BRAHMA KNOWLEDGE

THREE CONCEPTS ABOUT BRAHMA

Firstly, the whole of finite or phenomenal being is evolved from an infinite and unconditioned substrate of absolute reality, Brahma. Secondly, Brahma is pure Thought, absolute Spirit. Thirdly, Brahma is one with the essential thought of each individual subject of thought, the Soul or Ātmā.

Furthermore

Brahma as the primitive Spirit and single Cosmic matter, neither existent nor non-existent, a watery void, from which arose a primal Unity, whence sprang Desire as first bond between being and non-being.

Brahma, in the earlier Vedic books, is a neuter noun, meaning the spell or prayer of the priest and the magic power which it exerts over gods, men, and the universe.

_______________________________________________

BRAHMA KNOWLEDGE - PART I

CHAPTER 17 -

RELATION OF UNIVERSAL TO INDIVIDUAL SOUL

§ 17. Relation of Universal to Individual Soul.—It is a first principle of the Upanishads that the numberless individual souls are really one with the Universal Self. But how is this relation conceivable? To this question no answer is vouchsafed. The older texts instead give us

p. 41

cosmogonic myths, which realistically depict a Universal Spirit creating the phenomenal world and then animating it as world-soul; and the latter they simply identify with the self of the individual, sometimes more pantheistically (Ch. VI. iii.), sometimes more idealistically (B.A.II. iv. 5, III. iv. 1, v. 1, etc.). But why should there be this division between the one Absolute Soul and the innumerable individual souls condemned to suffer the intellectual darkness and physical sorrows of embodied life? The Upanishads find a solution in their theory of karma, the acts done in previous births requiring further embodiment to work away their influence upon the soul. This implies a regressus ad infinitum, as every act is the resultant of a former act; and this conclusion is cheerfully drawn by the later Vedānta, which thus avoids the necessity of explaining the "origin of evil." The older Upanishads, whose cosmogonies contradict this theory, simply avoid the question.

The theory which begins to appear in a somewhat late Upanishad (the Maitrāyaṇīya), that the Soul conceives division and plurality in consequence of the delusive attractions of physical Nature, and hence assumes embodied form and comes under the influence of "works," is partly connected with the dualism of the Sānkhya school, and partly with the theory of "illusion" developed in the later Vedānta (see § 16). Śankara generally regards the universe itself, i.e. the

p. 42

aggregate of subjects and objects of experience, as created in order to furnish finite souls with experiences in recompense of previous "works"; but the reason moving the Supreme Brahma to render himself an efficient and material cause of a universe distinct from himself, says Śankara, can only be motiveless sport.

-----------------------------

INTERPRETATION

The idea is that a fall from a oneness with the Source of Creation is the cause of this universe.

________________________________________________

BRAHMA KNOWLEDGE - Part I

Chapter X - BRAHMA IS ABSOLUTE BEING

§ 10. Brahma is Absolute Being.—The question whether the universal substrate, or Brahma, should properly be called being (sat) or non-being (a-sat), already agitated the Vedic poets (see Ṛig veda, x. cxxix. 1), and passed through the schools of the Brāhmaṇas to those of the older Upanishads. The debate, however, was merely over words. As Brahma is beyond all the limiting conditions of phenomenal being, either term may be applied to it; it is at once metaphysically existent and empirically non-existent.

Brahma is non-being, B.A. II. iii. 1, Ch. III. xix. 1, Taitt. II. vi.-vii.; being, Ch. VI. ii. 1, etc. Brahma is "reality of reality," B.A. II. i. 20, iii. 6; "the Eternal cloaked in (empirical) reality," I. vi. 3. A reconciliation from the transcendental standpoint is found in Śvet. IV. 18, v. 1, Muṇḍ. II. ii. 1, etc. Śankara (on Brahma-sūtra, I. iv. 14 f.) rightly notes the twofold meaning of the terms "being" and "not-being."

---------------------------

INTERPRETATION

THE GREAT SPIRIT denotes without form or unseen, said to be full of eternity, knowledge and bliss - corresponding to three main features of the Supreme: residing everywhere, residing within, residing outside and BEYOND......

________________________________________________

BRAHMA KNOWLEDGE

Part I - Chapter 16 - MAYA

Māyā.—The word māyā, magic illusion, is commonly used in the later Vedānta to denote the phantom character of the phenomenal world; and in this sense it does not appear in the Upanishads until the Śvetāśvatara (IV. 10). It is not found in the Brahma-sūtra; and hence the question has often been raised whether the idea denoted by it was actually present in the minds of the authors of the older Upanishads.

That phenomena, even to the first principles under which they are cognised (space, time, and causality), are unreal relatively to Absolute Being, is a cardinal doctrine not only of the Upanishads but of all metaphysics. Even the Vedic poets assert a real being of primal unity concealed behind the manifold of experience; and on this is founded the Upanishadic principle that the universe exists only in and by virtue of a World-Idea essentially identical with the individual consciousness. This, however, is still far from the māyā-theory of the later Vedānta. The authors of the older Upanishads were still much influenced by the realism of the Vedas, and it is therefore doubtful whether they could have agreed with the Vedantists who treat the world of experience as absolutely unreal, a mere phantom

conjured up by the Self for its own delusion. As typical of the Upanishadic attitude we may regard the theory of the Five Ātmās (§ 12) and the long passage of the Bṛihad-āraṇyaka (III. vii. 3 f.) where the Self is described in detail as the antaryāmī, or "inward controller," functioning as soul within matter as its body. Their view was in the main somewhat as follows. Phenomena are evolved from the Self, and hold their existence as intelligibilia in fee from the Self; with the knowledge of the Self they become known as phases of it; hence they are, to this extent, and no further, really existent (satya, B.A. I. vi. 3), provisionally true, although it is only ignorance of the Self that regards them as really independent of the Self and manifold. The Upanishads on the whole conceive the empiric soul's ignorance as a negative force, an absence of light; with Śankara and the later Vedānta it is positive, a false light, a constructive illusion. Brahma as cause of phenomena is in the Upanishads a real material, in Śankara's school an unreal material.

The difficulties besetting Śankara when he endeavours to bring logical order into the vague idealism of the Upanishads are very serious. On the one hand he maintains that the whole phenomenal world is unreal (avastu). As a magician (māyāvī) causes a phantom or wraith to issue from his person which has no real existence and by which the magician himself is entirely unaffected,

so Brahma creates from himself a universe which is an utter phantom and nowise modifies his absolute existence. His creative "powers" (which are real only when regarded from the standpoint of his creation, the world of finite subjects and objects) constitute the demiurgic principle of an empiric universe, which is, from its own standpoint, coextensive with him, whereas absolutely speaking it does not exist at all (see commentary on Brahma-sūtra, II. i. 6, 9, etc., and above, § 9). On the other hand, the universe, phantom as it is, nevertheless is a fact of consciousness. Illusion though it be, the illusion is. This predicate of existence is the bond uniting it with its source, the truly existent, Brahma (on II. i. 6). Brahma is absolute thought, the world is false thought; but the subject in both cases is the same, the thinking Self. Thus Māyā denotes the sum of phenomena—or, as more narrowly defined by some later Vedantists, the sum of matter—as illusively conceived by the Self; it is the Ignorance which creates the phantom of a universe and of an individual ego by imposing its figments upon pure Thought (§ 12).

----------------------------

Conscious spirit and unconscious matter

Both have existed since the dawn of time,

With maya appearing to connect them,

Misrepresenting joy as outside us.

When all these three are seen in one, the Self

Reveals His universal form and serves

As an instrument of the divine will.

- Shvetashvatara Upanishad (1.9)

---------------------------

Quantum Physics holds to the notion that matter is an hologriphic illusion this is the basis of maya, where niether are seen as they are.