Delivered as a lecture by
Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakura in Calcutta in 1932.
Introduction
My Friends,
With profound respect I come to offer a few words on Relativity and Absolute, which may prove to be conflicting with each other at first sight. But the harmony wanted by both of them should be secured to reach the unique position of the Truth Who has no deviation. The negative idea of our present day experience, through inadequate senses on the temporal plane, does not include the full description of the Absolute Truth, in Whom some other phases cannot have lien to co-share. The synthetic method need not be confused with the analytic process; neither the darkness should be accepted as light to explain our observing stand.
The activities of our present senses over phenomenal representations have impressed us with a particular designation which should in no case be abscribed to the manifested region of Absolute, where our deformed senses and their objects should not be thrust with equal vehemence as we are apt to apply in our present sphere.The transcendental specification does not submit to any limited sense of an enjoyer, but the cogent energy of the transcendence always exhibits a supernatural predominating and justifying aspect, to regulate the shortsighted views entertained in the temporal region. A close attention will, I am sure, convince every recipient if he is amenable to see things from different positions; so I take the liberty of asking everybody not to submit to the current views of many bearing an enjoying mood. A real enquiry, with submission for utilising the same, will ensure the safety of Truth. In cases of non-absolute subjects, an opposing party can have full claim to contradict or challenge, whereas in the Absolute no such second part is possible.
Among the considerate who were watching the career of the Supreme Lord Shri Krishna Chaitanya, on His return to Nadia from Gaya, the people of Shri Mayapur noticed His marked deviation from the former character of the Lord. They observed Him to discourage the impersonalism of the ascetic Prakashananda, who was alleged to have been inculcating an unassorted epistemology which went to show the dragging of the conception of the Absolute to a region devoid of manifestive sentiency. So the Supreme Lord compared the ascetic's ways and methods to those of a villain wanting to sever asunder the all-charming eternal limbs of the Personality of Godhead.
============
Everyone is engaged in action. The law of karma means that there are reactions to every action and that a person must endure the reactions to his actions..
Science of Identity Foundation - Siddhaswarupananda
============
The discouraging tone and positive nullification of the theory of the ascetic from the lips of the Fountainhead of the theistic thesaurus, brought a revolutionary effect on the pedantic mentality of the members of the then centre of learning. These discouraging remarks of the Supreme Lord caused them to hold a poorer conception of the Lord, Whom they found to have been belittling the mental acme of pedantic insinuation. The pedagogic function of Lord Vishvambhar was changed into that of a platform speaker, as the World Teacher closely demonstrating His instructions in practice. This simple and illustrated version gave a clear understanding to those who had a scope of honest reading of the Absolute Eternal Blissful Knowledge. They understood that it was a part and parcel of blasphemy to do away with the different parts of the Transcendental Structural Entity of the Fountainhead, Who is instrumental, ablative and locative of all Immanence, Transcendence and phenomena.
The disclaiming of the Spiritual Aspect of the Absolute had done a great mischief in the cosmological enterprise of tracing the genesis of phenomenal existence. The sensuous speculation of the phenomena made them confident of their advancement in the search of knowledge in their alleged thesaurus. The impersonalists have found facilities to explain by a suicidal commission the amalgamating of the three manifestive positions. The relativity observed among sentient and insentient phenomenal things shows qualitative difference among them; whereas among the sentients the distinctions are traced by the rhetoricians in five different connections. The esoteric interpretations of sentiency are more or less associated with the insentient, as their conceptions are drawn from the mundane concrete. So they cannot be strictly relied upon as being free from the contamination of a foreign opposite element. The quantitative as well as qualitative features have participated a good deal in the discourse on relativity of knowle dge.
The Supreme Lord, during His association with the members of theistic society, planned an idea of proceeding to the den of impersonalists at Benares, where He could meet all who had proselytised themselves as subscribing to the erroneous views insisted by Prakashananda, at that time the head of the so-called monistic community. In order to do so, He also thought that He should pose as an ascetic of their order, who could influence the members of that pedantic society, despite their hollow arrogance.
The fourth order of life was considered as the civic guardian of society. The Lord wanted to show Himself as an ascetic to attract the attention of all, instead of being received as one of them or less, in their comparative vision. Though the Supreme Lord underwent the different stages of life, He exhibited the highest position of the fourth order, by not adhering to the rigorous regulations and privations, and by not abstaining from dancing, singing and playing with musical instruments, which are essential relativities of the transcendence.
