Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and His Disciples's Perspectives
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It was the second day of the dark fortnight of the moon. Soon the moon rose in the sky, bathing temples, trees, flowers, and the rippling surface of the Ganges in its light. The Master was sitting on the couch and M. on the floor. The conversation turned to the Vedanta. MASTER (to M.): "Why should the universe be unreal? That is a speculation of the philosophers. After realizing God, one sees that it is God Himself who has become the universe and all living beings. "The Divine Mother revealed to me in the Kali temple that it was She who had become everything. She showed me that everything was full of Consciousness. The Image was Consciousness, the altar was Consciousness, the water-vessels were Consciousness, the door-sill was Consciousness, the "marble floor was Consciousness — all was Consciousness. I found everything inside the room soaked, as it were, in Bliss — the Bliss of Satchidananda. I saw a wicked man in front of the Kali temple; but in him also I saw the Power of the Divine Mother vibrating. "That was why I fed a cat with the food that was to be offered to the Divine Mother. I clearly perceived that the Divine Mother Herself had become everything — even the cat. The manager of the temple garden wrote to Mathur Babu saving that I was feeding the cat with the offering intended for the Divine Mother. But Mathur Babu had insight into the state of my mind. He wrote back to the manager: 'Let him do whatever he likes. You must not say anything to him.' "After realizing God, one sees all this aright — that it is He who has become the universe, living beings, and the twenty four cosmic principles. But what remains when God completely effaces the ego cannot be described in words. As Ramprasad said in one of his songs, 'Then alone will you know whether you are good or I am good!' I get into even that state now and then. "A man sees a thing in one way through reasoning and in an altogether different way when God Himself shows it to him.. |
English Reference: Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (As recorded in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Sri Mahendranath Dasgupta) |
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We now see that all the various forms of cosmic energy, such as matter, thought, force, intelligence and so forth, are simply the manifestations of that cosmic intelligence, or, as we shall call it henceforth, the Supreme Lord. Everything that you see, feel, or hear, the whole universe, is His creation, or to be a little more accurate, is His projection; or to be still more accurate, is the Lord Himself. It is He who is shining as the sun and the stars, He is the mother earth. He is the ocean Himself. He comes as gentle showers, He is the gentle air that we breathe in, and He it is who is working as force in the body. He is the speech that is uttered, He is the man who is talking. He is the audience that is here. He is the platform on which I stand, He is the light that enables me to see your faces. It is all He. He Himself is both the material and the efficient cause of this universe, and He it is that gets involved in the minute cell, and evolves at the other end and becomes God again. He it is that comes down and becomes the lowest atom, and slowly unfolding His nature, rejoins Himself. This is the mystery of the universe. “Thou art the man, Thou art the woman, Thou art the strong man walking in the pride of youth, Thou art the old man tottering on crutches, Thou art in everything. Thou art everything, O Lord.” This is the only solution of the Cosmos that satisfies the human intellect. In one word, we are born of Him, we live in Him, and unto Him we return. |
English Reference: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (Volume 2) |
Original |
it is necessary to say what Mayavadins, mistakenly called illusionists, mean by the expression maya. They think that the real and unreal are not contradictory terms, but only contraries with a middle ground between them. At one end stands the absolutely unreal or fictitious entities like ‘horn of a hare’ and the ‘son of a barren woman’. These are mere words, without any reality. At the other end stands Brahman, the absolutely real, which can never be negated by anything. Between these two extremes, there are two levels, forming a middle ground, as it were, which thought cannot exclusively classify with either of them. The first of these two middle categories is the experiences of the dream, and those caused by errors of perception…. At the time of perception these phenomena appear absolutely real, and therefore, as far as the perceiver is concerned, for the moment, the experienced objects are there. But when the error is dispelled by right knowledge the illusion disappears totally, or even if the appearance of it persists owing to a combination of circumstances, it no longer deceives the perceiver…The second of these intermediate categories is the phenomenal world which we experience in our working life, and which, after all, causes us all the problems of philosophy and religion. The first of these two middle categories is the experiences of the dream, and those caused by errors of perception…. At the time of perception these phenomena appear absolutely real, and therefore, as far as the perceiver is concerned, for the moment, the experienced objects are there. But when the error is dispelled by right knowledge the illusion disappears totally, or even if the appearance of it persists owing to a combination of circumstances, it no longer deceives the perceiver…The second of these intermediate categories is the phenomenal world which we experience in our working life, and which, after all, causes us all the problems of philosophy and religion. The school of thought [Advaita Vedanta].. tries to understand it also on the analogy of the erroneous perceptions described above. But it would be wrong to state that they put it on a par with them. What they contend is that there have been men who have experienced an awakening corresponding to the disillusionment from illusory perceptions. It is an awakening into a wider consciousness, on gaining which – and it is then and then alone – the phenomenal world is recognized to be on a par with experience of illusory perceptions, i.e. it either disappears completely or, if it continues to be perceived, it is no longer felt to be, in itself, of any reality or value.. |
English Reference: Swami Tapasyananda (RKM Order) (Sri Ramakrishna’s thoughts in a vedantic perspective) |
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi's Perspectives
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The aspirant starts with definition that the Real always exists, and then eliminates the world as unreal because it is changing and hence cannot be the Real. Ultimately he reaches the Self and there finds unity. Then that which was originally rejected as being unreal, is found to be part of the unity. Being absorbed in the Reality, the world is also real. Vedāntins say māyā’s manifestation is the display of the cosmos on pure Consciousness like images in a mirror. Just as the images cannot remain in the absence of a mirror, so the world cannot have an independent existence. |
English Reference: Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi (Conscious Immortality, 107) |
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D.: Is Bhagavan's teaching the same as Shankara's? B.: Bhagavan's teaching is an expression of his own experience and realization. Others find that it tallies with Sri Shankara's. D.: When the Upanishads say that all is Brahman, how can we agree with Shankara that this world is illusory? B.: Shankara also said that this world is Brahman or the Self. What he objected to is one's imagining that the Self is limited by the names and forms that constitute the world. He only said that the world has no reality apart from Brahman. Brahman or the Self is like a cinema screen and the world like the pictures on it. You can see the picture only so long as there is a screen. But when the observer himself becomes the screen only the Self remains. ‘Shankara has been criticized for his philosophy of Maya (illusion) without understanding his meaning. He made three statements: that Brahman is real, that the universe is unreal and that Brahman is the Universe. He did not stop with the second. The third statement explains the first two; it signifies that when the Universe is perceived apart from Brahman, that perception is false and illusory. What it amounts to is that phenomena are real when experienced as the Self and illusory when seen apart from the Self. ‘The Self alone exists and is real. The world, the individual and God are, like the illusory appearance of silver in the mother-of-pearl, imaginary creations in the Self.11 They appear and disappear simultaneously. Actually, the Self alone is the world, the “I” and God. All that exists is only a manifestation of the Supreme.’ |
English Reference: Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi (True Happiness - The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi) |
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The Vedāntins do not say the world is unreal. That is a misunderstanding. If they did, what would be the meaning of the Vedāntic text: “All this is Brahman”? They only mean that the world is unreal as world, but it is real as Self. If you regard the world as not-Self it is it not real. Everything, whether you call it world or māyā or lila or sakti, must be within the Self and not apart from it. There can be no sakti apart from the sakta. |
English Reference: Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi (Day by Day, 233; Cf. Teachings, 19) |
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Bose: When the Upanishads say that all is Brahman, how can we say, like Shankara, that this world is mithya or illusory? Bhagavan: Shankara also said that this world is Brahman or the Self. What he objected to is one’s imagining that the Self is limited by the names and forms that constitute the world. He only said that the world does not exist apart from Brahman. Brahman or the Self is like the screen and the world is like the pictures on it. You can see the picture only so long as there is a screen. But when the seer himself becomes the screen only the Self remains. Kaivalya Navaneeta has asked and answered six questions about maya. They are instructive. The first question is: What is maya? And the answer is: It is anirvachaniya or indescribable. The second question is: To whom does it come? And the answer is: To the mind or ego who feels that he is a separate entity, who thinks: ‘I do this’ or ‘this is mine’. The second question is: To whom does it come? And the answer is: To the mind or ego who feels that he is a separate entity, who thinks: ‘I do this’ or ‘this is mine’. The third question is: Where does it come from and how did it originate? And the answer is: Nobody can say. The fourth question is: How did it arise? And the answer is: Through non-vichara, through failure to ask: who am I? The fifth question is: If the Self and maya both exist does not this invalidate the theory of Advaita? The answer is: It need not, since maya is dependent on the Self as the picture is on the screen. The picture is not real in the sense that the screen is real. The sixth question is: If the Self and maya are one, could it not be argued that the Self is of the nature of maya, that is illusory? And the answer is: No; the Self can be capable of producing illusion without being illusory. A conjuror may create for our entertainment the illusion of people, animals and things, and we see all of them as clearly as we see him; but after the performance he alone remains and all the visions he had created have disappeared. He is not a part of the illusion but is real and solid. |
English Reference: Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi (Day by Day with Bhagavan, 29-5-46) |
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D.: What is reality? B.: Reality must always be real. It has no names or forms but is what underlies them. It underlies all limitations, being itself limitless. It is not bound in any way. It underlies unrealities, being itself Real. It is that which is. It is as it is. It transcends speech and is beyond description such as being or nonbeing. He would not be entangled in apparent disagreements due merely to a different viewpoint or mode of expression. D.: The Buddhists deny the world whereas Hindu philosophy admits its existence but calls it unreal, isn't that so? B.: It is only a difference of point of view. D.: They say that the world is created by Divine Energy (Shakti). Is the knowledge of unreality due to the veiling by illusion (Maya)? B.: All admit creation by the Divine Energy, but what is the nature of this energy? It must be in conformity with the nature of its creation. D.: Are there degrees of illusion? B.: Illusion itself is illusory. It must be seen by somebody outside it, but how can such a seer be subject to it? So, how can he speak of degrees of it? ‘You see various scenes passing on a cinema screen; fire seems to burn buildings to ashes; water seems to wreck ships; but the screen on which the pictures are projected remains un-burnt and dry. Why? Because the pictures are unreal and the screen real. ‘Similarly, reflections pass through a mirror but it is not affected at all by their number or quality. ‘In the same way, the world is a phenomenon upon the substratum of the single Reality, which is not affected by it in any way. Reality is only One. ‘Talk of illusion is due only to the point of view. Change your viewpoint to that of Knowledge and you will perceive the universe to be only Brahman. Being now immersed in the world, you see it as a real world; get beyond it and it will disappear and Reality alone will remain.’ As the last excerpt shows, the postulate of one universal Reality calls for the conception of a process either of illusion or creation to explain the apparent reality of the world. ‘The world is perceived as an apparent objective reality when the mind is externalized, thereby abandoning its identity with the Self. When the world is thus perceived the true nature of the Self is not revealed; conversely, when the Self is realized, the world ceases to appear as an objective reality. ‘That is illusion which makes one take what is ever present and all pervasive, full to perfection and self-luminous and is indeed the Self and the core of one's Being, for non-existent and unreal. Conversely, that is illusion which makes one take for real and self-existent what is non-existent and unreal, namely the trilogy of world, ego and God.' |
English Reference: Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi (True Happiness - The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi) |
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‘As I recalled Bhagavan saying sometimes that unreal (mithya, imaginary) and real (satyam) mean the same, but did not quite understand, I asked him about it. He said, “Yes, I do sometimes say that. What do you mean by real? What is it that you call real?” ‘I answered: “According to Vedanta, only that which is permanent and unchanging can be called real. That is the meaning of Reality.” ‘Then Bhagavan said: “The names and forms which constitute the world continually change and perish and are therefore called unreal. It is unreal (imaginary) to limit the Self to these names and forms and real to regard all as the Self. The non-dualist says that the world is unreal, but he also says, ‘All this is Brahman’. So it is clear that what he condemns is regarding the world as objectively real in itself, not regarding it as Brahman. He who sees the Self sees the Self alone in the world also. It is immaterial to the Enlightened whether the world appears or not. In either case, his attention is turned to the Self. It is like the letters and the paper on which they are printed. You are so engrossed in the letters that you forget about the paper, but the Enlightened sees the paper as the substratum whether the letters appear on it or not.”’ |
English Reference: Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi (True Happiness - The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi) |
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D.: The Vedas contain conflicting accounts of cosmogony. Ether is said to be the first creation in one place, vital energy in another, water in another, something else in another; how can all this be reconciled? Does it not impair the credibility of the Vedas? B.: Different seers saw different aspects of truth at different times, each emphasizing some viewpoint. Why do you worry about their conflicting statements? The essential aim of the Vedas is to teach us the nature of the imperishable Self and show us that we are that. D.: About that part I am satisfied. B.: Then treat all the rest as auxiliary arguments or as expositions for the ignorant who want to know the origin of things. |
English Reference: Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi (True Happiness - The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi) |
