two principles.

The Doctrine of Samkhya Is basically not Different From Materialism

Samkhya is only a restatement of the same problem of the materialists. The problem in the concept of materiality is the relationship between matter and consciousness. Previously what is called matter, is now called Prakriti; and what is earlier called consciousness is now called Purusha. The doctrine of Samkhya is nothing but a materialistic doctrine itself, which has been reshaped by a camouflage of a so-called spirituality of Purusha.

What is then, the relationship between Purusha and Prakriti? There is no relationship absolutely. There cannot be any relationship, because they are two utterly different elements. If they are utterly different, how does one know that they are different? Who is making this statement that Purusha is different from Prakriti? It cannot be said that Prakriti is making this statement, because it is unconscious; nor can it be said that Purusha is making this statement, because it has no connection with Prakriti. It cannot even know that Prakriti exists. But, if it knows that Prakriti exists, it has established a relationship already; its independence has failed. And, if the establishment of relationship has taken place, the nature of this relationship between the two has to be explained, a difficulty which was initially envisaged in understanding or studying the materialistic philosophy.

Patanjali's Proposition

The Yoga of Patanjali is based on the metaphysics of Samkhya, but it differs from Samkhya in one important point. How could anyone think of these two different principles Purusha and Prakriti, unless there is a thinker of the two things? The person, the element, or the principle, that is aware of the existence of Prakriti on this side, and Purusha on the other, remains as a third thing altogether. Such a witnessing principle cannot belong to either Purusha, or to Prakriti. But the Samkhya says that there cannot be a third thing. For it, there are only two things. The Samkhya defeats itself by positing two utterly different principles.

Who willed originally, who laid down this law that one body of matter should pull another body of matter in a particular manner? Why should there be this law of gravitation at all? Everything can be independent of, or different from, everything else. But, that does not seem to be the case. There is mutual action and reaction seen among bodies. One part sets up action, another part sets up reaction. There must be a connection between the two. Otherwise, there is no reaction of action. So, the third principle is called Isvara, in the language of the Yoga of Patanjali.

Instead of solving the difficulty of explaining the relation between two things, Patanjali seems to create another problem of a need to find a relation between three things, Prakriti, Purusha and Isvara. How are they related to each other? Are they identical, or different? Now, again, the problem of identity and difference arises.

Philosophy seems to have failed. The analysis of the world leads us nowhere. The problems remain as problems, unanswered, after a little bit of preliminary thought philosophically.

Excerpts from:

The Structure of The Universe: Chapter 3 The Philosophy of Religion by Swami Krishnananda

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(Oct 15,2013) Spiritual Message for the Day –Distinction between Purusha and Prakriti

Distinction between Purusha and Prakriti

Divine Life Society Publication: Discourse 3 – Commentary on the Bhagavadgita by Swami Krishnananda

 

We look at the world only with our eyes, and judge things according to the report that is provided through the medium of the senses. Every perception is a movement of the self towards an object. Our conclusion that we know the world or we know a thing is conditioned:  firstly, by it having to pass through the mentation, the psychic organ, the antahkarana; secondly, by the mind having to think only through the sense organs; thirdly, by the sense organs having to visualize things as located in space and time. So there is a threefold defect in human perception which includes social relations and everything that we regard as ours, or not ours.

The world is not as it appears to the eyes; it is a whitewash that we see, as the inside bricks and the cement are not visible to the outer perception.

We are essentially consciousness. This consciousness is the chaitanya shakti or the chaitanya purusha, which is indivisibly present and not divisible under any circumstance. Consciousness has to be there even between the two parts, which is to say that consciousness is everywhere.

Sankhya calls the objective character of perception as prakriti, and the subjective consciousness which perceives is called purusha. So the Sankhya divides reality into two phases or blocks of power – consciousness and matter, subject and object, purusha and prakriti. Experience is supposed to be engendered by a contact of consciousness with prakriti; purusha comes in contact with prakriti. Consciousness is never an object; prakriti is never a subject.  How does the mind or the individual consciousness experience that a given thing is there or the world is there?

Consciousness appears to perceive as if there is some object.  For instance, if a red flower is brought near a colorless pure crystal, it will appear as if the whole crystal is red. The world is never correctly known at any time, just as there is always a dissimilarity between the colored flower and the crystal, notwithstanding the fact that the crystal has apparently assumed the character (redness) of the object. A red-hot iron rod looks like fire, not like iron. It is glowing, white heat, yet that glow which is white heat is the fire; and there is something there which is not the fire – namely, the iron rod. The impact of the heat on the iron rod is such that the rod has ceased to be there, practically, though it is there really. In a similar manner, objects assume a reality, as it were, though there is no reality in them; they are pure transitoriness.

Prakriti continuously changes its characteristics. It is a continuity that is a flow, consisting of three strands – namely, sattva, rajas and tamas. Like a wheel that moves when the car moves, there is a cyclic movement of prakriti through the gunas of sattva, rajas and tamas.  Prakriti is not a solid object. There is no such thing as solid objects in this world; there is only fluxation. A person may appear on a screen, while the person is not really there at all. Thousands of small frames of film have moved with such rapidity that the movement could not be caught by the eye.

Likewise, we see that we are solid objects. But the apparent solidity is just like the solidity of a person on the screen, while the person is not really there. It is a continuous rapid movement of frames that gives the illusion of a solid person standing there, the illusion arising on account of the incapacity of the eyes to catch the movement. The television waves and high-frequency radio waves are dashing upon us just now, we can see nothing and  hear nothing. Therefore, the world of perception as a solid thing is a total illusion.

Prakriti, which is the objectivity of the purusha, i.e. consciousness, is constituted of three properties, called sattva, rajas and tamas. Tamas is inertia, pure inactivity; rajas is dynamism, distraction and action; and sattva is balance and harmony. The permutation and combination of these three gunas are the very substance of prakriti. The redness of a flower is a quality of the flower, but the redness itself is not the flower.  The three gunas – sattva, rajas and tamas – are the very substance of prakriti, and they are the very essence of movement in this world. These three gunas, by permutation and combination, create a situation of transparency in the cosmos, and the indivisible consciousness gets reflected, as it were, in this transparency, which is suddha tattva. It is the beginning of the process of the creation of the universe. It is a dream condition, as it were, where sketches of the future creation are drawn on the canvas of the mind itself. Thus, from the point of view of Vedanta terminology, there is a coming down of consciousness, which is Absolute, to the state of Isvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat, or in the language of Sankhya, prakriti becomes mahat, and mahat becomes ahankara.

The one indivisible ahankara, or Virat, gets divided into a three-partite state, as it were – the object, the subject, and the connecting link between the object and subject. These are known as the adhibhuta, adhyatma and adhidaiva. Thus, we see there is a world outside on account of the division that has taken place, and we are set aside as subjects perceiving the object outside, not being aware that there is a connecting link, which is called the adhidaiva, between the object and the subject. Then there is a continuous solidification of this objectivity into tanmatras, called sabda, sparsha, rupa, rasa, gandha –  prithvi, ap, teja, vayu, akasha – the five elements; and we have come down into the solidity which is this earth. 

The individual, who is the perceiver of this so-called external world, is also constituted only of the three gunas. The bricks out of which the world is made are the very bricks that also make our body. So there is an organic connection between the subject and the object; therefore, our judgments about things will not be finally tenable if we do not take into consideration our own involvement in the process of judgment. The mind of the judge plays an important role in making judgments.

The people in the world are not only those outside. You are also one of the persons in this world. Hence, your judgment of people in the world also includes judgment of yourself, which you are not doing. You think the world is constituted of people who are totally cut off from you – as in the story of ten people crossing a river.

The movement of prakriti within itself in the form of the sense organs and the mind on the one hand, and the objects on the other hand, is taken by us as two different activities taking place. Actually, one wave is dashing against another wave in the ocean, and two persons are not actually involved there. All action is cosmic action, as the very concept of individuality is ruled out in the light of this predicament of all perception being only a collision of the subjective side of prakriti with its objective side.

The world is not the maker of troubles. The world is defective on account of our not being able to isolate and identify ourselves with the world structure. There is no harmony between ourselves and the world of objects.

The premise has to be Universality, and from there we can deduce particularity. But we cannot rise from particularity to Universality, because particulars cannot tell us that there is a Universal.

The fundamental reality has to be ascertained first, and that is possible only by an investigation of the investigator himself. As Ramana Maharshi was fond of saying, “Whenever you put a question, tell me who is questioning.”

Therefore, go deep into yourself.

Continue to Read:

Sankhya Yoga – Distinction between Purusha and Prakriti:  Commentary on the Bhagavadgita by Swami Krishnananda

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