Another Meditation Thought (Duality)

[Guest guest]

Namaste all.

 

Without pausing to think, we come out with sweeping generalizations.

One such recent conclusion is : "Duality and the world are not two

different things".

 

That we see many different things around us as separate from us is

duality in vEdAnta. Let us, therefore, try to identify the important

features of duality by taking a specific example.

 

Consider a city. It has different communities. Members of each

community are different from one another. It has buildings of various

architectural designs – each one different from the other. It has

many roads, some of them really wide and long and others narrow and

short. There are many other differentiating features that sets each

element in the city's constitution apart from the other various

elements. Thus, we say, the city is dual.

 

However, while acknowledging this duality, we are also acknowledging

another feature of the dual city. What is it?

 

The city is an entity that is limited by space. It has geographical

limits or boundaries. These may expand. However, that expansion is

still within certain conceivable spatial limits.

 

Thus, duality is both diversity and `limitedness'.

 

Can we reasonably apply this consideration to the universe? The

universe has evident diversity as to its `contents' but when we pause

to impose limits to it as a whole, we are always haunted by the

thought of the beyond. In other words, the universe can have no

limits. It is limitlessness. Anantam, ajnAtam, avarNanIyam!

(Endless, always not fully known, indescribable!)

 

How can such limitlessness have diversity as its content? That is a

contradiction. Limitlessness cannot have parts! If it has parts,

such as the ones we `evidently perceive', then it becomes the sum

total of the parts as the city we considered is. A sum total is a

conceivaibility in the realm of mathematics in our empirical world.

Limitlessness is not conceivable. Yet, it is there because it is in

our language and psyche. Then, is our `perceiving' the error?

 

Faced with such an intractable conundrum, we have no choice but to

accept the undeniable limitlessness of the universe and do away with

the `perceiving' of `contential duality' by acknowledging it as an

error. It is here that the aTAtO brahmajijnAsA (BS I, I,1) begins

for the thinking mind, which again is an inseparable part of

the `contential duality' of the universe. The mind may then take to

a convenient theology and find deluded comfort therein. Otherwise,

it may take to the road of advaita and find the Truth through the

much talked about superimposition and rescission. The final

conclusion then will be what Sw. Satchitanandendra Saraswatiji

loudly thought: "the essential nature of each one of us as well as of

the whole world of duality is really Brahman or the Absolute,

eternally unsullied by a second, except for the Super-impositions of

Avidya". Avidya then is the error. That is our `perceivership'.

 

With the `perceiver' dead and gone, I and the Universe abide in

Oneness that is Fullness, Limitlessness and, therefore,

Timelessness. In other words, the universe separate from me with its

imposed `contential duality' had never been created at all! I am the

universe and everything `there'. `I AM' is just another way of

saying the same thing for the comfort of those who have a dislike for

the words world and universe.

 

PraNAms.

 

Madathil Nair

 

P.S.: Sorry, Gregji and other Members, if this threatens a

digression from the topic of this month. This is what the meditation

produced. I promise not to indulge.