To Know Yourself Is To Know Everything

The word ‘Vedanta’ is derived from the Sanskrit words ‘Veda’ and ‘anta’, which literally means the ‘end of knowledge’.

Vedanta is the knowledge to end all knowledge — that by which all things can be known.

According to Swami Dayananda, “There is no other knowledge that can make this claim. Every other form of knowledge is only of a given thing, which is mithya.”

If you think about it, you don’t need to know all the rivers and lakes and drops of rain in the world in order to have knowledge of water. Similarly, you don’t need to know every name and form in existence to know the essence of those forms.

This is made clear in the Chandogya Upanishad:

“By knowing one lump of clay, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of clay:
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is clay.
By knowing one gold nugget, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of gold:
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is gold.”

Knowledge of the phenomenal world is mithya knowledge. There’s no end to mithya knowledge because in the mithya world, objects are countless.

But to know all things, you simply need to inquire into the essence of those things.

A potter can create many pots, but the clay from which they are made is always the same. Therefore, if you examine one lump of clay, you then know the essence of all the pots.

Recall that mithya is a dependent effect derived from satya, which is the independent cause. (Satya and mithya are explained in this post, under the heading ‘Existence and Borrowed Existence’)

Satya is the intrinsic and all-pervading substratum of existence from which all phenomenal objects (mithya) borrow their limited existence. Satya, or sat (‘being’) is the very nature of the Self, which — courtesy of the power of maya — lends existence to this entire universe of form.

All forms borrow their existence from the Self just as all pots borrow their existence from the clay and all waves derive their existence from the ocean.

**By knowing satya (the cause), you then know the entirety of mithya (the effect) in essence.**

You Are the Entire Universe

The Puranas of India have a wonderful story to illustrate this.

In Puranic mythology, Lord Ganesha and his younger brother Subrahmanya are the sons of Lord Shiva and Parvatti.

To settle some brotherly bickering, Shiva set the boys a test. He told them to circle the entire universe and whoever made it back first would be crowned the winner.

Subrahmanya was certain he would win the contest. After all, he was strong and athletic and his vehicle was a glorious peacock, whereas the chubby Ganesha only had a little mouse to travel on.

Confident and determined, Subrahmanya set off, traveling the entire universe and speeding back to his divine parents.

Upon returning, he was dismayed to find that Ganesha had beaten him to it and was already standing victoriously by Shiva and Parvatti. “How did you beat me?” Subrahmanya cried.

Lord Shiva smiled. “I asked you boys to circle the entire universe. Ganesha did this. He circled myself and Parvatti.”

Subrahmanya was speechless. A humbled Ganesha lowered his head and said, “You told me to go around the entire universe, father. But I know that you are the entire universe.”

You don’t need to travel from one side of the cosmos to the other to know the nature of all things.

If you know the source and essence of all form — which is the Self — you then know everything in the creation.

The Self, here symbolized as Shiva, is that because of which the entire universe exists and is sustained — and that by which it is known.

One Self, Many Faces

Although the Self is indivisible and infinite, for the purposes of teaching, we divide it into three.

First we have Brahman, the Self, which is of the nature of sat chit ananda: existence, consciousness and the bliss of limitlessness. The Self is satya, the original awareness which is self-existent, self-luminous and self-shining.

Then we have Ishvara and the jiva. Both appear courtesy of maya, a power within awareness, which enables Ishvara, as the intelligent and efficient cause of creation, to create a universe of seeming multiplicity.

Much as a dreaming mind creates a dream world out of consciousness alone, Ishvara (which is the Self identified with the entire field of maya) creates a universe of gross and subtle forms out of its own being.

Within this field of creation appears the jiva (the Self identified with a particular gross/subtle form).

While the jiva appears to be separate, being made out of the very substance of Ishvara, it is actually no different to Ishvara. James Swartz says, “Imagine a rain-bearing cloud with millions of droplets of water, which create millions of reflections of the sky. Ishvara is the totality of all reflections, ie., jivas.”

Owing to the obscuring and projecting power of maya, the jiva, taking appearance to be reality, believes itself to be a separate entity; an individual.

Ignorance creates the impression that you are a limited, bound entity, subject to the ravages of time and fate. The process of self-inquiry negates this false identification with the body, mind and ego.

What is essential to understand is that both jiva and Ishvara, man and God, are mithya. They don’t exist independently of themselves.

Both borrow their existence from the Self, satya, just as the dream world borrows its existence from the dreaming mind.

Ultimately, the Self alone is. Everything else is just appearance; a configuration of name and form superimposed upon the Self. Only the Self is inherently real. Anything ‘other than’ the Self is mithya, which means only apparently real.

Awareness, Creation and Ishvara

“From his divine power comes forth all this
Magical show of name and form, of you
And me, which casts the spell of pain and pleasure.
Only when we pierce through this magic veil
Do we see the One who appears as many.”
— Shvtashvatara Upanishad

In the previous article in this series, we explored the nature of Ishvara, Vedanta’s definition of God.

Behind every creation is a twofold cause: a raw material (the material cause) and the intelligence required to fashion this material (the efficient cause).

These two factors must combine in order for anything to be created.

In order to create a clay pot, we require a material cause, the clay, and an efficient cause, the potter.

In the case of most objects, the material and efficient cause are separate and distinct. For instance, a cook is separate from the food he or she is preparing, just as the potter is separate from the clay.

Ishvara, however, is both the intelligence that shapes the creation and the very substance of which it is formed.

The Mundaka Upanishad uses the analogy of the spider and its web:

“As the web issues out of the spider
And is withdrawn; as plants sprout from the earth;
As hair grows from the body; even so,
The Sages say, this universe springs from
The deathless Self, the source of life.”

The Shape and Substance of Creation

Therefore, Vedanta does not speak of a God that somehow sits outside of the creation, looking down from the clouds and passing judgement.

Ishvara is the creation; its shape and substance as well as the intelligence that fashioned it.

The Self, which is satya — the one independently existent principle in existence — is uncreated. Being limitless and eternal, it is subject to neither birth or death. There is no time the Self was not. It doesn’t depend upon the world. The world depends upon it.

Everything in this phenomenal reality, which we call maya, is created — all the bodies and minds, plants, animals, planets, stars and galaxies.

All these forms enjoy only a limited, time-bound existence, and are entirely dependent on the substance and intelligence from which they come. They are just configurations of name and form, in the same way that the pot is simply a configuration of clay in a certain name and form.

Often the process of creation involves one substance being transformed into another. To make butter, for example, you must churn the milk a certain way, and after doing so, the milk can never be recovered again.

**The Self, however, by the power of maya, manifests this entire universe of creation without undergoing any change or modification itself.**

In terms of how the Self can appear as the created universe and all the jivas within it, while remaining unmodified, you should consider your own dream world.

Your mind creates and fashions an entire universe of dreams, while itself remaining unchanged. The moment you wake up in the morning, the dream world vanishes and you find yourself the same as you were the day before.

The Snake and the Rope

Maya is a world of projection and false superimposition.

Vedanta uses the metaphor of the snake and the rope to explain this.

One night, a weary traveller reached the outskirts of a village and stopped by a well. He was about to quench his thirst when he seized up in terror, having caught sight of a snake by the side of the well — its head upraised and poised to strike!

It wasn’t until another man approached with a lantern that the traveller realized it wasn’t a snake at all. It was simply a length of rope coiled around a bucket.

By mistaking the rope for a snake, he was seeing what is not actually there. The rope was the basis for this ‘snake’, yet, all along, the rope was nothing but rope.

The ‘snake’ was a product of ignorance; a false superimposition projected upon the rope.

The Unchanging Essence of All Things

The Self does not create, for it is actionless and changeless. Action requires form, movement and time. These are limitations that do not apply to awareness.

The Self, however, is that by which, through its power of maya, enables the creation to arise, be sustained, and eventually resolve back into Itself.

The Self, therefore, is the essence and substance of the entire creation, yet it exists apart from the creation.

The Brahma Sutras explain:

“Just as light which has no form appears to be endowed with different forms because of the object which it illumines, Brahman, which has no attributes, appears as if endowed with attributes.”

What causes the Self to appear as this universe of multiplicity of form is maya.

James Swartz writes:

“Maya is beginningless, beautiful and intelligent ignorance. We call it Ishvara. Some call it God. Like awareness, maya is not a created object. It is inherent as a possibility in awareness. It creates the whole universe. It is the substance of the universe—matter—the physical, moral and psychological laws that govern the universe and the sentient beings that populate it.”

Ishvara is the creative principle which, courtesy of maya, creates an entire universe of form. Ishvara is an upadhi, a limiting adjunct, which makes the Self, pure awareness, appear to become a universe of seeming multiplicity — in that same way that the rope appears to become a snake.

By the power of maya, the One becomes many.

The Self, which is ever free of maya, identifies with nothing because it is everything. To identify with any form is ignorance, which is why maya is often called ‘ignorance’.

When awareness identifies with a particular gross and subtle body it is called a jiva, an individual. Awareness identified with all the gross and subtle bodies on a macrocosmic level is called Ishvara.

The key is to realize that Ishvara and jiva do not exist independently of the Self any more than the wave and ocean exist independently of water.

Both entirely depend upon the Self for their existence, which means both fall under the category of mithya.

The Self, however, is limitless and eternal, and is not dependent upon anything else.

The Spell of Maya

Although the Self pervades the entire creation as the threads pervade a tapestry, the concealing power of maya obscures it. Unable to apprehend the Self as your inmost being, you get fooled by the magic show of maya.

The indivisible, all-pervading Self that you are mistakes itself to be a limited, finite entity; one amid billions, each seemingly separate and disconnected.

This fundamental misapprehension, which comes from being under the spell of appearance and materiality, is the cause of samsara.

“It creates a major problem,” James Swartz says, “this belief that objects exist independently of the Self and that they contain happiness. It causes individuals to pursue objects to complete themselves when they are already complete. It creates bondage to objects. Unless [this ignorance] is removed, samsara continues.”

Taking yourself to be a finite entity, a meager conglomeration of gross and subtle matter, you suffer all the pain associated with such limitation.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that those who seek freedom (moksha) are rare souls indeed. Most people are simply too deep under the spell of maya. Rarer still are those who actually manage to attain liberation.

Samsara is a case of false expectation; of misplaced seeking.

The samsari is seeking permanence in the world of the impermanent, seeking fulfillment from the finite, and happiness from that which can only ever deliver it with an equal measure of sorrow. Everyone is looking for security, permanence, fulfillment and happiness. The problem arises when we seek them in the world of the perishable, not realizing they belong to the Self alone.

Krishna admits that the spell of maya is hard to break. There’s no solution to maya within maya, because anything within maya is limited to maya alone.

That’s why the only solution is to seek the Self, which is ever-untouched by the ignorance of maya.

The articles in this Essence of Vedanta series are excerpts from my commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, which systematically unfolds the entire teaching of Advaita Vedanta. Be sure to get your copy and enjoy the series and much more in its entirety. “Bhagavad Gita – The Divine Song” by Rory B Mackay is available on the Unbrokenself shop here, and also on Amazon and all other good booksellers.