Reconciling Orders of Reality and Oneness – Part 4

In last sentence of Part 3, teacher briefly introduced two new terms ” subjective” and “empirical” orders of reality. This begins to explain how we can have “orders of reality” when all is actually One…

Student asks “When you talk of orders of reality? Where is the question of One?”

Yes, the term orders may cause some confusion.

One might even rephrase and ask, “How can you give the One Existence… a reality which is dependent upon the One Existence?”

There is only ONE real (pāramārthika). Which is Limitless Consciousness.

Whereas the personal levels of perception (prātibhāsika) and transactional orders of reality (vyāvahārika) are both mithyā (dependent-reals).

Yet there is a difference between subjective (prātibhāsika) and empirical (vyāvahārika) orders.

For example, once you realize the truth of the rope (vyāvahārika: māyā's objective reality universally agreed upon)… the snake (prātibhāsika: personal notion of what it might be) disappears.

As do your dreams when you awake. Although they may leave behind traces. Like emotional memories of their presence.

In the case of the world (vyāvahārika), it does not disappear. It continues to exist. But you will know it for what it is. (Because one stops copying-pasting subjective perceptions onto the empirical reality.)

Just as the pot continues to exist… despite our understanding of the pot's dependent-real-status on it's actual clay-truth.

In the same way, Creation (vyāvahārika) is like a dream of the All-Pervading Supreme Brahman (pāramārthika).

Owning to Brahman's limitless power of māyā… it creates an  unfathomable projection.

And within this projection, we (Body-Mind) are “in” right now. We are it's mini-creations from the TOTAL projection (vyāvahārika). We are like a picture within a picture on a TV screen. On top of that, we are able to create our own special dreams.

Consequence of this is…

 

Continue reading part 5 of this teacher-student conversation…