Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 450

VEDANTA
the Universe, the all-pervading, omnipotent Supreme One, who is inherent in every particle of creation. And yet, though thus associated with, he is not really subject to, dclusion; ignorance with him is wholly sättvic. Ile is pervaded ever by the bliss of Brahinan, the Self, yet indulges in a curious, childlike game of being aware of the illusory character of his own august personality and the universe, even while playfully bringing them forth, supporting them, and then permitting them to disappear. This is the way of ignorance in its collective, aggregate unawareness-the grandiose ignorance of the forest.
We, the self-centered individual trees, on the other hand, are circumscribed by the individual aspect of ignorance. We fancy ourselves to be a Mr. X, or a Miss Z; we fancy that to be a dog, and this a cat, distinct and scparate from each other and from ourselves. Whereas the Lord experiences ignorance in its grandeur, as one, with us the Sell is broken into bits, and associated, moreover, with a nescience that is coinplex--not made up solely of screnity (saltva), but compounded of clarity (sattva), violent activity (rajas), and dull inertia, mutcand dark (tamas). The latter two guņas bcing predominant, the power of sattva is eclipsed, and so the consciousness of an individual, whether man, tree, bird, or fish-is a poor resection indeed of the consciousness of the Self. It is not omniscient and omnipotent, but of little knowl. edge and unlordly; yet it may be called prājña, "intelligence,"169 since it “illuminates” one individual mass of ignorance, one tree in the forest. Such as it is, individual consciousness serves as a light. It cannot dispel the darkness that beclouds the individual completely-as would the sun the darkness of the world-but it scrves, nevertheless, as a candle in a house that would otherwise be completely dark.
This darkness within us remains generally unremovable because of its mixed or unclean nature. It is "bcset by unpellucid, untransparent, or dull and limiting adjuncts"; it is not endowed 169 Mändūkya Upanisad 5; cited in Vedāntasāra 46.
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