Prabuddha Bharata or Awakened India

The French missionary travellers Hue and Gabet were impressed in 1842 by the close resemblance between Catholic and Lhamaistic rituals: The crozier the mitre and chasuble the cardinal's robe. the double choir at the divine office the chants the exorcism the censer with five chains the blessing which the Lhamas impart by extending the right hands over the heads of the faithful the ros [...] The Absolute that is the ground of the world in the sense of the cause that manifests itself through the effects is not beyond time and is either conceived of as the starting point of the causal process or as the whole that contains all time-divisions within it. [...] Kant's noumenon is the ground and not the cause of phenmenon Spinoza's Substance is not the cause but the ground of the modes; Plato's Ideas are not the cause but the ground of the world of sense; Schelling's Absolute is the foundationless or groundless ground; Shankara's Brahman is the ground or Mhishthana yet not cause of the world. [...] The many that come out of the One but do not touch or disturb It the many that have their ground in the One but are not inherent in the One the many that can be explained by the One but still do not interfere with the transcendent fulness of the One are not in opposition to the One and thus are in happy harmony with the One. [...] From the Sthula to the Sukshma from the Sukshma to the Karana from the gross to the subtle from the subtle to the unmanifested in short from the manifested to the umanifested and again from the unmanfested to the manifested we have the realm of causation ; and here the cause and the effect are equally real.