The second mahavakya Vidyaranya explicates is aham brahmasmi.
Focusing on the first word of the three words—aham, or I—
what does this I represent, the physical or metaphysical?
This is essentialy self-inquiry: the I is paramatman, the supreme unlimited self.
Pure consciousness is the witness of reflected consciousness which by the eye is not seen but by which the seeing is seen, that I of I Am, the prajnanam of jnanam.
How marvelous! The consciousness of any creature in creation is the same one consciousness of the Creator itself.
Consciousness not only passes through the eye of a needle but encompasses the cosmos. Prajnanam brahma.
There are two creations, two dualities. The first is the macrocosmic universe called Isvara. The second is the microcosmic personal called Jiva.
There’s nothing wrong with the universe at all. All manner of things will be well. The personal, on the other hand, tells a different story.
The Pancadasi says there are two divisions of duality in the personal as well. First, there’s the evolutionary intent of realization manifesting
as personal deconstruction and self-inquiry. Second, there’s the desire and imagination of the personal loving the personal so much it hurts.
The Svetsara says, creation is the magic of a great magician. The Aitareya says, atman said, let me be many.
The Taittiriya says, satcitananda wills space into being. The Chandogya says, earth, wind, and fire are the vast vibrations of absolute existence.
The Mundaka says, it’s all like the dazzling sparks from an awesome fire. Vidyaranya's Pancadasi says, there are two creations.
The one is brahman appearing as a manifest universe in all the various ways in which the Upanishads are telling it.
Second is that brahman, a subtle body, and the reflection of consciousness on this subtle body, creates the person, jiva, psychological duality.
As the nature of the Self is awareness itself, it can’t be an object appearing in awareness. Thus the self is not non-existent, it’s just unknowable. Thus spake Vidyaranya.
The Self is neither known nor unknown, but knowledge itself. To say one knows an object but doesn’t know its knower isn’t paying attention. Thus that, they say, is known.
From whatever phenomenon, physical or mental, undergoing your earnest attention, tune out this object appearing in that awareness, and what awaits is Brahman. This is called Vidyaranya's Vision.
The Cave of Atman is what Vidyaranya calls that Brahman which the five sheaths of personality are covering.
The five are body, vital force, mind, intellect, and happiness. They don’t form a myth of creation as much as one of deconstruction.
Reasonable self-inquiry says I’m not the body nor it’s vital force. Neither am I the mind–intellect–happiness complex, this tri-lateral reflection of satcitananda.
The space in space-time is not the ground of all existence. The existence principle in absolute brahman is, that sat of satcitananda.
But scientific materialism loves its space, believing its universal ground of existence was born of nothing 14 billion years ago.
Forgive them for we’re hypnotized by maya. The superimposition has become the substratum. The snake rules the world.
Space is the superimposition, speaks the revelation. The existence principle is reality. It’s the only logical conclusion.
*on pancadasi 2:60-77
The power of maya is known only by its effect, the world. Further the power of maya is actually the power of brahman. And although maya is the power of brahman, make no mistake, maya isn't brahman.
Whereas maya is not absolute existence, neither is maya non-existent. Relatively existent, maya is as it is, undefinable and indescribable.
Before creation, there was maya, the darkness of maya covering the light of brahman. Brahman adorned in the cloak of maya is isvara, god, the saguna brahman, or the absolute with attributes.
And the first transformation of maya is space, in which the world appears, for brahman is spaceless, space being just a superimposition on the substratum of brahman.
Reality is existence. Reality is consciousness. Reality is bliss. Satcitananda is the nature of reality and not its components. Reality is the whole.
(In this way, Vidyaranya talks about the three types of differences: within a singular object, between objects of the same kind, and between objects of unlike kinds. Bheda: svagata, svajatiya, vijatiya.)
There are no parts within reality. Parts consist of name and form. Namarupa is the essence of the manifest creation. Existence is the essence of the unmanifest reality and not one of its parts.
Reality is alone. There can’t be another reality. Reality is uncontested. Existence can’t be opposed by non-existence; even emptiness exists as a superimposition upon existence. Look, it’s ekam eva advitiyam, one only without a second.
In the Pancadasi, a 14th century handbook of Advaita Vedanta (or as was just auto-corrected to advice of the doctor), in the chapter entitled Tattva Viveka, the first of 15 chapters, Vidyaranya (the author, most likely) writes of the 4 stages of knowledge from indirect to direct.
The first is called the listening. The second is called the reflecting or reasoning. Sravanam is listening to the guru faithfully. Manaman is confirming this knowledge initially taken in faith with logical reasoning and careful analysis until the mind buys it and owns it. Or not.
Only when this indirect knowledge clicks does the third stage, meditation, begin. Nididhysanam is the one-pointed contemplation on the brahmakara vritti, the thought, I am Brahman—until the meditator and the meditating drop into the nirvikalpa samadhi of Parabrahman, the fourth.
It may not appear to be the truth but that out there is you in here.
Remove the emptiness of all phenomena from the picture—
it’s obvious the absolute is the material cause of all.
Remove all belief and theories circulating in and about creation—
it’s obvious the absolute is the efficient cause as well.
Remove all beginningless ignorance concerning one’s actual self—
it’s obvious the absolute is one’s formal cause at last.
Thus that without the twin illusion of creation and creator
is you without the nescience of thinking you’re their creature.
footnote
Keep an open head: that out there is you in here.
If form is transformation and transformation is form,
then beneath this superimposition is the formlessness of brahman.
Religions have their gods. Science has its theories.
Avidya may be beginningless but it’s not everlasting thank god.
No guru, no method, no teacher?
No creator, no creation, no creature.
There are three bodies to every person: material, subtle, and causal.
The material body is the outer body completely inert and dependent on consciousness for sentience.
The subtle body is the inner inert one composed of two basic notes: energy and mind.
The mind is also binary in its essential nature and comprised of thinker and doer.
The thinker is the processor stuck between a zero and the one; the intelligence in this operation is the doer in duality.
The causal body is original ignorance and reflector of consciousness called the lover in this story.
For every lover, there’s 1, an object of desire like a missing half,
2, the procurement of this object making things whole again,
and 3. the temporary experience of this fulfillment for all worlds must end and start again.
footnotes
1. There are five sheaths to every tristate.
2. The material body is also called the gross body or annamaya, the sheath of food.
3. This energy is the vital breath, the life force, pranamaya.
4/5. Unsurprisingly, the mind is actually of two minds: manomaya is to hamlet as vijnanamaya is to the decider. Both were tragic.
6. The causal body is the locus of avidya, before karma but after maya. For anandamaya is the lover.
7. Make the object of my desire, god, truth, reality, or my beloved!
8. May my procurement of this object be the end of me in thou, tattvamasi.
a. energy plus mind equals wave-particle equals the subtle body.
b. the body is made sentient by the subtle astral body which is made sentient by the reflection of consciousness in anandamaya.
c. if i am the doer in duality, who am i?
d. if anandamaya is i am.
e. anandamaya - maya = brahman.
*
to fish in the sea
water is the vital breath—
to human beings
the space of consciousness is
*
if this karmic subtle body equals
that astral body of energy and mind
this wave-particle body-mind equals
lucid dreaming
*
ignorance may be beginningless, birthless, and unborn,
but thank god, it's not eternal
*
as pure consciousness is i
the reflection of consciousness is i am
*
the body-mind cannot begin to sheath infinite consciousness but almost everybody thinks it does
*
1.
The universe controls illusion. Ignorance controls people.
Universal consciousness directs maya with the laws of nature and whatnot.
Ignorance misdirects personal consciousness until the knowledge of the satguru turns its head around.
2.
As universal consciousness (Isvara) guides Maya (creatrix of intelligence, prakriti of sattva),
Avidya (creatrix of motion and matter, prakriti of rajas and tamas) dupes
this individual consciousness called Jiva just waiting for the Satguru.
footnotes
*
young’s myth of the self-reflexive universe fits into vidyarana’s advaitic one quite nicely
*
maya is why there will never be a unified theory of physics
you can’t unify physics without the metaphysics of illusion
the immutable nature of brahman will not let you
*
waiting for satguru is avidya’s inside joke
the one waiting for the satguru is the satguru
*
“I, Lalla, tried beyond trying in my search,
Discovering only my efforts had redoubled.
No matter what I did the door remained bolted.
By resolving only to stay there did I see
The door was my own doing.”
*
avidya dupes
