TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0181 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

|| 2.04 | THE IDEA OF PROGRESS ||

The above statements of fact are a declaration of the reality of things as pure existence , irrespective of what the mortal human in helplessness has to say in regard to it .

The relative individual does not have such a love for Self-Integration as to dismiss the world of plurality and forms at once as an illusion .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0182 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

A tentative consolation is demanded by the empirical scientific view that the world is a necessary step in the progressive evolution towards Eternal Life .

Support is sought from some passages of the Upanishads which declare that the world is a revelation of Brahman , even if a higher vision may repudiate this view .

" All this is indwelt by the Divine Controller . "
( Isha . Up . 1 . )

Appearance is indwelt by Reality .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0183 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

Truth persists even in the extreme of untruth .

Untruth is a lesser truth and evil is a lesser degree of goodness .

The whole universe is a progressive concealing of Reality by degrees .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0184 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

" The Inner Soul of all things , the One Controller , makes Its one form manifold . "
( Katha Up . V . 12 )

" Whoever worships one or another of these , knows not ( the Truth ) ; for one is incomplete with one or another of these . . . the self is the footprint ( trace ) of this All , for by it one knows this All . "
( Brih . Up . I . 4 . 7 )

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0185 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The relative intellect tries to find here a support for the concept that the world is a self-limitation of Brahman and that the world is the way to Reality .

The individual is the footprint of the Absolute , and it is explained that just as one might find cattle through a footprint , so one finds this All , the Brahman , by its footprint or trace , the limited self .

The individual is a copy or miniature of the cosmic .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0186 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The Svetasvatara Upanishad ( IV . 2-4 ) says that the Real has become all diverse things .

The Sandilya-Vidya of the Chhandogya Upanishad ( III . 14 ) declares that Truth is inclusive of everything in the world .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0187 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The conception of the universe as a stage in the progressive evolution of the individual towards the Absolute seems to be a preparation for the more severe insight that the form in which we perceive the world is an illusion .

The highest religion consists in a repudiation of manifoldness . The empirical reality of the world , however , demands a sanction of the view that progress is from a lesser truth to a higher truth , and not from error to truth , though the prayer is to lead us

" from the unreal to the Real . " ( Brih . Up . 1 . 3 . 28 . )

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The ultimately illusory nature of the multiple world is what is declared through illumination and insight , and the conception of the progressive evolution of the world towards the Infinite is a scientific necessity .

Rationality is based on categories , and integral experience which is relationless cannot be explained by rationality .

The world can be explained rationally without detriment to Reality , for insight or intuition is not irrational .

But rationality has always a love for justifying the empirical consciousness by making it a necessary appearance of the Absolute , for rationality itself is empirical .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0189 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

It is in the position of the tailless fox advising its friends to have their tails also cut .

It argues that the multiplicity of objects is not an illusion but their individual independence is unreal .

It is found difficult to account for ethical necessity and self-effort towards Perfection if the entire world is an illusion .

Absolutistic metaphysics seems to make life itself difficult , and we are compelled to take recourse to a relative reality of the world and the individual .

The scientist follows the method of the intellect .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0190 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The intellectual view of the world and Truth is always coloured by Relative concepts .

According to it , the world is a stage in the progressive and gradual ascending of the self to higher states of consciousness .

Man begins from the physical body and ends in the imperishable Soul .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0191 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

One is born in Nature which is one's dear and faithful friend and not an opposing enemy whose forces one must combat with .

The human exists on this earth not that one may kick it aside as a dreadful ghost which tries to devour one but that one may climb up to the higher states of consciousness through the ladder of earthly consciousness and experience .

Birth and death are the processes of the changing of the states of individual consciousness in order to reach superior states .

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The soul , through many such repeated experiences , exhausts the processes of change in consciousness caused by the momentum of past desires , and reaches the state of Perfection , where is no more change and evolution .

The entities of the world are not lures to sin and are not meant to be considered an evil , but are a remedy of Nature provided to the human to mould one and help one in desisting from objective attraction and centring oneself in the Truth of Infinity , and thus form steps in the ladder of development .

Objective contact is meant to effect an escape out of faith in pluralistic independence .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0193 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

The body has to be kept well as long as the individual is in the process of spiritual evolution .

If the body which is meant to effect a particular process of evolution in a particular stage of life is destroyed before the fulfilment of its duty , Nature will take a revenge against that individual and will compel the same to hang on in a condition necessary for the manifestation of another suitable body demanded by the need for continuing the previous work left unfulfilled .

The systematic Nature does not have discord within itself , and , hence , is not filled with conflicting forces .

The forces of life are the different urges for a unification of the self with the all-inclusive Reality .

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The universe with its inhabitants is transforming itself every moment with an inconceivably tremendous speed in order to exist as the absolutely conscious and harmonious Being .

Hence , the forces that work inside the human and outside in the world are always harmonious and sibblingly , and never inimical .

The senses work and demand their respective objects , the mind thinks of objective existence , life persists with its unceasing breaths , there is love and affection , hatred and battle , all because the Eternal Being is expressing itself in its Indivisible Multiplicity of Nature .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0195 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

Life is a dramatic struggle for Self-realisation and Truth-experience . Every event that occurs is for that purpose .

Even apparent contradictions are a sporting of the Absolute within itself .

Life is not a mistake of the soul or a delirium of spirit .

Samsara is not a curse but the process of the expansion of the self into Absoluteness .

Every act of existence is a turning for the better until the Absolute is realised .

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The state of Perfection is neither an Indivisibility nor a Multiplicity but an Indivisible Multiplicity .

Diverse experiences in life are not contradictions but the multiple form of the one Nature felt diversely by different ego-centres due to their attachment to particular forms of experience .

The moment they begin to embrace the entirety of Nature , diversity will be experienced as a Self-revelation of the Absolute .

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The world is not an illusion but a form of the Absolute .

The lower forms are steps to reach higher forms of experience and are not to be rejected as apparitions .

All forms , speeches and actions are the expressions of the Infinite Plenum in itself .

One has only to " realise " the meaning of its workings which appear to be conflicting in the unconscious plane but are in fact a harmonious and happy play of the Absolute .

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Even materialism is a step in the path to Perfection .

Diverse experiences stimulate activity to achieve Truth-realisation .

Death is the beginning of a better life . Evil is the starting point of a state leading to good .

Nothing is independent by itself . All are interrelated and are knit together to form the Eternal Whole .

Everything is only a part of the Infinite Completeness .

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This is what will appear to the individual situated in a world of relativity , for the relative individual cannot help conceiving the Absolute in relative terms .

We cannot know anything except in terms of what we are .

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Because everything changes , change itself is classed as a separate category of Reality .

It is true that , strictly speaking , there can be no such thing as a complete wrong or error , falsehood or evil , or any kind of pure negative of truth , but only a lesser truth or a higher truth , that the negative is not " existence " and so is not , that all is one positive indivisible Truth , though it may appear to have degrees when it is objectively experienced .

But , nevertheless , it has to be remembered that to hold that Truth really undergoes a change can have no meaning .

Evolution is not an absolute category but an experiential interpretation .

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The decision of the intellect that Reality is a process is the effect of its trying to compromise with what fundamentally presents itself as a self-contradiction .

However reasonable this view may be from the standpoint of the human , it cannot be held that the intuitional Upanishads declare as their essential proposition that the Infinite Whole is a constantly changing process attempting to reach itself , a doctrine which contradicts reason itself .

To them the form of the world is in the main an appearance and there is nothing but Brahman .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0202 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

We have already dismissed the possibility of evolution in Eternal Existence as self-contradictory .

Evolution is change , and change is becoming , which would mark the transient nature of Existence itself .

But Existence is eternal .

Nothing that is perfectly real can be said to change or evolve .

Brahman , therefore , does not change .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0203 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

If it is something else than Brahman that changes , we have to create a second to the secondless Brahman .

In any case , change and evolution are impossible as ultimate truths .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0204 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

Empirical facts have their place in one’s life , but they have to be brushed aside as finally untrue , if one wishes to have a perfect realisation of the essential nature of Being or Brahman .

TROTA | CHAPTER 2 | SEL0205 | SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

It is easy to trot out the shibboleth that a teaching on the unreality of all phenomena may itself be unreal . True .

But the consciousness of its being unreal cannot itself be unreal .

After all negation , and the negation of even this negation , consciousness remains , still , the Absolute , not as a bare featureless transparency , but the wondrous Abode of Divine Perfection .

SOURCE | SATYAVEDISM.ORG