Commentary on the Panchadasi

by Swami Krishnananda

The sixth chapter is called Chitradipa. This is a very important chapter of the Panchadasi, and very long, which practically lays the foundation for the whole philosophy of Vedanta. Philosophically, it is the most important of all the chapters. It has to be studied with great concentration.

Yathā citra paṭe dṛṣṭam avasthānāṁ catuṣṭayam, para mātmani vijñeyaṁ tathā’vasthā catuṣṭayam (1). The creation of the world is a process, something like the process involved in the painting of a picture. There are four stages in painting a picture; similarly, there are four stages in creation. This is the comparison between a painting and creation. What is the comparison? It is illustrated here.

Yathā dhauto ghaṭṭi taśca lāñchito rañjitaḥ paṭaḥ, cidantar yāmī sūtrātmā virāṭ cātmā tather yate (2). The first stage in painting is to have a cloth, a canvas. The second stage is to stiffen it with starch, because a piece of cloth with holes between the interwoven threads would not be suitable for the purpose of painting. The cloth has to become thick, and impervious to the ink. For that purpose, the cloth is stiffened with a smearing of suitable starch. This is the second stage in painting.

In the third stage in painting, the artist draws on this stiffened canvas, a pencil sketch or a light sketch in some form, barely visible and indistinctly cognisable as to its real fea­tures. We have some idea as to what is coming up when we have a perception of this faint outline that he has drawn on the canvas. This is the third stage in painting.

The fourth stage is the fair copy. The lines are filled with ink in different forms. Different types of colour are touched and filled as would be necessary to present the requisite pictorial scene. The variety, the beauty and the attraction of the picture is in the manner of the spreading of the ink in the requisite proportion. This is the fourth stage in painting, and then the painting is complete.

Likewise, there are four stages in the process of creation. Just as a background of cloth is necessary for painting a picture, an eternal unchangeable background is necessary for even the appearance of such a thing called the world. Even appearance cannot be there unless there is a reality behind it, and even falsity is so defined on account of its relationship with the truth, from which it is distinguished. There is an all-pervading, unchangeable background which, as we have studied earlier, is Pure Consciousness. That is the first stage in creation. It has to exist, as cloth has to exist.

The second stage in creation is the stiffening of the cloth, as it were, here in this process of creation. The Consciousness that is Universal gets stiffened, as it were, by a concentrated will of the Cosmic Being. The featureless transparency of the universality of consciousness gets concentrated, as it were, with the stuff of the futurity of creation. This is what we call the will of God.

In Pure Being, there is no question of will. It is just existence as such. In the second stage, there is a determination in consciousness as to the nature of the creation that is to take place in the future. The third stage is the drawing of the outlines. That is the faint picture of the cosmos that can be seen in the state of Hiranyagarbha. The stiffened form is Ishvara; the Pure Consciousness is Brahman.

So Brahman manifests itself as Ishvara. Ishvara becomes Hiranyagarbha, where the subtle cosmos can be faintly seen as an outline drawn to present the actual shape of the visible cosmos. The actual shape is not visible in the Sutratma, Hiranyagarbha. Only a faint outline is seen. But the fourth stage is the gross manifestation of the universe with all the variety, the grandeur, the beauty and majesty, with all the colours. The phantasm that we see in this cosmos is God filling in the variety of ink, as it were, on this outline that was drawn in the state of Hiranyagarbha – prior to which there was a will to do, prior to which there was the background of the Absolute. So here are the four stages of creation, almost similar to the four stages of the painting of a picture.

Svataḥ śubhro-tra dhautaḥ syāt ghaṭṭito’nna vile panāt, maṣyā kārair lāñchitaḥ syāt rañjito varṇa pūraṇāt (3). The cloth is pure, uncontaminated by any kind of starch, etc. It becomes a little different from what it is in itself by the smearing of the starch, and it becomes a feature of an indistinct nature when it is in the form of outlines. It becomes a concrete presentable picture when colour is filled into it.

Svataś cidantar yāmī tu māyāvī sūkṣma sṛṣṭitah, sūtrātmā sthūla sṛṣṭyaiva virāḍi tyucyate paraḥ (4). By itself, Consciousness is Pure Absolute, Pure Being. Pure Brahman becomes the potential cosmos, as if the universe is sleeping. Our potentiality is in the condition of deep sleep. The manifested form is in the waking. The subtle outline is in the dreaming condition. So we, too, pass through four stages every day.

The eternal consciousness that we really are, on which we fall, as it were, in the state of deep sleep, is Pure Being. That darkness, that potential of future action which is the sleeping condition, is the second stage. The outline of future action in dream is the third stage. The actual perception of the world in waking is the fourth stage. So cosmically, as well as individually, there are four stages.

The four stages are designated in the Vedanta philosophy as Brahman, Antaryami or Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha or Sutratma, and Virat or Vaishvanara. These terms are well known to us.

Brahmādyāḥ stamba paryantāḥ prāṇino’tra jaḍā api, uttamā dhama bhāvena vartante paṭa citra vat (5). All kinds of things can be seen in the picture. There are human beings, gods, mountains, flowing rivers, sky, shining stars, the sun and the moon. Actually, they are not there. There is only ink, yet we can see a beautiful face, a beautiful landscape, how the rising sun looks in the picture. We enjoy it. The rising sun is not there. Only the ink is there, but it looks like the rising sun.

In a similar manner, all wonders in creation, right from the creative principle of Brahma down to the lowest green grass in the meadow and a particle of sand – right from that supreme creative principle down to the littlest atom in the world all beings, in all the variety of species and gradations of reality in the categorisation of high and low, etc. – are presented in this picture which Brahman has painted over itself.

Citrārpita manuṣyāṇāṁ vastrā bhāsāḥ pṛthak pṛthak, citrā dhāreṇa vastreṇa sadṛśā iva kalpitāḥ (6). People painted in a picture wear different types of clothing. We can see someone tying the cloth in one way, and another dressing himself or herself in another way. Varieties of dress, presentations, embellishments are seen on the people, who also are variegated in the picture. Do we not see them? They look so variegated, multifarious, that we actually believe in the reality of these objects. We will not be able to take our eyes away from a beautiful painted picture. It may be a Renoir, a Michelangelo, as the case may be. We go on gazing and gazing and gazing, and never tire of gazing.

Are we gazing at the ink? Are we gazing at the cloth? Wonderful is the creation! The beauty of the presentation is what attracts the mind, but where does that beauty arise? Where does it lie? What is it that attracts us in a painted picture? Is it the cloth that attracts us? Is it the starch that attracts us? Is it the outline of ink that attracts us, or the colours?

Ink cannot attract us. We can have bottles of varieties of ink; nobody bothers about them. Not the outline or the pencil sketch, not the starch, not the cloth – who bothers about them? But what else is there in the picture which attracts our attention and stuns us, practically? It looks as if life is there.

So is the cinema in our own modern times. There is nothing there except a canvas, a hanging cloth, and a shadow of movement. But nobody believes that it is that. Really, these persons are there. They speak to us; they stir our emotions, they distress our mind. They can change the very life of a person, such is the power of these illusions. Illusions can change our life itself. Our real life changes by the perception of unreal things. How is it possible?

Here is a great philosophy. Are we really perceiving an unreal thing, a non-existent thing? In this case, we are fools of the first water. How could we be affected so seriously by seeing that which is not there? There are no mountains, no people, no clothes, no sun, moon, or stars. Knowing that, why are we looking at it? We are seeing something there which is not the ink. How can we see something which is not there? This is the mystery of creation.

The attraction that we feel for things in the world is not because Brahman is there in all things. We are not attracted to Brahman. Brahman is not seen at all. We do not see Virat, we do not see Hiranyagarbha, we do not see Ishvara; but except these things, there is nothing in the world. The whole of creation is Brahman, Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha, Virat, but none of them attract us. There is nothing to attract us, because we have not seen them. We see something else. We see the colour, the dress, the variety, the contour, the presentation, and something which is mysterious. That mystery is the meaning of creation.

Pṛthak pṛthak cidā bhāsāḥ caitanyā dhyasta dehinām, kalpyante jīva nāmāno bhaudhā saṁsa rantyamī (7). An individual, or a jiva, is a peculiar formation arisen out of the reflection of Pure Consciousness on the intellect of individuality. The Pure Consciousness is the same in all cases, but the medium of reflection differs from one person to another person; and because of the media differing from person to person, we see different people in the world who think differently, look differently, behave differently, and require things in a different manner.

Many people exist in this world. This many-ness is due to the many-ness in the variety of the structure of the reason or the psyche of the individuals, through which one consciousness reflects itself in many ways, as one uniform ink spread over a single cloth can create a picture scheme of a variety of things, while the variety is not there; it only seems to be there. Endless variety can be seen in a picture, though there is only one uniform thing – ink and cloth.

In a similar manner, the intellect and consciousness are the reason for the differences among individuals, and this law applies to every species of being, right from an ant up to an elephant, or even to the gods in heaven. The subtlety, grossness and structural pattern of the intellect – through which consciousness manifests itself – differ, and then it is that we feel that there are varieties of living beings.

The variety is an action of the structural peculiarity of the medium through which consciousness passes in different individuals. And because of this variety, the individuals get stuck. Consciousness gets identified with the intellect, as it were, and becomes egoism, ahamkara, I-consciousness, body-consciousness, mind-consciousness, etc.; and then they enter into the world of suffering. Samsara is the name of this kind of entanglement.