The Absolute and Manifestation

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But what Advaita says is that God is more than knowable. This is a

great fact to learn. You must not go home with the idea that God is

unknowable in the sense in which agnostics put it. For instance, here

is a chair, it is known to us. But what is beyond ether or whether

people exist there or not is possibly unknowable. But God is neither

known nor unknowable in this sense. He is something still higher than

known; that is what is meant by God being unknown and unknowable. The

expression is not used in the sense in which it may be said that some

questions are unknown and unknowable. God is more than known. This

chair is known, but God is intensely more than that, because in and

through Him we have to know this chair itself. He is the Witness, the

eternal Witness of all knowledge. Whatever we know we have to know in

and through Him. He is the Essence of our own Self. He is the Essence

of this ego, this I and we cannot know anything excepting in and

through that I. Therefore you have to know everything in and through

the Brahman. To know the chair you have to know it in and through

God. Thus God is infinitely nearer to us than the chair, but yet He

is infinitely higher. Neither known, nor unknown, but something

infinitely higher than either. He is your Self. " Who would live a

second, who would breathe a second in this universe, if that Blessed

One were not filling it? " Because in and through Him we breathe, in

and through Him we exist. Not that He is standing somewhere and

making my blood circulate. What is meant is that He is the Essence of

all this, the Soul of my soul. You cannot by any possibility say you

know Him; it would be degrading Him. You cannot get out of yourself,

so you cannot know Him. Knowledge is objectification. For instance,

in memory you are objectifying many things, projecting them out of

yourself. All memory, all the things which I have seen and which I

know are in my mind. The pictures, the impressions of all these

things, are in my mind, and when I would try to think of them, to

know them, the first act of knowledge would be to project them

outside. This cannot be done with God, because He is the Essence of

our souls; we cannot project Him outside ourselves. Here is one of

the profoundest passages in Vedanta: " He that is the Essence of your

soul, He is the Truth, He is the Self, thou art That, O Shvetaketu. "

This is what is meant by " Thou art God. " You cannot describe Him by

any other language. All attempts of language, calling Him father, or

brother, or our dearest friend, are attempts to objectify God, which

cannot be done. He is the Eternal Subject of everything. I am the

subject of this chair; I see the chair; so God is the Eternal Subject

of my soul. How can you objectify Him, the Essence of your souls, the

Reality of everything? Thus, I would repeat to you once more, God is

neither knowable nor unknowable, but something infinitely higher than

either. He is one with us; and that which is one with us is neither

knowable nor unknowable, as our own self. You cannot know your own

self; you cannot move it out and make it an object to look at,

because you are that and cannot separate yourself from it. Neither

is it unknowable, for what is better known than yourself? It is

really the centre of our knowledge. In exactly the same sense, God is

neither unknowable nor known, but infinitely higher than both; for He

is our real Self.

 

First, we see then that the question, " What caused the Absolute? " is

a contradiction in terms; and secondly, we find that the idea of God

in the Advaita is this Oneness; and, therefore, we cannot objectify

Him, for we are always living and moving in Him, whether we know it

or not. Whatever we do is always through Him. Now the question is:

What are time, space, and causation? Advaita means non-duality; there

are not two, but one. Yet we see that here is a proposition that the

Absolute is manifesting Itself as many, through the veil of time,

space, and causation. Therefore it seems that here are two, the

Absolute and Maya (the sum total of time, space, and causation). It

seems apparently very convincing that there are two. To this the

Advaitist replies that it cannot be called two. To have two, we must

have two absolute independent existences which cannot be caused. In

the first place, time, space, and causation cannot be said to be

independent existences. Time is entirely a dependent existence; it

changes with every change of our mind. Sometimes in dream one

imagines that one has lived several years; at other times several

months were passed as one second. So, time is entirely dependent on

our state of mind. Secondly, the idea of time vanishes altogether,

sometimes. So with space. We cannot know what space is. Yet it is

there, indefinable, and cannot exist separate from anything else. So

with causation.

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued