Self –the basis of conscious life

 

 

Shankara regarded the empirical life of the individual consciousness as nothing but a waking dream, and as any other dream, an nothing but a waking dream , and as any other dream, an unreal substance . It's unreality comes to light when one travels from limited to cosmic consciousness, or contemplates the relative nature of physical consciousness as it varies from waking (jagrat), to dream (swapan ), and from dream to dreamlessness (sushupti). If empirical experience is relative in character, wherein lies it's reality? The answer provided by Shankara is that it is to be sought in the Thinking Mind, which in turn only reflects the light of the Atman, the Eternal Self, the unchanging , the absolute, the real witness (sakshi). The principle of causality is just a condition of knowledge. The objects appear to be real so long as we work within the limits of cause and effect. The moment we rise above these limitations, all objects vanish into airy nothings. In the true nature of reality, there is no place for causation, because causal and explanation are always incomplete and ultimately lead nowhere. The objects momentarily appear  as  bubbles or ripples on the surface of the water and disappear the next moment into the water and are no more. Water alone remains the real substratum of the whole phenomenon. In just the same way , the Real contains and transcends the phenomenal, and is free from  all relationships of time, space and cause. The entire world lives in the mind of man, and it is the movement of the conscious mind that produces the distinctions of perception, the perceiver and the perceived, a differentiation where in fact there is none, as everything is part of the vast ocean of unity. This state does not recognize the distinctions of knower , known and knowledge, all of which are but relative terms with no finality about them . Similarly , the three states of the human experience (waking, dreaming and the dreamless) are unreal , for none of them lasts long enough, and each gives place to the other in turn, as the mind passes from state to state . Each of them has a beginning and an end and exists only in the absence of the others. The term “relativity” in itself implies it's antithesis, the “Reality,” and beyond the three states specified above lies the atman, behind the ever changing panorama of life , the ever unborn, eternally awake, the dreamless and self – illumined, by it's very Nature apure cognition distinct from the non-cognition of the sleep state.