Vedanta Verses 349 - 50

Just as black, cold iron ball when thrown into furnace looks red and hot, even so the inert and lifeless thoughts in contact with awareness look like objects, external and with vitality. Thoughts flare up as an entity. In dream the thoughts look like the biological individuals, body, tangible and external objects but when one wakes up one sees the negation of both the thought and the object seen in the dream. The division between me and the universe is because of thoughts. This division is however false arising out of the sense of embodiment. A notional equation with the form is presupposed in every sense of division. In fact the sense of equation with form and division are always seen to rise and fall together. When I transcend the embodiment I also transcend the sense of division. This is called the pratipattikrama or the reason-result relationship, or reason –result procedure. This is to be distinguished from the kaalakrama or succession in time.

What is this pratipattikrama? a reason which leads to a result, for example seeing snake leads one to the fear of snake, this might look as though there is a succession in time, but there is a simultaneity here, once you have the notion that there is a snake (and if you are scared of snakes ) you also have the fear rising up. The sense of embodiment results in the sense of division, in deep sleep there is neither a sense of embodiment nor any division. The former leads to the latter without any gap in time.

My sense of equation with the dream body brings about my notion of division in the dream world and both are falsified when I wake up. Thus when waking forms come to an end, all waking divisions come to an end, dream form and dream division come to an end and all equations are non eternal, in other words no equation is eternal. What is eternal is the observer, falsity of waking is my experience, the falsity of dream is also my experience, therefore all creation or vikara or transformation is a fiction.

What is creation in Vedanta? Anything that is contrary to the truth is a creation or transformation. In the case of clay and pot, clay is the truth while pot is only a notion having a language-word to refer to it.

Words and thoughts rise and fall together. What is not the object of thought is also not available for words, in deep sleep one notices that both are absent.

The role of words, language in Vedanta is neither descriptive nor prescriptive, but corrective, it does not describe the truth but only corrects our wrong understanding of the self evident truth.
When the Xth man is told that you are the Xth ( lost) man, the language here is not descriptive, but corrective of the error that he has been carrying with him that the Xth man is lost or is far away, so too the mahavakyas like tat tvam asi (thou are that) corrects man’s error about himself.

The truth cannot be described for it is self evident and does not require anything to validate it.
Starting from egoity, individuality up until all objects, including the notion that I am the body, all appear and disappear. Anyathabhavitaya is the term used by the text, and Swamijee would like to interpret it as subject to appearance and disappearance rather than “changeful”. According to Sw change and non change prove nothing, a thing can remain non- changing for an eternity but it may not be the truth, transformation does not prove or disprove anything, but that something appears and disappears is vital for us. What gives an insight about the falsity is that body appears and disappears, world appears and disappears, thoughts appear and disappear, and what observes this appearances and disappearances is the self that neither appears not disappears. Truth can not undergo this cycle of srsti and laya - birth and resolution.

Where the truth appears and disappears is the truth and that has no appearance and the disappearance. In me they all appear and disappear, and when this is grasped then one is clear that what appears and disappears is false. So the term anyathabhave is to be interpreted as appearance and disappearance rather than change.

Truth has to be free from change, truth has to be free from disappearance laya, truth has to be free from being disproved. Everything else “seen” is a mrsha or falsity but the self remains the same.

However this world is not other than the seer, right within the seer is the seen, every wave is dripping with water, every thought is dripping with awareness, what else is the world but thoughts, subject is unlike the object but subject is the very truth of the object.

When we think of the world as mundane phenomenon then we look for the truth elsewhere, little realizing that all that we see is nothing but this awareness.

What I see can be doubted but that I see cannot be doubted, this doubt free self evident presence is given as the evidence for all knowledge and error. Falsity of the seen can be judged only in the light of this doubt-free seer. The doubt free I am alone can prove or disprove anything.

Unfortunately judging the source in the light of creation brings about atrocious conclusions about god or self. The world is like this and therefore god has to be like that etc are error arising from this conclusion. Water is not judged in the light of the wave but wave is judged in the light of the waters. Water proves the appearance and disappearances of the waves and not the reverse. Thus falsity of the false is judges on the basis of the reality or continuity of the self, the seer, Vedanta thus is not an explorative science but a dismissive corrective knowledge, it explains away the matter, dreams the objects, thoughts etc.