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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
The Vaişņava Saints of ....
739
thing among other worldly objects. But God is unborn and undying. He is eternal and everlasting. Ramakışņa, therefore, describes Him as the Brahman that is above and beyond both knowledge and ignorance, good and evil, dharma and adharma He is indeed beyond all dualities. He is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known, and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and the unreal. In short, He is beyond all relativity.' He is, thus, the Absolute beyond all attributes; beyond whatever is connected with Māyā.? The Brahman or God is thus the final absolute Reality, and it is forever free from any particular characteristic although it manifests itself in all of them. It appears through infinite qualities but it does not share any one of the qualities exclusively. Ramakrsna further describes the Brahman as the absolute and unconditioned, and it is realised in Samadhi alone. Then it is all silence -all talk of reality and unreality, of Jiva and Jagat, of knowledge and ignorance, is hushed. There remains, then, only 'Is-ness' (Being), and nothing else. For verily the salt doll tells no tale when it has become one with the infinite sea,3 Thus, he holds that the finite and particular souls are constituted of the same stuff of the Brahman, and the former is totally lost in the latter at the time of deliverance. As such, the Brahman or God can be known only partially and approximately so long as it admits
i Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, Sayings Nos. 839, 840. 2 Ibid. 841. 3 Ibid, 846.
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