A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

*HEABSOLUTE AND MANIFESTATION.HE jjr one question that is most difficult to grasp in unvHyderstanding the Advaita Philosophy, and the onequestion that will be asked again and again and willalways remain after thinking of it all your life, is how hasthe Infinite, the Absolute, become the finite. I will take upthis question, and, in order toillustrate it better, I will use afigure.Here is the Absolute (a),andthis is the Universe (6).TheAbsolute has become the Univei;se.By this is not onlymeant the material world, butthe mental world, the spiritualeverything, heavens and earths, and everythingthat exists. Mind is the name of a change, and body thename of another change, and so on, and all these composeone universe. This Absolute (a) has become the Universe(6) by coming through time, space, and causation (c).Thisis the central idea of Advaita. Time, space, and causationare like the glass through which the Absolute is seen, andwhen it is seen on the lower side it appears as the Universe.Now we at once see from this, that where the Absolute is,there is neither time, space nor causation. The idea oftime cannot be there, seeing that there is no mind, nothought. The idea of space cannot be there, seeing that