Consciousness—The Ultimate Support

The same blackboard is approached by different teachers to explain different subjects during a single day in a classroom. The mathematics teacher’s geometrical figures and calculations are wiped clean by the geography teacher to design his maps of the world and to trace the path of rivers, the location of lakes and the position of mountains. When the chemistry teacher arrives, he erases the entire world of mountains, rivers and oceans represented on the blackboard, and he, in his turn, writes on it the laws of chemical reactions among the various elements and their compounds. The history teacher makes the blackboard clean again, to scribble on it the ancestral trees of dynasties destroyed and the families forgotten.All designs are chalked out and executed upon the same blackboard, which, in turn, illumines the mathematical calculations, the geographical data, the chemical formulae and the historical facts. When, in the evening, the students and teachers have all left the classroom, the blackboard still remains.Similarly, the Self—the blackboard of pure Consciousness upon which all other conditional knowledge is scribbled, upon which the delusory experiences of creation and dissolution take place—serves as the permanent and changeless substratum. It is the Consciousness that maintains, nourishes, and sustains all possibilities in us.Even by a more material consideration, we can logically come to accept this statement.I am standing on the floor of my house; the house is supported by my piece of land; the land is protected by the city corporation. The city is supported by the country, and the country is supported by the world. The world is supported by water, the waters of the ocean; water is held in position by the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is a part of the planetary system!The universe stays in space, and this space rests upon the ‘concept of space’ that is in our mind! The mind gets its support from the judgment of the intellect. Since the decision of the intellect is known and realised by the Consciousness in us, this spiritual entity is indeed the ultimate support for the entire world of change!! Vedānta’s call is to teach us to re-read life.

Consciousness—The Ultimate Support

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