We conclude our detailed presentation of a proposed transcendental logic. If this seems hard to understand, please review our earlier podcast material for background. To read and hear more than 100 previous installments of this series, order our DVD, the Complete Your Perfect Body Podcast.
The living entity always has all his spiritual qualities, beginning with consciousness. The presence of consciousness alone marks the living being as a spiritual entity, because since consciousness is transcendental, it can only the quality of a transcendental object. Transcendental entities can, by definition, embrace an entire continuum of logical values; therefore material Aristotelian logic is insufficient to reason about them.
A true transcendental logic must start from the point of consciousness and the understanding of the spiritual living being as a transcendental entity, with a discrete amount of the complete transcendental qualities. These qualities—consciousness, cognition, recognition, personality, memory, desire, intention, initiative, forecasting, the urge for beauty and pleasure, and many more—are common to all living entities, but may be more or less covered by the modes of a particular embodiment.
Our goal in spiritual life, indeed in all life, is to attain a perfect embodiment according to our conception and in terms of the designations, attachments and symbols of our identity. The result of spiritual culture is to reawaken our awareness of our eternal perfect identity. This self-realization is intimately connected with our realization of the spiritual qualities of our relationship with the Supreme.
We can pursue this real, eternal perfect identity or we can run away and hide in a maze of artificial ones. When we strive to align our purposes with the purposes of the Supreme, we gain in life energy and other spiritual qualities. This is yoga-maya or engagement in devotional service. Conversely, the origin of the death urge is found in our deviation from the good purposes of the Supreme, and engagement in pursuits beneficial only to oneself. This is maha-maya, the grand illusion to which all living beings are subject due to their infinitesimal size, knowledge and power.
Only the Supreme Personality of Godhead, visnu-tattva, is complete with all energies; we living entities, jiva-tattva, potentially can have most of His spiritual qualities—but even in the spiritual world, only in limited quantities. In material existence, our eternal sweet relationship with the Lord becomes perverted into material reflections in the modes of material nature: goodness (sattvika), passion (rajasika) and ignorance (tamasika).
So the complete description of the living entity includes his or her complete identity in the spiritual world. Once this is understood, whether the consciousness of the living entity is in spiritual energy (yoga-maya) or material energy (maha-maya) must be known. If in material consciousness, then how is the original rasa reflected? If all these things are known, then the existential condition of the living entity can be described completely.
The interesting point is that since all these qualities are fundamentally qualities of consciousness, and consciousness happens to be ineluctably subjective, only the living being himself can make these observations. When consciousness contemplates the qualities of itself, a naturally happy situation is created, just like when the sun shines in the clear sky. This advanced bhakti-yoga practice, as elaborately described in the Esoteric Teaching, is certainly the perfection of yoga.