As the wind, though one, takes on new forms in whatever it enters; the Spirit, though one, takes new forms in whatever that lives. He is within all, and is also outside.…There is one Ruler, the Spirit that is in all things, who transforms His one form into many. Only the wise who see Him in their souls attain the joy eternal.
And again:
From His life comes the universe, and in His life the universe moves. In His majesty is the terror of thunder. Those who know this attain immortality. From fear of Him fire burns and from fear of Him the sun shines. From fear of Him the clouds and winds, and death itself, move on their way.
And in the Mundaka Upanishad:
From Him comes all life and mind and the senses of all life. From Him comes space and light, air and fire and water, and this earth that holds us all.…From Him comes the sun, and the source of all fire is the sun. From him comes the moon, and from this comes the rain and all herbs that grow upon earth. And man comes from Him, and man unto woman gives seed: and thus an infinity of beings comes from the Spirit supreme.
But what is the exact relation between Brahman and His creatures? Is it the same relation of Creator to creature that we find in the Christian and Islamic conceptions, or is it the pantheistic relation of participation, in which the creature is a part of God, where God is one with the universe? The answer is given in the Chandogya Upanishad:
All this universe is in truth Brahman. He is the beginning and end and life of all. As such, in silence, give unto Him adoration.…There is a Spirit that is mind and life, light and truth and vast spaces. He contains all works and desires and all perfumes and all tastes. He enfolds the whole universe, and in silence is loving to all. This is the Spirit that is in my heart, smaller than a grain of rice, or a grain of barley, or a grain of mustard-seed.…This is the Spirit that is in my heart, greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven itself, greater than all these worlds.
At first it sounds almost like pure pantheism, but later in the same Upanishad the master says, “An invisible and subtle essence is the Spirit of the whole universe. That is Reality. That is Truth. Thou art That.” The master does not tell his disciple that he is a part of Brahman; he tells him that he is Brahman, and if we are to give this doctrine a label we must say that it is not pantheism but panentheism.2 In the same way St. Catherine of Genoa says, “My me is God, nor do I know my selfhood save in Him,” and again, “My Being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my Being.”3
Therefore the phrase “That art thou” (tat tvam asi) is the first, fundamental principle of Vedanta arising from the second, that all things without exception are Brahman, not by participation, for Brahman is one and indivisible. Hence Vedanta is also known as the system of Advaita (literally, “not two”) or nonduality, and nonduality in philosophy is the natural expression of total acceptance in psychology. Every object, being, and activity is Brahman in His (or Its) entirety, for Brahman alone is—the “One-without-a-second.” But, it will be asked, if Brahman is the only reality, why do things appear to be separate, why do we human beings feel that we are separate egos and how is it that we are ignorant of our identity with Brahman? This, according to Vedanta, is maya—a word grossly misunderstood by most Western interpreters of Hindu thought, who translate it simply as “illusion.” As we have already shown, the original meaning of maya was “trick” or “device,” and it is sometimes described as the creative power of Brahman. Woodroffe describes it thus in his Shakti and Shakta:4
Maya is not rightly rendered Illusion. In the first place it is conceived as a real Power of Being and as such is one with Full Reality. The Full, free of all illusion, experiences the engendering of the finite centers and the centers themselves in and as Its own changeless partless Self.…Even God cannot have man’s mode of knowledge and enjoyment without becoming man. He by and as His Power does become man and yet remains Himself. Man is Power in limited form as Avidya [ignorance]. The Lord is unlimited Power as Maya. [p. 44]
In other words, if man has the experience of separateness, this experience also is Brahman since there is nothing other than Brahman. Maya is not illusion as against reality, for in the Vedantist conception there is nothing apart from Reality which may be set over against it. Thus we may say that while there is no actual separateness from Brahman, there is certainly an experience of separateness, and this experience is real even though it is incomplete and relative. Maya is therefore only translatable as “illusion” in regard to the actual existence of separateness from Brahman; but as the experience of separateness maya is creative power, for that experience is the device whereby Brahman manifests Himself as creatures who act on their own initiative.
But does this imply that though we may have a real experience, say, of a tree and a mountain as separate things, those two are not there at all, that while the experience may be real it has no real object to be known as a tree and a mountain? Is our imagination simply conjuring up these forms by Brahman’s power out of a vast and formless infinitude of sameness and uniformity? Do the Vedantins imply that when we have ascended from the partial experience of maya to the total experience of Brahman, we are conscious only of this infinite oneness and have no longer any perception of trees and mountains? Although many texts would seem to answer these questions in the affirmative, I cannot see that this is a true interpretation of the Upanishads or of the fundamental principle of nonduality. For it is not at all consistent with that principle to identify Brahman with infinite unity as distinct from finite diversity, with formlessness as distinct from form. If Brahman is truly nondual, He cannot be the infinite as opposed to the finite. But when we say that a man, a mountain, or a tree is Brahman, we are not denying that it is a man, a mountain, or a tree. Conversely, if such objects are real, this does not involve their separateness from Brahman and in no way denies the statement that Brahman is the only reality. If by saying that man is Brahman we imply that he is not man, we fall straight into dualism because we are virtually saying that Brahman is not man! If this interpretation is incorrect, I err in good company, for, to quote Woodroffe again,
the Vishvasara Tantra says: “What is here, is elsewhere. What is not here, is nowhere.” The unseen is the seen, which is not some alien disguise behind which it lurks. Experience of the seen is the experience of the unseen in time and space. The life of the individual is an expression of the same laws which govern the universe. Thus the Hindu knows, from his own daily rest, that the Power which projects the universe rests. His dreamless slumber when only Bliss is known, tells him, in some fashion, of the causal state of universal rest. From the mode of his awakening and other psychological processes he divines the nature of creative thinking. [Ibid., p. 36]