सदाशिव समारम्भाम् शंकराचार्य मध्यमाम्
अस्मद् आचार्य पर्यन्ताम् वंदे गुरु परम्पराम्
In the first sloka , Shankaracharya was dealing with the Tvam padartha or the jivatama and thereby telling us about the pure consciousness that we are. Using the examples of mirror image and the dream world , he explained that the world as it appears is dependent on consciousness for its existence and in fact what the world appears, is nothing but a modification of consciousness into names and forms. However when we dream or even when we are in wakeful state (without this knowledge) we live as though all the mithya forms are real and continue to be affected by them. A woken up one sees स्वात्मानमेवाद्वयं ( everything is me the consciousness only).
In the second sloka , Shankaracharya wants to tells us about the paramatma or the Tat padartha. So who is paramathma or who is Brahman?. In all scriptures Brahman is described as Jagat Karanam or the ultimate cause of the universe. Universe is the effect or Karyam, while Brahman is the cause or Karanam. Usually in all cause -effect relations , a cause undergoes a series of transformations by an intelligent intruder to produce the effect. For e.g. A goldsmith uses gold ( karanam) and works on it producing the ornaments( karyam). Here the gold is called the material cause(upadana karanam) while the goldsmith is called the instrumental cause(nimitta karanam). Normally both these karanams are distinct . But in the case of the world it is the same. Brahman is both the upadana karanam as well as the nimitta karanam like the web created by the spider from his own body.
If we understand this simple principle that the Brahman itself as the cause of everything , then we will not have difficulty understanding the second sloka. However this principle of a single cause is not so easy to grasp, as normally we associate some doer taking some raw material and creating something . Creation is always associated with this kind of an intelligent intervention. All systems of philosophy use this analogy in the creation of the universe also. What Shankaracharya wants us to understand is , this is not how creation is . In fact the word creation itself is not correct . There is nothing actually created. There is only a transformation.
In order to understand this, consider this simple fact. Before the ornament is made, did the necklace exist?. Consider a piece of pure gold. It is a formless one. No beautiful form is there. Is the necklace existing in it or not?. If you say that it is there , it would be wrong , because then making of necklace is not true . If you say it does not exist, then in the necklace there must be something that is not there in gold. But we see only gold. So we can see a non existent necklace can never emerge from gold, nor can an existent necklace emerge from it. So we see an important conclusion. Existence cannot be created. Existence of something is always there in a potential form. It just becomes manifest when it is a necklace, un-manifest when it is gold. So creation is not producing new things, but manifesting existence in a new form. Manifestation appears to us as creation, while un-manifestation appears as death.
Take the example of this blog, even before it was written it must have existed in potential form as conscious energy. Only thing is it was not manifest. So we can never say blog was written. Blog post became manifest from a potential form. Putting it simply, effect is cause in a new form. There are not two things, one being created from another. We can say cause is avyakta avastha while effect is vyakta avasta and this transformation is what is seen as creation. This is a very important conclusion. Just as we understand all ornaments to be just gold , we can understand all the universe as Brahman manifesting in different vyakta avasta.
So then the question arises, what gives the diversity to the universe. We see many things all around, different objects, different systems and so on. Shankaracharya says, all this diversity is created by the illusion of space and time. When the space has split up the form, we see two or more objects. When time manifests itself the form move and change even in the same place. If we mentally remove these distinctions or illusion of space and time, we can see one basic thing viz Existence or Sath, He compares the creation of this illusion as something similar to a magic show created by a stage magician or a Maha yogi creating a world . What he wants to convey is this. An illusion is not a fact , it has an underlying explanation. Only thing is we don't know what it is. When a magic trick is performed , we believe it to be true while the show goes on. But deep down we know there must be an explanation. Similarly when we understand that the space time illusion is nothing but an illusion to create diversity where there is none we tend to understand it better.
With this prelude let us look at the second sloka
बीजस्याऽन्तरिवाङ्कुरो जगदिदं प्राङ्गनिर्विकल्पं पुनः
मायाकल्पितदेशकालकलना वैचित्र्यचित्रीकृतम् ।
मायावीव विजृम्भयत्यपि महायोगीव यः स्वेच्छया
तस्मै श्रीगुरुमूर्तये नम इदं श्रीदक्षिणामूर्तये ॥२॥
The world (जगदिदं) is like a sprout (appearing from a seed (बीज). The world existed in its potential form in the brahman. Due to the illusion of space and time all diversity (वैचित्र्य) appears. This is much like a magic show or a world created by a mahayogi. Salutations to him who teaches us this supreme knowledge through silence.
We have seen many examples of this principle. Shankaracharya here uses the example of the seed and the sprout. Is the sprout created ?. Or did it exist in the seed in a potential un manifest form?. You can see that even modern science tells us that in the DNA , the way in which an organism evolves is encoded. So the seed actually contains all the essentiality of the sprout . Only thing is, when we look at the seed , it hardly looks like the tree it would grow into. We can never say the tree was created here. The tree becomes manifest through a process . All ingredients are there in the seed for this. A seed is a tree only . You can see time playing its illusion of growth of a tree making us believe that a tree was created. In the timeless spaceless understanding the seed and the tree are one and the same.
All these are examples. What is the cause of the universe ?. It is pure existence or Sath. So Sath here plays the role of the seed. Existence is the seed from which the material universe is created in names and forms. All objects in the world exists in the potential form in something called pure existence or Sath. This pure existence or the seed is what is called the Brahman or the Paramathma. This is the meaning of the part जगदिदं प्राङ्गनिर्विकल्पं ( world exists in the potential form before it appeared). Nirvakalpam means in unmanifest form.
So from the first verse we saw that how the world appears in consciousness using the mirror example, while here we see how the world itself is manifest from pure existence using the seed example. The first verse speaks about jivatama while the second speaks about the paramatma. The next verse is going to establish the equivalence of these two.
अस्मद् आचार्य पर्यन्ताम् वंदे गुरु परम्पराम्
In the first sloka , Shankaracharya was dealing with the Tvam padartha or the jivatama and thereby telling us about the pure consciousness that we are. Using the examples of mirror image and the dream world , he explained that the world as it appears is dependent on consciousness for its existence and in fact what the world appears, is nothing but a modification of consciousness into names and forms. However when we dream or even when we are in wakeful state (without this knowledge) we live as though all the mithya forms are real and continue to be affected by them. A woken up one sees स्वात्मानमेवाद्वयं ( everything is me the consciousness only).
In the second sloka , Shankaracharya wants to tells us about the paramatma or the Tat padartha. So who is paramathma or who is Brahman?. In all scriptures Brahman is described as Jagat Karanam or the ultimate cause of the universe. Universe is the effect or Karyam, while Brahman is the cause or Karanam. Usually in all cause -effect relations , a cause undergoes a series of transformations by an intelligent intruder to produce the effect. For e.g. A goldsmith uses gold ( karanam) and works on it producing the ornaments( karyam). Here the gold is called the material cause(upadana karanam) while the goldsmith is called the instrumental cause(nimitta karanam). Normally both these karanams are distinct . But in the case of the world it is the same. Brahman is both the upadana karanam as well as the nimitta karanam like the web created by the spider from his own body.
If we understand this simple principle that the Brahman itself as the cause of everything , then we will not have difficulty understanding the second sloka. However this principle of a single cause is not so easy to grasp, as normally we associate some doer taking some raw material and creating something . Creation is always associated with this kind of an intelligent intervention. All systems of philosophy use this analogy in the creation of the universe also. What Shankaracharya wants us to understand is , this is not how creation is . In fact the word creation itself is not correct . There is nothing actually created. There is only a transformation.
In order to understand this, consider this simple fact. Before the ornament is made, did the necklace exist?. Consider a piece of pure gold. It is a formless one. No beautiful form is there. Is the necklace existing in it or not?. If you say that it is there , it would be wrong , because then making of necklace is not true . If you say it does not exist, then in the necklace there must be something that is not there in gold. But we see only gold. So we can see a non existent necklace can never emerge from gold, nor can an existent necklace emerge from it. So we see an important conclusion. Existence cannot be created. Existence of something is always there in a potential form. It just becomes manifest when it is a necklace, un-manifest when it is gold. So creation is not producing new things, but manifesting existence in a new form. Manifestation appears to us as creation, while un-manifestation appears as death.
Take the example of this blog, even before it was written it must have existed in potential form as conscious energy. Only thing is it was not manifest. So we can never say blog was written. Blog post became manifest from a potential form. Putting it simply, effect is cause in a new form. There are not two things, one being created from another. We can say cause is avyakta avastha while effect is vyakta avasta and this transformation is what is seen as creation. This is a very important conclusion. Just as we understand all ornaments to be just gold , we can understand all the universe as Brahman manifesting in different vyakta avasta.
So then the question arises, what gives the diversity to the universe. We see many things all around, different objects, different systems and so on. Shankaracharya says, all this diversity is created by the illusion of space and time. When the space has split up the form, we see two or more objects. When time manifests itself the form move and change even in the same place. If we mentally remove these distinctions or illusion of space and time, we can see one basic thing viz Existence or Sath, He compares the creation of this illusion as something similar to a magic show created by a stage magician or a Maha yogi creating a world . What he wants to convey is this. An illusion is not a fact , it has an underlying explanation. Only thing is we don't know what it is. When a magic trick is performed , we believe it to be true while the show goes on. But deep down we know there must be an explanation. Similarly when we understand that the space time illusion is nothing but an illusion to create diversity where there is none we tend to understand it better.
With this prelude let us look at the second sloka
बीजस्याऽन्तरिवाङ्कुरो जगदिदं प्राङ्गनिर्विकल्पं पुनः
मायाकल्पितदेशकालकलना वैचित्र्यचित्रीकृतम् ।
मायावीव विजृम्भयत्यपि महायोगीव यः स्वेच्छया
तस्मै श्रीगुरुमूर्तये नम इदं श्रीदक्षिणामूर्तये ॥२॥
The world (जगदिदं) is like a sprout (appearing from a seed (बीज). The world existed in its potential form in the brahman. Due to the illusion of space and time all diversity (वैचित्र्य) appears. This is much like a magic show or a world created by a mahayogi. Salutations to him who teaches us this supreme knowledge through silence.
We have seen many examples of this principle. Shankaracharya here uses the example of the seed and the sprout. Is the sprout created ?. Or did it exist in the seed in a potential un manifest form?. You can see that even modern science tells us that in the DNA , the way in which an organism evolves is encoded. So the seed actually contains all the essentiality of the sprout . Only thing is, when we look at the seed , it hardly looks like the tree it would grow into. We can never say the tree was created here. The tree becomes manifest through a process . All ingredients are there in the seed for this. A seed is a tree only . You can see time playing its illusion of growth of a tree making us believe that a tree was created. In the timeless spaceless understanding the seed and the tree are one and the same.
All these are examples. What is the cause of the universe ?. It is pure existence or Sath. So Sath here plays the role of the seed. Existence is the seed from which the material universe is created in names and forms. All objects in the world exists in the potential form in something called pure existence or Sath. This pure existence or the seed is what is called the Brahman or the Paramathma. This is the meaning of the part जगदिदं प्राङ्गनिर्विकल्पं ( world exists in the potential form before it appeared). Nirvakalpam means in unmanifest form.
So from the first verse we saw that how the world appears in consciousness using the mirror example, while here we see how the world itself is manifest from pure existence using the seed example. The first verse speaks about jivatama while the second speaks about the paramatma. The next verse is going to establish the equivalence of these two.
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