Vedanta explains
the reason of this difficulty as due to the fact that all these
indefinable forms and names can only be experienced as modes
of the real, the self-luminous. Our innate error which we continue
from beginningless time consists in this, that the real in
its full complete light is ever hidden from us, and the glimpse
479
that we get of it is always through manifestations of forms
and names; these phenomenal forms and names are undefinable,
incomprehensible, and unknowable in themselves, but under
certain conditions they are manifested by the self-luminous real,
and at the time they are so manifested they seem to have a
positive being which is undeniable. This positive being is only
the highest being, the real which appears as the being of those forms
and names. A lump of clay may be moulded into a plate or a
cup, but the plate-form or the cup-form has no existence or being
apart from the being of the clay; it is the being of the clay that
is imposed on the diverse forms which also then seem to have
being in themselves. Our illusion thus consists in mutually misattributing
the characteristics of the unreal forms--the modes of
ajnana and the real being.
Pages:
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104
1105
1106
1107
1108