Degrees of reality

[Guest guest]

Shanti,

 

Thank you Madathil Nair for saying:

"The feeling that "one has to die to all this illusion whilst in the

body" demands a reading and understanding of the scriptures, whatever

they are"...

and also Tony O'Clery for mentionning Shankara's indication regarding

degrees of reality.

 

I believe in guidance.

As we endeavour to go through those degrees, while in them, they appear

to us as real.

As we try and work for realization, I think we cannot not deal with

them,

or risk the real delusion of thinking they do not exist for us.

 

I like to refer to text:

 

64. If the Constant is what is permanent, then phenomenal appearance is

what is not constant, relative, impermanent and conflictual.

The constant cannot be annulled by any experience, by any

conceptualisation, by any event; appearance is what can be devalued, can

be contradicted and annulled in time and space.

Appearance (maya) can undergo various degrees of evaluation and

perspective; let us say, different degrees of truth, which in time-space

can be considered real, but not in the absolute sense; in scientific

terms we might say that it has various systems of co-ordinates.

A cloud in the sky is real, but because it is born and dies, it cannot

be considered constant or absolute; therefore it simply corresponds to a

certain degree of relative truth.

When we look at the moon and due to a certain trick of the light we see

two moons, we say our perception is faulty; i.e. we are under an

illusion; also when we see a mirage in the desert we say we have an

optical illusion. This mirage is but another degree of truth...

obviously less true than the other.

When we state that a child was born of a barren woman, that a dog has

horns, or that a circle is square, we are affirming a non-reality; we

are, that is, in the realm of the untrue.

Just as one system of co-ordinates can be contradicted by another, so

the relative truth can be contradicted by another relative truth. The

cloudy sky is contradicted by a clear, blue one. The dream ? the

dreamer’s relative truth ? is contradicted by wakefullness, the light is

contradicted by darkness, the life of forms by death and so on.

Erroneous perception is contradicted by other possible perceptions. We

can perceive two moons and even three. The mirage we perceive in the

desert is contradicted by its disappearance. The relative truth and the

apparent truth are, nevertheless, aspects of experience. A dream is a

precise experience for the dreaming consciousness, just as observing a

mirage is a specific experience. The unreal is what cannot be

experienced. An object is unreal when due to its self-contradiction it

cannot represent a sensorially experienced datum.

The relative or relational truth and the apparent one constitute maya.

To hold that relative truth or the truth of appearance are absolutes

resting on themselves, that they do not depend on other truths, that

they are self-sufficient, in other terms that maya has its own absolute

validity, it means maintaining a metaphysical error and falling into

ignorance (avidya). Yet many men of “culture” hold that half truths are

whole truths.

Every living form cannot avoid being classified as phenomenon, that is

to say a relative truth, therefore as maya.

For Advaita, and from the empirical point of view, a phenomenon is not

unreal but maya, and therefore perceivable; yet it is a relative truth

which can be contradicted by another relative truth; this implies that

it is not an absolute truth.

Because there cannot be a phenomenon (movement) which depends on itself,

the absolute Truth is Brahman alone.

The universe is “conformed movement”, is formal vital phenomenon, a

mirage, a great cloud which appears and disappears.

 

65. Reality, appearance and unreality are three orders of being and

non-being which the human mind can recognise and decide to experience.

These three orders, however, are logical conceptions that allow

discernment and distinction: from the point of view of Reality there is

only one Real absolute because all the rest is non-Brahman,

non-constant.

When all the objectifying of the subject-object is transcended there is

no further datum to be perceived, to be experienced.

When a dream has been resolved, it ceases to exist; thus from the point

of view of wakefullness no dream can exist.

When this planet inevitably disappears, vanishing into interstellar

space, the clouds will no longer exist, but from the point of view of

the absolute Reality there are no clouds.

 

 

Shanti,

 

Carlo

 

 

Brahman, 64, 65, in

Raphael

At the Source of Life

Aurea Vidya

New York 2001