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VEDANTA
the world, which is the dream of Visņu; and the god upon it, Brahma, the "Creator," is an emanation from the world womb of Viṣṇu's cosmic sleep.
The meaning of all this is that when the pure, transcendental, metaphysical essence (brahman), which is beyond all attributes and personal masks, one-without-a-second, pure bliss, pure sentiency and consciousness, sinks into the state in which, under a personal mask, it fancies itself to be the Universal God, then the clarity of pure spiritual being is clouded, and this cloud is self-delusion on a cosmic scale: universal consciousness, forgetful of the true state and nature of Brahiman. It imagines itself to be possessed of a divine personality: this is the crucial mystery of creation. The highest Lord, under this illusion, acquires the consciousness of being the highest Lord; fancies and feels himself to be endowed with omniscience, omnipotence, universal sovereignty, and all the other similar supreme virtues. The possession of these attributes, however (and they are ascribed generally to the Highest Being throughout the world, in Islam and Christianity as well as in the popular cults of India), is itself but a reflex of delusion. Impersonal, anonymous, inactive-Brahman remains untouched, beyond these popular veiling clouds, this supreme eclipse. Only apparently is the universal substance implicated in this highest personal figure, which has been born, as a magnificent superego, out of a sublime state of godly consciousness-in-ignorance.
The Vedantic adept comes to a point in the course of his yogic progress where he becomes identified with this personal creator of the world illusion. He feels that he is at one with the Supreme Lord, partaking of His virtues of omniscience and omnipotence. This, however, is a dangerous phase; for if he is to go on to Brahman, the goal, he must realize that this inflation is only a subtle form of self-delusion. The candidate must conquer it, press beyond it, so that the anonymity of sheer being (sat), consciousness (cit), and bliss (ānanda) may break upon
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