Advaita Vedanta

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

Page 28

The Absolute as...
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of I, i.e, purely subject, only symbolically spoken of as objects, That extra-bodily things, just in so far as they are mine and not 1, are independent need not, however, mean that they are as independent as a pan-objectivist would have them. From the humanistic point of view they too are symbolic representations of pure subjectivity. Only, the mental and the bodily constitute one type of symbolic representation and the independent thing another. To this distinction we shall very soon turn.
Most people get upset when their bank balance, very definitely mine to everyone of them, fails. But some people there always are who, not 1 cessarily of defective constitution, bearthe loss quietly. To bear the loss that way means they can stand aside, they can dissociate themselves, from the things they call mine. The same is true of physical injury and mental unhappiness. Most people identify themselves with their bodies and minds, so much so that they get purturbed when these are threatened. But there are some, again, who can calmly bear physical pain and some mental discomfort too. They are not necessarily of defective sensibility : it is not true that they do not have these pains and discomforts. They do have these and yet they can stand aside, i. e. dissociate themselves from these. To have these pains and discomforts means that so far they identify themselves with them, and to bear them calmly means that they so far dissociate themselves from them. Simultaneous presence of identification and dissociation is no apomaly here. The relation is precisely like one between distin. guished form and the given complex from out of which the form is distinguished. We have already seen that when the form is distinguished out what remains over is not a distinct matter. What remains over is the same old homogeneous fusion that was started with. Similarly, when these people distinguish them. selves, say, from mental states, they do indeed realize themselves as centres of pure subjectivity, and yet, at the same time, what remain over are the same old mental states exactly as they were experienced before the dissociation. If there was no contradic