Pravachanasara

SR No.: 003289
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram
Publication Year: 1964
Total Pages: 612
Language: Hindi, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 16 MB

Page 108

Introduction
OMNISCIENCE ELSEWHERE AND OMNISCIENT BLISS.--The creating Isvara of the Nyāya school is omniscient, because the doer or kartā must-know his actions with their causes, and the universe being an object of knowledge must be known by somebody. Partial counterparts of and similarities with this notion might be detected in the Alaukika-pratyakşa of the Nyāya school and in the Samādhiaprajñāta meditation and some meditational achievements of the Yoga school. There is another aspect of omniscience emphasized by Kundakunda that it is a spiritual state of eternal bliss. It is essentially the spiritual happiness; the senses have no scope there, for their happiness or pleasure is not independent as it is contingent on the conjunction of two entities. If it is once realised there is no end to that. It is attainable only after the destruction of various hindering karmas. In this state knowledge and bliss are identical, because both of them are identical with the self. This condition is possible for a Tirthakara and a Siddha. It is to be aspired after by religious aspirants. This state can be happily compared with, so far as its reference to [p. 79:] an individual is concerned, the Jivan-muktāvasthā of Sāmkhya and Vedānta, 1 in which Ātman has been Brahman but is waiting till the journey of the mortal body is over and the upādhis are mitigated; in this condition there are no pains, no actions good or bad.2 So far as its blissful aspect is concerned, it is similar to Upanişadic Turiyāvasthā where self-conscious bliss is attained. 3 This state of Brahmananda is set forth in Taittiriyopanişad with an attempt to measure the bliss with empirical standards; we get there the perfect identity of Brahman and Atman, and in the end there is a classical passage recording the ecstatic echo of the aspirant who is one with Brahman. This aspect of omniscience, in fact, partly encroaches on the realm of religious mysticism.
OMNISCIENCE COMPARED WITH RADHAKRISHNAN'S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. This spiritual life of omniscience and omnibliss is almost exactly the same as what Radhakrishnan calls Religious experience.4 It is a positive spiritual state of selftranscendence; there the individual acts by his whole being, by the totality of his faculties and energies; it is not the result of unconscious perversion but of spiritual superconsciousness;there is the response of the whole to the whole; and therein 'thought and reality coalesce and a creative merging of subject and object results'. This religious experience is full of joy and peace. But there is a point of difference: this religious experience, according to Radhakrishnan, is a temporary state and not exercised continuously at the level of everyday experience, while omniscience when once attained cannot be parted with, because it is the essential manifestation of the entire spirit. "The soul of man' as Joad puts it is like a chrysalis maturing in the cocoon of matter from which one day it will burst forth and spread its wings in the sun of
1 Samkhyakārikā 67. 2 Belvalkar: Basu Mallika Lectures pp. 66-8. 3 Ranade: Constructive Survey of Upa. Phil. pp. 335 etc. 4 An Idealistic view of Life pp. 84 etc., also Counter Attack from the East by C. E. M. Joad
pp. 79 etc.