Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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answering bliss. The Taittirīya Upanisad describes the final state of bliss where the jīva embraces the anandmaya Brahma :
"He indeed is one who makes him (jīva) blissful. Only when he enters into the invisible, the not-self, the indescribable, the infinite and obtains his final rest, he is totally free from fear.... He penetrates the Blissful” (III. 5-8).
By doing, the jīva imitates God. By this imitation he divinizes himself and participates in the very person of God. He perfects himself by the grace of God and enters Him, as the Brhadāranyaka Upanişad puts it, brahmaiva san, brahmapyeti (4.4.5). Being full he enters Fullness.
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NOTES The dates, as mentioned in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, Ed. John Bowker, OUP, 1977, Tattvasankhyanam, Sarvamūlagranthaḥ, vol. vii.725. All references to Madhvāchārya's works are from Sarvamūlagranthah- Collected works of Sri Madhvāchārya, Edited critically with an Introduction, explanatory notes, Appendices by Dr. Vyasankere Prabhanjanacharya, M.A., Ph.D [seven volumes) Bangalore, 1999. Note also Bertrand Russell's critique of Plato's theory of appearance: 'any attempt to divide the world into portions of which one is more real than the other is doomed to failure.' A History of Western Philosophy, London, 1946, p. 144. Madhvāchārya does not divide reality into compartments of the true' and 'the false'. He sees God as the supremely Real overseeing the derivatively real and asserts that the individual, sentient being, is intrinsically and eternally the other. The 'dependent reality is real precisely because the Supreme Reality and His creation is immediately and ultimately real. The existence of his God is not a product of Brahma, the sole reality and "māyā' (illusion) or 'ajñāna' (ignorance). You cannot wed light to darkness and produce a third entity, since, to borrow a statement from Rgveda apedu hāsate tamah (X.127.3) 'light ridicules/mocks darkness'. You can call your God a mystery, but never an incredible hybrid.The illusionist school of thought is raised on shaky foundations. Madhvāchārya pithily puts it: because of the utter impossibility of ignorance (ajñana) affecting the [luminous] Brahma, the school stands totally rejected (Ajñānāsambhavādeva tat matamakhilam apākṣtam, op. at. vii.42).
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