continues from "the science and philosophy of Sanatan.."
The question started, as Tarkik’s questions usually did, with something that shouldn’t have bothered him.
It was a Thursday afternoon at Himshikhar, and he was sitting in the back row of physics class while Mr. Rathod wrote the laws of conservation on the board. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Everything that exists has always existed, in some form.
Tarkik copied it into his notebook, then stopped.
Everything that exists has always existed, in some form.
He underlined it. Then wrote below it: But what is the form before all forms? What existed before matter and energy — before the universe itself?
Mr. Rathod did not have an answer for that. Physics, as a discipline, politely declined to comment.
Aindri read it over his shoulder on the way out of class. “You’re going to ask Dadi,” she said. It was not a question.
“It’s the holidays next week.”
“I know. I’m coming.”
— — —
They arrived at Haridwar in the evening, when the ghats were loud with the Ganga aarti — a hundred lamps moving in slow circles over the dark water, the chanting carrying up through the lanes. The air smelled of incense and wet stone and the particular sweetness of marigold garlands being sold in fistfuls at every corner.
Dadi’s haveli was a ten-minute walk from the main ghat, up a narrow lane that Tarkik had learned by heart over years of visits. Third left after the sweet shop. Past the blue door. Steep steps at the end.
She was inside when they arrived, not on the terrace — it was too late for the terrace. She looked up from her book when they knocked, and the expression on her face was the one she had when something had arrived at the right moment.
“You didn’t write,” she said.
“I wanted to ask in person,” Tarkik said.
He touched her feet. Aindri followed — she did it the way she did most things, without making anything of it.
“Come,” Dadi said. “Eat first. Then the question.”
— — —
The terrace in the morning was different from the terrace at night. At night the river was a sound — a low, continuous presence in the dark below, marked only by the aarti lamps drifting downstream like slow orange stars. In the morning it was a fact: wide and silver and absolutely certain of itself, the far bank still in shadow, the near bank already catching the first slant of sun.
Dadi had chai ready before either of them was fully awake. She settled into her chair and looked at Tarkik with the patience of someone who has been thinking about a question since the night before.
“Show me the notebook,” she said.
He opened it to the underlined line and passed it across. She read it. Set it on her knee. Looked at the river.
“Sanatan Dharma,” she said finally, “begins with one idea. Just one. And it is the most important idea in the whole tradition.”
“What is it?”
“There is only One.”
She let the silence work. Below, the Ganga moved in its unhurried way — neither slow nor fast, simply continuous.
“Not one god among many gods,” she continued. “Not one religion among many religions. One existence — behind everything, inside everything, holding everything together. The stars above us, the river below, you, me, the question in your notebook — all of it, one single thing, wearing different forms.” She paused. “The name for this One Existence is Brahman.”
— — —
“The ancient sages knew that a name this big is hard to hold in the mind,” Dadi said. “So they gave us a picture instead.”
She gestured at the river below.
“Watch the Ganga. A wave rises — it has a shape, a height, a sound. It looks completely separate from the water around it. But it is not separate at all. It is water. The same water as the river it rose from. When it falls back, it has not disappeared. It has simply returned to what it always was.”
Tarkik looked at the river. A long, slow wave moved across the silver surface, catching the early light, then dissolving back into the whole.
“The universe is that wave,” Dadi said. “It rises from Brahman, lives for a vast stretch of time, and returns to Brahman. It is not separate from Brahman — it is Brahman, taking form for a while, the way water takes the shape of a wave.”
“So Brahman is not a god who created the universe from outside,” Aindri said slowly. “Brahman is the substance of the universe.”
“The Chandogya Upanishad puts it in four words: All this verily is Brahman.”
Tarkik wrote that down. Then: “But if Brahman is just — everything — then what is the point of having a name for it? Why not just say ‘everything’?”
“Because ‘everything’ suggests a collection of separate things. Brahman is not a collection. It is one thing that appears as many.” She looked at him. “That distinction is the entire philosophy.”
— — —
“Now,” Dadi said, “Brahman can be looked at in two ways. Both are true at the same time.”
“Like light and heat from the same sun,” Aindri said.
“Exactly like that. The first way: Brahman before creation. Before form, before motion, before even the idea of a universe. Pure, vast, perfectly still. The texts say not even the words ‘being’ and ‘not-being’ can touch it. This is called Nirguna Brahman — Brahman without qualities.”
“And the second?”
“Brahman turned toward creation. Active. Full of power and purpose. This is Brahman as the living Lord — Saguna Brahman, Brahman with qualities. And the name for this active aspect is Ishvara.” She paused. “Not a different being. The same Brahman, looking outward rather than inward. The way this river is still and vast from above — but step into it and it has current, direction, force.”
Tarkik thought about it. “So when people pray to a personal God — to Ishvara — they are praying to Brahman in its active aspect.”
“Yes. And when the mystic sits in silence and seeks the formless absolute — they are seeking Brahman in its still aspect. Same reality. Different faces.” She folded her hands. “This is why Sanatan Dharma has never had a problem with different forms of worship. Every path is approaching the same mountain. The mountain does not change because the paths are different.”
— — —
The sun had cleared the far bank. The river went from silver to the particular warm amber it became when the light hit it at the right angle. Somewhere below, a boatman was pushing off from the ghat, his oars making slow circles in the gold water.
“When Ishvara turns toward creation,” Dadi continued, “two great forces appear. The first is Spirit — the living, knowing presence in all things. It is what thinks and feels and is aware. It does not divide. It does not take shape. It simply knows.”
“And the second?”
“Prakriti — Matter. Everything that takes form is Prakriti. The stone on the ghat, the water in the river, the air you breathe, the body you live in. Matter by itself cannot think or feel. But it does something Spirit cannot — it takes shape. Any shape. Every shape.” She looked at both of them. “Spirit is the knower. Matter is the known. Out of these two, the universe is woven.”
“And what are we?” Aindri asked. “Spirit or Matter?”
“Both. And here is the part that changes everything.” Dadi set her chai down carefully. “Ishvara is pure Spirit. And a spark of that same Spirit lives inside every single being. That spark — the true Self inside you — is called the Atma. It does not age. It does not die. It is not different in a child and a sage, in a human and an animal. The Atma in everything is the same Atma.”
“So we are — at our core — the same substance as Brahman,” Tarkik said.
“Not a piece of Brahman. A reflection of it. The Upanishads say the Atma and Brahman are ultimately identical — the way the wave and the ocean are ultimately the same water. Separate in form. One in substance.”
“Then why doesn’t it feel like that?” he said. “Why does it feel like I’m separate? Like I’m just — me, and everything else is not-me?”
Dadi looked at him with a calm that meant the question was exactly right.
“That,” she said, “is the next question.”
— — —
“When the Atma enters a body of matter — takes on a form and begins its journey through the world — it is called a Jiva. A living, individual self. The body is like a coat. The Atma is the one wearing it. The coat will wear out. The one wearing it will not.”
“So the Jiva is the Atma dressed in matter,” Aindri said.
“Yes. And once inside a body — with eyes that see only what is directly in front of them, a mind full of its own particular thoughts and fears and desires — the Jiva forgets, temporarily, what it really is. It feels separate. It starts to believe that it is the coat.” Dadi paused. “And that forgetting is what causes all the suffering.”
Tarkik looked up from his notebook. “But why would Brahman design it that way? If the Jiva is a spark of Brahman — if it’s already everything it needs to be — why would Ishvara send it into matter and let it forget? What is the point of the suffering?”
Dadi was quiet for a moment. Not the pause before an answer — the pause of someone deciding how honest to be.
“Think of what a seed is,” she said. “Everything the tree will become is already inside it. The branches, the fruit, the flowers — all compressed, dormant, waiting. But the seed must go into the ground. It must break open in the dark. It experiences — if we can call it that — a kind of dissolution. Everything it was as a seed is destroyed before it can become what it actually is.”
“The breaking open is necessary,” Aindri said quietly.
“The Jiva is the same. It contains all the powers of Brahman — but compressed, unawakened. To unfold them, it must enter matter. It must struggle. It must want things and lose things and try things and fail. Every desire that pulls it forward, every disappointment that teaches it what doesn’t work, every moment of grief or joy or confusion — these are not punishments. They are the curriculum.” Dadi’s voice was steady. “The forgetting is not a flaw in the design. It is how the design works. You cannot truly discover something you were told about. You can only know it by finding it yourself.”
“So the whole journey,” Tarkik said slowly, “is the Jiva working its way back to knowing what it always was.”
“Through experience. Not through being told.” She looked at him. “Which is also, you may notice, exactly how you learn anything worth knowing.”
He wrote that down without saying anything.
— — —
“Two things make the forgetting possible,” Dadi said. “The Gunas — and Maya.”
“The Gunas first,” Tarkik said.
“All matter is woven from three qualities, always at work, never separate. Tamas — heaviness, stillness, resistance. The weight of a stone, the depth of sleep. Rajas — movement, energy, restlessness. Fire, wind, the mind racing from thought to thought. And Sattva — rhythm, clarity, order. The steady orbit of a planet, the clear mind that has understood something true.” She paused. “Everything in the universe is a mixture of all three. What changes is which one leads.”
“And in a person?” Aindri asked.
“When Tamas leads — heavy, stuck, asleep to the world. When Rajas leads — burning, scattered, always chasing the next thing. When Sattva leads — calm, clear, awake.” Dadi looked at them both. “You can watch which Guna is moving in you right now. And with practice, you can shift it. That is already a form of the work.”
Tarkik thought about the last fortnight of sitting in class feeling vaguely restless and dissatisfied without knowing why. Rajas, almost certainly.
“The Gunas keep the world in constant motion,” Dadi continued. “Always changing, always offering new sensations — always pulling the Jiva’s attention toward the surface of things, away from what lies underneath. This is what makes the forgetting so complete. The world is very loud, and Brahman is very quiet.”
— — —
“And Maya?” Aindri asked.
“Maya is the power that makes the One appear as Many.” Dadi thought for a moment. “Imagine a dark room. Nothing in it but a lamp. The lamp is lit — and suddenly, shadows appear on the wall. A leaf. A hand. A dancing shape. They look real and separate, with their own edges and movement. But they are shadows. The moment the lamp goes out, they are gone. They were always just the lamp’s light, cast on the wall.”
“So Maya is like the lamp,” Aindri said.
“Maya is Ishvara’s own creative power — the force that stirs Matter into form. Because of Maya, the One becomes Many. The formless takes form. The silent becomes a world full of sound and colour and story.” She paused. “This does not mean the world is a trick to be ignored. The shadows are real shadows. But they are not what they appear to be. Underneath every form — every wave, every body, every thought — is Brahman. And Brahman is not hiding. It is simply the part we have forgotten to look for.”
The river below caught a slant of mid-morning light and went gold all at once — the way it sometimes did without warning, as though something beneath the surface had switched on.
Tarkik looked at it for a long moment.
“So the entire tradition,” he said, “is built on one claim: that what seems like many separate things is actually one thing, appearing in many forms. And all the philosophy, all the practice — is to see through the appearance to what’s actually there.”
“That,” Dadi said, “is the whole of it. Everything else is detail.”
— — —
They left after lunch — Dadi had made khichdi and insisted they finish it before the train. On the lane outside, Tarkik turned back once. She was standing at the top of the steep steps, one hand on the blue door.
“Write your next question,” she said. “Don’t wait.”
He didn’t have one yet. For once, the notebook felt complete.
The train pulled out of Haridwar station at two, running alongside the river for the first hour before turning into the hills. Aindri had the window. Tarkik had his notebook open on his knee, reading back through what he had written.
Brahman — the One Existence. Everything is Brahman in different forms. Ishvara — Brahman active, turned toward creation. Atma — the spark of Brahman inside each of us. Jiva — the Atma in a body, temporarily forgetting what it is. Gunas — three qualities of matter that keep the world in motion. Maya — the power that makes One appear as Many.
Outside, the Ganga was still visible below the train line — moving fast now, broken over rocks, white-tipped where it hit the boulders. The same river it had been at the ghats. Completely different.
He looked at it and felt the question arrive before he could stop it:
If Brahman is one — if the whole universe is one thing wearing different forms — then how, exactly, did the Many come from the One? There must be an order to it. A sequence. What is the actual structure of what poured out of Brahman?
He wrote it down.
Aindri glanced over. Read it. Said nothing for a moment.
“Two weeks?” she said.
“Maybe one,” he said. “It’s a better question.”
Source: 1916; Sanatana Dharma — An Elementary Textbook of Hindu Religion & Ethics; Central Hindu College, Benaras, and others.
