Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 112

CREATION.
97
is pure Consciousness. Conceived as a quality, or essence, it never changes under any circumstances whatsoever, whether it be working on the waking, the dreaming, or the deep-sleep plane of empirical existence. This one eternal Existence, Vedanta teaches us, is also the consciousness within ourselves. Hence, we are all God. It is upon this simple foundation that the Vedantic conception of " That thou art” is built.
As regards the number of souls in existence, Vedanta is rigidly monistic even as to that, maintaining that there is and can be only one soul in existence. Since all the souls, it is urged, have consciousness in common among them, it follows that consciousness is the one and the only real Soul. Pointing out certain features of resemblance between the world and a dream, the most favourite method of argument with Vedanta, the Vedantists ask: Can we call our dream-creatures spirits? If not, then where is there room for a multiplicity of souls in this dream-like illusion which it pleases us to call our real, material world ? It we refuse to dub the dream phantoms spirits, what authority have we for calling the men and women of this world by that name? With the breaking up of the dream, the actors and actresses of the dreamstage melt into thin air, the buildings, parks, cities-- nay, even whole worlds--collapse into airy nothingness, and the entire panorama is rolled away like a scroll, leaving not a multiplicity of souls, but only the one indivisible spirit of the dreamer. Similarly, argues the Vedantist, there is and can be only one spirit in this world of our waking consciousness. Ascribing the spatial type of infinity to consciousness, he asks: since