The Mandukya Upanishad 2.3 : Swami Krishnananda

21/04/2019
Section 2 : The Individual and the Absolute 3.

i.
How can many things be one thing, is another question. Sarvam brahma: All is Brahman. A multitudinous variety seems to be unified with a single entity.

This is intriguing because we have never seen many things being equated with one thing. Many things are many things and one thing is one thing. The manifold variety of the universe is perceived by us because of the differentiating characters of objects.

What about this differential, then? What happens to the differential when we try to identify all things with a single reality? Here, again, we have to apply the same method of Bhaga-tyaga-lakshana, of shedding something and taking something else, in the act of understanding.

Just as you recognise a person who was there and who is now here by a method of sublimation of characters, all this manifold universe is recognised as one single Being by the method of elimination of redundant characters which are not essential to the structure of the variety, which cannot be called the essence of the variety and which are only accidental to the particulars.

That which is accidental is to be abandoned and that which is essential is to be taken. Brahman is essence and therefore it can be equated only with essence. The essential Brahman cannot be identified with the accidental attributes of the objects of the world. The name and the form, the structural distinctions that we observe in the things of the world are accidental in the sense that they persist only as long as there is space and time.

As was pointed out in the first Mantra itself – Yaccanyat trikalatitam tadapyomkara eva – Brahman transcends the three periods of time, and therefore all space. For this reason it cannot be said to have the characters of space and time.

ii.
What are the essential characters of space and time?

They are distinction and formation, differentiation of one thing from another by attribute, definition, etc.

Because of perception of specific characters called Viseshas, we begin to distinguish one set of Viseshas from another, calling each centre or set as an individual or entity. Minus these Viseshas, these entities would vanish.

We know water as drops. One drop is different from the other. When all the drops are one and there is no differentiating character between one drop and another, we call it the ocean. We, then, name it by a different epithet altogether.

There is a merger of properties due to the overcoming of the difference of space and the barrier of time, in some sense, and in this merger of characters, there is no perception of variety.

To be continued ..