The Infinite is Never a Compound
Raised by a metaphysical mother, we were taught early on to watch not just our spoken words, but also our thoughts, for they had the power to manifest. In tandem with this was the practice of denying such statements as “I am sick,” “I am tired, sad, etc.” Not only were such thoughts capable of locking in such experiences, but the foundational teaching was that “I” was not a body or anything associated with the body. “I” was intangible Spirit/Soul. So we chose our words carefully and tended to have more “well days” off of school than “sick days.” Really, we would skip school and go to the mountains to play for the day.
Two decades later I was sitting in Swami Aseshananda’s ashram listening to Sunday lectures every week. One of the things he often repeated was that the Infinite can never be a compound. A compound must be finite because it is made of two or several things, and in order to be infinite, it must be the “One without a second.” A compound is always subject to decay; it has a beginning, middle, and an end. Of course, this clarified the reasoning process of the practice I had been given early on. That intangible Spirit, which was my “I,” had to be the Atman-Brahman of Vedanta, the unique, singular Reality. No wonder it could not be the body, the mind, or anything associated with them; they were compounds. But compounds of what and from what source?
Sankhya studies came next and provided a cosmological framework on which to practice separating out the “I” (the Self) from the non-Self, or all the possible compounds. Now I could see that the body was made of the five elements and all the objects of the senses (whatever I heard, touched, saw, tasted, or smelled) were also made of those five elements: ether/space, air, fire, water, and earth. Every-thing in this gross world is a combination of those five elements. But where did they come from? Science tells us that matter comes from smaller bits of matter or energy; this takes us further into the realm of compounds, because the enquiry remains in the physical universe. Cosmology, however, takes us inward into the mind on a trajectory to the Infinite, “that one thing by knowing which all else is known.”
The physical elements themselves are compounds and have their next level of origin in what is called the tanmatras, which are a rudimentary form of elements, senses, and sense objects. These five can be described as:
–the idea of sound and the space it will travel through to be heard
–the idea of tangibility and the air that makes touch possible
–the idea of visibility and the radiance needed for sight,
–the idea of flavor and the water needed for taste
–the idea of odor and the earth needed to produce things to smell.
The main point here is that the physical manifestation of things have been preceded by the thought, the idea, of them, literally, or idealized. But this manifestation must occur via some power. Prana is the name for that power, manifesting as insentient force or energy in the universe, as life force in bodies, as psychic force moving thoughts, and as Dynamic Intelligence when the insentient veils fall off in higher states of consciousness, both for the individual, the collective, and the Cosmic beings. It is one of the secret teachings of Vedanta and different Yogas that prana, an insentient energy in the unawakened, gets revealed as Supreme Cosmic Intelligence, the Mahashakti, sometimes also called Ishvara, moving through all realms of existence. In the Upanisads, Prana is sometimes used in place of Brahman. But until a true awakening comes, one must be careful not to think that Consciousness (Brahman) is insentient energy, or one will lose the goal of Realization.
What we have been describing here is a process of involution, or dissolving the mindstream, as my teacher puts it. Elements are involved (opposite of evolve) into the senses, both are involved into the tanmatras. The method I have been taught then dissolves the tanmatras into the pranas and psychic pranas, and then these are dissolved into the Antahkarana (four-fold mind of buddhi, chitta, manas, ahamkara). Then antahkarana is dissolved into the Great Mind (Mahat, containing cosmic principles like time, space, causation, and others); the Great Mind into AUM; AUM into Atman and Atman into Brahman. This is all done in the mind during the contemplation portion of meditation and aptly prepares one for a deep formless meditation. One of the results of this practice is the awareness that objects, gross and subtle, rise and fall within Consciousness without ever affecting It. Another lesson is that all objects come out of the mind; there is nothing to cling to therefore. Yet another lesson is that everything is “unoriginated.” And this is where I have been headed in this writing.
My teacher, Babaji, just completed a series of classes on Gaudapada’s Non-Touch (Asparsha) Yoga. I can hardly write this without also hearing the quip “you can’t touch this!” Yes, Brahman, Reality, cannot be touched by anything, nor can we touch, physically or mentally, any-thing if we are intent on immersing into That, our true nature. Here is a quote from one of his classes where he was elucidating one of Gaudapada’s teachings on non-origination, ajativada:
“You cannot produce an unproduced thing. And even if you have a “produced” object, it was unproduced before; thus, its true nature is unproduced. It has simply been made to look like something other than it truly is. And, surprise! That is the case with all the worlds, and with human bodies as well. Everything in Maya looks other than what it truly is…..”
Looking back on Swami’s statement that the Infinite is never a compound, we see that this is the necessary stage of discrimination, viveka, we all must follow to purify the mind of false identification with the non-Self (which are all compounds). This leads us to understand the Advaita when it states that compounds, “produced things,” do not really exist; only the true nature of an object exists. This is one of the meanings behind saying that all objects are empty. Further, the real meaning of any object is its true nature, the one unique Infinite. Anytime Swami taught from Gaudapada, he would invariably begin with this salutation, “I pay my obeisance to Gaudapada, for he was an illumined soul.”
Here are two more quotes from recent classes with Babaji:
The ignorant person sees objects as solid matter.
The knowledgeable person sees objects as atomic particles.
The Intelligent person sees objects as solidified thought.
The Illumined person sees objects as Buddha Nature, Atman.
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If one renounces Nature and that is as far as one goes, then one gets abhava, formlessness. But man and Nature remain separate. What kind of oneness is that? But if one renounces Nature by knowing that it has come out of oneself, then one gets both formlessness and the realization of “iti iti” – “all this.” This is called Mahayoga.
