QUESTION: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in his Science of Being and Art of Living, speaks of the Absolute and the relative as the two basic aspects of creation. He also refers to the Absolute as the unmanifest value of creation and the relative as the manifest value. He also suggests that through Transcendental Meditation ™ we can realize our Identity with the Absolute. Is this a good summary of the higher teaching?

APHORISM #1: It is better to distinguish the Absolute from the unmanifest value of creation, which is Maya.

COMMENTARY: In his commentary on the Mundaka Upanishad, Shankara suggests that when the text speaks of two higher immutables, of which the Self (Absolute) is the higher, the lower of these two is the unmanifested or Maya. Shankara states that Maya is the adjunct of Brahman appearing as name and form which is itself higher than the evolved world of modification. In the next verse (second mundaka, first part, #3) it is further suggested that the highest immutable permeates the other one, which is also called akasha, and becomes empirical experience.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff, in his Experience and Philosophy, suggests a similar idea in his later aphorisms on consciousness without an object where he describes consciousness without an object as neither Restriction nor Freedom.

The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living ® suggests that a certain ordering of the planets: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, reflects these same principles. Saturn represents the limiting adjunct (upadhi) of the body, Venus, the senses, Jupiter, the mind and conscious feeling, Mercury, the intellect, Mars, the will (ahamkara), the Moon, Maya or the unmanifest value of creation and the Sun, the Absolute.