Commentary on the Panchadasi

by Swami Krishnananda

Kūṭastho’smīti bodho’pi mithyā cenneti ko vadet, na hi satyatayā bhīṣṭaṁ rajju sarpa visarpaṇam (16). A question is generally raised: "How does knowledge arise in a person?" It cannot be due to the effort of the person, because effort in the right direction is not possible unless there is some knowledge. We cannot say that human effort is the cause of the rise of knowledge in a person, because that effort itself requires some knowledge at the back of it. How does knowledge arise? This question was also raised by Acharya Sankara in his Brahma Sutra commentary. There is no answer to this question.

How does evolution take place? We are told that there is a movement of life from the rudimentary stages up to the higher levels – from mineral to plant, plant to animal, animal to human being. Who causes the push of this evolutionary process? Does the plant one day start thinking, "Tomorrow I shall become an animal?" No. The plant has no consciousness of that futurity. Does the animal think that it should become a human being after some time? Is it the animal's effort that transforms it into a human being? No.

Whose effort is it then? If there is no cause at all to end its operation, it would mean that effects can follow without causes. Anything can happen at any time with no meaning at all. But the world does not seem to be working in a chaotic manner. Nothing irrational or meaningless takes place in the world. On a careful investigation, logically and scientifically, we realise that the world is perfect in every sense. In that perfect world, how can there be irrational elements such as something coming from nothing? Therefore, how can a human being evolve from the lower species unless there is an impulse caused by something which is responsible for the push of consciousness from the lower to the higher level? Nobody can answer this question. Even great rationalists like Acharya Sankara had nothing more to say than that perhaps it is the grace of God.

The ultra-monistic type of thinking, which is the characteristic of philosophies like Acharya Sankara's, also brings in the grace of God. All the while it has been told us that God, this creative principle Ishvara, is only a tentative manifestation of the Absolute Brahman through the mulaprakriti's sattva guna quality. That means to say, no special importance has been given to this reflected consciousness known as Ishvara. All the importance has gone to Brahman. Yet, when we feel confronted with the terrible question like this, we resort to God. “Bhagavan ki iccha.” We always say that.

This verse that we read just now has some relevance to a question of this kind. Who is it that attains salvation? The Kutastha chaitanya, the pure Atman inside which is Universal in its nature, need not have to strive for liberation. The physical body does not attain liberation, and not even the mind which gets dissolved in liberation. The five sheaths are also cast off. After the five sheaths we have only the Atman, pure and simple. There is nothing in between.

If the moksha that is spoken of in such glorious terms is not what is attained by the Kutastha Universal consciousness and not by the five sheaths, who attains it? Is there anything called attainment? "It is the jiva that attains it" is a tentative answer; but what do we mean by the jiva? It is a makeshift arrangement between the five sheaths on one side and the Atman consciousness, Kutastha, on the other side. There is no such thing as jiva independently by itself. It is apparently there as a kind of reflection of the Kutastha Atman in the intellect, which is the purified form of the five sheaths.

Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to tell a story in connection with this peculiar jiva which neither belongs to the five sheaths nor belongs to the Kutastha, yet wreaks havoc. There was a marriage feast. Hundreds of people were running hither and thither, and there was dinner on the table. Hundreds were sitting, and nobody knew who was sitting and eating. In this crowd, how can one know who is eating, because each one was thinking that a person there sitting at the table must be belonging to either of the two parties – the girl’s side party or the boy’s side party. There were only two parties at the wedding and if someone was not recognisable by one party, they thought that perhaps he belonged to the other party, so why should they unnecessarily talk to him? Also, it is not polite to ask, "Who are you?" And the other party also thought that they should not talk like that, as he may be a person from the other side and they should not be impolite by asking him, "Who are you?" on that auspicious occasion.

When the wedding was over all the people departed, one by one, but there was one person who would not go. He remained in the in-laws' house. They did not say anything; they were embarrassed. They thought perhaps he is one of the members of the other party that had left. They could not enquire if he belonged to the other party, because politeness is important. So he went on eating and living there, and having all the enjoyments. This went on for days together. He wouldn't budge. They were very much upset as it was very difficult situation. One day they could not bear it any more. They said, "Please let us know from where you have come." The next day he ran away from that place. He did not belong either to that party or this party; he made a good bargain of this chaos of the wedding feast and enjoyed life very well for days together, creating a false impression that he belongs to some party. So is this jiva.

There are some people, very simple, ordinary persons, who come to know somehow or other that a VIP is coming at such and such a time, on such and such a railway train. He knows that when they arrive there will be big garlanding and photographing and so on, so suddenly he will put a garland on himself and stand nearby and get photographed with everybody. Afterwards he will show the photograph and say, "I was also a VIP and my photograph was taken." If many photographs are taken, he is a very big man because he has been photographed with so many VIPs. He himself purchased the garland, put it on and then stood there to be in the photographs.

This is how the jiva works here – belonging neither to Brahman, the Absolute, nor to this physical world. How does moksha take place? Is it a real attainment, or is the attainment itself an unreal process? This has been illustrated by an analogy. Suppose we are fast asleep and we are dreaming that a tiger is pouncing on us. It roars so loudly that we yell and get up from sleep. That tiger did not really exist. The roar of the tiger was also not really there. But our waking up was real.

An unreal cause can produce a real effect. Is it possible? Sometimes we feel like we are falling from a tree. Such a thud! We feel that we have fallen from a tall tree; after waking up we start rubbing our knee to see whether it is alright – such pain we feel. How could an unreal tiger's roar create a real waking? Is this not a contradiction of the relation between cause and effect? Can an unreal cause produce a real effect? But here is an example of such a case. An unreal tiger produces a real waking. Otherwise we would have simply kept quiet, listening to the roar.

They say the Guru is like the tiger; his teaching is like a roar. And we are living in this dream world. The Guru is also inside the dream world; he is not outside. He is like the tiger. That is the only difference. We are like an ordinary person; the Guru is like a tiger. His teaching is like a roar. It is enough to shake us up from our slumber and create an experience that is transcendental. Though the jiva that is aspiring for moksha is itself not a real entity, it can attain real salvation in just the same way as the fright created by the roaring of a tiger in dream was not a real fright, but that unreal fright created a real waking.

The world is unreal, finally. Neither our scriptures, nor the Guru or the teaching can be regarded as finally valid in the light of the Absolute Brahman. There is a homeopathic saying in Latin, "similia similibus curentur". Like cures like. Our ignorance is not a real state of affairs. It is a kind of obscuration caused by certain factors which cannot be regarded as ultimately real. To remove that obscuration, we do not require a real cause.

There was a boy who was having his lunch – a little kid. He saw a lizard moving on the wall. He was taking his meal and going on looking at the lizard. It was moving this way and that way. After a few minutes, he found it was not there. He looked from all sides. The lizard was missing. He thought it had gone inside him. He felt that the lizard had gone inside his stomach. He vomited, yelled, cried, and beat his breast at what had happened. The parents came. "Oh, the lizard has gone inside me!" he cried. They called the doctor, who gave some emetic. The boy vomited, but no lizard came out. So bad and so sick he became, that they thought there was no cure for him because the lizard was inside the stomach. After a few minutes, suddenly the boy saw the lizard on the wall. "Oh it is there, it is there!" And in a minute he was alright.  The doctors had to go away, as there was no need for a doctor at all. An unreal sickness does not require a real treatment. But the sickness was so realistic that he was vomiting. How could vomiting, which was so real, be regarded as an unreal phenomenon?

It is real from the point of view of the experience of the person, but totally unreal from the point of view of its real cause. When the real lizard was seen, immediately the illness vanished. The doctors had to quit, and no fees had to be paid because they did not have to treat the boy.

This question that is raised in Vedanta philosophy is very crucial. The unreality of a thing or the reality of a thing is not a glib question and a glib answer. We cannot simply raise this question and expect one answer to it. There are great authors on Vedanta and metaphysics, such as Madhusudana Saraswati who wrote Advaitasiddhi, a large text that gives at least nineteen definitions of what unreality can be.

Unreality is not just as we think. The unreality of horns on the head of a human being is different in nature from the unreality of the snake seen in a rope. Both are unreal, but there is a difference between these two kinds of unrealities because the horns of a human being are never seen at all. They are atyanta abhava, meaning absolutely non-existent. But the snake in the rope is not absolutely non-existent; it is relatively non-existent. As long as it is perceived, it is there; when it is not perceived, it is not there. So it has a relative non-existence and also a relative existence. It is not like a tail of a human being or horns of a hare.

Varieties of unrealities are there. What kind of unreality do we attribute to this world? Is it like a horn on a human being's head? It is not so, because horns cannot be seen. We are seeing the world. The illustration is that it is something like the snake in the rope. Misconception – wrong, erroneous perception – is the cause of the appearance of something outside us as the world.

As the appearance of bondage in the form of the perception of the world outside is a relatively valid experience and not an absolutely valid experience, we require only a relatively valid treatment for it – like the teaching of a scripture or the word of a Guru, or the thoughts that we entertain in the meditation process, though all these activities come within dream only. It does not mean that dream is totally unreal because if we have hunger in dream, we can have a dream lunch and we will be satisfied with that. If we are thirsty in dream, we can have dream water; it will quench our thirst. It does not mean that it is totally meaningless, because corresponding causes are producing corresponding effects. The verse that follows tells us: "As is the god, so is the offering."

Kūṭastho’smīti bodho’pi mithyā cenneti ko vadet. The consciousness that we are the Kutastha Atman also is a part of the dream world. It is as unreal as the snake in the rope, but it is very real as the snake in the rope. It is unreal because the rope cannot become a snake. It is real because we jumped over it in fear. An unreal, non-existent thing cannot cause a real jumping in fright. It was there for the time being. So there is an indescribable, inexplicable phenomenon which is relatively real and relatively unreal. As is the case of the relation between the rope and the snake, that is the relation between the world and God.