The Finite & The Infinite!
The Upanishadic View on Finite and Infinite reality of human Consciousness.
The Upanishads deduce that of finite objects the individual self has the biggest reality. It reaches closest to the nature of the absolute, though it is not the absolute itself. There are paragraphs where the finite self is looked upon as a contemplation of the cosmos.
The whole world is the cycle of the finite attempting to become infinite, and this uncertainty is found in the individual self. According to the Taittiriya Upanishad, various components of the cosmos are found in the essence of the individual.
In the Chandogya Upanishad, fire, water, and earth are said to compose the Jivatman or the individual soul, together with the law of the finite.
Man is the meeting point of the various phases of reality. Prana resembles Vayu, the breath of the body to the wind of the world, manas to akasa, the mind of man to the ether of the cosmos, and the whole body to the material components. The human soul has affinities with every level of existence from top to bottom.
There is in it the divine component which we call the beatific consciousness, the ananda state, by which at extraordinary moments it reaches into sudden connections with the absolute. The finite self or the embodied soul is the Atman bonded with the perceptions and mind.
The various components are in a fragile harmony. “Two birds, akin and friends, stick to the self-same tree. One of them consumes the sweet berry, but the other stares at him without eating. In the same tree- the world tree- man dwells along with the god, With hardships overwhelmed, he collapses and weeps at his helplessness. But when he beholds the other, the Lord in whom he delights- ah, what glory is his, his pains pass away.”
The natural and the divine have not as yet accomplished a permanent harmony.
The being of the individual is constantly evolving. The infinite in man summons the individual to bring unity out of the diversity with which it confronts the difficulty between the finite and the infinite existing throughout the world -the cycle comes to a head in the human consciousness.
In every facet of his life, intellectual, emotional, and moral, this effort is felt. He can receive admission into the province of God, where the endless varieties of absolute love and absolute independence abide only by plummeting his individuality and altering the whole of the finiteness into infiniteness, humanity into divinity.
But as finite and human, he cannot achieve the fruition or obtain the final attainment. The being in which the action is noticed points beyond itself, and so man has to be surpassed. The finite self is not the self-sustaining truth. Be he so, then God becomes only another self-sufficient individual, restricted by the finite self.
The truth of the self is infinite & endless; the unreality which is to be got rid of is finite. The finite individual loses whatever existence he possesses if the indwelling spirit is eliminated.
