Monday, September 24, 2012

The Real and the Unreal in Gita


Introduction
The real is beyond all conceptions of personality and impersonality. We call it the Absolute to show our sense of the inadequacy of all terms and definitions. We call it God to show that it is the basis of all that exists and the goal of all. Personality is a symbol and if we ignore its symbolic character it is likely to shut us from the truth. The Real is that which has no change and remains the same in all periods of time - past, present and future. It always is. It is that which does not die when the body withers and that which is not born when a body is born. It is what we call as Atman, soul or spirit in English. The atman is never born, never dies, and it is changeless and eternal. The II Cor. (4. 18) states, “For the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” It occupies all matter living and non- living. The real never dies and the unreal never exists as it is continuously dying (changing).   Universal Spirit (Brahman) or God is the only truth which never changes & always remains the same.
“Words such as “flower,”, “dog” and “human” are simply names, symbols we attach to patters of computation. This, in fact, is the Vedic understanding not of life but of the material body. In the Eleventh Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, Krishna says to Uddhava that the gross and subtle forms of material bodies have no existence of their own; they are only temporary patters manifested by an eternally existing substrate of reality, called the Absolute truth.”[1]
Krishna says in Bhagavad-Gita (2.20) that the soul, the individual conscious self, eternally exists: “For the soul there is never birth or death. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.”[2]
The Supreme is Unmanifest, Supreme, Exhaustless and Imperishable. It displays itself in the garment if the ever-changing phenomena and so appears to partake of their character. It transcends all and yet it pervades and permeates all. Everything is strung on it like gems on a thread (7: 7), and yet it is above and beyond all modifications (7: 13, 24, 8: 22, 10:22). “It is neither Being, nor not- Being. It appears to possess the functions of the senses and yet is devoid of the senses; without all beings and yet within; not moving, yet moving; far and yet so near; undivided,  yet seeming to subsist divided in all beings” ( 13: 12-16) a description which brings together several texts of the Isha, Katha, and Mundaka Upanishads. The Supreme is really neither exclusively transcendent nor exclusively immanent. It is idle to imprison the Inconceivable in finite concepts.  But that should not mean that it is an abstraction or a negation. It is altogether too big and too vast to be confined in concepts, it baffles complete or anything like adequate description. As Prof. James put it in his picturesque American way, ‘It is superlucent, super-splendent, super-essential, super-sublime, and super-everything that can be named.”[3]
On the other hand, the unreal is that which does not remain the same for two successive moments. Whatever did not exist in the past or will not exist in the future cannot really exist in the present. That which is not in the beginning and which will not be in the end, but which seemingly exists in the present is called un-Real. Any object conditioned by the law of cause and effect is not absolutely real because every effect is a change brought about by a cause and every cause is temporary. The Gita uses the much –discussed term maya, the mystery which deludes one of the Reality. Maya is not an illusion, or a mirage, but a veil or an obstacle that hides the Real, the thick strata, physical and mental, which overlay the Divine in us, the clouds that obscure the Sun in us, and the golden lid that covers the face of Truth.
Glimpses of real and the unreal in Bhagavad-Gita
The Imperishable is the Supreme Brhaman. The term Brahman indicates the one changeless and imperishable subjective essence behind the phenomenal world. It becomes Self, the Conscious Principle which illumines the body, mind and intellect during all their pilgrimages from birth to death through the infinite varieties of their vicissitudes. The presence of Self in each individual body is called Adhyatma. Though the Self is formless and subtle, it is all-pervading. Its glory and might, power and grace are felt, experienced and lived by each physical structure. The Conscious Principle is that which illumines all the thought waves that rise in mind, functioning in that given embodiment. The Infinite Self being one everywhere, it is the same Principle that illumines the entire different embodiment, all the thought experience, at all times. The Self is considered as the most ancient because the Eternal Truth is that which was before all creation, which ramians the same all through the ages of existence, and which shall ever remain the same ever after the projections of the plurality have ended.[4]
The Adhibhuta, as a contrast to the Imperishable (Akshara), is the perishable equipment (kshara), the world of prakriti, through which the potential dynamism, vigour and glory of Infinite Self express themselves. Between the kshara and Akshara, there is as much difference s between a steam-engine and the steam, a running caar and the horse-power in the petrol, a singing radio and the electric current that makes it possible for the radio to sing. In short, perishable (kshara) indicates the whole world of phenomenon of the universe.
According understanding of Hinduism, the world in which we live is called unreal not because of that it does not exist, but because it is unstable, impermanent, unreliable, ever changing and illusory. It is unreal because it is transient & changing every second. Just check the things around you, these are changing every second. So this changing world, which is not permanent is called Maya or illusion & not real. The concept of Maya, the very existence of an individual as a separate entity is unreal. As long as the individual thinks that he or she is different from the rest of the creation and strives to work for his or her own ends, protecting, furthering nurturing and defending his or her own ego or   individuality, he or she suffers from illusion and his or her ego continues. The journey into an unknown future shaped by his or her endless actions and desires continue. We find different characteristics of real or truth or Ultimate reality in Bhagavad Gita starting from Chapter 2: 11 onwards:
 sri bhagavaan uvaacha
ashochyaan anvashochastwam prajnaavaadaamshcha bhaashase
gataasoon agataasoomshcha naanushochanti panditaah (Bhagwat Gita: Chap. Two verse 11)
Sri Krishna says: ‘You grieve for those who are not to be grieved for; and yet you speak words of wisdom! The learned do not grieve for the departed and those who have not departed.’ The cause for Arjuna’s suffering and distress is because when he looks at his relatives, friends and teachers lined up on the opposite side, the feeling of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ becomes very strong in him, the central point being the sense of ‘I.’ A man is grieved when he categorizes some objects or persons as his own and some others as not his own. This sense of mine and not-mine - attachment for things considered as one’s own and indifference for things considered as not one’s own - is called ego which is the source of all grief, worry, fear and confusion. Rediscovering oneself to be really higher than one’s ego is the end of all sorrows arising out of false identification or relationship.
So Krishna went to the bottom of this grief, sorrow, misery and suffering and explained that a wise man does not have the sense of ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’. Such a man is not bound by any tie or attachment of any kind.
naasato vidyate bhaavo naabhaavo vidyate satah
ubhayorapi drishto’ntastwanayos tattwadarshibhih (Bhagwat Gita: Chap. Two verse 16)
The English translation of the verse is given as: The unreal has no existence. The Real never ceases to be (never ceases to exist). Men possessed of the knowledge of the Truth fully know both these. The material objects belong to the Prakruti or nature. The nature is an ever changing entity. The human body and it five sheaths is also a part of nature and it is subject to birth and death. In fact the changes in the body is so fast and persistent that it changes by the second, even millisecond so much so that the body you see before closing your eyes is not the same when you open them. If we observe closely, we will realize that the body was not there when one was not born nor it will remain when one dies.
This verse also indicates that the mental tranquility can occur only through right interpretation of life.  Right interpretation of life involves knowing what is real and what is un-Real. We know that the life is finite. The body changes every moment, mind evolves and intellect grows with the passage of time.  Each change in the body for example from childhood to youth and from youth to old age results in the constant death to its previous state. Body, mind and intellect constitute the continuous succession of the changes and all of them cannot be real. A thing which never remains the same for any given period is un-Real.  The whole of the phenomenal world must be unreal because no one state in it endures even for a fraction of the time.
But there must be some real entity behind these changes.  For the changes to take place there must be some changeless substratum just as a river bed is necessary for the rivers to flow.  In order to hold together innumerable experiences at the levels of body, mind and intellect and to give them a cohesive whole which is called life, a changeless substratum is required for all.
That something which remains unchanged all through the changes is the Real and it is nothing other than the Self in all, the Pure Awareness, and Consciousness. What is changing must be unreal and what is constant must be real. When the soul is overpowered by ignorance, the un-Real which is the names and forms of the phenomenal world, veils the unchanging reality - the Atman, Consciousness - which manifest and which is not conditioned by causality. This Self is the unchanging Witness of the changes in the relative world as in the case of the river bed and a flowing river. This Awareness by which one becomes conscious of things in one's life - because of which one is considered alive, but for which one will have no existence in the given embodiment - That Spiritual Entity, Eternal, All Pervading, Unborn and Undying, the One Changeless factor is the Infinite in him.  And this is the Atman, Consciousness which is the Real.
Maya in Gita
By reason of delusion, man takes wring to be right. We see how Arjuna was led to make a difference between kinsman and non-kinsmen. To demonstrate that this is a vain distinction, Lord Krishana distinguishes between body ( not-Self) and Atman (Self) and shows that while bodies are impermanent and several, Atman is permanent and one. The gunas or prakriti within us and without us are maya which dazzales us and blinds us astray. The bondage, the separateness, the diversity is caused by this maya. The world of name and form strikes no our senses, the various ornaments of gold, for instance, appear to us as so many different ornaments, the multitudinous waves appear to us as so many waves, but we do not see the gold and the unchanging sea, we do not see the Nameless and the Formless of which we see numerous forms.
Lord Krishna in Bhagavad-Gita gives details about the 'Maya' in its various chapters.
"mama yonir mahad brahma
tasmin garbham dadhamy aham
sambhavah sarva-bhutanam
tato bhavati bharata" (Bhagwat Gita: Chap. Fourteen verse 3)
"Sri Krishna says: O Arjuna, My womb is the great Nature (Prakriti or MAYA) which is the source of birth of all living entities, and it is in that I place the germ (embryo of life). Thus it makes possible the births of all living beings."
"sarva-yonisu kaunteya
murtayah sambhavanti yah
tasam brahma mahad yonir
aham bija-pradah pita" (Bhagwat Gita: Chap. Fourteen verse 4)

"Sri Krishna says: O Arjuna, It should be understood that all species of life, are made possible by birth in this material nature (Prakriti or MAYA), and that I am the seed-giving father."
"prakrityaiva cha karmani
kriyamanani sarvasah
yah pasyati tathatmanam
akartaram sa pasyati" (Bhagwat Gita: Chap.Thirteen verse 30)
"Sri Krishna says: O Arjuna, One who can see that all activities are performed by the nature (Maya) alone and sees that the self does nothing, actually sees." (The Self is the silent witness).
Ramakrishna on Maya
Ramakrishna acknowledged the power of Maya in life. He was all love and reverence for maya, perceiving in it a mysterious and majestic expression of Divinity. To him Maya was God. He discovered that maya operates in the relative world in two ways and he termed these "avidyamaya" and "vidyamaya.' Avidyamaya sustains lower planes, but vidyamaya is enlightening, including qualities like kindness. Vidyamaya elevates a man to a better consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya he then gets free of maya, if only for a while. The two aspects of maya are two forces of creation.
In the guru Ramakrishna's experience, Maya was divine. Ramakrishna "did not, like a Vedantic scholar, repudiate the world as maya, but gave it a spiritual status, seeing in it the manifestation of Chit and Ananda." Ramakrishna had a "vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained."
Personal Reflection
We need to know the difference between body and Atman because body is impermanent while the Atman is permanent. Effort is within the man’s control, not the fruit thereof. All he has to do is to decide his course of conduct or duty on each occasion and persevere in it, unconcerned about the result. Fulfilment of one’s duty in the spirit of detachment or selflessness leads to freedom. St. Ignatius of Loyola would say in this line, work as though everything depends on you and pray as though everything depends on God.  We are very much aware that none of us is fully governed by one the three gunas- sattva, rajas or tamas. We need to rise to a state in which we are governed predominantly by the sattva principle, until at last we rise beyond the three and are Perfect Man. The illustration from the physical world would suffice our wish. Take water, which in its solid state remains on the earth: it cannot ascend until it is rarefied into steam. But once it is rarefied into steam it rises up in the sky where at last it is transformed into clouds which drop down in the form of rain and fructify and bless the earth. We are all like water, we have to strive so to rarefy ourselves that all the ego in us perishes and we merge in the infinite to the eternal good of all.”[5]    
The purpose of human life is to realize the truth and work for unity with the Divine. The senses draw us towards the sense objects and through the  process of attraction or repulsion give us feelings of joy or suffering, rendering our minds unstable and vulnerable most of  the time. The world draws us into its vortex of confusion and misery as we try to embrace it. There is no escape for us from this world of illusion, unless we wriggle out of our individualities and realize our true nature. We all are subject to it. Those who think they are not are in fact in greater danger because their minds have already become intoxicated by its blinding influence. Keeping us chained to our individual selves, making us do things which would result in frequent conflicts with the outside world, it binds us to our selfishness and our respective interests, building walls of isolation and ignorance all around us.
We cannot overcome this problem of our existence unless we learn to look at ourselves with a different awareness, hold back ourselves and our petty interests, and accept life as it comes to us. We cannot qualify for liberation from this world, unless we cease to be ourselves and stop all manner of struggling and striving and protecting and furthering our individual interests. There are of course divergent views about the true nature of the sensory world that exists all around us. These beliefs subsequently gave birth to the Dvaita and Advaita and Vishistadvaita schools of thought with further variations among them.
Conclusion
The true knowledge is that with the eye of which one sees each and every being in the universe in one’s self and then in God. True spiritual knowledge makes one rest in the vision of con-substantiality of the Self in man and God. The Gita succinctly sums up that the long section of the Mandaka, declares knowledge to be the sure boat to take even the most abandoned sinner across the ocean of sin, and describes the ways and means to find that knowledge of loving homage and service and repeated questioning and inquiry of a Master of knowledge.
The Bhagavad-Gita gives its own verdict on this subject, ‘The self is the enemy of the self and the self is also the friend of the self’.  The outer self is an enemy of the inner self when we become attached with the external world, turn selfish and egoistic and it is a friend when we become selfless and detached innerly.  It is only through self we can ultimately raise ourselves beyond our limited awareness and our illusory attitude towards life. It is fallacious to believe that God would come and rescue us from this problem, without the necessary effort from our side. Thus we find three gunas: sattvika, rajasa and tamasa at work in us. These three kinds of agents, act, perception, understanding, will, happiness, are described in order that man may ever bend his energies zestfully and without thought of success or failure (18: 26) to rise from the impure to the pure, from selfishness to selflessness, from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge.



[1] Richard L. Thompson, “Life: Real and Artificial,” God & Science: Divine Causation and the Laws of Nature (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Ltd., 2010), 114.
[2] Ibid., 114.
[3] Mahadev Desai, THE GOSPEL OF SELFLESS ACTION (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1946), 41.
[4] Swami Chinmayananda, THE HOLY GEETA (Bombay: Central Chinmaya Mission Trust), 480.
[5] M. D. Weekly Letter, Young India 12-01-1928)
6. Internet