GOVERNING LAWS
In addition to Brahman and mystical truth, the third facet of ultimate reality in Hinduism is the pre-eminence of governing laws. The first of these is the cycle of the universe – creation, preservation, and destruction. However this applies not only to the cosmos, but to all things including human beings. This fundamental principle is a brute fact of reality instantiated by Brahman and inescapable except through moksha. Woven into the cycle is the imprint of evolution at the levels of the cosmos, biology, civilization, and the individual person.
The second governing law is freedom, which takes on two forms: (1) free will and (2) freedom from the fetters of physicality. Humans receive free choice from Brahman, but with a caveat. Poor choices, typically from ignorance or selfishness, reverberate as inevitable death and samsara or reincarnation and thus continuance of the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The human cycle is further regulated by the third law, karma – the immediate, intermediate, and long term consequences of free action. Here we find another paradox – the disciplined voluntary restriction of wanton freedom via elimination of self-interest and desire is the means to freedom from both karma and the cycle of samsara.
The fourth governing law is that physical reality (including humans) is conditioned by three gunas – tamas (inertia and ignorance), rajas (energy and passion), and sattva (purity and goodness). These occur in different mixtures in each person, therefore a program of recognizing, modifying, and channeling them in an evolutionary process is the means to equanimity, ultimate freedom, and happiness.
The final governing law directs the very purpose of human existence. The essential and ineluctable objective of human life is the transcendental experience of the unity of life and consciousness and the oneness of the deepest self with Brahman. Acquiescence to this law is the only means by which one can achieve moksha and beatitude.
HUMAN APOTHEOSIS
We arrive at the fourth constituent of ultimate reality which is situated in human being. Hindu philosophers tell us that experience incontrovertible by logic represents the highest truth. Beneath human materiality, ego, mind and personality is pure awareness or consciousness called atman, the true self. Atman and its identity with Brahman are found by pure experience in contemplation and are logically congruent, hence absolutely true. This truth sublates or supersedes all other experience and all common truths and can thus never be refuted by future discovery.
Mankind is offered two kinds of immortality – samsara or reincarnation and moksha or final release and immortality in this lifetime. Still moksha is not merely a negative state of release from samsara and karma, but also the positive state of final empowerment, the ability to access prana (divine power).
Hinduism offers four yogas or disciplines to achieve this enlightenment: bhakti yoga (the path of devotion to God), karma yoga (the path of action), jnana yoga (the path of knowledge), and rajas yoga (a program of meditation). Religion provides the guardrails in each case and individual dharma steers one’s course. The operative characteristics are desirelessness and selflessness. The end result is ‘the life divine’, hyperconsciousness, identity with the Here and Now, and Hinduism’s summum bonum of eternal, transcendental bliss in the company of the divine.
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