One could say Brahman is smaller than a mustard seed and larger than the multiverse if Brahman didn't transcend space-time itself.
Brahman is, Gaudapada says, neither a seed of consciousness nor omniscient consciousness, neither unmanifested Maya nor that omnipotent Isvara.
Brahman is not reflected consciousness although reflected consciousness is Brahman. All brilliant names and shadowy forms appear in The Lake of Pure Consciousness.
~rj25
God is like an overcoat one wears when acting like an individual. When acting like a God, one wears nothing but being. In reality, who's acting?
Nonduality rains. Variety appears. Consciousness holds your undivided attention.
The world is doing or not doing, decisions, decisions. Real power in Maya is nondoing, evolution, the will of God. The ground of consciousness always knows.
~SR13 (A Divine Play in Three Acts; Raining Nonduality; Yoda Yoga)
A Divine Play in Three Acts
God is like an overcoat
one wears when acting
like an individual.
When acting like a God
one wears nothing but being.
In reality, who's acting?
Raining Nonduality
Nonduality rains.
Variety appears.
Consciousness holds
your undivided attention.
Yoda Yoga
The world is doing or not doing, decisions, decisions.
Real power in Maya is nondoing, evolution, the will of God.
The ground of consciousness knows.
The world is doing or not doing, decisions, decisions.
Real power in Maya is nondoing, evolution, the will of God.
The ground of consciousness knows.
God is like an overcoat
one wears when acting
like an individual.
When acting like a God
one wears nothing but being.
In reality, who's acting?
Shankara on Avidya (nescience)
Shankara on the Absolute as Lord
Shankara on the Unmoving Mover
Shankara on Cause, Effect, and the Absolute
Shankara on Adhyaropa and Apavada
Shankara on Defining the Absolute
Shankara on Satyam Jñānam Anantam Brahma
Shankara on Gaudapada's Acosmic Doctrines
On Shankara. Snippets on Shankara's Identity and True Works (plus Alston Info)
On Shankara: Gaudapada and Madhyamika Teaching
On Shankara: Schools of Advaita
A. J. Alston Bibliography:
Shankara on the Absolute: Shankara Source Book Volume One Kindle Edition
Shankara on the Creation: Shankara Source Book Volume Two Kindle Edition
Shankara on the Soul: Shankara Source Book Volume Three Kindle Edition
The Thousand Teachings of Shankara: Upadeshasahasri
A. J. Alston:
There are texts in the Upanishads and in the Epics and Purāṇas, including the Gītā, which imply that the individual soul is different from the Lord and that he should approach Him in devotion and that he may perhaps attain to Him or to ‘his world’ through his grace.
For Śaṅkara, these texts had validity within the world of nescience. But if they were to be taken as the final truth, they would conflict with the other texts speaking of the utter transcendence of the one and only non-dual Self, bereft of all duality and all empirically knowable characters.
While the individual soul in its true nature is identical with (is nothing other than) the Lord, the Lord in his true nature is not identical with the individual soul in its individual nature. In particular, the Lord is not in his true nature the transmigrant. The individual soul is dependent on the Lord for his power to act.
The relation between the individual soul and the Lord appears different from different standpoints. From the standpoint of nescience they may seem different, and identity with the Lord then appears to be a ‘goal’ that has to be ‘attained’.
From the standpoint of knowledge, this identity is a fact. Bondage and liberation, in turn, depend on whether the student feels himself to be different from or identical with the Lord.
~Alston, 'Shankara and the Soul', pp. 70-1
A. J. Alston:
Our experiences force us to conclude that an unchanging, self-luminous principle must exist within the individual as the Witness of his passing states of experience.
Further it is the presence of this light which unifies and organizes the psychic and physical functions and enables perception and other cognitive acts to take place.
The mind and senses are composed of the material elements, and there must exist some self-luminous light perceiving them if there is to be experience at all.
The intellect is the chief instrument of this self-luminous principle in the case of the waking experience of an ordinary unenlightened man.
The intellect is the special and most intimate instrument of the Self in empirical knowledge. The intellect is lit by the light of the Self, and objects are lit by the intellect through the medium of the senses, and require to be so lit in order to be perceived at all.
The light of the Self within is reflected in the intellect, and this reflected light is passed on, by contact (samparka), to the lower mind, senses and the body.
People identify themselves with this or that aspect of the psycho-physical organism, depending on how far their powers of discrimination have developed and rescued them from crude self-identification with the body.
As long as there is failure to discriminate the Self from the intellect, the Self appears ‘like’ the appearances that come before it. But in truth it is pure light and does not really act or move.
~Alston, 'Shankara on the Soul' pp. 56-7
So sannyāsa cannot be inactivity or meaningless activity. It ought to induce man to engage himself in some ceaseless activity.
Sannyāsa implies realisation of Truth and the dissemination of the way to ensure that realisation. For intelligent people, it means also the study and the teaching of philosophical works.
If these principles are strictly followed, nobody can gainsay that it is harmful. On the contrary, it will be for the good of himself and for others.
If sannyāsins thus perform their duties – activities befitting them and are to be performed by them – activities impossible for others to perform – they will not be subjected to criticism and insult as idlers and do-nothing fellows.
from Ishvara Darsana p.197
A. J. Alston:
The soul is the immutable Consciousness viewed in association with superimposed limiting adjuncts (upādhi),1 and this Consciousness, appearances notwithstanding, is also present in dreamless sleep. The connection of the immutable Consciousness with superimposed adjuncts is due to nescience.
The adjuncts in which the Self is apparently enclosed to form the multiplicity of individual souls derive from name and form as their material cause, and how the Self is in its true nature unborn and immutable, while only the adjuncts, like the gross material body, come into being and pass away.
The immutable Consciousness is said to be reflected in its closest and most immediate adjunct, the mind with its ego-notion. Śaṅkara regarded the use of the reflection-analogy as indispensable for explaining the facts of experience, and for reconciling the fact that the experiences of each individual soul are private to himself with the presence of one Self as the reality in all.
Another useful analogy for explaining the apparent individuation of the Self as the multiplicity of individual souls is that of the apparent separation of individual parcels of the ether of space within various pots.
The reflection-analogy, which is much the more important for Śaṅkara, as later sections will show, has the incidental advantage of suggesting to the beginner on the practical path that, even if he cannot attain to the Absolute at a single leap, he can acquire a higher degree of awareness of the presence of the Absolute in the course of daily life through purification of the mind, the medium in which its light is reflected.
~Alston, Shankara on the Soul, pp8,9
