East Meets West – A Gautami Tripathy Column

This column previously ran by Deepak Morris is now taken over by Gautami Tripathy.

The purpose of the column is to bring the culture and joy of mysterious and beautiful India to the world.

April 9, 2007

Brief bio: I am secondary school teacher. I teach Mathematics. I love to write. Poetry, prose whatever. I read a lot too.

 Gautami Tripathy
s_gautami@yahoo.com
http://soulfullymindless.blogspot.com

  

Gita X: Nirguna (above quality) and Acintya (inconceivable)   

 gautami tripathy

If the fundamental form of the Supreme is nirguna, beyond quality and acintya, inconceivable, the world is an appearance which cannot be logically related to the Absolute. In the unalterable eternity of Brahman, all the moves and evolves is founded. They exist by It, they cannot be without It, though it causes nothing, does nothing, determines nothing. While the world is dependent on Brahman, Brahman is not dependant on the world. This one sided dependence and the logical inconceivability of the relation between the Ultimate Reality and the world are brought out by the word, “maya.”

Maya does not imply that the world is an illusion or is non-existent absolutely. It is delimitation distinct from the unmeasured and immeasurable. By why is there this delimitation? We cannot answer this at empirical level. In this journey, we have embarked on, it may be revealed to us or maybe not. It solely depends on us.

In every religion, the Supreme Reality is conceived as infinitely above our time order, with its beginning and end, its movement and fluctuations. God, in the Christian religion, is represented as without variableness or shadow of turning. If this were all, there would be an absolute division between the Divine life and this pluralistic world, which would make all communions between the two impossible. If the Supreme Reality were unique, passive and immobile, there would be no room for time, for movement, for history. Time, with its processes of change and succession, would become a mere appearance. But God is living principle, a consuming fire. It is not question of either an Absolute with an apparent multiplicity or a living God working in this pluralistic universe. The Supreme is both this and that; Eternity does not mean the denial of time or history. It is the transfiguration of time. Time derives from eternity and finds fulfillment in it. In the Bhagavad-Gita, there is no antithesis between eternity and time. Krishna unites the eternal and historical. The temporal movement is related to the inmost depths of eternity.

(c)gautami.tripathy 

(to be contd.)