Vedanta - Two unique aspects part II

In the first part of this post, I had called out the two unique aspects of vedanta.

One is that it gives knowledge of atma, and ishvara both, by using an equation, thus one vastu alone is the subject matter, revealing about both atma and ishvara.

Second one being, atma being subject, and not have any aspects also, the nature of the knowledge it gives, is by drawing an equation between self evident atma, equating it to ishvara, the one who manifests himself as the universe. Point being the vastu here is self evident, and hence the knowledge is simply an equation alone made to a self evident vastu.

There alone we had raised a valid doubt, that how can oneself, the atma be the one who has expanded himself from within himself manifested the universe.

After all if I look at this mind and body, there is no way it has all capabilities to do so.

Here alone shAstra points out the nature of the equation. When shAstra says atma is ishvara , it has already minused out the individual body mind, as "objects" of atma, the knower, and also delegated the knower status to be also only in association with "body mind", hence the truth of the knower alone is said to be atma, consciousness.

This atma is what is said to be ishvara, the one who manifested this entire universe from within himself.

But it is also logically not feasible, if we simply say atma manifested, since in our experience, atma is non changing, it doesnt undergo any change. Hence to make this assimalable, shAstra has to have something more in it, and being flawless, shAstra does talk more about this equation.

ShAstra proclaims that atma, is said to be ishvara, with something extra, which makes it ishvara, this extra is called as "maya shakti", which is power to create the universe.

Now this maya shakti is not an additional material outside of atma, it is atma itself as the material and atma itself as the intelligent cause also.

This means that out of atma with maya shakti alone entire universe as arisen and resolves into.

Now what we call as ishvara, is nothing but atma itself, when looked upon as the cause of the universe, i.e with maya shakti.

Now the doubt can be how come same vastu atma, is both attributeless, and also has maya shakti.

Here also the nature of the this maya shakti is explained . The maya shakti is mithya. The nature of the manifestation, is mithya, which means like gold ornaments, chaing bangle, ring etc. have their truth in one gold, same way entire universe has its truth or satya in atma, and same way as gold is unchanging, same way atma is also unchanging.

It is only from the standpoint of ring, chain, bangle that we say gold is the cause, from its own standpoint, neither is gold the cause, nor has it undergone any change, same way from pov of atma neither it is the cause, nor is their any manifestation, it alone is.

From the standpoint of manifestation , maya which is mithya, atma is satya.

So it all becomes clear when we see two standpoints, satya and mithya.

From satya standpoint, truth, there is one unchanging atma, consciousness IS, oneself.

From mithya standpoint there is a manifest universe, and that manifest universe is mithya, which has its being in satya, the atma.