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17. Know that to be imperishable by which all that is pervaded; for none can bring about the destruction of this indestructible substance.
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Reality must always and eternally be real in order to be considered as truly real. Reality is "is not", but to be and always. If an object exists today and disappears the next day, can it be called real when it is not existing? The waves on the ocean shores come and go, raise and fall. They are there one moment and disappear the next. Does a particular wave is real the moment it has plunged itself into the ocean for an eternal rest? A tree majestically standing in the front yard of the house today is struck down by a lightening tomorrow. The child hood of the aged and the matured is full of pleasant experiences but today only a memory. Is their childhood now real except in memory? The mankind has a history of perhaps a million
years. Its past is buried in the labyrinths of the benign earth. Whether their history is anymore real?
The material universe is perishable. Every thing in it is made of some perishable substance. Each of them has a beginning and an end. The physical universe is a grand stage in which the objects enact their drama of continuos transformation from one form into another, one state into another. The stars, the sun, the moon, even the earth have to disappear some day perhaps into some frighteningly self-absorbing atomic soup. The human body on death cannot just disappear into itself. It has to disappear into some thing else which is more enduing than the body itself. The same is true with the consciousness. It must disappear into some greater consciousness capable of absorbing it. And the material universe itself has to some day disappear into
something else because it cannot continue in the same form. And when that happens, it should disappear into some greater power that has greater capacity and endurance.
Logically, for the comprehension of the human mind, it is appropriate to say that the universe is made of up of several levels, layers or grades of reality. Each level has its own qualities, nature of existence and specific period of endurance. Some realities are momentary, like the waves, the flash of the lightening, the thoughts in the mind, the images on the mind's screen etc., Some other realities are more enduring like the life on earth, the cycle of the seasons, the flow of the rivers, the monuments of human creation and so on. The existence of the heavenly bodies, of the evolved souls serving in the higher worlds, is still more enduring. But however enduring they may be, they too have to perish some day or the other. They all have a
well-defined beginning and an end. They are subject to the laws of creation and destruction. They are all made of destructible substances and have to meet their ends.
The only reality, the ultimate reality, the highest reality, that survives and continues, without a beginning and an end is the divine existence, the all-pervading supreme existence, which alone is worthy enough to be termed as "Reality"; the imperishable Reality of Realities made of the indestructible substance. It is behind all known visible and transient reality, connecting every thing in an invisible way to its own indivisible Self.
Commentary by Jayaram V
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