Gita Rahasya -Tilak 253

Gita Rahasya -Tilak

CHAPTER IX THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE SELF Such questions do not arise in the Material sciences, because, in those sciences only such things are to be examined as are perceptible to the organs. But, from the fact that a man or his organs come to an end, we cannot conclude that the Paramesvara also comes to an end; nor can we conclude from the fact that a man sees Him as being of a particular kind, that His Real, non-relative form, which is uncircumscribed by Time, is what the man sees. Therefore, in that philosophy of the Absolute Self in which one has to determine the fundamental form of the Reality which is at the root of the universe, one must give up the relative and dependent vision of the human organs, and one has ultimately to consider the matter purely by his spiritual vision, that is to say, as far as possible, by Reason only; and when that is done, all the qualities which are perceptible to the organs automatically drop off; and one sees that the real form of the Brahman is beyond the reach of the organs, that is, qualityless; and that that form is a super- excellent form. But who is going to describe that which is qualityless and how?. Therefore, the Non-Dualist Vedanta has laid down the proposition that the ultimate, that is to say, the non-relative and eternal form of the Parabrahman is not only qualityless but indescribable, and that, man sees a qualityful appearance, in this qualityless form, by reason of his organs. But, here again a question arises as to how the organs have acquired the power of changing the Qualityless into the Qualityful. The reply of the Non-Dualistic Vedanta to this is : as human knowledge stops at this stage, one has either to say that this must be called the ignorance of the organs, and that their seeing the appearance of the qualityful universe in the qualityless Parabrahman is due to that ignorance ; or, one has to oontent oneself with drawing the definite inference that the visible universe (Prakrti) is only a ' divine illusion ' of the qualityless Paramesvara, since the organs themselves are part of the creation of the Para- mesvara . My readers will understand from this the> import of the statements in the Gita that- though the a-prabuddha, that is, those who see merely by the physical organs, see the Paramesvara to be perceptible and qualityful, yet, His real and excellent form is qualityless and that Realising that form by spiritual vision is the climax of Knowledge. But though, in this way, one arrives at the conclusion that the Paramesvara is fundamentally qualityless,. and that the human organs see in Him the variegated appearance of the qualityful universe, yet, it becomes necessary to precisely explain in what meaning the word ‘qualityless’ has to be taken in this proposition.