Summary:
Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 4, Verse 24 – Part 2: Not all is as it seems – color is a neural construction, your never see things in true present moment, and the sense of self is built from environment and belief. This raises a deeper question: what is actually real? Vedanta holds there is only One reality, yet many realities appear to exist. It resolves this by showing that every apparent reality dissolves into a deeper one – like a pot whose weight and existence belong entirely to the clay beneath it. Every effect (mithya) is inseparable from its material cause (satyam), while the cause remains independent. Following this logic to its end, analyzing any form reveals only quantum probabilities with no fixed shape – more like a verb than a noun. At every step, what seemed real turns out to be a name for an arrangement of something deeper. The chain ends at Intelligence, the one principle cognitively observable at every level, never resolving into anything further – making it the material and intelligent cause of everything. A dreamer illustrates this well, being simultaneously the material and intelligent cause of every object and person in the dream. Yet even Intelligence is not final, because it depends on Consciousness, while Consciousness is independent of it. Everything – world, individual, and God – is therefore one Consciousness appearing in different forms, available to all as their very self.
Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 4, Verse 24 – Part 2:
Attitude of a Karma-Yogi:
Discussed in prior session.
Vision of a Jnani:
Not all is at it seems.
For example:
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- Your brain is constantly suppressing irrelevant background noise (the hum of a fridge, ambient traffic) so you're not overwhelmed. So you're never hearing the moment as it truly is.
- You're always seeing the past. Visual processing takes roughly 80–200 milliseconds, so your conscious perception is always slightly behind reality.
- Objects don't inherently have color. What's actually happening is that surfaces absorb certain light wavelengths and reflect others back toward the eye. A tomato, for instance, reflects wavelengths in the ~700nm range, which the brain then interprets as red. Color itself exists entirely as a neural construction – it has no existence outside of a perceiving mind. This becomes clear when you consider that different species perceive the same object in completely different “colors,” and even individual humans vary in their color perception. The tomato isn't red. It's just bouncing light, and your brain is doing the rest. Even wavelengths don't have color – color is purely the brain's label for different wavelengths, so technically nothing “has” color except the experience itself, inside the mind perceiving it.
- Sense of self is constructed by waking state, environment, memories, belief systems, who's around you, etc.
Let's expand on this simple idea…
The Appearance of Many Realities
Initially it seems as though each object has its own reality. For example, leaf is real, trunk is real, one thought is real, etc. But many realities emerge when you look into any object. When you take any reality that makes up the reality of a tree, that reality goes, as it's made up of further realities. However Vedanta says, “All that is here is One reality”, so there can't be two realities. Vedanta looks at reality differently, saying whatever you consider real and true is NOT real and true, because your perception can't see the whole, and the mind needs a means of knowledge that makes you see deeper into reality.
One Reality Behind All Appearances
Example of pot-clay is given in Vedanta. The weight of the pot is the weight of the clay. The pot has no weight, as it belongs to the clay. Before the pot was born, clay was there. Can't dismiss pot as non-existent (as it holds water and is functional), nor claim pot is absolutely existent (independently existent). Pot has an in-between reality, anirvacaniyam. All that is there is clay, in a particular form, which we call “pot”.
Similarly, can't say clay is pot; while you can say pot is clay. Can't say shirt is fabric, but can say fabric is shirt.
Analysis Into Any Form Will Always Show You Two Things:
1) Can’t find anything but intelligence
Can't find the bark, since bark is cellulose. Can't find the cellulose, since cellulose is molecules. Can't find the molecules, since molecules are atoms. Can't find the atoms, since atoms are mostly empty space – just a nucleus orbited by electrons, and even that nucleus dissolves into protons and neutrons. Can't find the protons and neutrons, since they are quarks.
Quarks
Can't find the quarks, since quarks are just a quantum field – existing as probabilities rather than fixed things. A quark has no definite spin-up or spin-down position until something interacts with it. In physics, this is loosely called ‘observation‘. Scientists use “observer” loosely and it has unfortunately made people think a human's observation collapses the wave function, but the physics community is largely saying it's any physical interaction that does it.
Meaning, any physical interaction – a photon, a measuring device, even another particle, is enough to collapse the probability into a definite state.
For instance, when sunlight hits a flower, those photons are already disturbing the electrons on its surface before your eye receives anything. In that sense, you cannot look at anything without light having already physically touched it and changed it – by mere virtue of having to shine light or use a measuring instrument on it.
Even your eyes, in close enough proximity, would be radiating and interacting with the environment at the quantum level. The flower you see is not the flower as it is – it's the flower as it has been disturbed by interaction.
Probabilities
Can't find probabilities, since probabilities have no shape, colour, surface – you can't hold it or point to it as a “thing”. It's more like a verb than a noun. Something happening, rather than something existing.
Conclusion
At every step, what seemed like the real thing turns out to be a name given to a particular arrangement of something deeper. The bark was always the cellulose. The cellulose was always the molecules. Each layer is mithya.
Where does the chain end?
What is the final material – the clay beneath all the clay (since it’s all just clay) – that is not itself borrowed from something else? That which is the final satyam, which never resolves into anything further, because it is not made of anything other than itself.
For now, that is Intelligence — the one principle you can not negate, because it is observed at every level of assemblage to hold it together. You can’t find a tangible form, but you can recognize intelligence by mere fact of it orderly interacting with everything else.
2) No effect is separate from it’s material cause
No effect (mithya) can be independent of its material cause (satyam). While the material cause (Satyam) is independent of the effect.
EG: Shirt is cotton, while cotton is not shirt. Cotton is yarn, while yarn is not cotton. Yarn are atoms, while atoms are not yarn. Atoms are free of shirt, cotton, yarn – thus they’re able to put themselves together in infinite combinations.
Jagat (universe) is the name for all effects that are not separate from the material Cause.
What is the Material Cause Into Which Everything Reduces?
Putting together of a sentient subject (body-mind capable of responding to its environment), infinite objects that constitute the environment (jagat), and the laws that facilitate interaction between the subject-object and object-object — presupposes knowledge. This all-knowledge, or Intelligence is called Ishvara (which means “cause of the universe”), or God as used in religion.
If Ishvara (knowledge-power) is the cause of jagat, then Ishvara must use some material to make it, just as a pot maker uses clay to make a pot. Unlike the pot maker who gets material away from himself, Isvara itself is not only the intelligence that puts everything together, but the material also, which is nothing but Intelligence also as we’ve seen above.
Bible beautifully puts: In the beginning was the word (form with a name), and the word (form with a name) was with God (clay), and the word was God (clay). What word? “Pot / atom / space / time / fire / etc”.
Relatable Analogy of Ishvara Being Both the Intelligent and Material Cause: The Dream
In the beginning was sleep. But you were there. Then your mind thought of sun and sun came, together with millions of objects, including time and space. The final finished product, you call “dream-world”. Additionally, to think of sun, it means there is knowledge of sun. Same applies to anything created.
Thus you are all-mighty, omniscient in the dream; at least what the dream people call you. And not one person in the dream is separate from you who is the material and intelligent cause of every person and object.
Each dream person's karma determines what that person goes through in your dream, because you've been dreaming the dream world for a long time, so the dream subjects did a lot of things that caused them to be who they are, and in the situations they're in.
And one person in the dream is saying “aham brahman asmi”, which is saying “My truth and the maker's truth is One”. Eventually that one person in the dream comes to see that everything is Ishvara, because nothing is separate from its material cause.
Ishvara's Truth Is Brahman
Is Ishvara the final reality? No. Intelligence has it’s basis in Consciousness. Intelligence depends on Consciousness, while Consciousness is independent of Intelligence. For example, you are perfectly Aware before a plan arises in your Awareness.
So whether it is total-knowledge (called Ishvara) or little-knowledge (called jiva) – truth of both is Consciousness. So it is one Self appearing as jiva/jagat/Ishvara. All three are the Self.
The relationship between Ishvara and Brahman is like that of pot and clay. All-knowledge-power is Consciousness, but Consciousness is independent of all-knowledge-power.
The Individual Waking Up
In the book “The Laughing Jesus”, it says the individual has been sleeping (dreaming) for a long time, and lives mostly from his own reality. And the person has to become awake to Ishvara and finally to his own nature. And this individual is saying “aham brahman asmi” (I am the whole, I am the whole) to affirm his true nature, even though at the beginning it's intellectual.
All Resolves into Consciousness
Therefore mind + body + senses + experience + etc = Consciousness. You minus the mind, body and senses – and what's left is Consciousness that’s available to everyone as their very self.
NEXT SESSION: We'll finish inquiry into nature of self…
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Course was based on Swami Dayananda (Arsha Vidya) home study course.
Recorded 19 April, 2026