Advaita Vedanta

Author(s): Kalidas Bhattacharya, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 11

A Modern Understanding...
of form, and whatever positivity it has is only that of the unreflective given situation which just was positive, there being no question as to why it was so. The relation between body and the world, between mind and body and between pure consciousness and mind has to be understood in the same manner. This is unlike any ordinary case of distinguishing where when X is distinguished out the remainder is understood as a clear positive definite Y equivalent to the given situation minus X. Dissociation of the stages of freedom, as thus of a different sort, can be best represented by saying that what is now dissociated had earlier, by an inscrutable act of self-negation, deformed itself positively as the given that was started from. This is the Advaita principle of ajñāna details of which, however, will be taken up later.
The given that is started from is the ordinary world of things. What is first distinguished out of it, as more subiective and, therefore, free so far, is one's body. Body which is otherwise a thing among things of the world called Nature or world of objects (jada) is yet in a way not in it. Somehow it enjoys a priviledged position. If the world is an object of experience to a subject that experiences it, body as the medium of this experience finds a distinct position for itself which is as much in that world of objects as not in it. When an object finds itself to be a medium (means), to that extent it transcends the world and feels drawn toward the subject that uses it as a means. As a matter of fact, in that aspect it is felt as I, which is never the lot of any other physical thing of the world. Other things of the world can at most be mine, never felt as I. Being in the world, the body equally transcends it.
This relative subjectivity of body is evident in other ways too. The absolute distance and direction of everything and, for that very reason, their distances and directions in relation to one another are due ultimately to the reference of each to my body; and add to this the more intriguing phenomenon that my body is not a mere point-and, what is still more