Madhva’s Universe: Many Dimensions of Reality
- by Madhukrishna Sudhindra
Look around us. We see people, animals, plants, objects, thoughts, actions and events. Things arise, change and disappear. There is pleasure and suffering, knowledge and ignorance, birth and death. There is also time within which all these changes take place. Madhvācārya’s Tattvasaṅkhyāna attempts to place this enormous diversity in the cosmos within a single map of reality.
Madhva presents a single universe in which reality has many dimensions. Physical objects are only one part of it. Mind, intellect, knowledge, ignorance, pleasure, pain, time, change, and even the absence of something all have a place within the same reality. His map therefore embraces not only what we can see and touch, but also the inner and less tangible aspects through which we experience the world.
The first important distinction is between existent reality (bhāva) and the reality of absence (abhāva).
The second category is especially striking.
Suppose there is a pot on a table. The presence of the pot is a reality. Now suppose the pot is removed. Its absence from the table is also something real about the situation. “There is a pot here” and “there is no pot here” describe two different states of reality.
The same idea can be extended beyond physical objects. A society in which there are no cruel people presents a very different reality from one in which cruelty is widespread. The absence of cruelty is not mere nothingness; it changes the character of the society itself. Likewise, the world after the Second World War was different not only because new institutions and political arrangements had come into existence, but also because certain earlier realities had disappeared—the old colonial order had begun to recede, fascist regimes in Europe had been destroyed, and entire assumptions about war, sovereignty and human rights had changed. What is absent from the world can therefore be as significant in defining its reality as what is present.
Madhva therefore does not treat absence merely as nothingness. The absence of something is itself a reality distinct from its presence.
He goes further and classifies absence into three kinds. There can be an absence before something comes into existence, an absence after it has ceased to exist, and an absence that is perpetual.
This is an important clue to the kind of universe Madhva is describing. Reality is not restricted merely to physical objects that we can see and touch. It includes different modes and conditions of existence—and even objectively real absence.
Existent reality is divided into two great classes: sentient (cetana) and insentient (acetana).
We normally think of the insentient world simply as matter. Madhva’s classification is much wider.
Prakṛti belongs to this domain, but so does Time. The Vedas representing knowledge also occupy a distinct place within insentient reality. Mahat, the ego-principle, intellect, mind, the faculties, subtle elements and gross physical elements are all included within the insentient order.
This is quite different from our everyday use of the word “matter.”
The ego-principle, intellect and mind may appear very close to our inner conscious life, yet Madhva does not classify them as the conscious being itself. They belong to the apparatus through which the sentient being experiences and interacts with the world.
The cosmos is therefore multidimensional.
Madhva distinguishes the insentient further into what is eternal (nitya), what is both eternal and non-eternal (nityānitya), and what is non-eternal (anitya).
The Vedas, as knowledge, are eternal. Whether you possess knowledge or not, knowledge exists. You can only discover knowledge.
The Purāṇas and similar works, Time and Prakṛti belong to the curious middle category of that which is both eternal and non-eternal. This need not be understood as a contradiction. Something may endure in one respect as a principle while changing in another. Moments of time continually pass away, yet Time itself continues. Prakṛti persists while undergoing transformation into different manifestations. The same holds true for aspects of knowledge that evolve, as represented by the Purāṇas.
The non-eternal, in turn, includes the uncombined principles—Mahat, ego, intellect, mind, faculties and elements—and the combined cosmos, represented by the cosmic egg and everything contained within it.
The concluding verse of Mahābhārata by Vyāsa is worth noting here:
“The dharma is eternal, but not the pleasure or the pain. Jīva is eternal, but not the cause for which being is invested with a body.” – BORI 18.5.50
Madhva’s universe is therefore not merely a collection of material objects floating in space. It is a layered structure containing different orders of reality.
Then we come to sentient beings.
Here Madhva presents one of his most distinctive ideas, yet one that begins with the differences we observe in ordinary life.
We encounter striking differences among people. Some seem naturally drawn towards kindness, restraint and knowledge. Others are strongly driven by desire, ambition and craving. And occasionally history confronts us with individuals in whom cruelty and destruction appear almost to have become their defining nature.
Human beings clearly differ in intelligence, temperament, inclination and moral character.
Madhva takes the reality of such differences much further.
Sentient beings are not simply identical souls temporarily wearing different personalities. They possess real differences, and those differences extend even to their very nature, svabhāva.
Some beings are eligible for liberation (mukti-yogya). They are capable of progressing beyond suffering and attaining liberation.
But Madhva also speaks of beings who are not eligible for liberation (mukti-ayogya).
Among these are beings fit for darkness (tamo-yogya), whose course ultimately leads to utter darkness. Daityas, Rākṣasas, Piśācas and the lowest of mortals are placed within this category.
There are also beings whose condition is continuing transmigration—remaining within the cycle of worldly existence and suffering rather than reaching liberation.
This produces a very different picture from philosophies in which every being is assumed eventually to arrive at exactly the same destination.
In Madhva’s universe, differences are real.
A simple analogy may help. In a school, children do not all begin with identical capacities and tendencies. Some show the potential to become exceptional scholars, artists, leaders, or scientists. Many remain within an ordinary range of achievement, while a few may repeatedly display destructive tendencies that, if strengthened rather than corrected, can lead them towards seriously harmful conduct. Education, circumstance, effort, and discipline matter greatly, but the children are not identical in their starting dispositions or in the possibilities naturally open to them.
Madhva sees sentient beings in the real world in a somewhat similar way. They are not identical beings merely passing through different temporary conditions. They possess real differences in nature and capacity. Some are fit for liberation, some continue in transmigration, while others move towards darkness. Their different destinies reflect real differences among the beings themselves.
The diversity we observe among living beings is therefore not merely superficial. Madhva sees plurality and difference as woven deeply into the structure of reality itself.
Yet there is one final fact without which this entire picture remains incomplete.
Everything described so far—the sentient and the insentient, Time and Prakṛti, mind and matter, gods and humans, liberation and bondage, existence and the reality of absence—belongs to dependent reality.
None of these exists independently.
Only Lord Viṣṇu is independent reality (svatantra).
An analogy may help.
Imagine the ocean. Within it live countless forms of life: enormous whales, tiny fish, coral, plants and innumerable microscopic organisms. Each is a distinct living being with its own characteristics. None is identical with the ocean.
Yet remove the ocean and the entire marine world collapses.
The fish cannot say, “I exist independently of the water.” The coral cannot separate itself from the environment that sustains it. The whole ecosystem exists only because the ocean supports and encompasses it.
The analogy is not exact, but it helps us understand Madhva’s central idea. Similarly, the whole cosmos is grounded in and sustained by Viṣṇu.
At the conclusion of the Tattvasaṅkhyāna, Madhva gathers the entire universe under Viṣṇu’s governance. Lord Viṣṇu governs the cosmos through creation, maintenance, dissolution, regulation, ignorance, cognition, bondage, liberation, pleasure, pain, recurrence and light both in aggregate and in detail.
This final statement brings us back to the underlying architecture of Madhva’s universe.
It is a universe of astonishing plurality: living beings, matter, mind, intellect, Time, Prakṛti, eternal realities, changing realities, suffering, liberation and even realities of absence.
Each is real. Each is distinct. But none is independent.
Behind, within and supporting this vast network of realities stands the one reality that depends upon nothing else—Lord Viṣṇu.
Madhva’s universe is therefore neither a collection of independent things nor a universe in which all differences ultimately disappear. It is a cosmos of real differences held together by complete dependence upon one independent reality.
The many remain many. But the many exist only through the One on whom they depend.
