I. Consciousness As The Fundamental Principle of Creation

11:31 AM Posted In Edit This

As countless rays emerge from the sun and ripples from the surface of the sea, so emerge from consciousness infinite worlds including our own. Consciousness manifests itself in two forms – the objective and the subjective. While the objective is the result of objectification of consciousness, the subject is the consequence of restoration of consciousness to itself. The parallelism of the objective and the subjective gets graded into four as manifest in the four states of human consciousness, namely, the waking, dreaming, deep sleep and what in the Veda is called the fourth – turiya.


Due to the parallelism of both subjectivity and objectivity and their coincidence in consciousness, every act of perception presupposes the corresponding sense organ while the latter perceives anything has its source in manas or Mind. Mind in its turns, is dependent on the real cogniser lying behind it and whose nature is consciousness.


In this creation, nothing exists outside consciousness, since its activity is universal throughout. It is the very nature of the universe consisting of both actual objects and imagined ones, such as sky-flower, etc.


Every appearance in this cosmos owes its existence to the light of consciousness and nothing can ever have its existence without that light. Consciousness experiences itself in the light of consciousness because it is identical with that light. This is expressed in Ucchusmabhairava:


"Oh dear one, as long as there are no knowers, how can there be anything known. In fact, the knower and the known are really the same principle. Therefore, there is nothing, which is inherently impure." - Ucchusmabhairava as quoted by Ksemaraja in his com mentary on Siva Sutras, p.13.

Thus consciousness is the fundamental principle of creation and the entire creation resides in it and it itself pervades the creation. The paradox is that it takes many roles and yet maintains its identity. Consciousness is the whole of reality because all existents derive their being from It, and in the process of knowing, the Known gets identified with it. It may be contended that if the nature of universe is consciousness consisting of empirical selves and inert matter, then how bondage can be explained. Bondage is nothing but ignorance of the reality.

When Consciousness delimits itself in knowledge and form, it gives rise to the drama of the world. The prologue is formed by the veiling of Its essential nature. In the prologue, it undergoes the process of involution to the extent of assuming the form of matter. This process is called the arc of descent. At the acme of this descent begins the process of evolution resulting eventually in the emergence of the principles of life and mind. Having thus got evolved, man questions about his being and gets to know himself in his true nature. This marks the arc of ascent or evolution.


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