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Changing and Changeless Reality



Upanishads contemplated about changeless and changing reality. One was designated as the supreme self and other as Maya (illusion). One was conceptualized as the seer and other as seen. The dichotomy of subject and object is as old as Greek civilization. This division was also conceptualized by Nyaya and Navya Nyaya philosophy in ancient India. The modern materialistic science emerged out of this dichotomy and objectified the worldly reality. In that process, subject was also objectified as property. Ancient Indian philosophy raised this logical question: if something changes then how does it exist? It is similar to what Zeno exemplified through his paradoxes. Zeno raised the question if an arrow in moving in time how does it exist as ontological reality? Its reality is relative to time and space. Nagarjuna, a Buddhist philosopher, questioned the very essence of everything. He was was considered as the hard core skeptic whose only job was to demolish the arguments of opponents without raising an argument of his own. Nagarjuna through his prasanga raised the question if something is changing then how come it exists? All the changing reality is just like a hide and seek game of appearance and disappearance, which comes out of avidya (ignorance). True Jnana is to discriminate between changing and changeless reality. Gaudapada raised a very important argument: Something which is changing has no reality of its own and changeless is the only reality which does not get affected in sway of time. Just like Plato imagined a world of conventional reality, which is corrupting and decaying, but the absolute form is otherworldly, eternal, and incorruptible. Upanishads imagined the changeless reality, which alone remains a seer, an experiencer, an observer, the consciousness, which doesn't exist in time and space. Physical body, emotions, feelings, intellect, and unconscious awareness are temporal reality. It is also affected and created by space. Beyond the physical and mental substratum, the pure awareness remains as the ultimate reality of the Universe, that reality is beyond the imagination of physics. That metaphysical domain is experienced by mystics and poets, whose reason and passion of logic cools down and there only insight pervades into the light which is changeless and eternal. That source is quite apparent yet the baffling mind is too skeptical to experience the changeless in a changing world of reality. Buddha categorized it as the conventional truth and universal truth. Both are as true as the shining light of Sun. While one is perceivable and other is identifiable as suggested by Aurobindo in his Life Divine.

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