Page:Philosophy of bhagawad-gita.pdf/33

Rh or anything like matter. It is not even consciousness, because all that we know of consciousness is with reference to a definite organism. What consciousness is or will be when entirely separated from upadhi is a thing utterly inconceivable to us, not only to us but to any other intelligence which has the notion of self or ego in it, or which has a distinct individualised existence. Again it is not even atma. The word atma is used in various senses in our books. It is constantly associated with the idea of Self. But Parabrahmam is not so associated; so it is not ego, it is not non-ego, nor is it consciousness—or to use a phraseology adopted by our old philosophers, it is not jnata, not jnanam and jneyam. Of course every entity in this cosmos must come under one or the other of these three headings. But Parabrahmam does not come under any one of them. Nevertheless, it seems to be the one source of which jnata, jnanam and jneyam and the manifestations or modes of existence. There are a few other aspects which it is necessary for me to bring to your notice, because those aspects are noticed in the Bhagavad-Gita.

In the case of every objective consciousness, we know that what we call matter or non-ego is, after all, a mere bundle of attributes. But whether we arrive at our conclusion by logical inference, or whether we derive it from innate consciousness, we always suppose that there is an entity--the real essence of the thing upon which all these attributes