Many of us often gloat over our limited knowledge. We think that we have understood everything in this world and we deem ourselves qualified to question deep philosophical truths.
I have heard many self-styled rationalists declaring that God does not exist and it is just a superstition of a primitive man. These people neither know the meaning of God nor do they have any proof by which they have arrived at the conclusion that God does not exist, no matter what that word means! The so called ‘science’ that these people proudly claim to be adherents to, needs a proof even to declare the non-existence of something. Not having a proof of existence does not automatically imply non-existence. It just means that “we do not know”. It is as simple as that 😉
Let us get back to Upanishads.
There was this boy Swetaketu who had just returned home after his studies in residential school. He was under the impression that he has studied everything during his long stay in the school. I am quoting a story from Chandogya Upanishad which is part of Sama Veda.
His father Uddalaka was quite amused by Swetaketu’s arrogance. He wanted to correct his son. So, he asks him
“Have understood ‘that’, after knowing which there is nothing else to be known?”
Swetaketu had studied all the sciences, mathematics, scriptures and so on, but not about ‘that’ after knowing which there is no need to understand anything else. So, he retorts that he has never heard of any such thing.
Father Uddalaka goes on to raise the most fundamental question.
“My son, whatever you see around you, from where did all these come from? Did these come into existence from ‘nothing’ as some people claim? But that can’t be. Something can’t come out of nothing! There should have existed something before this world came into existence”.
This is such a fundamental question that even our modern science has no clear answer. There are some guesses but nothing conclusive. And we are talking about a person, who may have lived 5000 years ago. He had no ‘science’ as we understand the word today. No huge telescopes, no complex mathematical skills, no advanced computers! All that he had was a deep insight that he attained through prolonged meditation. He got the answer from within and so he did not have to look outside.
But he was not a typical religious man who would force his views on his son without explaining it logically. So, he goes through a long list of arguments and experiments to show that there is some such thing called ‘Atma’ which alone existed in the ‘very beginning’.
“And this ‘Atma’ which was one and only one, ‘became many’. It took the form of multiple things in this world which includes both animate and inanimate things. In particular, you (i.e. Swetaketu) are none other than a form taken by that Atma. So, in the ultimate sense, whatever you see around is nothing but the ‘Atma’”.
The texts of all religions equate this ‘Atma’ to God. But they don’t say that God became this world. But they say that the God ‘created’ this world. That brings in the duality – the creator and the created, controller and the controlled, master and the subordinate, which is a basic tenet of all God centric religions.
But not the Upanishads. Upanishads say in more than one way, that it is the very same thing which has taken the form of many things that we see around us, including each one of us. That raises several paradoxes. If Atma has taken several forms, then
1. This Atma is subject to change since each of the forms goes through changes.
2. Anything that changes cannot be eternal. So, Atma is not eternal.
3. Since all beings without exception undergo suffering at some stage or other, and since all of them are Atma, that implies that the Atma is subject to suffering. That means Atma is helpless and not omnipotent God as is usually understood by religious scriptures.
4. More than anything else, if Atma has taken so many forms, then after the forms are taken, the original Atma no longer exists. That means there is no God!
These are the kind of questions that seemed to have baffled even scholars like Sankara. His opponents could easily ridicule his concept of Advaita by pointing out these inconsistencies. Sankara dismisses all those objections by saying that
“the multiplicity in the world that we perceive is just an illusion or Maya. In reality, there are no multiple things in this universe. In fact, there is no universe itself. All that exists is Atma and only Atma. It is Maya or illusion that makes this Atma appear to be many things – seer and the seen, perceiver and the perceived, and so on.”
When asked why there are stories in the Upanishads that talk about this one and only Atma ‘becoming‘ many, Sankara goes to the extent of saying that even the Upanishads are part of this grand illusion called Maya. If that is the case, what is Sankara, his philosophy, his arguments? Are they all illusions? One has to accept that. Where does that lead us to?
Post Sankara, his successors came up with many theories using which they struggled to resolve this paradox of ‘one Atma appearing as many thigs’.
Some said, the multiplicity is because of the adjuncts like body and so on. These bodies make the same Atma ‘appear’ as if there are many things. If that is the case, then what are these bodies? Are they different from the Atma? – not if we go by the Upanishads!
Some later Advaitis came up with more sophisticated reasoning such as ‘object and its image’. They said that the beings in the world are just the images of the Atma reflected in the ‘minds’ and not the Atma itself. That raises whole plethora of questions! What is this mind that they are talking about? Is it Atma? If not, you are admitting that there is something other than the Atma, which contradicts the original claim that Atma is one and only one that exists. Further, if beings are just images of the Atma, then they lose all notions of ‘free will’ since an image is totally dependent on the object of which it is an image. In that case, why do these images suffer since they can never do anything wrong!
Not that I have fool proof answers to any of these questions. I would rather go by what the Upanishads say. Let us discuss that in the next episode.
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