As mentioned in my last blog, language is a dual phenomenon and cannot be otherwise. In fact “dual” and “phenomenon” is tautological, i.e. an unnecessary repetition as every phenomenon is dual.
Quoting from the blog: Both ‘to know’ and ‘to experience’ are transitive verbs, i.e. they require one or more objects. Logically there is no reason why we need to appreciate one term more than the other. As words, both can indicate dvaita. And both can be stripped of their customary use and be defined in an advaitic sense.
The same is true for other terms. In Advaita Vedanta the words love and gratitude are rather under-represented. One of the reasons may be that they are even more loaded with the notion of transitivity than the word experience. Everyone knows love towards someone, but just ‘love’? What’s that supposed to be? Even more so with gratefulness. Grateful for what?! And prayer or devotion are terms I have come across recently that also seem to be difficult to conceive of as intransitive.
Brahman is sat-chit-Ananda or satyam-j~nAnam-anantam. Sat – existence, pure is-ness – is the common factor of every phenomenon we come across. There is nothing here that does not exist or, putting it the other way around: the common factor of everything that is here is existence, sat. Sat is inseparable from chit, consciousness. Every existent thing exists for us because we know about it or, putting it the other way around: nothing would exist for us if we did not know about it.
Every existent object has the qualities of asti (it is existent), bhAti (it is perceptible) and priya (it is loveable). These terms relate respectively to sat, chit and Ananda because Brahman is reflected by every object. The matter-aspect of an object requires a transitive word. The “Brahman-aspect” requires that we cognitively strip that very word of its transitivity.
In my experience neither love, nor gratitude, nor prayer necessitate an object (even if they may do so grammatically) and none require the identification with (oneself as) a separate identity. If life has become pure knowing and pure experiencing, it has turned into pure love, pure gratitude and pure prayer – including everything, excluding nothing.
Pure love, pure gratitude, pure prayer are nothing but aspects of fullness, pUrNa. Fullness means knowing everything as Self, i.e. knowing oneself as everything – limitlessness. My conclusion:
Pure experiencing equals existence, sat.
Pure knowledge equals consciousness, chit/j~nAnam.
Pure love, pure gratitude, pure prayer equals blissfulness/limitlessness.
So first we need to distinguish ‘experiencing something’ from pure experiencing, ‘knowing something’ from pure knowledge, ‘love for something’ from pure love etc. Yet, once we have made this distinction (but only after that) we can withdraw it because in truth nothing is separate from brahman. mithyA is mithyA only because in its essence it is satya. Any knowledge, any experience, any gratitude, any love, any prayer is nothing but Brahman alone.
photo credits: La-Liana@pixelio.de
Very inspired post, Sitara.
Sri Krishna Menon wrote (Atma-Nirvriti): ‘Knowledge is not the name of a function. All objects dissolve in knowledge. They are therefore none other than consciousness.’
Also: ‘How can thoughts which rise and set in Me, be other then Myself? (ch.11)
You: “In Advaita Vedanta the words love and gratitude are rather under-represented”.
I think you are right, but also (especially love) that they are over-represented in social networks, such as Facebook, tending somewhat to sentimentality and self-absorption (ego-centredness); it is cozy, and warm, and huggy, which I have nothing against. It is love anyway (as self-pity is), even if constricted. You may agree with this.
Love is akin to Beauty in its universal projection, and I see them both as equivalent in their essence, thus non-dual, impersonal. Even ‘down to earth’ love, compassion, and gratitude, as you are saying, have a dimension which transcends the individual, and that is their essence (mother’s love! – an epitome of that).
Yes, what is usually understood by love is nothing but sentimentality or biology. You say “It is love anyway (as self-pity is), even if constricted.” I agree, see below.
You: “Love is akin to Beauty in its universal projection, and I see them both as equivalent in their essence, thus non-dual, impersonal.” I agree. Rupert Spira who has been an artist himself, talks a lot about this.
You „Even ‘down to earth’ love, compassion, and gratitude, as you are saying, have a dimension which transcends the individual, and that is their essence (mother’s love! – an epitome of that).”
I would like to add that in its essence even the most unloving relationship is Brahman and thus pure love. Its ability to reflect Saguna Brahman may be very limited but it nonetheless is Brahman. What else could it be.
Words are such slippery things! Whilst trying to think how to respond to this, I was reminded of the famous quotation from Alice in Wonderland: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” And there is a lot of truth in that, so that any objection to what you say is, to some extent, only another personal viewpoint.
I suppose that I tend to go with the mainstream traditional views, having encountered them so often. So I am happy with your use of knowledge, love, existence and consciousness and certainly with your well-expressed sentiments in general terms. Where I have some difficulty is with your attempted use of experience, gratitude and prayer in an intransitive sense. As you say, we tend to use grateful in the sense of gratitude to someone for something. Similarly to me, if you say that you are praying, I would have to ask ‘to whom, and for what?’ As far as I know, all usage of the concept of prayer in the scriptures relate either to karmakANDa style ritual or to sAdhana chatuShTaya sampatti. There is no usage as an ‘attribute’ of brahman.
Finally, I feel (and I believe all usage I have encountered elsewhere) that ‘experience’ entails an experiencer and an experienced thing. I.e. duality is not merely implied but essential.
You have used Sanskrit terms for those words which are ‘ok’ in an (Advaitic) intransitive sense and also given some explanation. But for those other words, you have given neither. If you want to convince me, you need to do both!
Hi Dennis,
About experience. Although I do not have a quote from the scriptures, I’d like to quote Swami Dayananda (from my last blog, which I remember you actually liked) in comparison to Rupert Spira:
‘Consciousness is the self-revealing experience. If at all there is experience, that alone is the experience. Every other experience is strung in that experience. When it is repeatedly emphasised that atman is not a matter of experience, that statement has to be understood properly. It means atman is already experienced all the time. It does not mean it is outside experience, it is the very content of every experience. It does not need to be experienced because it is atma-svarupa – it is experience itself.
(Swami Dayananda in his commentary on mantra 3.2.6 of Mundaka Up.)
Comparing this to the statements of Rupert Spira, a Western advaita teacher with the background of Direct Path, we cannot but notice how both teachers, in their own styles, point to the same advaitic Truth:
Experience is ever changing in name and form, never changing in essence.
From the point of view of a finite self, experience consists of a multiplicity and diversity of finite objects and selves, some of which are conceived as ‘me’, others ‘not me’. From the point of view of experience itself, there is just the seamless intimacy of itself, one indivisible, un-nameable whole, always changing in name and form but never changing.
(Rupert Spira, quotations from his website: http://non-duality.rupertspira.com/home )’
You say ‘experience’ entails an experiencer and an experienced thing’. I think that this viewpoint is habitual. Ask anyone in the street whether there is consciousness without someone who is conscious and without something that he is conscious of. Or whether love can exist without a lover and a beloved.
As to the other two words, gratitude and prayer, I do not know any ‘Sanskrit terms for those words which are ‘ok’ in an (Advaitic) intransitive sense’. As Alice pointed out so wisely, in the end it is a matter of how oneself defines a word. It seems, as you say, that within traditional Advaita Vedanta the concept of prayer in the scriptures ‘relates either to karmakANDa style ritual or to sAdhana chatuShTaya sampatti’. And I guess it is likewise with gratitude, which is somewhat related to prayer.
Actually, risking to be misunderstood, I would like to bring something in here that may trigger a whole new discussion: gender – not in a biological sense but in an archetypical sense. As you know Advaita Vedanta requires manly qualities, which help to transcend sentimentality and emotionality (and the attachment in their wake). Even though this is not explicitly stated, it implies that sentimentality and emotionality signify the female archetype – whereas I say that they just signify the downside of fthe female archetype (the downside of the male archetype could be aggression and insensitivity). So I would say that the positive female archetype is insufficiently represented .
Of course Brahman does not have gender. And sat is chit is ananta is pUrNa. But there may be personal connotations we place to a word. For me personally pUrNa denotes the positive female archetype and as, to my mind this positive female archetype is treated rather step motherly in Advaita Vedanta, I particularly cherish the term pUrNa (just as a term, not placing outstanding value on it).
To sum up what I stated, not in order to convince anyone but just as a possibly unfamiliar way of pointing to the truth of Advaita – about which you and me have no quarrels:
If life has become pure knowing and pure experiencing, it has turned into pure love, pure gratitude and pure prayer – including everything, excluding nothing. This is pUrNa.
This is why I try to avoid using the word ‘experience’. There are two adverse connotations. Firstly, there is the tendency of many Westerners to think that enlightenment is an experience for which they have to search. Secondly, there is the tendency for them to think that hearing or reading the scriptures can only give you knowledge, which you then somehow have to put into practice.
You mention Swami Dayananda. He in particular feels very strongly about this. He says: “There are two things (according to modern Vedanta): theory and practice. By reading how to cook, you do not know how to cook. You have to practice cooking. You have to know theory and practice. This is how Vedanta is presented all over the world and in any book. They do not understand that it knocks off the pramAtA (knower). ‘I know brahman, but I want to experience brahman,’ is their catch-all phrase. The fellow has read something, but he does not yet get the point. His phrase is bunkum.” (From his talks on the Mandukya Upanishad.)
One more thing: you say “if you say that you are praying, I would have to ask ‘to whom, and for what?’” There seems to be a misunderstanding, this is not what I was talking about. Prayer is an activity. By pure prayer I mean an aspect of fullness itself, a ‘state’ of being, not an activity.
This is exactly what I was saying. If you use a word in a way different from how most people use it, you are very likely to be misunderstood. This is the reason why we use Sanskrit terms and say, for example, mithyA rather than illusory, or even Atman rather than self.