The colorless crystal - Chapter 20

The existence of atman (आत्मन्) is intrinsic to it or in other words is its very nature and we need to understand this aspect clearly. We generally use adjectives to qualify the attributes of an entity and therefore when the word ‘existence’ is used with atman (आत्मन्) the tendency would be to understand atman (आत्मन्) as an entity and existence as it’s attribute but that is not so. Just as a wave in the ocean does not have water in it but IS water so too atman (आत्मन्) does not exist but IS existence. Being of the nature of existence it remains the same in all the three periods of time. It is changeless, ever the same.

Atman (आत्मन्) is not a distinct entity to be sought out and understood but is the very essence of all beings just as water is the essence of all waves. The teachings of Vedanta therefore essentially are teachings about oneself or what one intimately refers to as ‘I’. When Vedanta says that everything other than one’s own Self is mithya (मिथ्या) and everything depends on one’s own Self to exist there is stiff resistance because we do not know the real nature of one’s own Self. We have taken what the Self is not to be the Self and that mix-up is the source of the resistance. It is not a physical mix-up though but a cognitive mix-up and knowledge of the Self can remove this. One needs to understand the Self so well that one can distinguish it from the non-Self. Ignorance of the Self is universal and beginningless but once removed it doesn’t come back again.

A red flower seen through a crystal would seem to be coloring the colorless crystal in red and in the same manner the non-Self seemingly superimposes its attributes onto the attribute-less Self resulting in the Self and the non-Self getting mixed-up beyond differentiation. It is for this reason that Shastras used the method of negating the superimposition to reveal the Self. When the non-Self is negated in its entirety, what remains is the pure Self, the Truth.

We shall now begin discussing the nature of the Self in this method where we shall elaborate in detail on what the Self is not before elaborating on what it is.