Synopsis

    

  • Why should Brahman which is perfect, absolute and infinite, desiring nothing throw out a force to create the world of forms in Itself? Brahman is free and is under no obligation to create forms. Yet, Brahman indulges in its power of movement and formation for only one reason. That is for delight, Ananda.
  • Brahman is a conscious existence; the very nature of its existence is bliss; the very nature of its consciousness is bliss. Our original being is the absolute. It is in full possession of its infinite and illimitable self-consciousness and self- power. This self-possession is nothing but self-delight. When out relative outer being touches this self- possession, we sense delight.
  • The self-delight of Brahman creates infinite movement with infinite variation. Its Ananda flows out to create innumerable forms and universes. The Force that has thrown itself into forms is nothing but Sat-chit-ananda. All things that exist in the universe have that aspect of conscious being-Sat, conscious Force ChitShakti, its Ananda – delight of being.
  • Delight is the all-embracing aspect of self-existence. All things we find in the universe are the variable self-expression of this delight. Everything is borne from delight and exists by that.
  • Emotional and sensational consciousness of pain and the problem of evil seem to contradict this truth. When we say the existence is in itself an infinite self-delight how can we justify the universal presence of grief, suffering and pain? For us this world appears rather a world of suffering than a world of delight of existence.
  • Yet it is an exaggeration. Looking impartially, we observe that whether it is active or passive, on the surface or underlying, pleasure of existence is the normal state of nature. Pain is a contrary occurrence; its lesser sum affects us intensely. We hardly notice pleasure unless it becomes an acuter form of itself.
  • Normal satisfaction of existence is mainly responsible for the presence of overpowering instinct of self-preservation in the universe. We do not account for it in our balance of emotional and sensational profit and loss.
  • Yet, the very presence of pain creates the whole problem. All being Sachchidananda how can the pain and suffering be present? This is the real problem further complicated by two other issues – our idea of an extra cosmic God and our ethical difficulty.
  • How can God create a world in which he causes suffering on His own creatures? How can he approve pain and permit evil? If we say, the pain is the penance or tough test we have to undergo for our progress, then God becomes immoral. Is it not immoral to subject somebody to hardship? Or is he simply a God of Might whose laws we have to obey?
  • If pain is the natural punishment for the moral evil committed by man in the previous births, who created the moral evil that produced the inevitable result of suffering and pain? The inescapable law of Karma is not reconcilable with our idea of God who is supremely moral. Therefore, Buddha rejected the idea of the existence of any free and all-governing personal God.
  • This difficulty arises because we assume the existence of a personal God outside this cosmos. We do not consider God, Himself the Universe. Sachchidananda of Vedanta says there is no duality. There is one existence without a second. All that is, is Brahman. There is no division between the cosmos and the God.
  • Since all is Brahman, it is the Brahman who bears all the evil and suffering. Then the question becomes, how can Sachchidananda – Existence, Consciousness and Bliss – allow something which is not bliss into Itself? Sachchidananda is All-Delight and is free to condemn and reject evil and suffering. Then, how can evil and suffering exist in Sachchidananda?
  • We are stating a partial statement and applying it to the whole. The ideas of good and love come from the dualistic and divisive state of our mind. Sachchidananda belongs to the status of Oneness. How can we apply the law of duality to the status of Oneness?
  • We should see how it can be solved in its original purity. Only then we can come down and deal with the parts, the relations between creature and creature on the basis of division and duality. We force an ethical meaning into the whole operations of Nature. This limited understanding of events of the world from his personal limited self prevents man from arriving at real knowledge and complete sight.
  • The operations of the material nature are not based on ethics. We do not blame the tiger because it kills and eats its prey. Nor do we blame the storm because it destroys or the fire because it tortures and kills. Blame and condemnation or self-blame and self-condemnation are the beginning of true ethics.
  • The origin of ethics is dislike or recoil. With the growth of egoistic mentality this adverse reaction takes the forms of extreme aversion, dislike, disapproval. The conception of good and evil we apply to ourselves and then we extend it to the whole community we belong and make it into a general approval of what is good and general disapproval of what is bad.
  • Ethics represent a stage in evolution. Sachchidananda has the urge to express itself at all levels. This urge is present in inanimate force and objects, not coming under the purview of ethics- non-ethical. The acts of animals are considered below the norms of ethics – infra-ethical.
  • In the case of man, it becomes anti-ethical. Because it permits us to hurt others while we disapprove it when it is done to us. In this respect man is only half-ethical. As all things below him are infra-ethical, so all things above him are supra-ethical – the stage man will eventually arrive which has no need of ethics.
  • Ethical impulse and attitude are the means by which we progress from lower harmony to higher harmony, from lower universality of inconscience(matter) to the higher universality of conscient oneness (super-conscience). We cannot apply this ethical stand point to the total solution of the problem of the universe. It is only an element in the solution.
  • The real solution to the problem can be found only when we find what is common to all the three layers of the world – infra-ethical, ethical and supra-ethical. The satisfaction of delight of existence is common to all three layers of the world. It forms the base and to which all clings. It seeks new forms of itself.
  • In its passage to higher forms (matter to plants, plants to insects, insects to animals to man) there is intervention of pain and suffering. As consciousness evolves into life forms, pain and suffering are felt which contradict the fundamental delight of being. This alone is the root problem for all pain and suffering.
  • Buddhists are of view that only by escaping into Nirvana (Nihil or Nothing) we can get rid of the pain and suffering. This is wrong. The Zero (Shunya, Nothing) of Buddhists is said to contain all potentialities and the solutions in itself. This statement is self-contradictory. Only by returning to our original conception of Sachchidananda we can look for a foundation on which a completer solution to the problem of evil and suffering is possible.
  • The Consciousness in universal. Likewise, the universal delight of existence is different from the ordinary emotional and sensational pleasure of human being. It is more essential and wider than the individual pleasure. Pleasure and joy, pain and grief are limited and occasional movements. Both arise from the same background which is the delight of being.
  • It is the infinite Bliss of Sachchidananda which forms the background of its finite expressions of pleasure, pain and the neutral state of indifference. Delight of being in manifestation seeks to realise itself as delight of becoming. In Its becoming it takes different forms of movement. The pleasure is the positive current of this movement and the pain is the negative current.
  • From the subconscient level, this self-delight seeks to realise itself in life and mind by its emergence in the becoming. Its first movement happens between the two ends of pain and pleasure. Yet its ultimate goal in the movement is to make itself known in the purity of the supreme delight of being. The delight of being is universal, self-existent and objectless.
  • Sachchidananda moves towards realisation of this delight, in the flowing out of particular experiences and objects. Once we become aware of this self-delight then we shall not seek external objects to make us happy. Instead, objects we possess, will merely reflect the delight which is already within us.
  • Human being is still an egoistic mental person. He has emerged out of the dim shell of matter. The delight of existence is neutral and half-concealed in him in his subconscious parts. That which is hidden at the roots of the pain and pleasure is the sap of delight. When the divine conscious force, working secretly in us, consumes our desires like the Vedic fire, the sap of delight which is at the root will emerge in new forms.
  • These new forms will no more contain desire in them but will have self-existent satisfaction. Then the transformation of growths of pains and pleasures into Divine Ananda is possible because, in their essence, equally, both pleasure and pain are nothing but the delight of existence they seek.

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