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Sachchidananda
Existence: Consciousness: Bliss
The Supreme is Pure Being, Absolute Existence, sat.
He is Existence because He alone Is, there
being nothing else which has any ultimate reality
or any being independent of His self-manifestation
The Supreme is also Pure Awareness, Absolute Consciousness,
cit. We must be on our guard against confusing
the ultimate consciousness of Brahman with our own
modes of thought ahd knowledge, or calling Him in
any but avowedly metaphorical language the Universal
Omniscient Mind and by such other terminology; Mind,
Thought, Knowledge, Omniscience, Partial Science,
Nescience are merely modes in which Consciousness
figures under various conditions and in various receptacles.
But the Pure Consciousness of the Brahman is a conception
which transcends our modes of thinking The Upanishads
tell us that Brahman is not a blind universal Force
working by its very nature mechanically, nor even
an unconscious Cause of Force; He is conscious or
rather is Himself Consciousness, cit, as well
as sat. It necessarily follows that sat
and cit are really the same; Existence
is Consciousness and cannot be separated from Consciousness
The Supreme is, finally, Pure Ecstasy, Absolute Bliss,
ananda. Now just as sat and cit are
the same, so are sat and cit not different
from ananda; just as Existence is Consciousness
and cannot be separated from Consciousness, so Conscious
Existence is Bliss and cannot be separated from Bliss.
I think we feel this even in the very finite
existence and cramped consciousness of life on the
material plane. Conscious existence at least cannot
endure without pleasure; even in the most miserable
sentient being there must be pleasure in existence
though it appear small as a grain of mustard seed...
SABCL
Vol 12 page 16-19
God is Sachchidananda. He manifests Himself as infinite
existence of which the essentiality is consciousness,
of which again the essentiality is bliss, is self-delight.
Delight cognising variety of itself, seeking its own
variety , as it were, becomes the universe. But these
are abstract terms; abstract ideas in themselves cannot
produce concrete realities. They are impersonal states;
impersonal states cannot in themselves produce personal
activities.
This becomes still clearer if we
consider the manifestation of Sachchidananda. In that
manifestation Delight translates itself into Love;
Consciousness translates itself into double terms,
conceptive Knowledge, executive Force; Existence translates
itself into Being, that is to say, into Person and
Substance. But Love is incomplete without a Lover
and an object of Love, Knowledge without a Knower
and an object of Knowledge, Force without a Worker
and a Work, Substance without a Person cognising and
constituting it.
This is because the original terms
also are not really impersonal abstractions. In delight
of Brahman there is an Enjoyer of delight, in consciousness
of Brahman a Conscient, in existence of Brahman an
Existent; but the object of Brahman's delight and
consciousness and the term and stuff of Its existence
are Itself. In the divine Being
Knowledge, the Knower and the Known and, therefore,
necessarily also Delight, the Enjoyer and the Enjoyed
are one.
This Self-Awareness and Self-Delight
of Brahman has two modes of its Force of consciousness,
its Prakriti or Maya, -intensive in self-absorption,
diffusive in self- extension. The intensive mode is
proper to the pure and silent Brahman; the diffusive
to the active Brahman. It is the diffusion of the
Self-existent in the term and stuff of His own existence
that we call the world, the becoming or the perpetual
movement (bhuvanam, jagat). It is Brahman that
becomes; what He becomes is also the Brahman. The
object of Love is the self of the Lover; the work
is the self-figuration of the Worker; Universe is
body and action of the Lord.
SABCL
Vol 12 page 96-97
Sachchidananda is the One with a triple aspect. In
the Supreme the three are not three but one -existence
is consciousness, consciousness is bliss, and they
are thus inseparable, not only inseparable but so
much each other that they are not distinct at all.
In the superior planes of manifestation they become
triune -although inseparable one can be made more
prominent and base or lead the others. In the lower
planes below they become separable in appearance,
though not in their secret reality , and one can exist
phenomenally without the others so that we become
aware of what seems to us an inconscient or a painful
existence or a consciousness without Ananda. Indeed,
without this separation of them in experience pain
and ignorance and falsehood and death and what we
call inconscience could not have manifested
themselves -there could not have been this evolution
of a limited and suffering consciousness out of .
the universal nescience of Matter .
SABCL
Vol 22 page 239
Sachchidananda is the manifestation of the higher
Purusha; its nature of infinite being, consciousness,
power and bliss is the higher Nature, parii prakrti.
Mind, life and body are the lower nature, aparii
prakrti.
The state of Sachchidananda
is the higher half of universal existence, pariirdha,
the nature of which is Immortality , amrtam.
The state of mortal existence in Matter is the
lower half, apariirdha, the nature of which
is death, mrtyu.
Mind and life in the body
are in the state of Death because by ignorance they
fail to realise Sachchidananda. Realising perfectly
Sachchidananda, they can convert themselves, Mind
into the nature of the Truth, vijfiiina, Life
into the nature of caitanya, Body into the
nature of sat, that is, into the pure essence.
When this cannot be done perfectly
in the body, the soul realises its true state in other
forms of existence or worlds, the "sunlit"
worlds and states of felicity, and returns upon material
existence to complete its evolution in the body.
A progressively perfect realisation
in the body is the aim of human evolution.
It is also possible for the
soul to withdraw for an indefinable period into the
pure state of Sachchidananda.
The realisation of the Self
as Sachchidananda is the aim of human existence.
SABCL
Vol 12 page 89-90
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