Pariprasna

Srimat Swami Tapasyananda Ji (1904 – 1991) was one of the Vice-Presidents of the Ramakrishna Order. His deeply convincing answers to devotees’ questions raised in spiritual retreats and in personal letters have been published in book form as Spiritual Quest: Questions & Answers. Pariprasna is a selection from this book.

QUESTION: Can the mind of a man comprehend the witness who is not revealing Himself? What is the way? MAHARAJ: The witness cannot be comprehended as an object by the mind. Because, immediately it is seen as an object it ceases to be witness or the seer. It is just like the eye. We see all things with the eye, but the eye cannot see itself in the way in which it sees other things. Yet its existence is not doubted. So also there is a centre of consciousness which is not the object of perception, but through whose power all perceptions are possible. If we are to have an experience of it in itself, we have to eliminate from its field all perceptions and all the instruments with which it is in identification in the process of perception. For example, there are the senses, the mind, the intellect, the will, etc. The luminosity of the seer is percolating through all of the instruments of perception and thus the seer is in identification with all of them and is not able to recognize his autonomy.

Now to realize the separateness of the instruments and recognize their separateness from himself, it is a very difficult exercise in inward concentration, and so the Upanishads compare it to the separation of a very subtle stalk of a blade of grass from the fibrous materials adhering to it. If this could be done and the witness recognized in his isolation, then there will be comprehension of one’s essential nature as the unaffected witness. Of course it is not the mind that ultimately comprehends, because all the mental faculties have to be objectified and then there is no power of comprehension for them. The witness has to be realized as pure Self-awareness, which is another name for Samadhi.

QUESTION: How did the Jivatma originate? When one becomes a Jivanmukta has he got to take any future birth? When one becomes a Mukta, what becomes of the Atman, the ‘I sense’?

MAHARAJ: The Hindu spiritual tradition has two metaphysical positions. One is the pure absolutist point of view for which everything objective is a mere appearance, the pure subject alone being the real. An appearance means something that is experienced, but does not exist none the less in the way it is experienced. From this point of view, the universe, inclusive of the Jiva, is an appearance only. It does not actually exist, and the reason for its origination as also of the world, does not therefore arise.

Now this way of answering may have some show of logic but does not satisfy a man for whom his Jivahood is a fact, a lived experience. So it is better for him to leave aside the absolutistic tradition and think in terms of the realistic, in which Jiva and Prakriti (the world) are real, but dependent for their existence on God. The nature of that dependence may be described as that between soul and body or between power-holder and power. In this view Jiva becomes an aspect of the Sakti or the body of God. From that Jiva-Sakti, which is a part and parcel of His being, individual centres of consciousness are thrown out as sparks from a conflagration. But there is no particular time or reason for its origination. It is a part of His being and is therefore eternal.

The Jiva, along with Prakriti, emerges during creative cycles, and in Pralaya it becomes dissolved, or shrunk and exists only in a subtle condition as trees in the seed. The emergence at the opening of a creative cycle may be called the beginning of a Jiva in a way, but when it is remembered that it might have passed through several such cycles, it has to be taken that the Jiva has no beginning in the sense we understand it. It is a part and parcel of the structure of the divine and it has therefore existed always either in a latent condition or in an emerged state, either as shrunk and contracted to a state indistinguishable from matter or freed and liberated and shining in its blissful nature.

God’s creative activity and the emergence of Jiva are sometimes stated as relative without admitting that the Jiva is something created without any prior existence. The creative process, consisting of the cycles of manifestation and dissolution, is the divine sport in the process of which the Jiva comes into fuller and fuller manifestation. Originally almost one with matter owing to the shrinkage of consciousness by the influence of Tamas or Inertia, the Jiva is gradually stimulated into activity by the process of material evolution until it becomes a full-fledged centre of Selfconsciousness. Ultimately the process of evolution brings out the conscious and blissful nature of the Jiva into full manifestation. These are the theories regarding the origin of Jiva. It has no origin in terms of our time-sequence. All that can be said is that it has always existed either in a latent condition or in a manifested state.

The doctrine of Jivanmukti, or liberation even when the physical body is alive, is accepted only by the pure Advaitin, whereas according to the other schools of Vedanta, only a very high state of spiritual awareness is reached in the living condition, full liberation being attained only on the death of the physical body. According to both these schools of Vedantins there is no rebirth for the liberated one. In pure Advaita it is said that one who mistakenly considered himself as an individual, recognizes his oneness in essence with the Supreme. Figuratively it can be said that he is dissolved in God. The other schools will say, the Jiva is conveyed to transcendental realms from where there is no fall. It is however maintained that if the Jiva has some noble desire like serving or liberating fellow beings, he may again come to the world as an Adhikarika, a prophet with a divine commission or as a partner in the mission of a Divine Incarnation.

As for what becomes of the I-sense of a Jivanmukta, the answer is the same as for what becomes of his physical body. The physical body of every man dying dissolves into the material elements. But the subtle body has its continuity, no doubt with changes, through the whole of the transmigratory existence. I-sense, is the core of the subtle body. It continues through the whole transmigratory existence, and when ultimately knowledge dawns, it dissolves into its corresponding cosmic whole. Then the individual I-sense will dissolve into the Cosmic I-sense. So individuality as the pure Jiva persists, for the Jiva is a monad having always a dependent existence on God.