The Primal Cause

Living implies the operation in the individual of the life principle that activates all beings. The attributeless divine assumes certain qualities as Its nature and becomes saguna. The individual thus formed seeks to know and experience the variety of names and forms that are exposed to its senses of perception and its mind. This is, in short, the process of living, the project of ‘knowing’, of expanding one’s awareness. The process has a beginning and an end, it involves success and failure, good and evil.

“I am jivi, live individual,” “I am a spark of Consciousness’, “I am embodied Atma,” declarations such as these do not reveal knowledge of the life principle. The jivi is divine consciousness, installed in a chariot. It is not a bundle of inert stuff moulded into a form and labelled with a name. There is only One all-pervading Consciousness but man experiences It in fragments and, mistaking It as many, he gropes in the confusion caused by his own ignorance.

Many scriptures instruct men the truth that God dwells in his body along with the jivi, God inducing him to aspire for the heights and the self advising him to be content with the low. The jivi has faith in the reality of the world and of itself. The divine principle, on the other hand, asserts that It is present, both close to man as well as far from him. The fact is, people feel It is far, because they are not aware of Its being near, nay, in their own hearts. The truth that the scriptures teach is that God is everywhere, near and far, above and below, inside and outside. God is One, indivisible, omnipresent.

Four Categories Of Wakefulness

In order to awaken to this truth, one has to attain higher levels of wakefulness. Indeed, there are four such levels. The first is the apparently wakeful attentiveness with which we move about and busy ourselves every day. We are very much like others, alert and aware, when thus awake. But, Vedanta reveals four categories of wakefulness: the fully awake, the wakefulness of mind only as while dreaming, the wakefulness of the self alone as in deep sleep, and the illumination of the self-awakening into the over self. These are named sthula, sukshma, karana and mahakarana (The gross, the subtle, the causal and the super causal).

The gross body that is activated in the waking stage is the composite of many items the five senses of perception, the five senses of action, the five inner instruments, the five elements in creation, the five vital airs and the self—26 in all. This is the jagrat stage, wakefulness. The subtle body that dreams has only five vital airs, the five senses of perception, and five fundamental elements fifteen items in all as the sukshma (the subtle), the yatana vehicle which according to Vedanta, undergoes the consequences of good deeds and bad.

Brahman Eludes All The Three Bodies

Karana (Causal) body is the third. It possesses only one nature, namely, prajna (consciousness), pure and unmixed with the subjective and objective worlds. Since the sthula (gross) body is fully involved with the objective world, the vishwa; it is called vishwa, the sukshma body or the dream body is illumined by the mind and the tejas (inner light) and so it is called tejas; the body in the deep sleep stage, when it is latent in the cause, subsumed in the consciousness, is called prajna. The truth, namely, Brahman, eludes all these three bodies. They are all involved in bhrama (illusion), not in Brahman, the absolute. What appears true in the dream is falsified when one awakes; what one experiences while awake is distorted and devalued in dreams; sleep wipes out of memory both the dream world and the wakefulness world. The awareness that survives these three passing stages is the mahakarana, the superconsciousness.

The super or supreme consciousness is the thought that became all this the hiranya garbha, the golden womb, the primal urge, the first concretisation, Ishwara. When Being ‘thought’, it became the many, or rather, it put on the appearance of many. The mahakarana is beyond Consciousness; the sthula, sukshma and the karana bodies into which it proliferated are beneath consciousness. The former is true knowledge (eruka in Telugu). The latter is the illusory experience (marupu in Telugu). God is the Lord of eruka, the jivi is the slave of marupu (forgetting).

The One Appears To The Split Vision As Two

The mahakarana, the cosmic consciousness, is often denoted as ‘param’ (beyond), in Vedanta; since the concept is obviously contentless, it does not arise and fade; nor does it originate and disappear. It has no name and form, for it cannot be defined or limited or identified as separate. It is understood as Brahman the unmoving, immovable totality (Purna), the Eternal, the true, the pure, the attributeless. Just as the unmoving road enables the car to move along it, the Brahma principle is the basis for the existence and activities of jivi.

In fact, there is only One. The One appears to the split vision as two. Look outward! It is jivi. Look inward, it is God. The outer vision makes you forget; the inner makes you remember. When man seeks to rise to the divinity which is his reality, he is remembering, struggling to know and experience. When he grovels in the lower levels of consciousness and is entangled in disease, he is caught in the coils of forgetfulness. Removing selfish desires and expanding one’s urge to love and serve is the most effective means to succeed in merging with the supreme consciousness, the primal Cause, the cosmic thought, the Mahakarana.

Discourse at Prasanthi Nilayam, 22 Mar 1985