Hari OM
'Text-days' are for delving into the
words and theory of Advaita Vedanta.
We are now studying Aatmabodha. As
always, with each week, you are encouraged to review the previous teachings and
spend some time in contemplation of the meanings as the affect your life.
Please do consider purchasing the text. Remember, also, to recite the mangala charana before each study and
review the lessons before each new one.
It
has been mentioned previously, that the upaadhis arise from an ignorance
(avidya) of the True Nature of things. Avidya cannot itself be an effect - at
no time can we say "oh you became ignorant because…." We can gain
Knowledge but we can never 'gain' ignorance. We can, therefore, say that
"you do not know this or that because… of your ignorance" and then
set to removal of the ignorance. Avidya shows itself to be a cause of not
knowing. Once we know, we can no longer be ignorant… and have you ever tried
'unknowing' something?! This is the
basis by which the following shloka states;
Anad!yivd!yainvaRCya
kar[aepaixéCyte,
%paixiÇtyadNymaTmanmvxaryet!.14.
Anaadyavidya-anirvaacyaa
kaaranopaadhir-uchyate,
Upaaditritya-adanyam-aatmaan-amavadhaarayet.
||14||
Avidyaa, which is indescribable and beginningless, is
the causal body. Know for certain that the Aatman is other than these three
conditioning bodies.
When
Truth is not known (avidya), when the reality of a things is veiled from us
(aavarana), we cannot but misinterpret the Truth through our own confused and
erroneous imagings (vikshepa), which in turn form the delusory projections we
call the world (adhyaasa). A clouded
intellect dances to the tune of the untamed mind and creates all sort of
terrors for itself.
We
misapprehend the Aatman (spirit) due to the original avidya, crediting the
upaadhis (the physical manifestations) with more than their worth and
identifying with them, developing an ego-self and claiming "I-ness"
and "my-ness", setting up our own individual cells of torture!
This
'original ignorance' is said to be the causal body (karana shariira) insofar as
it is due to the non-knowledge of the possibility of Spiritual Perfection that
our gurgling desires in the intellect, the thoughts of our mind and the actions
of our body currently serve immediate and selfish needs, not even
recognising that in attempting to serve these needs, we are still answering the
call to serve the ultimate need - to return to the baseline existence of
Sat-Chit-Aananda… and if we don't know about that possibility, how can we
strive for it?
Upon
what basis can Shankaraacharya state that avidya is anaadi - beginningless? As
normal human beings, the concept of beginningless-ness is almost harder to
grasp than endless-ness. This may be due to the fact that at some level or
other we would all like to think we can live forever. However, one cannot have
endlessness unless there is no beginning. We can turn to physics for this.
Think in terms of time. For us to be perceiving anything at all, we have to be
experiencing. For there to be an experience (or a unit of time) three things
are required; the event to be experienced, the observer of the event
(experiencer) and the connection between the first two, the experiencing. An
experience cannot be said to exist until these three things are unified. Time
is said to be the interval between events. At point A, there is no distance to
measure. Only when point B appears, can distance be measured and that unit
between them is given a name… one second of time, let's say. Only in the
lapsing and replacing of A with B can time be said to be moving. Time cannot
exist without our imposing the upaadhi of 'measurement' upon it. In the case of
experience, even for the very first experience where 'time' is an impossible
concept, the very fact that we apprehend that experience suggests that the
equipments by which to measure experience must have arisen… and the only place they could have arisen from is that very avidya itself.
This
is such an advanced concept that the other word here given in reference to
avidya is 'indescribable'! Make no mistake, what we are talking about here in
Vedantic terms is the equivalent of the 'big bang' of the science of
astrophysics. By terming the causal body as 'avidya', we must understand that
what has arisen has come from something
and not from nothing, but that the description of this is, currently, beyond
us.
However,
in this shloka, it is not that we must know avidya, but that we must know and
understand the Truth by what we can
percieve - the upaadhis - the Knowledge being that Aatman is none of these.
Avidya is darkness. No matter how hard we try we cannot actually 'see'
darkness, as such, because the darkness itself prevents us from seeing it.
However, darkness is easily dispelled by light and much can be seen; light, of
course, being Knowledge.
A
fool lit a lamp and walked all over his house trying to find the darkness. The
more we try to understand avidya, the more it eludes us. By using the lamp, the
fellow might have found the jewel in his altar room, if he had chosen to look
for what can be found rather than what cannot.
We
cannot know Truth through ignorance, only through Knowledge.
