From the Unreal to the Real

We saw in the last editorial that though from the stand point of the ultimate Reality the world is unreal like a dream, nothing else is more real to us in our everyday experience. The world impinges upon our consciousness and determines our priorities as long as our body and mind are real to us. The challenge is to break the unreal world-dream and wake up to Reality. Mind discipline and spiritual practices help us in this endeavor.

What Makes the World-dream Real to us

According to Vedanta, Brahman is the only reality. It appears to us as this manifold world of differences. This appearance is because of maya, the power of Brahman. In fact, maya is a twofold power: The power of concealment (avarana sakti), concealing from us the basic spiritual Reality, Brahman; and the power of distortion (viksepa sakti), making Brahman appear to us as the world.

Sankhya philosophy has a name for the ultimate Reality: Purusha. According to it, however, there are infinite Purushas, in contrast with the one-without-a-second Brahman of Vedanta. Vedanta is more rational since it negates multiplicity for the Spirit, which transcends nature (space and time). Our focus here is on Prakriti, Sankhya’s equivalent of maya. Prakriti is loosely translated as Nature. Prakriti is primordial Nature, out of which evolve everything that is not-Spirit, not-Purusha, or not-Self – both at the microcosmic and macrocosmic levels. Prakriti is inert but is able to evolve as the subtle and physical worlds and go about its activities by mere proximity to the conscious Purusha. The goal of life is for the Purusha (the individual soul) to free himself from the hold of Prakriti, realize his spiritual nature and thus free himself from the threefold misery of the world arising from (1) his own body and mind. (2) those of others and (3) nature’s fury like flood, famine, cyclone and earthquake.

A Brief Survey of the Three Gunas

Prakriti is composed of three gunas called, sattva, rajas and tamas¹. They are respectively translated as calmness (or poise), activity and inertia. These gunas constitute Prakriti even as three strands a rope. Minus the strands the rope vanishes. Even so, minus the gunas, Prakriti vanishes and the spiritual Reality stands revealed in its true glory. All that we perceive with our sense organs, think with our mind, and our own body and mind – all have evolved from Prakriti and hence composed of the three gunas. Our identification with our body and mind and consequent running after the fleeting objects of the world are the result of our apparently inextricable association with the gunas. All the three gunas are present in an individual, but one of them predominates over the other two. Deluded by the three gunas, the world does not know the spiritual Reality behind it². Sri Ramakrishna describes the three gunas as three robbers who rob man of the knowledge of his real Self. Tamas, the first robber, destroys. The second robber, rajas, binds a man to the world and entangles him in a variety of activities. Sattva alone shows the way to God. It produces virtues like compassion, righteousness and devotion. One cannot attain the knowledge of Brahman unless one transcends the three gunas³.

References

1. The gunas are discussed in greater detail in `The Three-stranded Rope’, March 2002 editorial.
2. See Bhagavadgita, 7.13.
3. M, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans. Swami Nikhilananda (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1985), 218-9.

© "Prabuddha Bharata" (August 2003) published by Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati post, Via Lohaghat, Champawat Dist. 262 524. Website: www.advaitaonline.com. Reprinted with permission.

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