Real and unreal: A Deeper Assessment
A common expression found in Vedanta Studies and dealing with the problem of pervasive suffering is “taking the unreal for the Real and the Real for the unreal.” Also, in the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna tells Arjuna “the unreal has no existence; the Real never ceases to be. The truth about both has been realized by the wise.” (Gita 2:16) I remember how difficult it was to hear this correctly and retain the tenuous intuitions of its true meaning when I first began to contemplate these. There are good reasons for this. For starters, among western or westernized speakers of English, Real and unreal are used almost opposite of what the Indian Seers mean.
In common usage, anything that can be perceived by the five senses is considered real. People say an object exists, and what they mean is that it has a separate existence. It may be related to something else; it may be the effect of some cause, but it exists on its own. What is perceived only by the mind, and not the senses, may or may not be counted as real depending on how many others have the same perceptions or conclusion. In short, real things are perceived by the senses or supplemental instruments the senses can use (i.e. microscopes), or are mental perceptions that are commonly accepted. In ordinary thinking, unreal things are mental fabrications that cannot exist in our universe as we understand it, optical or sensual illusions that appear to exist but are really just tricks played on the mind or senses, or concepts that cannot be proved by the senses.
The Seers of ultimate Truth have a different definition, however. The Real is That which is uncaused and never changes. It is self-existent, relying on nothing else to reveal it or generate it. It is never the effect of a cause. The unreal, by contrast, is anything that changes. If we examine sensual, phenomenal things, we find that they change. The have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and are caused by something else. The ancient philosophers looked at this and were not satisfied. Besides, if something is real, if it has existence, then shouldn’t it exist all the time? Not satisfied even by saying that phenomenal things are unreal because they decay, erode, break, and die eventually over one lifetime, generations, or epochs, they looked into the states of awareness common to all beings and saw that objects went in and out of existence daily. The tree one sees during one’s waking state, may or may not be present in one’s dream state. And if it is, it is distorted in some way. But in the state of dreamless sleep, all objects disappear. If something is real, then it should persist in all states of consciousness, thus objects were unreal over the long view and the short view.
Now, people usually ask, “Well, the tree I see when I am awake is still there for others when I am asleep – what about that? Why should my perspective alone be the basis on which the reality of the tree is determined?” This reminds me of a story my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Harrison, told us. I remember that she told it in a state of wonder and admiration, if not a little bewilderment as well. In earlier years, she had a classroom of 5th graders and they were told to answer the following question: what is the most important thing to happen in the last ten years? This one little boy, probably 10 years old, stated simply, “I was born; because if I were not here, none of this would matter.” And this gets to the heart of the matter. As the Upanisad states, the Reality (pure Awareness) is “Anterior to both life and mind.” And as the Sankhya philosophy states in the Tattva Samasa Sutras, “Prakriti (Nature and its evolutes) exists to serve a Sentient Subject.” That is, objects have no existence separate from the perceiver.
We could keep going on in this vein and it would seem that I am still not addressing that question about why objects are called unreal simply because they are not seen by “me” during my sleep state even though they are seen by others who happen to be awake. The most satisfying answer to this, cosmologically and philosophically, requires an understanding of Consciousness as it expresses via individual, collective, and cosmic modes. But that is outside the scope of this blog. I did touch on it in an earlier blog [“Vyapti & Upadhi” http://advaita-academy.org/blogs/Annapurna.ashx?Y=2011&M=June ]
Now, the fact that the Seers noticed that in the deep sleep state that there was no thing, and no action, caught their attention. If indeed nothing was there, how did they know that? Obviously, something persisted, but it was not an object of perception. It was not susceptible to sensory experience, or even available to memory except later as awareness of the “not knowing.” It was simply present. Nothing was there to reveal it; rather, it was so foundational that it was the revealer of the presence or absence of everything else. This is the ultimate “Real.”
The Sanskrit word for Real is Sat, which also means truth, Truth that is never untruth. This is also significant. It shows an exquisite subtlety of perception. I can tell the truth: I am happy. But that may not be true for very long. I can say, “I am of the female gender.” Yet, when the body dies, am I still female? Truth that is conditioned by time and space, where there is cause and effect, will necessarily be untruth at some point. But the Real can never be contradicted. Thus, the words Truth, Real, and Existence are all correlative in the absolute sense when we hear the teaching “The Real never ceases to be.”
There is another reason that it was difficult for me to grasp the meaning of “taking the unreal for the Real and Real for the unreal.” This is common to many early practitioners and for those who hear these teachings and are not ready for them. The reason is a lack of qualification that only comes with discernment, or the practice of discriminating between the Self and the not self; Subject and object; Seer and the seen. Without clarity about these crucial distinctions, and then having an argumentative mind, many people will find fault with these statements that are meant to draw us into a deep analysis of mind and awareness.
It has become popular to say that Truth is relative; I have my truth and you have your truth. Indeed, if my truth is different from your truth, then it certainly is relative, not ultimate Truth, as we have described the use of it in Vedanta by the seers. Then there is the argument that there is no ultimate Truth. This is a common position of many intellectuals. It is based upon intellectual reasoning alone. But intellect is posited in space and time and in cause and effect, so intellect can only approach an ultimate Truth via the negative position, i.e. what is not Truth; never what is Truth. Speech necessarily falls back from a clear statement of what lies beyond duality. Besides, intellect disappears in the state of deep sleep too, so how can it explain what precedes it? (that fundamental awareness of changes in one’s states of consciousness).
Others say that no one can realize ultimate Truth. This is true when it refers to someone who remains identified as an individual person, but it is not true otherwise and dismisses the accounts of beings (across cultures and some religions) who have transcended the limits of individual mind, intellect, and ego, perceiving “That” which can only be referred to by analogy and never literally. Why? Because the state of being an individual disappears when Truth, when the Real is “known.” Truth, the Real, ultimate Existence, can never be known as an object, one realizes one’s identity in It by dissolving all separateness. This is why one hears that statement, “if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
Thus, in closing, here are those two phrases/statements again for pondering:
“(Suffering is the result of) taking the unreal (objects, the not Self) for the Real (pure Awareness, Self), and Real for the unreal (i.e. dismissing or rejecting pure Existence, Reality, Truth, that is the true Self of all beings – and objects too, for that matter).”
From the Gita: “The unreal has no existence (it is not self-existent but is caused by something else and is temporary); the Real never ceases to be (is the Witness to all change and the presence or absence of objects).”
And finally, here’s one for those who simply do not like to think of Nature, our bodies, life, actions, etc. as unreal by any definition, and want to embrace everything. My teacher, Babaji, stated this in a class while discussing the real meaning of objects:
“This solves everything: It is either all unreal or it is all Real. If it is unreal, you can easily renounce it; you cannot own something that is unreal. If it is all Real, then that is what you are and there is nothing to renounce.”
