Questions & Answers
Pariprasna
March 2021
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.
The Vedanta Kesari
34
QUESTION: Who is the individual self? Who is the Universal Self? How can they be identical and how can a statement like ‘Thou art That’ prove their identity? MAHARAJ: The individual self is the centre of consciousness with reference to an individual person. To put it according to the Vedanta psychology, a person is an assemblage of several layers of bodies centring on a point of consciousness. There is first the gross physical sheath. Behind it, and permeating it, are the vitalistic sheath, intellectual sheath and causal sheath. The true Self is distinct from even this last. It is the centre of Self-consciousness which flows through and enlivens all the sheaths and integrates them into a whole, which we call the personality. In the state of liberation the Self is released from the hold of all these sheaths and becomes one with Brahman, while at the time of death it is temporarily released from the gross physical sheath alone, to be embodied in another afterwards. In release or Mukti the centre of consciousness gets united with the universal Self according to pure monists, or retains its individuality clothed in a divine body and participates in divine life, according to others. The Universal Self is the Self of the whole universe. Just as our individual being is a physical body superficially, but basically a non-physical self-conscious entity, so also the gross totality we experience as the universe of matter and individual selves, is at the core of its being Sat-chit-ananda or absolute existence, awareness and bliss. Now this Satchidananda, the core of the reality, is the Universal Self. According to the Vedanta the individual self and Universal Self are not two entirely different entities. According to some of the realistic schools of Vedanta, the individual self is a part of the Universal Self and, in that sense, one with it. When the limiting adjuncts of the sheaths are removed, the part becomes one with the whole. But according to the pure or idealistic Vedantins, there is no part and whole feature in the Universal Self. The one Self misconstrues itself to be the limited individual self. When this ignorance is removed by reflection on statements like ‘That Thou art’ what is called the individual self recognises itself to be the one Universal Self. It has indeed always been so, since the connection with the adjuncts is only apparent and not real. Liberation therefore means only this recognition of its inherent identity with the Universal Self, according to this school of thought. Identity is not something achieved, but has been always there; in bondage it is forgotten and in liberation it is recognised.
