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CHAPTER 111 PSYCHOLOGY
Here we convert the order and begin with the esoteric Psychology, because it is closely connected with the esoteric Cosmology and its fundamental doctrine: the world is mâyâ. All is illusive, with one exception, with the exception of my own Self, of my Âtman. My Âtman cannot be illusive, as Çankara shows, anticipating the "cogito, ergo sum" of Descartes,--for the who would deny it, even in denying it, witnesses its reality. But what is the relation between my individual souls the Jîva-Atman, and the highest soul, the Parama-Atman or Brahman? Here Çarkara, like a prophet, foresees the deviations of Râmânuja, Mâdhva and Vallabha and refutes them in showing, that the Jîva cannot be a part of Brahman (Râmânuja), because Brahman is without parts (for it is timeless and spaceless, and all parts are either successions in time or co-ordinations in space, as we may add), ---neither a different thing from Brahman (Mâdhva), for Brahman is ekam eva advitîyam, as we may experience by anubhava--nor a metamorphose of Brahman (Vallabha), for Brahman is unchangeable (for, as we know now by Kant, it is out of causality). The conclusion is, that the Jîva being neither a part nor a different thing, nor a variation of Brahman, must be the Paramâtman fully and totally himself, a conclusion made equally by the Vedântin Çarkara, by the Platonic Plotinos, and by the
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