Prasthanatrayi Swaminarayan Bhashyam (Study)
by Sadhu Gyanananddas | 2021 | 123,778 words
This page relates ‘Eternal and Indistinct’ of the study on the Prasthanatrayi Swaminarayan Bhashyam in Light of Swaminarayan Vachanamrut (Vacanamrita). His 18th-century teachings belong to Vedanta philosophy and were compiled as the Vacanamrita, revolving around the five ontological entities of Jiva, Ishvara, Maya, Aksharabrahman, and Parabrahman. Roughly 200 years later, Bhadreshdas composed a commentary (Bhasya) correlating the principles of Vachanamrut.
3.4. Eternal and Indistinct
Like Parabrahman, Akṣarabrahman, īśvaras, and jīvas, māyā is eternal -without beginning and without end. It was never created, nor will it ever be destroyed.[1] One may overcome it to secure liberation, but it can never be eliminated.
The Svāminārāyaṇa-bhāṣya also reveals:
“prakṛtiṃ triguṇātmikāṃ jaḍabhūtāṃ māyāṃ...tvam anādī... viddhi jānīhi” (Bhagavad-Gītā 13/19, p.285).
“Know the non-sentient prakṛti to be beginningless and endless; and also know that all expansions and guṇas arise from the prakṛti.”
But unlike the other four entities, māyā is not unchangeable. As we saw in the opening chapter of this part, māyā is set apart from those sentient entities, which are immutably eternal (kūṭastha nitya), by having mutable eternality (pariṇāmi nityatā). Though never being eliminated, it nonetheless undertakes various transformations during the process of creation and sustenance.
Upon final or ultimate dissolution, however, māyā is not destroyed; it simply disperses into a minutely compact or indistinctly subtle form within one part of Akṣarabrahman’s light.
“It is this aspect of māyā’ s mutability that grants its products -the material body, objects, and all the features that encompass the world to be changing and perishable, revealing how beings can be born and can die and how things are said to be created and destroyed. Therefore, all things that evolved from mūla-māyā, including the elements of mahattattva, etc., are in fact, generated and dissolved in each cycle of creation. During the phase of absolute rest after final dissolution, māyā is said to be non-distinct (nirviśeṣa)”[2],
Because all its creations with name and form have been merged within it. It, too, merges into a subtle, unmanifest (avyakta) form within Akṣarabrahman. On the other hand, when called into action for the process of creation, māyā becomes especially gross and manifest through its countless creations, each with a distinctive name and form inspired by Parabrahman and Akṣarabrahman.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
Vacanāmṛta Gadhadā I/7, 3/10
[2]:
Vacanāmṛta Gadhadā I/12