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The Sanskrit term Ajativada is one of several alternately-held creation theories in Advaita Vedanta, meaning "non-creation" (of the world). In the book 'I am that', Nisargadatta Maharaj said only one in Bombay, about ten million people at the time, could really understand what non duality really meant...

Etymology

• "A" means "not", or "non" as in Ahimsa, non-harm
• "Jāti" means "creation" or "origination
• "Vāda" means "doctrine"

Taken together "ajātivāda" means "the Doctrine of no-origination" or non-creation.

The conceptm "ajāta" was borrowed by Gaudapada from Madhyamika Buddhism, which uses the term "anutpāda":

• "An" also means "not", or "non"
• "Utpāda" means "genesis", "coming forth", "birth" Anutpada is not Ajativada as the Buddha subsribes to a 'something', which would be more similar to Saguna Brahman than NirGuna Brahman in Vedanta...

Taken together "anutpāda" means "having no origin", "not coming into existence", "not taking effect", "non-production".

Contemporary Advaitins translate the concept of Ajativada also with the phrase "nothing ever happened", or "not even the appearance of creation exists". That is to say, not even the unreality of the world "exists". This is pointed at with the question "Where does the world go in deep sleep, turiya, nirvikalpa samadhi and nirvikalpa sahaja samadhi/meditation?".

Creation theories

In Advaita, there are three creation theories:

1. Srishti-drishti-vada: what is created is being perceived. The universe is held to be created by the Brahman in his capacity as Ishwara. Srishti (creation) is therefore prior to Drishti (perception). A thing has to exist for it to be perceived.
2. Drishti-srishti-vada: perception is simultaneous with creation
3. Ajativada: creation is not an absolute real event. It actually never "happened". Ajativada implies that searching for a source of the origin of the world in a Creator is futile.

Usage

Gaudapada

"Ajātivāda" is the fundamental philosophical doctrine of Gaudapada. According to Gaudapada, the Absolute is not subject to birth, change and death. The Absolute is aja, the unborn eternal. The empirical world of appearances is considered unreal, and not absolutely existent.

Gaudapada, who was strongly influenced by Buddhism, borrowed the concept of "ajāta" from Nagajurna's Madhyamaka philosophy of Buddhism. The Buddhist tradition usually uses the term "anutpāda" for the absence of an origin.{{rfen|group=note|The term is also used in the Lankavatara Sutra. According to D.T Suzuki, "anutpada" is not the oppiste of "utpada", but transcends opposites. It is the seeing into the true nature of existence, the seeing that "all objects are without self-substance".However anutpada is not ajativada as anutpada falls into the line of thought that Guatama Buddha used to say there is a 'something' whereas ajativada does not subscribe to a something at all as it subscribes to no mind or appearance or anything at all.

But Gaudapada's perspective is quite different from Nagarjuna. Gaudapada's perspective is based on the Mandukya Upanishad. In the Mandukya Karika, Gaudapada's commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad, Gaudapada sets forth his perspective. According to Gaudapada, Brahman cannot undergo alteration, so the phenomenal world cannot arise from Brahman. If the world cannot arise, yet is an empirical fact, than the world has to be an unreal appearance of Brahman. And if the phenomenal world is an unreal appearance, then there is no real origination or destruction, only apparent origination or destruction. From the level of ultimate truth (paramārthatā) the phenomenal world is Maya.

As stated in Gaudapada’s Karika Chapter II Verse 48:

No jiva ever comes into existence. There exists no cause that can produce it. The supreme truth is that nothing ever is born.

Shankara

Adi Shankara wrote:

On account of constant absorption in Brahman, freed from the sense of reality of external objects, only seemingly enjoying them when offered by others, like a sleepy baby, perceiving the world as that seen in a dream and recognising it only now and then, such a man is indeed rare. He is the enjoyer of the fruits of untold merit and is truly held blessed and revered on earth.

Ramana Maharshi

The twentieth-century Sage Ramana Maharshi was an articulate adherent to the concept of Ajativada. On Sri Ramana's view, Ajativada or non-creation is a part of the highest form of consciousness that can be attained. Sri Ramana described three consecutive steps, each of which corresponds to a different understanding of reality:

1. Somebody or some god created the world
2. The world arises simultaneously with our perception of it
3. Ajativada, the view that the world never happened at all.

Sadhu Om, a chronicler and devotee of Ramana wrote,

At times Sri Ramana Maharshi used to reveal some information which was not given by the scriptures and Puranas such as: how, in the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna began His teachings with the doctrines of Ajata and Advaita, but then condescendingly came down to various stages of Dvaita, and how He carefully used words which, though suited to Arjuna's limited grasping power, also gives room for well-ripened aspirants to discover, even now, the motive behind those words.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Nisargadatta Maharaj's main teaching was that all was consciousness, and that consciousness was awareness interfaced with manifestation and using energy or prana.. He distinguished three levels of discenrment:

1. Individuals begin with first believing they are making things happen;
2. Then they realise that things are in fact happening to them;
3. Then finally they realise that nothing is happening at all.

In the book 'I am that', Nisargadatta Maharaj said only one in Bombay, about ten million people at the time, could really understand what non duality really meant.

Other traditions

The Buddhist Meditation of vipassana, or observing the rise and fall of created or compounded things and the development of insight, is an indication of the unreality of the so-called 'creation'. Similar teachings can be found withf the Sufis, like Din Attar, Ibn Arabi, Jalala'din Rumi, Al Hussein Ibn Al-Mansour, Hadrat Muinudin Chisti, Al-Hallaj, other Indian saints such as Kabir, Guru Nanak, and Christian mystics such as St John of the Cross, St Theresa de Avila and many more, most of whom were really considered out of the main steam, by their peers.

Levels of truth

Advaita discerns levels of truth. It is at the level of the highest truth (paramārtha) that there is no origination.

Ontological levels of Reality

Advaita took over from the Madhyamika the idea of levels of reality. Usually two levels are being mentioned, but Shankara uses sublation as the criterion to postulate an ontological hierarchy of three levels:

• Pāramārthika (paramartha, absolute), the absolute level, "which is absolutely real and into which both other reality levels can be resolved". This experience can't be sublated by any other experience.
• Vyāvahārika (vyavahara), or samvriti-saya (empirical or pragmatical), "our world of experience, the phenomenal world that we handle every day when we are awake". It is the level in which both jiva (living creatures or individual souls) and Iswara are true; here, the material world is also true.
• Prāthibhāsika (pratibhasika, apparent reality, unreality), "reality based on imagination alone". It is the level in which appearances are actually false, like the illusion of a snake over a rope, or a dream.

Levels of Vedanta

Ajativada apllies at the highest level of truth, which is also called "Para-Advaita", comprising a fourth level of Vedanta:

1. Dvaita - duality
2. Visishtadvaita - partial duality
3. Advaita - nonduality
4. Para-Advaita - respectively and finally above non-duality.

Nirguna Brahman and Saguna Brahman

Four levels of awareness or truth can be discerned:

1. Small Ego/Ahamkara - 'I am'
2. Big 'I Am' consciousness of Siva/Sakti-Prana
3. Pure Awareness of SaGuna Brahman
4. Ultimate Truth as NirGuna Brahman

According to Y.K. Menon, for Sankara the goal of Advaita Vedanta is knowledge of the non-duality of Atman and Brahman, thereby realising Sat-Cit-Ananda, or Being, Consciousness, Bliss. According to Ramana Maharshi these are actually qualities, and therefore attributes and still within illusion. In other words not Nirguna Brahman, but still Saguna Brahman. According to another interpretation, the realisation of Saguna Brahman and Nirguna is simultaneous, unless the person is a Bhakta/Devotee of some 'God Figure' and a believer in form. On the Pralaya or Dissolution of the Universe, it is Saguna Brahman, or Awareness, that 're-manifests' the universe, and not Nirguna Brahman. This is due to the seeds of manifestation being still present in subtle form or in potentiality, while the material is dissolved in Maha-Pralaya or the Great Dissolution. Absolutely seen, Saguna Brahman is ultimately an illusion that never ever happened, Nirguna Brahman being or the only Truth.

This can be compared in Vedantic Meditation to Kevala Nirvikalpa Samadhi (temporary realisation) and Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi (permanent Moksha). A person doing Kevala Nirvikalpa Samadhi is at the temporary stage.

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms used in this article

• Atman = the individual being, identical with Brahman
• Jiva = Individual being
• Advaita = Non-dual
• Dvaita = dual
• Visishtadvaita = Non-dual with distinction
• Ajativada = non-creation,
• Bhakta = Devotee,
• Brahman = Pure Consciousness.
• Saguna Brahman = Brahman along with Maya, as Creator of the Universe
• Mukta = a free/realised person.
• Nirguna Brahman = Pure Consciousness. Nir=Nil and Guna=modes; so "beyond all mind".
• Nirvikalpa Samadhi = where subject-object division is not there; no mind, no modification.
• Sat-Cit-Ananda = Existence-Consciousness-Limitlessness,
• Pralaya = Dissolution or resolving of the Universe,
• Maha-Pralaya = Dissolution of the material and subtle universe,
• Para = Above/beyond,
• Para-advaita = beyond non duality itself
• Vedanta = The concluding portions of the Vedas, the teachings of the Upanishads,
• Turiya = Fourth State
• Sahaja = natural meditation, permanent state of NirVikalpa Samadhi
• Sakshin = Witness,
• Siva/Sakti = Consciousness/Universal Energy,
• Jiva = The individual,
• Mukti = Freedom, liberation
• Manas = Mind, one of the four faculties of the antahkarana(the other three being buddhi, cittam and ahamkara)
• Vasanas = past impressions of the mind.

Notes

1. C.q. "transitory"
2. The term is used in Kashmir Shaivism, meaning "the supreme and absolute non-dualism".
3. Gaudapada too states that, from the absolute standpoint, not even "non-dual" exists.
4. "The Absolute without qualities", the ultimate transcendental, indescribable 'Beyond'
5. "The Absolute with qualities", being or 'Consciousness' associated with 'manifestation'

References

Web-references

1. Sanskrit Dictionary for Spoken Sanskrit, Utpāda
2. Sanskrit Dictionary for Spoken Sanskrit, Anutpāda
3. ^ Ajativada – the missing link
4. Dr. Vemuri Ramesam, A Critique Of John Wheeler’s “You Were Never Born”
5. Mandukya Upanishad with Gaudapada's Karika
6. ^ advaita-vision.org, Discrimination
7. Piyaray L. Raina, Kashmir Shaivism versus Vedanta – A Synopsis

Sources

• Bhattacharya, Vidhushekhara (1943), Gauḍapādakārikā, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
• Chatterji, Mohini M. (1973), Viveka-Cudamani, Adyar: Chennai
• Comans, michael (2000), The Method of Early Advaita Vedānta: A Study of Gauḍapāda, Śaṅkara, Sureśvara, and Padmapāda, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
• Dikshit, Sudhaker S. (1999), I Am That. Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Durham, N.C.: Acorn Press
• Godman, David Godman (1986), Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, London: Arakana, pp. 181–3, 184
• Hart, William (1987), Vipassana Meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka, San Francisco: Harper and Row
• Puligandla, Ramakrishna (1997), Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy, New Delhi: D.K. Printworld (P) Ltd.
• Renard, Philip (2010), Non-Dualisme. De directe bevrijdingsweg, Cothen: Uitgeverij Juwelenschip
• Sarma, Chandradhar (1996), The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
• Suzuki, Daisetz Teitarō (1999), Studies in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass

External links

• Creation theories in Advaita Vedanta
• Swami Atmananda website
• Sri Ramana Maharshi website
• Gaudapada on Mandukya Upanishad
• Nisargadatta Maharaj website
• Sanskrit words and phrases

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1. ^ Sarma 1996, p. 127.
2. ^ Renard 2010, p. 157.
3. ^ Comans 2000, p. 35-36.
4. ^ Bhattacharya 1943, p. 49.
5. Suzuki 1999.
6. Suzuki 1999, p. 123-124.
7. ^ Comans 2000, p. 36.
8. The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination', Mohini M. Chaterjee, The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1932. Verse 426
9. David Godman (1986), Be as you are. The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi. London and New York, Arakana
10. 'I am that'
11. 'I am That', Acorn Press. N.C. 1999
12. Renard 2010, p. 130.
13. ^ Renard 2010, p. 131.
14. ^ Puligandla 1997, p. 232.

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