[Advaita-l] Question on consciousness

[H S Chandramouli]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 6:07 AM Kartik Vashishta via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

<<  I am in doubt about consciousness.....

How is consciousness universal and the ONLY thing?

I can understand that every table/chair/river/mountain is consciousness in
its essence, I am however not able to logically believe that it is all the
same "universal"(for lack of a better word) consciousness.

My question is, how do we conclude that everything is ONE consciousness(in
its essence)? I am tending to think of every entity having it's
LOCALIZED(IT'S OWN) consciousness.....>>,

Namaste.

Consider a mirror in a room reflecting a number of other entities in the
room. The entities  could be sentient or insentient. When the number of
entities in the room are counted, the mirror is taken to be ONE entity
only. The reflections are not counted. Similar  is the case with Creation.
Imagine a huge mirror, practically infinite in dimensions, with entire
Creation reflected therein. We concern ourselves for the present only with
the mirror and the reflections therein. What is the relationship between
them? The mirror is neither a part, nor a property nor a product of the
reflections. It pervades the entire reflection. In what sense? There is no
object if there is any place where the mirror is not. In essence objects
are nothing but the mirror. The reflections derive their “existence” from
the mirror. The mirror is unaffected by the reflections. There could be a
raging fire therein. The mirror is not burnt. We can go on.

Now assume the mirror to be sentient. Being all pervasive, it is easy to
imagine that the “sentient”  entities in the reflection derive their
“sentience” from the sentient mirror just as they derived their “existence”
from it. All the “sentient” entities derive their “sentience” from  the ONE
sentient mirror only.

There can be any number of different combinations of the reflections. Thus
a variety of “infinite” Creations. But the “Infinite” remains ONE and ONLY
ONE alone. This answers the question you had posed  earlier concerning  Isa
Up.

I hope my understanding of the question is correct and the above resolves
it appropriately.
Regards


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