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GEORGE BURCH
help the persons in it. Likewise, while we have an obligation to help our fellows in the empirical world, it would be absurd to acknowledge any obligation to them after spiritual awakening has shown the unreality of that world and all the individuals in it. Chaudhury, like most Vedantists, rejects the Buddhist concept of the bodhisattva (the freed man devoted to the welfare of those still bound) as self-contradictory.
The two principal problems of philosophy are how we rise to a higher plane and how we fall to a lower plane." We rise from the first to the second plane, that is, wake up from a dream, through any one of three causes. (1) Some violent perception from the empirical world, such as a loud sound, may intrude into the dream and shatter it. (2) A critical analysis of the dream experience from within may show that its fantastic content can be understood only as unreal illusion. (3) In the absence of either of these causes we shall in any case wake up spontaneously after a short time, as time is reckoned in the waking world, though this may be a long time as reckoned within the dream. We rise to the third plane by accepting the consequences of the rejection of the dream images and so forgetting them. We rise to the fourth plane by causes analogous to those by which we rise to the second. (1) Some stimulus from the higher plane may intrude into the lower one. This is the religious way. "The subtle workings of the higher grade of consciousness in the lower one in order to rouse and raise the subject in the latter is the essence of divine grace," "s and this grace may be mediated through a guru or through any of the other methods known to religion. (2) A critical analysis of ordinary experience, in accordance with the well known arguments of idealist philosophy, may convince the person who is willing to attend to these arguments that the world is not real but phenomenal. This is the philosophical way. (3) We may in any case come spontaneously to see the unreality of the world, but only after a long time as time is reckoned within the world (the "end of the kalpa"). This is the natural way. It presupposes the individual's continued existence by reincarnation. We rise to the fifth plane by accepting the consequences of the
45 Aesthetics—a Vedantic View, p. 6.
| SR No. | 269349 |
| Book Title | Contemporary Vedanta Philosophy 02 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | George Burch |
| Publisher | George Burch |
| Publication Year | |
| Total Pages | 19 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Article |
| File Size | 2 MB |