All Schools of Vedanta are seen through the Bhagavad Geeta

All Schools of Vedanta are seen through the Bhagavad Geeta

The principles enunciated in the Scriptural Trinity go by the name of Vedanta. The word is a compound of Veda and Anta. It means the end or culmination of the Vedas. The teachings of the Vedas deal with the mundane world. They give us the relative knowledge. What pertains to the senses and the intellect is relative knowledge. But the scope of Vedanta transcends this relative world and relative knowledge. It leads the aspirant to transcendental knowledge and finally to absolute knowledge. The limitations of the senses and the intellect have to be got over in order to reach that higher knowledge.

Vedanta is the repository of all the spiritual principles contained in all the religions that have evolved in India and elsewhere. It may be asserted that no religion or theology contains a spiritual law that is not found in the Vedanta. For this reason Vedanta may be viewed as the mother of all religions. Ultimate Reality may be connoted by any appellation, says Vedanta. Controversies in religion centre round names and descriptions. But Vedanta exhorts us not to be name-bound and dogma-bound. It leads the enquirer into the Reality behind names and forms. There is the stuff that quenches thirst, variously called aqua, water, pani and jal. Quarrels arise in regard to nomenclature. Earnest enquirers into the ultimate Reality do not get entangled in schism and dogma. Creeds and cults are prone to misguide seekers after Truth. They create confusion too. But Vedanta always holds aloft the torch light of enquiry above all schisms, and focuses attention on the realization of Truth in Its nakedness.

The core of the Dvaita, Visishtadvaita and Advaita has to be known. Three categories of Reality are presented to us by them. Jagat or the universe we live in is one category. Jivas or the individual souls that live in the universe form the second category. The Substratum behind the universe and the innumerable souls is the third category. This third one is the repository of ail knowledge and power. Not only does It sustain, but also govern and control the destiny of the Jagat and the Jivas. Enshrouded as the Jivas are in the Jagat, they subject themselves to countless births and transmigrations. Through transmigration they either evolve to higher orders of life or involve to the lower ones. Virtue and righteous acts help them go upwards. Vice and sinful acts drag them downwards. Mukti or emancipation is effected by giving oneself away into God. Complete disentanglement from the meshes of the world is thereby obtained. Mukti is the goal of all Jivas. This fundamental position is common to all the three systems of philosophy. The specialities of the three systems may now be gone into.

According to Dvaita, the universe, the individual souls and God are three separate and everlasting entities. God rules over the universe and the souls. The souls in their ignorance are entangled in the universe. Through devotion to God and through His mercy obtained thereby, the souls are to free themselves from the bondage of the world and attain the realm of God. This state of living with God in Heaven is termed Mukti. There the Jivas are eternally in the presence of their Lord. Their individuality is not lost because of Mukti.

Visishtadvaita literally means ‘qualified non-dualism.’ God alone exists, according to it. The cosmos is His body. The Jivas exist as innumerable life-cells in that cosmic body. As the rays of the sun are inseparable from it, the individual souls cannot be separated from God. With the dawn of intuitive knowledge, the Jiva realizes that the Paramatman (God) is the whole and he an infinitesimal part of It. The attainment of this knowledge leads to emancipation. Complete self-surrender is the means to the attainment of this goal. In the state of Mukti the Jiva is ever aware that he is a limb of the Lord.

Advaita literally means non-dualism. What are termed Jagat and Jiva and Brahman are not really separate entities. Reality is one without a second. It is Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Infinite. It has intrinsic power to manifest Itself as the Jagat and the Jiva. This inherent power goes by the name of Maya. Brahman and Maya are inseparable. This is the implication of the word Advaita. It is because of his ignorance that the Jiva fancies that he is separate from the universe and the Substratum behind it. With the dawn of knowledge this feeling of difference vanishes. The Reality alone exists. Because of Its Maya Shakti It manifests Itself as the Jiva and the Jagat. Resolving this Shakti into Itself, It also remains unmanifest. In Its kinetic state it is Saguna Brahman (Conditioned Reality), in the static Nirguna (Absolute Reality). As the wave subsides into the ocean the individual soul dissolves into the Absolute. This is emancipation according to the Advaita system of philosophy.

Evidences are available in the Scriptures in support of all the three systems of philosophy. Human life itself is a composite of these three systems. In the wakeful state man moves about and transacts. He is then in the plane of Dvaita. The world he lives in and the persons he contacts are all entities independent of him. Then comes the next state. The experiencer of this world of multiplicity goes to sleep. The world of variety vanishes. The dream-world comes into being. The same plurality is experienced again. But the men and world found in dreams are different from those found in the waking state. One has external reality while the other is a phantom of the mind. The dream world of plurality exists nowhere except in the mind of the experiencing individual. Here there is a perception of dualism while actually it is all monism. This is the position of the Visishtadvaita. Then there is the coveted dreamless sleep. Contentless consciousness alone persists there. Naught has the power to obstruct the continuity of this consciousness. The self that is in the waking and dream states continues to be in the dreamless slumber as well. This is the position of Advaita—one without a second. Mutually exclusive though these are, these three experiences—wakefulness, dream and dreamless sleep—are indispensable to a man entangled in the meshes of the world. And all these three types of experiences are the mundane counterparts of the stages of experience in intuitive knowledge. The contention among the commentators is in regard to the relative validity of these three forms of experience, each commentator maintaining that his experience alone constitutes the Ultimate Truth.

Source: Srimad Bhagavad Geeta-Commentary by Swami Chidbhavananda

Swami Chidbhavananda belonged to the Ramakrishna Order of Monks. He was a disciple of Swami Shivananda who was a direct disciple of Parmahamsa Sri Ramakrishna.  Swami Chidbhavanandaji founded the Sri Ramakrishna Tapovanam and has written over 125 books, the most famous being his commentary on the Srimad Bhagavad Geeta.