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innerself, that method should be considered the good method
and it is not confined to any one method only.
This great principle could be extended beyond the different
approaches within a particular school of thinking, to the.
different schools themselves accepting them all as valuable and
valid for their followers. The time that is now wasted by many
learned men of all schools in proving other modes of thought to
be mistaken could be used beneficially in pursuing the realization
of what they hold to be right. The validity of all the views has
been reiterated for the modern man by Sri Ramakrishna by
arriving at the same goal by all the paths by the effective method
of practising them earnestly and with complete faith.
It has been pointed out that the vādās discussed here were
only analogies to guide the mind from different points of view
towards the Infinite. In fact nothing can produce a knowledge
of Reality; because Reality, the Infinite, is itself knowledge
identical with being. Again the Infinite is one and undifferen-
tiated. The process of knowing which is transitive requires a
subject and an object. It is a function of the mind. Since the
very characteristic of the mind is to differentiate, no function of
the mind can lead to the undifferentiated Being which is also
absolute knowledge of awareness. That is way absolute Being
which is also pure Consciousness and Bliss is said to be self-
evident and not cognizable by any means of knowing, svatah-
siddha or svatah-pramāṇa and aprameya.
This self-evident Being-consciousness is eternal, immutable.
Therefore it can never become another. But, in our present
state, each of us is aware of his identity as an individual, as the
fundamental fact to which all other knowing is related. The
cause of this, it is held, is ignorance. Avidya, which causes
something to appear as something which it is really not; the
one to appear as many; pure consciousness as a mixture of
knowing and unknowing; the eternal as having a beginning -
and end and so on ad infinitum. This ignorance, avidyā or māyā,
is only a hypothesis which holds only so long as the sense of
individuality lasts. The two cease simultaneously.
1
innerself, that method should be considered the good method
and it is not confined to any one method only.
This great principle could be extended beyond the different
approaches within a particular school of thinking, to the.
different schools themselves accepting them all as valuable and
valid for their followers. The time that is now wasted by many
learned men of all schools in proving other modes of thought to
be mistaken could be used beneficially in pursuing the realization
of what they hold to be right. The validity of all the views has
been reiterated for the modern man by Sri Ramakrishna by
arriving at the same goal by all the paths by the effective method
of practising them earnestly and with complete faith.
It has been pointed out that the vādās discussed here were
only analogies to guide the mind from different points of view
towards the Infinite. In fact nothing can produce a knowledge
of Reality; because Reality, the Infinite, is itself knowledge
identical with being. Again the Infinite is one and undifferen-
tiated. The process of knowing which is transitive requires a
subject and an object. It is a function of the mind. Since the
very characteristic of the mind is to differentiate, no function of
the mind can lead to the undifferentiated Being which is also
absolute knowledge of awareness. That is way absolute Being
which is also pure Consciousness and Bliss is said to be self-
evident and not cognizable by any means of knowing, svatah-
siddha or svatah-pramāṇa and aprameya.
This self-evident Being-consciousness is eternal, immutable.
Therefore it can never become another. But, in our present
state, each of us is aware of his identity as an individual, as the
fundamental fact to which all other knowing is related. The
cause of this, it is held, is ignorance. Avidya, which causes
something to appear as something which it is really not; the
one to appear as many; pure consciousness as a mixture of
knowing and unknowing; the eternal as having a beginning -
and end and so on ad infinitum. This ignorance, avidyā or māyā,
is only a hypothesis which holds only so long as the sense of
individuality lasts. The two cease simultaneously.
1