CHAPTER 4
MAYA DARSANAM - VISION BY NEGATION
"That which deceives you into error, generically, is Maya"
For Hegel, Maya is "Negativität".
It is like a heavy railway engine shunting in the engine yards.
See also Schopenhauer, Kant, Fichte etc.
Study the negative side of the Absolute
Negativity is that which is not positive,
It leads to what is not the Absolute.
Negativity is a vague idea to be understood through examples.
"Omnis determinatio negatio" (Spinoza)
So, Maya is the name for the Negative Absolute.
In Verse 1, Narayana Guru itemises all the possible kinds of negative error, seven in number:
1st - Vidya - Science, the error of knowledge, wrong judgement, logic etc
2nd - Avidya - too much importance given to the immanent, nescience, ignorance.
3rd - Para - Tamas - Darkness
4th - Apara
5th - Tamas
6th - Pradhana - The seed contains the oak-tree, space is abolished
7th - Prakrti - a centripetal force of becoming, it expands horizontally.
Note the neutral position of the fifth verse.
So, we have classified all possible illusions: we can do no more than that.
Schlegel, Schopenhauer, Schuermacher, Hegel were all influenced by the Upanisads.
Schlegel was a Sanskrit scholar.
Their philosophy bears a great resemblance to Vedanta.
Vedanta is NOT idealism, because it gives a place to sense percepts.
The prime potent power - Pradhana, is inside Maya.
Verticalize the horizontal tree into a seed.
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VERSE 1
What is not real, that is Negation,
Which by itself, as by science-nescience,
Transcendence-immanence, darkness and prime potency
Of nature, in many forms, looms.
Maya is what is not real.
It is the category of all possible error.
It is what really does not exist but seems to in practical life.
Chapter 3, Phenomenology, was translucent error,
what we have here is a more opaque error.
Chapter 5 is even darker, though two-sided.
VERSE 2
Just as for the origin of the pot the clay itself is
In its non-being, so too before the origin of the world,
as other than the world,
What had no being as the Absolute itself,
Such is Maya, the negative principle of indeterminate possibility.
Maya = Non-Existent = the Absolute
The world's prior non-existence is like the pot and the clay.
The principle of indeterminate possibility.
It also covers Manas and Sankalpa in Verse 3.
VERSE 3
"The non-Self is unreal, the Self is real."
Thus what looms is vidya, knowledge,
As the reality of the snake appearance
Superimposed on the rope-reality is understood
Vidya - the bright intelligent side of Maya, is faulty knowledge -
the other is the dark, ignorant side.
Here we have double negation in order to double assert the Absolute.
VERSE 4
"The Self is unreal, the non-Self is real."
Thus what looms is avidya, nescience indeed,
As the erroneous cognition
As between rope and snake.
Avidya is what is contrary to science.
VERSE 5
The senses, the mind, intelligence and the five
Vital tendencies, what creates -
That is the transcendent, indeed, even they being
The subtle limbs of the reasoning self
A neutral verse.
This verse deals with Para, the transcendent,
and the Cidatma, or reasoning self.
The Cidatma is pure reason and the self.
The Jiva is the vital principle, experiencing pleasure and pain.
VERSE 6
Adopting as its own these limbs, the reasoning Self,
By its own negative base of errror,
Imagines itself as if happy or suffering,
In truth, there is nothing else at all
The mind imagines suffering and pain - thus it is transcendent
- Para - not gross, but subtle.
Apara: the gross.
The negative, ontological, fully existential Absolute has a nuclear
pattern of reality as a universal concrete: the colour solid.
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VERSE 7
The objective data of the senses, which is the world,
What emanates forth - that indeed,
In the context of the Self, is the immanent,
The basis of all gross presentiments of the will.
VERSE 8
As the ignorance about the mother-of-pearl
Is the basis of the silver-presentiment,
So too what in the Self is the basis of the world,
That is known a darkness
The cause of the supposition of the world in the self is Tamas.
Darkness is the cause of the silver in the mother-of-pearl,
as also of the blue in the sky.
VERSE 9
Because of being that aspect of Maya which is a marvel,
By containing all this universe like a tree in a seed,
Or by virtue of its importance above others,
This here is known as the prime potent power.
Pradhana is the ontological source of Maya.
It includes the world as a seed at the Alpha Point.
Space is abolished.
VERSE 10
By its own nature, because in a marvellous way
It diversifies the three nature modalities,
This aspect of Maya consisting of the three
Modalities is well known as Nature .
Prakrti, nature, spreads out the three nature modalities.
Nature is the basis of what is seen in the world..
Narayana Guru wants to underline that Nature should not be left out.
The Sanskrit prefix "Pra" - means "more so".
"-krit" means "overt activity", hence " Prakrti"
"-dhana" means "to contain or hold together", hence "pradhana"
CHAPTER 5 – BHANA DARSANA
(NORMALISATION) CONSCIOUSNESS
This Darsana is like the Mandukya Upanisad; it is pure structuralism.
Bhana is overt consciousness, it is overt, teleological and objective.
Bhanasreya is the basis of consciousness; it is perceptual, ontological,
subjective and basic.
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Bhana has four types of consciousness.
Bhanasreya has four types of consciousness.
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Both sides have four parts:
both of these four have generic and specific aspects,
thus there are eight types of consciousness.
There is a one-to-one correspondence between the divisions of the numerator and the denominator.
Finally we get sixteen subdivisions: four generic and four specific on both sides.
Consciousness is both inside and outside.
There is a rapid alternation between the subject and the object; a kind of pulsation or propagation; you can hear the bees' wings buzzing.
It is a figure-eight and it is nothing.
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Both Bhana and Bhanasreya have four parts = eight types of consciousness
This structure is a conic section.
Submit consciousness to abstraction and generalisation and you get the Absolute.
VERSE 1
Present equally within and without,
In constant bee-agitation,
Consciousness is of two kinds -
The generic and the specific.
VERSE 2
As the concrete, the subtle, the causal and the Absolute
Basic consciousness is of four kinds,
So these names even of basic consciousness
Are also applicable to consciousness.
VERSE 3
Lo, here, "I am the body,this is the pot,"
Depending on the concrete,
What looms in consciousness,
That is known as the concrete.
VERSE 4
Here, what is the consciousness of the body
And the pot, that is the specific,
Likewise too what is the consciousness of "I" or "this"
Is known as the generic
"I" is generic, "body" is specific.
"This" is generic "pot" is specific.
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VERSE 5
The senses, mind, intellect, interest items
And the five vital tendencies,
By what are made conscious - that is known as the subtle.
Because of dependence on the subtle.
VERSE 6
"I am ignorant: such a consciousness
Is said to be the causal.
Here, that aspect which stands for "I" is the generic,
And the specific what stands for "am ignorant"
VERSE 7
"I am the Absolute." Thus what consciousness attains
Is praised as the consciousness of the Absolute.
Here, the element "I" is the generic,
And "Absolute" is its specific attribute.
VERSE 8
Where consciousness exists, there the
Object of consciousness exists, where
Consciousness exists not, its object neither.
Thus, both by agreement and difference, certitude comes.
VERSE 9
As with the eye which cannot see itself,
So the Self does not see itself,
Therefore indeed, the Self is not the object of consciousness.
That which the Self sees is the object of consciousness
You cannot know the Self, but you can feel the Self.
VERSE 10
What is the object of consciousness, that is conditioned,
What is unconditioned, that is not the object of consciousness.
What is conditioned is non-existent,
But what is unconditioned, itself THE EXISTENT IS THAT.
This is a Mahavakya, or basic axiom of Vedanta: neutral and normal;
evidence of the perfect symmetry of this work.
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