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Reality, the great Terror, the raised-up Thunderbolt,
through fear of which the fire burns, the sun gives heat, the
wind blows, Indra showers, Death does its duty! The
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Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas serve as its meal, and death
itself is its condiment. At the command of that
Imperishable, the sun and the moon, the earth and the sky
are held in their respective positions. At the command of that
Imperishable, the moments, the instants, the days, the nights,
the fortnights, the months, the seasons, the years, stand
differentiated in their own places. At the command of that
Imperishable, some rivers flow from the snowy mountains to
the east, some to the west, in whatever direction each may
flow. Whatever great actions one does in this world, even for
thousands of years, without the knowledge of this
Imperishable, is finite. Whoever dies without the knowledge
of this Imperishable, is miserable (Brih. Up.). This
Imperishable is satyam, True Being. Sat is the immortal and
ti is the mortal. Yam is that which holds the two together
(Chh. Up., VIII. 3. 5). It rises above the mortal and the
immortal, both of which are relative conceptions. The highest
is ritam and brihat, real and great.
Thus, Being alone is the unavoidable basic experience,
which is the fundamental concept in philosophy. We can
think away everything, but we cannot think away that we
are. Being is the very nature even of one who denies it. All
constituents of our thinking, all forms of existence, all modes
of knowledge, presuppose being. Being cannot lead us to
non-being, for, the moment non-being is known, it becomes
being itself. But being is not an object of our immediate
empirical experience, for it is always a particular mode of
being or, rather, becoming that is the object of our relative
experience. To us, individuals, there can be no such thing as
experience of existence-in-general. But eternal being is
general or absolute existence which cannot be confused or
identified with becoming which is a process. Brahman is not
a process or a collection of many particulars, not a multitude
of many finites. No amount of accumulation of relatives,
however vast that may be, can make up the Absolute. An
aggregate of finites can give us a huge mass of finites, but not
the Infinite spatial immensity or vastness is not infinitude.
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The Absolute transcends all finites, but includes everyone of
them. It does not become. It is. Becoming is not completeness
of existence, whereas perfect Being implies Fullness. The
Absolute does not grow or evolve. It is not a process
stretching beyond itself. If it were so, the Absolute would be
involved in space, time and causation, and would cease to be
the Absolute. The Absolute is perfect Oneness and not a
system of plural beings co-existing as reals with action and
reaction among themselves. It is not a complex mass of
relations. If the Absolute is considered as a system, then its
parts must be either identical with it or different from it. If
they are identical, their individualities are lost; if different,
the relation between them becomes unintelligible. The
Absolute can only be Being free from all kinds of differences.
It must be Partless, Eternal, Homogeneous Existence, One
only without a second. Existence is the most universal
concept which leaves nothing whatsoever outside it.
Existence is what is invariably present in all the
processes of knowing. Everything is known to exist, though
the existence of a thing may be qualified by the limiting
factors which constitute the individuality of that thing. There
can be no idea or knowledge, no action and no value, not
even life itself, without existence. In the objective universe of
names and forms there is the permanent principle of
existence underlying all names and forms. Even if everything
dies and is lost, the existence which supported that condition
which is no more, cannot die or be lost. Since existence
cannot change, there can be no death or birth for existence.
Existence is eternal. The physical form of an external object
is subject to transformation, and this transformation is called
the process of birth and death. There is birth and death of
forms, states, conditions, modes, but not of existence.
Existence is what enables us to know that there is birth and
death, that there is change and modification, etc. If existence
itself is not, nothing can be. Everything is in some state or the
other. Though everything is destroyed, the existence therein
is not destroyed. Since existence is the general reality of
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everything, it must be infinite. Existence can have no
limitations, boundaries or divisions either within itself or
outside itself. Existence is indivisible and is its own
explanation. Existence cannot be defined since it has no
specific characteristics, and since it never becomes an object
of knowledge. It is the reality of the object as well as of the
subject. The body, the vital energy, the senses, the mind, the
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