The world is a presentation of outward variety and seeming contradiction in existence. It is a disintegrated appearance of the Absolute, a limited expression of Infinitude, a degeneration of the majesty of immortal Consciousness, a diffused form of the spiritual Completeness, a dissipated manifestation of changeless Eternity. Each of such separated entities of the world claims for itself an absolutely independent existence and regards all objective individuals as the not-Self. The not-Self is always considered to be in absolute contradiction to or at least absolutely distinguished from the self's own localised being. The exclusion of other limited objective bodies from one's own subjective self involves a relation between the two, and this relation is the force that keeps intact the network of diverse consciousness. Everything hangs on the other thing for its subsistence through contact. A lack of the character of self-sufficiency discloses the deceitful nature of the relative reality of things marked off within themselves. The obvious fact that every demarcated entity expresses within itself an urge to relate itself to other objective beings through internal psychoses and sense-operations points out the inability and impossibility of individualised centres of consciousness to maintain the apparent truth of their professed self-existence. The universe rolls on ceaselessly in the cycle of time, and reveals a newer characteristic of itself every moment. Things do not rest in themselves but ever pass away into something else. Everything in this universe is change. Change is the law of life. Nothing is without changing itself. An inadequacy felt in the attainments of the current state of existence is the forerunner of all enterprises in the life of the individual. Action is impossible unless the self feels in itself a deficiency which can be filled up by an active endeavour to possess the missing part that would contribute to the completion of its nature. A felt necessity for a fuller state of experience is the mother of all attractions and repulsions. The whole cosmos seems to be a restless field where dynamic powers are arrayed in battle as if to extirpate themselves for a nobler cause. Tranquillity can well be said to be non-existent in the history of the space-time world. Struggle is the meaning of phenomenal endurance. The Upanishads solve the riddle of relative strife through the intuitive perception of the Essence. The heroic leap of the individual into the unknown is the expression of the want of a superior joy. The dissatisfaction with limitedness in life directs the soul to catch the fullness of perfection in the truth of its Integrality, with which the individualised condition is not endowed. Hence, universal movement and individual effort, though differing in their altruism of nature, can be understood as a reflection of the tendency to Self-Perfection of Being. The pressure of the truth of the absoluteness of consciousness is the source of the force that compels individuals to transcend their finitude and find their eternal repose in it alone. This permanent Verity is the supreme object of quest through the cosmical endeavour in creation, wherein alone all further impulses for externalisation of forces are put an end to. The desire to become the All terminates in the experience of Infinitude. This aspiration to transcend states and things points to the unreal character of the universe.

"The one Being, the wise diversely speak of." -Rig-Veda, I. 164. 46.

"There is nothing diverse here." -Katha Up. IV. 11.

"Existence is One alone without a second." -Chh. Up. VI. 2.1.

The life of every individual bears connections with the lives of other individuals in varieties of ways, in accordance with the degree of its awareness of Reality. Every thought sets the surface of existence in vibration and touches the psychic life of other individuals with a creative force the capability of action of which is dependent on the intensity of the affirmation of the mind generating that thought. Objects entirely cut off from one another can have no relation among themselves. Sense-perception, cogitation and understanding are messengers of the fact that there exists a fundamental substratum of a uniform and enduring Consciousness. Cognition is impossible without a pre-existent link between the subject and the object. Thought cannot spring from emptiness, for emptiness is itself nothing. Activity is possible because there is creative imagination and imagination is a moving objectified shadow of Consciousness. The denial or assertion of something presupposes the awareness of the thinking subject and the subject cannot stand apart from self-awareness. Self-consciousness is, thus, unavoidable in being. It is an eternal fact. The perception of an object reveals the conscious relation that is between the subject and the object. This relation should be based on a fundamentally changeless being, without which even a relation is not possible. All contacts presuppose an immovable ground which supports all movements.

The world is made up of forms. The forms of things disclose their unreal nature when subjected to a careful examination of their composition and working. A thing is a member of the society of diverse phenomenal centres appearing to divide against itself a basic Noumenon. A thing is an object of thought, an internal form, and an external form is known through thought itself, which is consciousness objectified. A form is differentiated from existence as a whole by a particular mode characterising it. It cannot be said that a thing is defined by a mode or that it has a definite form unless it becomes an object of thought. Thought itself is conditioned by forms, and it is thought, again, that knows external forms and determines their nature. The laws governing the modes of thinking shall have sway over its objects also, for the rules that regulate the process of knowledge and restrict its operations determine all the contents thereof, which, therefore, cannot be known independent of and free from the conditions to which the knowing process is subject. All forms of objective knowledge are, thus, deceptive and give to the knower nothing of reality. The truth of the object of thought can be known only when it is freed from the modes of thought, and the truth of thought itself can be known only when it is not conditioned by the forms which it takes. Neither the mind nor its object, taken independently, can be said to truly exist. That the mind exists cannot be proved unless there is a modification of the modal consciousness, which is called a psychosis or a mental transformation, which, again, is not possible without the mind's taking the form of an object or an objective condition. That objects exist also cannot be proved unless there are minds to cognise and know them. Each is explained only by the other and not by itself. Nothing in this world, neither the subject nor the object, is independent and self-existent. The test of reality is non-dependence, completeness and imperishability. When things are judged from this standard of truth, the phenomenal subjectivity and objectivity in them are found to break down and reveal their ultimate unreality. The appearance of the subject-object-distinction has to be finally attributed to the creative activity of consciousness itself, though the relation of consciousness and change in the form of any activity is beyond understanding and explanation. As the idea of causality itself is an effect of the want of real knowledge, a question as to the cause of this want has no meaning. But the affirmation of consciousness has to objectify itself in the form in which it is desired to manifest itself, as all forms are contents of consciousness. Whatever an individual affirms must ultimately happen or be materialised into effect, because each centre of consciousness has infinity at its background. Misery or suffering and pleasure or happiness are experiences relative to the understanding of the individual, and are of such a character and degree as is the condition of the individual consciousness in relation to the Absolute Being. There is really one experience which is absolute, and it can be styled neither a misery nor a pleasure. That One Experience is diversely felt as variety, and is fictitiously termed as either this or that, and of this nature or of that. The form of the world is found to be a magical appearance when subjected to the test of severe discrimination. The world and the Atman or Brahman neither exclude nor include each other, but are non-related, for relation is possible only between two demarcated objects, and the possibility of duality or any relation is annulled in the being that is "one alone without a second." Pure Experience is attributeless, and all "existence" is "experience". Ethical virtues and immoral vices are the effects of the different mental modes reacting variegatedly to the one changeless consciousness in different ways, leading respectively to the experience of Unity-consciousness and diversity-delusion. All our experiences are relative, and neither the relative experiencer nor the experienced can stand the test of reality. They present an appearance, though the reality in them transcends them and exists as an indivisible unity. This one Reality appears as the knower as well as the known. It is one and the same thing that appears as the earth to certain states of consciousness, as heaven to some, as hell to certain other, as men and creatures to still some other, and as Eternal Consciousness to another that is integrated. The Substance is One and it is felt by different modes of mentation in their own fashion, as good, bad, sweet, bitter, beautiful, ugly and the like. The Substance by itself does not change; only the mode of perception changes. The truth therefore remains that Eternal Existence is without any evolution or involution within itself From this it follows that the world of space and time is an appearance, a shadow of Reality. Even immortality and death are relative to the individual. In order to have the Experience of Reality we have to discard the forms as mere appearances.