Bhagavadgita -Radhakrishnan 10

The Bhagavadgita -S. Radhakrishnan

Prev.png
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
4. Ultimate Reality


The Brhaddranyaka Up. says : "Where everything indeed has become the Self itself, whom and by what should one think? By what can we know the universal knower ?"[1] The duality between knowing and know-able characteristic of discursive thought is transcended. The Eternal One is so infinitely real that we dare not even give It the name of One since oneness is an idea derived from worldly experience (vyavahara). We can only speak of It as the non-dual, advaita,[2] that which is known when all dualities are resolved in the Supreme Identity.

The Upaniads indulge in negative accounts, that the Real is not this, not this (na iti, na iti), "without sinews, without scar, untouched by evil,"[3] "without either shadow or darkness, without a within or a without.[4]9.) The Bhagavadgita supports this view of the Upaniads in many passages.

The Supreme is said to be "unmanifest, unthinkable and unchanging,"[5] "neither existent nor nonexistent."[6] Contradictory predicates are attributed to the Supreme to indicate the inapplicability of empirical determinations. "It does not move and yet it moves. It is far away and yet it is near. "[7] These predicates bring out the twofold nature of the Supreme as being and as becoming. He is para or transcendent and apara or immanent, both inside and outside the world.[8]

The impersonality of the Absolute is not its whole significance.The Upanisads support Divine activity and participation in nature and give us a God who exceeds the mere infinite and the mere finite.


Next.png

References and Context

  1. ↑ II, 4, 12-14.
  2. ↑ Kularnava Tantra.advaitam kecid icchanta dvaitam icchant* ca'paremama tattvam vijananto dvaztadvaita vivarjatam.Some editions read for vij ananiah, na j ananuu.
  3. ↑ Isa Up., 8. The Supreme, tad ekam, is without qualities and attributes, "neither existent nor non-existent." ?g. Veda, X, 129 The Madhyamika Buddhists call the Ultimate Reality void or sunya, lest by giving it any other name they may be betrayed into limiting it. For them it Is that which shall be known when all oppositions are resolved in the Supreme Identity. Cp. St. John of Damascus:
  4. ↑ Brhadaranyaka Up., III, 8, 8. In the M.B. the Lord who is the teacher tells Narada that His real form is "invisible, unsmellable, untouchable, quality-less, devoid of parts, unborn, eternal, permanent and actionless." See .�Santiparva, 339, 21-38. It Is the "cloud of unknowing" or what the Areopagite calls the "superluminous darkness," "the silent desert of the divinity . who is properly no being" in the words of Eckhart. Cp. Angelus Silesius : "God is mere nothing , . , to Him belongs neither now nor here." Cp. also Plotinus : "Generative of all, the Unity is none of all, neither thing nor quality, nor intellect nor soul, not in motion, not at rest, not in place, not in time; it is the self-defined, unique in form or, better, formless, existing before Form was or Movement or Rest, all of which are attachments of Being and make Being the manifold it is." (Enneads, E.T., by Mackenna, VI,
  5. ↑ II, 25.
  6. ↑ XIII, 12; XIII, 15-17.
  7. ↑ Isa Up., 5 : see also Mundaka Up., II, x, 6–S ; Katha Up., II, 14; Brhadaranyaka Up., II, 37; .Svetdsvatara Up., III, 17.
  8. ↑ balm' antas ca bhutanami, XIII, 15