Text 52 of Tattva Sandarbha
The Meaning of Monistic Statements in the Scripture
In the last Text Çréla Jéva Gosvämé established that the Absolute Truth is eternal, nondual consciousness. One sect of Buddhists, the Kñaëika-vijïäna-vädés, raise an objection to this conclusion. Their doctrine states the following:
There is only one reality, consciousness, which is changing at every moment, and there is no difference between knowledge and the object of knowledge. Just as in our dreams the things we see do not exist outside our consciousness, so also in our waking life distinctions between knowledge and the object of knowledge are not real. When we see a blue object our consciousness is blue. If we next see a yellow object, the blue consciousness is destroyed and our consciousness changes to yellow. How, then, can consciousness be called eternal?
This is the objection the Vijïäna-vädés raise against Jéva Gosvämé’s conclusion that the Absolute Truth, the nondual consciousness, is eternal.
They reason that an eternal object cannot be the cause of anything since in general a cause transforms into its effect. For example, since milk transforms into yogurt, it cannot be eternal. Similarly, the nondual consciousness, being the cause of everything, must undergo transformation and therefore cannot be eternal. Further, they say, everything is changing at every moment, although we may not notice the moment-by-moment change, just as we do not notice the moment-by-moment growth of plants or our bodies.
To the Vijïäna-vädés’ argument, Çréla Jéva Gosvämé replies not with a logical refutation but by quoting Çrémad-Bhägavatam, the supreme pramäëa. The Bhägavatam verse given here (12.13.12) explains that the nondual reality is characterized by oneness of the Supreme with the individual selves. Thus the oneness of reality is not the Buddhists’ oneness of momentary consciousness and its objects. This reality is advaya-jïäna, the essence of all the Upaniñads and the subject matter of Çrémad-Bhägavatam; it is not momentary but eternal, conscious, and blissful by nature; it is the cause of everything in this universe; and it can achieve everything simply by its will. All this implies that the advaya-jïäna is endowed with multifarious potencies. It is called Brahman because it is the greatest and because it can make others great: båhattväd båàhaëatväc ca yad brahma paramaà viduù (Viñëu Pur. 3.3.21). The various çruti statements cited in this Text describe all these characteristics of Brahman. So the theory of consciousness put forward by the Kñaëika-vijïäna-vädés does not agree with either çruti or Çrémad-Bhägavatam.
The Vijïäna-vädés’ theory of reality is based on their assumption that there is no absolute, pure consciousness. The Vijïäna-vädés do not know that the absolute reality is a person possessing acintya-çakti, inconceivable potencies, through which He causes everything while remaining unaffected. As the Éçopaniñad declares in its opening verse,
oà pürëam adaù pürëam idaà pürëät pürëam udacyate
pürëasya pürëam ädäya pürëam evavaçiñyate
“The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance.”
The Vijïäna-vädés’ view is based on a material conception of changing consciousness. Their understanding does not apply to the absolute realm. While in our ordinary experience material energy is in a constant state of flux, the Lord and His internal energies are not under the same system of natural laws that govern material nature. The example of the spider cited in the previous Text also applies here: from within itself the spider produces a special substance and then weaves its web with it, and later it draws the substance back within itself, all without undergoing any transformation. To understand the Absolute Truth, we must first shed all our misconceptions based on material conditioning and simply hear from authentic spiritual authorities in disciplic succession. The Vedic literature therefore recommends that even if a person is highly qualified by good birth, good education, and so forth, he still should present himself as ignorant and foolish at the feet of a bona fide spiritual master, inquire from him submissively, and render service to him. This is the correct process for cleansing one’s heart and mind of material contamination, and a sincere candidate for spiritual life who follows this process can gradually gain full realization of the Absolute Truth. The Vijïäna-vädés, being followers of Lord Buddha, reject the Vedic literature, and consequently they end up with the hopelessly muddled explanation of transcendental reality outlined above. They say consciousness is momentary. If this were true, then consciousness could not be the cause of anything, because according to the Nyäya school of logic a cause has to exist for at least two moments. It must exist as the cause for the first moment and then transform or produce the result in the next moment. And if our consciousness were existing for only one moment at a time, we could not remember our past experiences, since there would be no continuity from one moment’s consciousness to another moment’s consciousness. A person who has experienced something can recall it later on, but if consciousness were momentary there would be nothing to recall in the next moment’s consciousness. This is certainly contrary to everyone’s experience.
Nor can the Vijïäna-vädés’ idea of the external world withstand the test of logic. They say that the external world is a manifestation of momentary consciousness. Here a question may be asked: Are things perceived as external one with momentary consciousness or different from it? If the Vijïäna-vädés claim that the external objects are separately real, then they are agreeing with our Vaiñëava opinion and are contradicting their own statement that the apparently external objects are only a manifestation of internal consciousness. On the other hand, if they say that the external objects are one with internal consciousness, in practice there would be no way to distinguish between the momentary, internal consciousness and the objects it perceives. Also, there would be no standard to separate, say, blue consciousness from yellow consciousness, and thus our perceptions would be rife with confusion.
As is known from both reason and direct experience, consciousness always has a subject (one who is conscious) and an object (what one is conscious of). If momentary consciousness alone were real, where would its subject and object be? To this the vijïäna-vädés offer no satisfactory answer. If neither external objects nor such internal objects as happiness and distress are different from the perceiver, then who is doing the perceiving? Everyone’s common experience is that the perceiver, the perceived, and the perception are distinct.
In this Text Çréla Jéva Gosvämé again clarifies that the oneness of the jéva and Brahman spoken of in çruti should not be understood as absolute oneness. After all, çruti contains such statements as anena jévenätmanänupraviçya näma-rüpe vyäkaraväëi: “Along with this jéva I shall enter as Paramätmä and create name and form” (Chändogya Up. 6.3.2). Here the pronoun anena (“this”), referring to the jéva, implies that the jéva is different from “I,” the speaker (God). Nonetheless, elsewhere the jéva is described as part and parcel of Brahman, a conclusion confirmed by Çréla Vyäsa’s trance. The reconciliation of this apparent contradiction is that, as we have discussed before, the jéva and Brahman are one in the sense of their sharing the common characteristic of consciousness but are different in their individual identities and potencies. When someone says that Texans and New Yorkers are one, we understand him to mean they are from the same country, the United States, not that they have no separate identities.
The jévas are parts of Brahman, the whole. This is the oneness of Brahman with its parts, its energies, which is the fundamental teaching of the Upaniñads and also of Çrémad-Bhägavatam. The idea is that in general the part is dependent on the whole and helps it function. When separated from the whole, the part becomes useless, just as a finger lopped off a hand becomes useless. In the same way, the relation between the jévas and the Supreme Lord, who is known as Brahman in the Upaniñads, is that of the servants and the served. The jévas have no independent existence. All their problems begin when they start considering themselves independent of the Supreme Lord.
Correctly understanding the oneness between Brahman and the jévas is a fundamental step in understanding the nature of Brahman. Every jéva directly experiences his own consciousness, and the Upaniñads, on the basis of the oneness of Brahman and the jévas, instruct the jévas to extrapolate from that experience some idea of the nature of Brahman. To illustrate this process, Çréla Jéva Gosvämé gives the analogy of a man born and bred in a cavelike room who has never seen the sun. To educate this man about the sun, someone may point to a ray of sunlight shining into his dark room through a tiny opening and tell him, “This single ray of light is from the sun, an enormous sphere that emanates countless similar rays.” From this information the man can get some idea of what the sun is like. The Upaniñads use this same method to instruct the jévas about Brahman’s status as pure consciousness. Indeed, the jévas are like atomic rays emanating from the sunlike Brahman. The sun’s rays are not completely different from the sun, for they originate from the sun, nor are they absolutely one with the sun, since they can be seen apart from the sun and they lack the complete potency of the sun. Similarly, the jévas are neither completely one with Brahman nor completely different from Brahman. In his Sarva-saàvädiné, Çréla Jéva Gosvämé calls this relationship between the jéva and Brahman acintya-bhedäbheda, “inconceivable, simultaneous oneness and difference.” Owing to this relationship, Brahman is described as advaya-jïäna, or nondual consciousness, which is the subject of Çrémad-Bhägavatam.
Thus the word Brahman—as the Upaniñads and also Çrémad-Bhägavatam use it—should not be misunderstood to mean impersonal Brahman without qualities. The Mäyävädés insist on this wrong understanding, but according to logic such an impersonal Brahman cannot exist, because if it did it would possess the attribute of existence, which implies potency, which in turn implies duality—Brahman plus attributes. But Mäyävädés abhor duality in the absolute realm. Therefore in no Vedic scripture does the word Brahman mean impersonal Brahman in the sense that the Mäyävädés intend.
The true conception of Brahman is stated by Süta Gosvämé in Çrémad-Bhägavatam (1.2.11): brahmeti paramätmeti bhagavän iti çabdyate. “This nondual consciousness is called Brahman, Paramätmä, and Bhagavän” Here Süta Gosvämé does not say that the Absolute Truth is also called jéva. He includes only the above-mentioned three designations—three names of the same nondual consciousness, which Çrémad-Bhägavatam identifies as Kåñëa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The Absolute Truth appears differently to the practitioners of various spiritual processes, but the Absolute Truth itself does not change. This is the significance of the word çabdyate (“it is designated”) here. The Brahman described in the Vedic scriptures is Bhagavän, the Supreme Person, Kåñëa.
In the çruti we find two types of statements concerning the relationship between the jévas and Brahman: those statements designating the jéva as part of Brahman and those indicating his oneness with Brahman. The real distinction between these kinds of statements is only one of emphasis on either difference (bheda) or nondifference (abheda). Statements in the Vedic scripture such as nityo nityänäà cetanaç cetanänäm (“That one eternal conscious being is the support for the many eternal conscious beings”; Kaöha Up. 2.2.13) belong to the bheda class. Statements such as sarvaà khalv idaà brahma (“Indeed, all this is Brahman”) belong to the abheda class.
The word kaivalya in Bhägavatam 12.13.12 properly means “pure devotion.” Although impersonalists commonly use this term to mean final emancipation, or merging into Brahman, Brahman is not ultimately impersonal, as the Mäyävädés claim. Their usage of kaivalya is therefore absurd. Kaivalya means liberation, but the real mark of liberation is pure devotional service, not merging into Brahman. Çréla Jéva Gosvämé will explain this more fully in the Préti-sandarbha.
To summarize, each statement in the Vedic scriptures describing the oneness of Brahman and the jévas serves one or more of the following purposes:
1. To distinguish both Brahman and the jévas from inert matter by pointing to consciousness as their common quality.
2. To show that the jévas are fractional parts of the Supersoul.
3. To teach that the jévas are dependent on the Supersoul.
4. To indicate that by becoming an unalloyed devotee of the Lord a jéva can become powerful like the Supreme Lord.
5. To show that living in the material world is not the natural, healthy condition of the jéva.
6. To show that the jéva, whether in conditioned life or in liberation, is dependent on the Lord.
7. To establish that Brahman is the only self-existent reality.
One should not think that any statement in the Vedic scriptures about the oneness of Brahman and the jévas asserts their absolute oneness.
To know the Supersoul, one must first understand the nature of the individual self, the jéva. Thus in the next Text Çréla Jéva Gosvämé begins explaining the characteristics of the self.
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Text 53.3
The objection of the Kñaëika-vijïäna-vädés discussed in the previous Text—namely, that consciousness is only momentary—is repeated here (in Text 53.3) and answered differently. The momentary consciousness of which they speak actually consists of changes in one’s mental state. It is produced by the senses interacting with the external world. Consciousness itself is constant. The Vedänta explains that when a person looks at an object there arises a particular mental state, called a våtti, which the soul perceives. The mental state itself is not the perceiver. But the Buddhists, who are totally ignorant about the soul, mistake this temporary, ever-changing våtti for the real consciousness.
This point is further clarified with the analogy of the life air. Air is one, but air within the body has various names, such as präëa, apäna, and samäna, according to the function it performs. Similarly, the soul is one, but on account of the senses, the consciousness the soul manifests while in the body appears many-branched and ever-changing. This phenomenon is similar to the way in which sweetened milk gives rise to different mental states when perceived with different senses: to the eyes it is white, to the tongue sweet, and so on.
So it is not the self but only the mental state affected by varieties of sense perception that appears and disappears, or undergoes changes. The living entity is a fractional part of the Supreme Lord, and since the Lord is conscious and eternal the living entity must share these qualities, just as a tiny gold nugget shares the qualities of the mother lode. And the purpose of explaining the conscious and eternal quality of the soul with logic and personal experience is to help us develop an understanding of the Supersoul.
Çréla Jéva Gosvämé derives two arguments from the words of Pippaläyana (Bhäg. 11.3.38), both of which serve to distinguish the soul from the material body. The first argument is based on the changes that occur in the material body. We see these changes as time progresses, but with some reflection we can understand that we ourselves have not changed but are the same person. Since the attributes of changelessness and transformation cannot be attributed to the same object, the unchanging soul must be distinct from the changing body.
Çré Jéva’s second argument is based on the distinction between the perceiver and the perceived. The body and mind cannot be the observer, because they are objects of perception. Thus the perceiver, the soul, must be different from them.