Discourses on The Philosophy of Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga - Lecture -4

Master discusses the problem of 'atheist'. An atheist is one who denies the existence of God. An atheist is one who denies the necessity of postulating the existence of God for explaining the world. There is the scientific atheist. He says that God need not be included as a cause for the production of effects in this world. And, there is no need to assume a first cause. This scientific atheism is therefore something that depends upon Nature to provide the Laws by which this world is functioning. The scientific atheism is therefore something that depends upon Nature to provide the Laws by which this world is functioning. The scientific atheist is one who wants to understand the laws that govern nature and, if anybody says God must also be included, he says, we do not find any necessity to have a God in this world picture. Order in this Universe is not necessarily related to a person or God. Order can be in the very nature of things. So, we do not want a God to create this world. You may ask when and how all this came. There must be something before. You cannot say that there was nothing, at the stage from which something has come. Obviously, something cannot be produced out of nothing. Therefore, the doctrine which says that there was nothing at the beginning is self-contradictory.

Master uses in his work a verbal point. There is no God means God is nothing, and if you look out for God you do not find him anywhere. Therefore He is nothing. He is a zero or soonya, or to use our own language 'sunna', and how do you represent it - in a circle or a dot. A point is a contracted circle. A circle is an expanded point. Now you can shrink God into 'nothingness' in your science. You can eliminate Him as a cause. But He is a cause of all, and not the cause of any one particular thing. You are looking for a 'particular cause' and not for a 'general cause'. That is absolutely a meaningless point. A scientist would look for particular causes or particular effects and not for a general cause which operates in respect of everything in this world. You look from that point of view. You will see you have shrunk the God to Nothingness. It has become so indistinct that it looks like a point. God is a point or a speck. But when you go nearer, it becomes bigger and bigger and a vast one and an Infinite Ocean. So, God has got a very peculiar capacity unlike anything found in our visual experience to become the whole circle of things comprising the whole of the Universe when you go nearer and nearer. So that is how the atheist reduces God to a Zero.

Now master takes another example. He just says the fun about adding zeros to one. Zeros multiplied without 'one' result is nothing at all. But he takes one (1) and adds zeros. Then you will find that for each zero, the value increase ten times. 10, 100, 1000, 1 lakh etc. If '1' is to be one i.e. you, you are the person and if you add zero to your right, you will become bigger and bigger. The individual when he begins to look at himself begins to expand and so you will become very vast just as the zeros added to number '1' increases the value of the number. So, zero has value.

Place the zeros on the left side before the one 1., 01., 001. After a decimal point i.e., after negation of '1' I think, you become fractional and this can be done till the value of .00001 is equal to zero. He represents this as a very fine problem of numbers. The potentiality of zero seems to be infinite. Therefore, he says "I am prepared to accept the atheistic view that God is nil. I am also prepared to accept the mathematicians' term that God is zero and Infinite". This seems to be one way of looking at the problem of the importance of the zero in our lives. Zero is negation and the most objective way of knowing Reality is when you reduce yourself to nothingness.

Science also tells one thing. The observer must also be eliminated. Individual predilections, prejudices, omissions will have to be completely eliminated in objective knowledge in science. Now it is true in science also as in the gross way of the world experience and experiment, the individual counts almost nothing. That is in all observation 'I see' 'I know' 'I observe' the 'I' can be eliminated and we can say 'It is observed'. When you go to micro-working, or Infinitesimal work, or when you are thinking of general theories of relativity, the individual himself has to be eliminated; and it seems to be impossible for any scientist to eliminate the observer or individual because he develops a field of his own. He cannot, therefore, be eliminated so they have to make their formulae inclusive of the personal observer. And this observer, therefore, is an impediment to the objective understanding of reality. That is why the 'ego' cannot be removed. The ego is the observer and somebody should observe in order to get the results. There can be no experience without the observer and so the observer is in the picture. It may be anything that he observes. You must include him in the whole picture of understanding about the Ultimate.

So, when people say Sat Cit Ananda they think that it is the Ultimate, we find it is not so. So, Master says that many people think that SAT is God, which we have to reach and think that is the Ultimate. Now that is not the Ultimate because it includes the difference between the 'observer' and the 'observed'. And when you can eliminate the observer, then Reality alone remains. Suppose we can eliminate the 'one' by some means (of course it is very difficult) then, we can have only the Reality. The 'I' has already merged. When can the 'I' or observer merge in the Ultimate which gives value to it. That is only done when you are able to become completely a zero. The SAT or Being then gets merged. That condition can not be described. That is what we say in our Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga 'OM TAT SAT'. The idea is, when you pass beyond the three levels of consciousness of waking, sleeping and dreaming, you come across a condition where the 'I' is negated. That is what other people call Sat. We do not say Sat Tat, but we say Tat Sat.

So is the Being and that which you know as the Being. No philosophy can really come into being unless you reach the Being. All that we now speak of may be a kind of SAT, working with the 'I' which you cannot eliminate. So, you will see that all such knowledge is bound to be imperfect if not unreal. But if you reach that stage, it is Being. From this point of view you can say it is nothing. For us, that TAT is nothing, zero. But without it we cannot exist. In fact it is the most valuable number if it can be called a number at all. Zero is not a number. It is not even a negative number. If you can achieve that TAT, zero, then you will be able to see the real nature of things of SAT. What is Being is, you can only say when you are completely merged.

This order cannot be changed. The order has not been understood. It is much worse in the case of poets. So they do not understand the significance behind OM TAT SAT. Unless you know that TAT, the SAT cannot be understood. The Pure Reality is without the modifications or changes or imperfections introduced into it by the observer, namely, yourself or the 'I'. If you think about and contemplate on OM TAT SAT, I would like to ask if you reached the second term before you reach the third term or have you known the first term atleast before the second term. Then how can you go to the third?

Neither the religious men, who do not understand the OM nor the philosophers who do not understand the SAT know the Ultimate Reality. This I think, is a very mathematical statement. If you observe in the nature of 'zero' you may be able to see that it is asking us to go beyond philosophy. In fact, you see that the original thing was not 'nothing'. It has tremendous potentialities, infinite potentialities; but absolutely immobile till you introduced the 'I'. That condition of thought is a condition of BHOOMA according to Master. The Bhooma is what we call Bhoomi. BHOOMA is that on which everything stands. It is the support of every Reality. Without that support of Brahman or Bhoomi, there can be nothing in this world. So this is zero, this Bhooma, this Reality is what we are to know.