This is part IV of the series ‘the supreme creation’. In the first part of this series, we have discussed about the internal tools. In the second part, we discussed about soul and in the third part, we discussed about prakriti. In this part, we are going to discuss about the Brahman. The Brahman is known by several names like Supreme Self, God, Father, Spirit, Absolute etc. He is the cause of creation and it is beyond our comprehension to know Him. He does not have a shape or form. All scriptures talk about Him as self-illuminating light and without this light, the whole universe will plunge into total darkness. The Brahman is described by these scriptures mostly be negations, refutations and affirmations only, as none has the capacity to know Him fully well. To make it understandable, the Brahman can be explained as the supreme level of consciousness that is non-relational. It is beyond the study of subject and object and is the ultimate, beyond which nothing exists. It is immanent in nature and a casual reality with all the apparent effects. It is better to err on the safer side by saying that nobody knows the time of its origin. It does not have a parentage. Therefore, it is considered as the root cause of everything that exists in this universe with the understanding that the present, past and future tense of the word existence is implied. Since it does not have a form, ancient sages and saints describe the Brahman in whatever form they visualised Him.

The difference in the meaning of manifestation and visualization is to be specifically understood. Manifestation is the indication of the existence or presence or nature of some person or thing, whereas visualization is a mental image that is similar to a visual perception or becoming aware of something through the senses. In manifestation, senses are not involved and in visualization, senses are involved. The objects are perceived only through senses. For perceiving something, you need to have a prior experience of an object. In reality, the Brahman can only be manifested and cannot be visualized. This is based on the theory that the Brahman is formless. For easier understanding, the Brahman is divided into two categories viz. the Brahman with attributes and without attributes. The Brahman without attributes is logically concluded as the Supreme one. This form of the Brahman is not partaking in the actions of the universe. Assuming for a moment that He has the form of a human, then it can be said that He stands as a witness to all the happenings in the universe mainly due to unfolding of karmas of various souls. A person getting aware of another person or an object is a process called knowing. The process of knowing evolves out of unfolding of karmic accounts of souls. Karma manifests on the basis of Newton’s third law ‘for every action there is an equivalent and opposite reaction’. But this karmic manifestation does not unfold in a single birth, but over various births consisting of various forms. Over a period of time, the actions that constantly take place in this universe undergo gradual changes and this process is known as evolution. Therefore, spirituality does not override the scientific principle of evolution and in fact analyzes the process of evolution more intensively and thoroughly, without any ambiguity.

That is why spirituality always accentuates that the knowledge of the highest order is an essential component of Self-realisation. Returning back to our discussion on the concept of knowing, the process needs a knower who acts through his mind to know an object. The object is called known. Both the knower and the known undergo degenerative changes as they are subjected to the factors of time and space. The act of knowing is an experience and when the knower and the known undergo changes, the experience of knowing has, also to undergo changes. The experience of knowing sometimes gives pleasure and sometimes gives pains. If we consider the Brahman as omnipresent, then the pleasure and pain that are being felt by our body, also happens in the Brahman. This way of thinking goes to prove that, the Brahman exists within us as well, due to the simple fact of its omnipresent nature. Self-realization is a mental process by which the experience of pleasure and pain is felt by the Brahman within, by disassociating our mind from the experience. Here the Self means the omnipresent and omnipotent Brahman. He is omnipotent because He is cause of every action without actually associating in the action itself. The cause of his action is being manifested in our physical body. Our mind fails to recognize the cause due to the influence of maya or illusion. The discussion of the Brahman is yet to be concluded. One this discussion is over, we have to proceed to the external tools and the effect of combination of all these factors in the process of creation. (to be continued)