Video 31

Ask Swami with Swami Sarvapriyananda | Mar 25th, 2017

so now we go into our monthly episode of ask Swami where there are so many questions which come in from all over the world and I try to deal with those questions respond to the questions both from our virtual audience all over the world and also from the live audience here so the way we usually do it is one question will be read out from the questions sent from the from people around the world will be read out by Diana and I'll respond to it then somebody from here just raise your hand I'll ask you to come here in the front row tell us your name ask the question wait here till the question is answered and then you go back to your seat and this is how we will go as long as we have time all right let's take a question from the virtual audience this is a question from a devotee who would rather remain anonymous all right involuntary thoughts are mostly negative and bad how do we uproot them if we are what we think does it mean these ugly thoughts will bring our suffering and misery if what we think that we become then how does karma come into play I have noticed people who are positive thinkers and are not necessarily good people but have very good peaceful lives so is it my thoughts or is it my Karma that makes my destiny I'll answer the last one first is it my thought or is it my karma that makes my destiny both yes that's an easy one but let's go back to the first one our thoughts which come up in the mind the person who writes this says that it is often it is negative not helpful what happens is this if we introspect inwards we will see that the thoughts which come up come up from some unknown source from us from a subconscious reservoir of tendencies the yoga sutra which is the manual par excellence on meditation the most ancient book on meditation which we have the potentially Yoga Sutras there there are different commentaries on that one of the the main commentary is by Vyasa it's called vyasa Basha commentary by Vyasa they're an interesting discussion takes place exactly on this subject what it's easier there is that we have a storehouse of tendencies or traces what in the modern world we might call the subconscious mind the yogic term for that is samskaras some scholars are traces which are left in our mind by past actions not necessarily in one berth if you're a Hindu or a Buddhist or a giant or a Sikh you believe in many births so maybe from many past lives in our subtle body especially in the mind these samskaras are there these tendencies and they bubble up and they become conscious thoughts it's only at a late stage that we become aware of a desire and annoyance and irritation something that's bubbling up from within which might not be caused by anything in the world outside it just or it might be a reaction to something caused in the world it comes from within where it comes from from those samskaras now so one word is samskara samskaras are traces left in the subconscious mind by our past actions past language what we say and past thoughts so thought word and deed they leave traces on our mind especially if they're repeated again and again now these samskaras become conscious thoughts or thoughts at the level of the conscious mind when it comes to the conscious mind the sanskrit word for that is Rick T Rick T is a modification of the mind stuff like a little wave comes up on a lake so the mind is like a lake a wave comes up in the lake thought a desire something maybe anger maybe resentment maybe guilt various kinds of thoughts they come up maybe memories surface suddenly for no good reason at all so these become with these and then what happens is if you entertain those writ T's Authority stays in the surface of the mind long enough it sinks back into the mind into the subconscious mind and becomes a samskaara so you see the cycle some scar bubbles up comes up as a with T and the riptides Wells in the surface of the mind especially if you act upon it if the thought comes up and if you express it in speech and action then the writ t get strengthened and it sinks back again it seems to go away from mind after a while even the most fearsome rage or the most darkest depression it goes away but it does not disappear it goes back into the storehouse of some scars and strengthens existing some scars or creates new ones this cycle of samskaara and brick t goes on unceasingly day and night in all our waking moments specially even dreams so this is the cycle which goes on in the commentary in sanskrit it is said a vom brick t samskaara rupa chakram a hernia sham but tomorrow day and night this cycle is rotating now because of the way we have led our lives not carefully not mindfully a lot of negative stuff has gone into our minds I sometimes joke that we are so careful about what we eat and you would not go into a go to a dumpster and put your hand in there and bring out food and eat it rotten food it be your tummy would be upset immediately but we do that to our minds we take in things from the world indiscriminately we dump things into the mine until it becomes a mental dumpster so no wonder that the mind is full of negative negativities now what do you do about it because it is rotating continuously normally we don't do anything about it and so like in computers you have a default mode when you boot a computer whatever is programmed it'll start so whatever is in there that bubbles up and we sort of act on that and we live this is our life but you can consciously change it Yoga says we can consciously change our with T's and thereby our samskaras the samskaras the tendencies the storehouse we have no direct access to that it's something that in the modern times fried discovered that there is a an a subconscious layer to the mind though it is being challenged now by modern psychology so there is a this seems to be the storehouse in our mind to which we have no direct access that's why your therapist not right now but maybe 40 or 50 years ago when Friday and psychotherapy was all the rage and they would ask you for the contents of your dreams or free-associate sit down on the couch and talk things like that because we have no direct access to the subconscious storehouse it is only in dreams or in free association what bubbles up they want to see the therapist wants to see what bubbles up from within so those are the samskaras we have no direct access to it but what we do have direct access to are the rictus so as the conscious thoughts as they come to the conscious level we become aware of it and before it takes hold before it becomes strong before it becomes an irresistible tendency to you know punch that irritating guy or to sink into depression and and and I will not get out of bed today it's the world is dark before it becomes that the thought comes up it's still fresh and weak before we give it power by acting on it or starting to do things at that time Yoga says you can replace a negative Ricky with a positive Whitney I'll repeat that these thoughts which come up in our minds at the initial stage when they come up they can be replaced a skillful yogi will replace negativities with positive thoughts thoughts of anger with thoughts of peace thoughts of jealousy with thoughts of happiness thoughts of depression without with positive thoughts so you can replace this and this is possible if you replace it a negative thought with the positive instead of just letting it come up and express itself if you replace it what will happen is you will dwell with a positive thought a positive pretty for some time and that will sink back into the storehouse thereby weakening the negative Ruthie's and setting up new positive with these if you are with me so far this nice example I read was n teacher and the student who goes and complains about exactly this thing that when I meditate all sorts of negative thoughts come up in the mind bad thoughts the unwanted thoughts and the teacher said here is a bowl with stones you know the polished stones which there are in the Japanese gardens so smooth stones black stones and white stones and here's an empty bowl whenever a negative thought bubbles up in your mind in your calmness of meditation take a black stone and put it in the empty bowl if a positive thought comes take a white stone and protecting the empty bowl and go on practicing like this and the student did that initially you know what happened then the bowl empty bowls was soon filled up with black stones maybe one or two white stones were there but over time as he watched over time slowly the white stones in the bowl increased till the one day the bowl was mostly white for white stones what it means is slowly we can reprogram change the inner conditioning the practice is to replace negative thoughts with these with positive ones now it's easy to say that not so easy to do it what is required what enables us to do it is a calm and meditative mind if the mind is not meditative habitually a little calm and reflective and introspective and quiet what will happen is before you know it before you know it negative routines have bubbled up from the mind and taken over the mind we have patterns of thinking we think thousands of thoughts in a day but the thoughts are not original or different or new mostly they are the same kind of thoughts so let's become aware of our thought patterns put a little distance between yourself and the mind you are not the mind it is one lesson that you should take away from the Vedanta Society is that we are not our minds we are the knowers the luminaires the witness of our minds in my light the mind functions thoughts come up stay and disappear the mind is an instrument just like the body's instrument the mind is an app a collection of apps so you can use it as you will normally does not seem like that it seems that it has taken over us it's because we have given it power the way to take control of the mind is to first become calm put a little distance between yourself and the mind psychologically and then try this process it's an ancient insight a commentary on the Patanjali yoga sutras which is an answer to this question you can replace negative writ T's with positive ones unwanted thought patterns with with healthy thought patterns at first it will be a struggle will be difficult but worthwhile over time it changes the Gita says the mind alone is your worst enemy and use your best friend Krishna says that in the Gita how is the mind of worst enemy the best friend the mind uncontrolled is your worst enemy the mind controlled is your best friend I think it's Milton the poet who wrote in Paradise Lost the mind in its own place can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven the mind by itself doesn't matter what your external circumstances are how bad it is it can be transformed into a heaven by the mind just by the attitude the way the mind reacts to the circumstances no matter how good once circumstances are it can be transformed into a Hell by the mind uncontrolled I was in AI I was teaching children for a long time and young people for two decades nearly and I saw young people from the best of families where parents were rich and prosperous and good family all of that is there and yet they ruin themselves maybe by drug addiction or by some kind of something and children coming up sometimes from the worst of circumstances a terrible struggle and they made their lives today they have wonderful lives which they create themselves it the difference is in the mind all right questions from the live audience it could be anything related to spiritual life yes please come tell us your name and then ask the question mister Swamiji my name is T rich yes are you able to hear is the mic on yes so um my question is about you had briefly mentioned in one of your lectures about the four lines in the nature of reality the error in Maya yes can you please explain that in more detail all right it's a phrase which I had used I think I remember I had to use this phrase that's coming back to bite me somebody and heard this so Dida's is asking me that once had mentioned about the fault lines in our experience the nature of reality that that indicates Maya that this is not real in fact I remember there's a book John Barrow the book is called impossibility it's about science and how in every field of science we are now coming across paradoxes inconsistencies incompleteness it talks about gödel's incompleteness theorem and so on in every every field whether it's mathematics or logic or physics as the science advances far enough even biology as the science advances far enough we come across tremendous paradoxes in the by the 19th century the idea was among scientists that we are going to learn very soon we are going to complete knowledge we are going to learn all that is to be learned about physics and life in biology about mathematics and each field there was this optimism and in the 20th century in each field it seems the optimism was shattered as we learnt more and more the nature of reality seemed to be seems to be evading our understanding now this seems to be mysteries at the very bottom at the very depth of reality that's one thing from a scientific point of view from the Vedantic point of view I could give you a few interesting very clues to this the things are not what they seem one is we seem to be you know there's this world out there we are experiencing this world you this is not me this is me I am this being within this you know body of flesh and blood a subject and an object an individual and the world and this is how we experience life but is this really so Vedanta says considered the dream example in the dream example what happens when we dream we are in in some place we're talking with people there are people and animals and events you are yourself there in your dream you have a body and everything and you don't know you're dreaming it seems real and there are good things happening sometimes a good dream sometimes there are bad dreams and so on it's only when you wake up you realize oh it was all a dream the interesting thing about the dream example is once you wake up you realize both the subject and the object in the dream you in the dream and all the people you met in the dream and all the things that happen in the dream and all the places you visited in the dream all of them are nothing but you yourself when I wake up from a dream I realize the places I went to the events that happened the people I meant I met and I myself who was there all of it was imagined in this one mind so the mind can project itself as a subject and an object right so what seemed to be external when you wake up you realize it was all internal it was all in my mind what seemed to be the other when you wake up you realize it is not the other is me myself I say I alone appeared as another alright so what now Vedanta says here is the interesting claim that Vedanta makes this very experience we are having here that'sa waking a dream experience but the waking experience itself according to Vedanta is exactly like that not a dream but with respect to the existence consciousness bliss the ultimate reality which we learn to speaks about all of this which we experience as a separate world and individuals experiencing it all of them are actually all appearing in one underlying reality Vivek Kundra puts it this way one alone exists it appears as nature soul nature soul means object nature means the subjective universe soul means the subject as you individual and the world that you experience so it seems to be so different but Vedanta says they are all one reality they are all one reality all this diversity is one reality and not only is it one reality what is that one reality it's you it's you where is the fault line which expresses this which which shows us this this seems to be a very physical universe out there and you seem to be separate from it and experiencing it let me point it out in three steps and follow this carefully this is the essence of Advaita Vedanta you get it you've got all of our weight of Atlanta if you don't get it at least be intrigued by it and try to think the thing about it I'll try to put it as simply as possible in three steps it's like this what are we trying to see that there is one reality in which the entire universe including you yourself you are it's there and it that your reality is you yourself that's what you're trying to see and I'm claiming it's possible to see it right here right now in three steps okay here goes I saw this movie once they had references to many things like Alice in Wonderland like down the rabbit hole it was called The Matrix movie so the matrix so there in this very reality itself we can penetrate to a deeper reality so that's what we're going to do right now down the rabbit hole okay here is an example step 1 here's an object something you can see right with me so far an object simplest the simplest the first step is really really simple an object now stage step two I want you to consider is it just an object or is it that you are experiencing an object what's the truth about this situation is it a book by itself or is it that you are seeing a book you are experiencing about it's a book by itself you are not there you are here right so I am tempting and notice something it's not just a book it's a book being seen by you better description of the situation it's an object in your experience doesn't matter that you're seeing it could be touching it could be something that you smell or taste um it's an object in your experience think about it no object that you have ever become aware of has been anything other than an object in your experience if you're aware of it it's a truism it must be in your experience stage two is it's not an object by itself it's an object of which I have knowledge I am having knowledge of this object are you with me so far it's only slightly more difficult than what I've said and I'm making a comment now about this and aside a derivation of a sort of implication of this second step whatever you have experienced in your life has been experienced by you in your knowledge something that you saw heard smelt tasted or you thought about it you remembered it you desired it you disliked it you liked it it has been something in your experience in your in your knowledge other than didn't that you have that you have not experienced anything in your life other than that there is no life for you this it's only within the your lived experience is your life right this is stage 2 to object not by itself in your experience hissing yeah we get it go on what's the stage three it seems pretty easy so far stage three is subtle stage three years all this knowledge all of this is nothing apart from what I might call experience or awareness or consciousness your knowledge does it not take place in consciousness or awareness third point I'm making point three is very important crawl it awareness call it null I call it consciousness call it experience itself all objects are in knowledge all knowledge is in your experience where I'm though using the word experience as interchangeable with awareness or consciousness there is no knowledge possible without consciousness do you agree you cannot have knowledge unless you're conscious or aware or sentient right and no object is ever ever experienced or no event no object no person nothing is experienced unless you have knowledge of it so none of the objects are there other than in your knowledge no knowledge is possible other than in your consciousness the only thing that you have is consciousness experiencing itself first as knowledge and then later as the object of that knowledge wait wait yes the conclusion she said was but for that control consciousness is nothing that we are experiencing and that consciousness or awareness indubitably you are it's like a magician with a few mates you would say that suddenly pulled a rabbit out of the Hat wait wait wait a minute what did you say very simple three steps object step 1 knowledge of object step 2 consciousness are experienced step 3 no objects are there without knowledge of them controversial statement you people can develop surface can debate it no knowledge is possible without consciousness that's not so controversial if no object is possible without the knowledge of that object object then the object is not apart from that knowledge it's a constituent of that knowledge if no knowledge is possible apart from consciousness then the knowledge is no reality apart from that consciousness ultimately it's all reduced to consciousness itself or experience itself and you that that experience pure experience of pure consciousness is you yourself is your own real nature call it being many many words are used sucked being chit consciousness the Buddhists have a very interesting term to use clear light of the void right here in this world itself that's why the dream example is very applicable I'll quickly indicate two more fault lines here what I've done is I'm not indicated a fault line but I have shown you in this experience itself we can you can at least you can change your paradigm your complete point of view about this world the experience which we are all having instead of thinking a separate subject experiencing a separate object question can easily be asked where have you ever experienced the object apart from yourself from your own knowledge never never in philosophy they call it the standing scandal of philosophy that you cannot really demonstrate the existence of an external world you never experienced an object apart from your knowledge of that object and any kind of my knowledge I mean what you get with the operation of the instruments of knowledge seeing hearing smelling touching tasting or inference scientific thinking logical thinking and all of that cannot exist without consciousness if they cannot exist without consciousness then they are nothing apart from consciousness all of these are names and forms superimposed on consciousness in reality consciousness alone it's the only reality and that's what you are all right let me quickly indicate to fault lines one is a very general thing things change things change true all things are impermanent true things are created they exist in the deadest right uh Nick iam the word Buddha notice this first on et americium sarvam an idiom impermanent impermanent all is impermanent why should this be an interesting fact here is the fault line yes shuttle down yeah thanks why should this be an interesting fact look at it this way first fact is things are impermanent that they change they are created they exist and that they're destroyed look at it this way it's like things come into being they gain existence they retain existence and they lose existence let me give you an example here when we cook say boiling a potato so you have the expression hot potato now does the heat in the potato does it belong to the potato the potato was cold earlier it's hot now it will become cold again when you have to you serve it in a few minutes where did the potato get the heat from you will say from the boiling water in the pan the boiling water in the pan the heat that it has there is it intrinsic to the water no where did that water get the heat from from the hot pan and the pan is also not intrinsically hot it got it from the fire or the electric coil underneath right so neither the potato has intrinsic heat of its own neither the pan has internal the water is intrinsic heat of its own nor depan is intrinsic heat of its own but next we come to the fire where did the fire get the heat from is it is it intrinsically hot yes as long as the fire is there it's hot the pan borrowed heat from the fire the water borrowed heat from the pan and the potato borrowed heat from the water what is the distinguishing fact between the fire and the others they all become hot and then they lose the heat they gain heat and they lose heat they are not always hot they don't have heat all the time so generalizing one sign of a property which is not intrinsic is that if one can gain it and lose it if it is natural to you intrinsic to you you would always have it and an entity which has that property would always have it if its intrinsic if it is borrowed if it is incidental then it will come and go okay with me so far as far as the question of existence as an intrinsic property then what will happen to that thing if a thing does not have heat as an intrinsic property what will happen to it sometimes it will be cold sometimes it will be hot and again it will become cold it will gain heat and lose it if it is not naturally hot but similarly if a if a thing has does not have intrinsic existence does not have being intrinsic to itself what will happen to it it will yes it will die it will come into existence and it will disappear it will come into existence it will disappear in other words it will be impermanent subject to change that means everything that is subject to change in this way of looking does not have intrinsic existence it borrows existence but from what ultimately all borrowing must be from something that has intrinsic property so all of all those things which were hot and they last it became hot and they lost it again they all borrowed it from the fire which was always hot so there must be something which has intrinsic existence and the only thing that can have intrinsic existence logically speaking is being itself existence itself that never goes out of existence that's the vedantic idea of sucked pedantic idea of thought so all things in this way we are putting it all things borrow existence derive their existence from sucked from pure being you might protest at this point and say that pure being that sounds like an abstraction a vedantist will say all things in the universe are abstractions is that pure being alone is the reality it's the only one that has existence that is that alone lens reality to all these names and forms whether they are people or things or events whether they are bodies or minds or thoughts or ideas all things come into existence and disappear borrowing existence from such pure being what is the fault line which gives us a clue to this the impermanence of things think about it I've given you a very profound thing in the bhagavad-gita there's a verse second chapter xvi worse nassau Dovid deity of Abhinav how of India sat on the Unreal never comes into existence and the real never goes out of existence the wise know the truth about these two Shankar Acharya and his commentary writes pages and pages and pages what I've just told you about intrinsic existence and losing the existence and not losing the existence and the possibility of of a pure being in isness all of that is controlled all of that is is discussed in Shankar Acharya is coming through there I am just giving you the summary what do they call it the executive summary or something yeah I am giving you the this is some notes are there students use it cliff notes yeah I gave you the cliff notes if you actually have to study the commentary it would take a few several classes actually but the clue there the fault line act up it is the simple fact everybody knows we see it all the time we never note note what it means according to Vedanta it means something very profound what is that fault line the impermanence of things that the very simple fact that things come into being and disappear that people are born and died things are produced and destroyed in the Gitanjali rabindranath tagore in the english translation will tell you it is a very beautiful thing which struck to my mind you know he says a leaf a dry leaf breaks off from the tree and floats down to the lake and it sets of ripples on the lake since it is the one saying cosmic movement the leaf falling and the ripples going out on the surface of the lake to the stars being born and dying it's a one cosmic movement in the universe coming into being and then slowly dropping out of being behind all of this it points to an unchanging reality prama fault line the last fault line I will indicate is a subtler one it's it's this it's a it's a very specific fault line you know we have three kinds of experiences throughout the day we are awake right now hopefully and then we go to we fall asleep and we are tired and we dream and then we we have deep sleep dreamless sleep waking dreaming deep sleep in sanskrit jargon swapna sushupti this we know now what happens in in deep sleep the mind which was which is active what is waking the mind is active along with the sense organs and we contact an external world it seems like that what is dream our body falls asleep but the mind is still active and it generates like movies we are not in contact with the external world we have forgotten that we are lying on the bed but in our mind we'll live a virtual reality it's a dream mind is still active what's deep sleep the mind completely shuts down the mind is resolved it's a state of blankness now when you wake up it's a classic vedantic analysis when we wake up they say I slept nicely I slept like a log I didn't know anything this kind of phrase is there in almost every language in the world I slept like a log I didn't know anything the very fact that you can say I slept like a log I didn't know anything points to the fact that there must have been a continuity of experience that's why I say deep sleep is not an absence of experience it's an experience of absence this all I have mentioned but the fault line I'm pointing to use this Swami in the Himalayas in in in Brindavan actually pointed this out he says that when you wake up what do you say I slipped nicely okay who says that it's the mind which says it mind wakes up and then starts thinking oh I was sleeping now I'm awake I slept that was good sleep I slept nicely who's doing all that thinking if it's thinking it must be the mind you follow my logic but what did I say just now deep sleep the mind was stopped there was no thinking in deep sleep in deep sleep we don't think I am in deep sleep if you do that you're not in deep sleep you're not in deep sleep then so the mind was not working at that time it's not the mind which experienced deep sleep yet when you wake up the mind appropriates that experience and says I was asleep and yet the fact is there was deep sleep and it feels natural to say who else was sleeping except me I was sleeping so who is the I who was there in deep sleep where the mind was not there whose experience the mind borrows appropriate upon waking up that's a fault line mind was not there and the yet the mind insists that I was asleep whose experience is it that the mind is borrowing if you investigate that the difference between that and the mind I'm just calling it that which was there in deep sleep there's a old Tamil saying I don't know the original Tamil but the English is to sleep without sleeping one Swami who was regarded as in our order as regard as the Brahma kyani he wrote a poem in Malayalam the language in Kerala so I don't know the language but the English translation the the titles of the poem is so evocative only a person who's in in person could even say something like that he calls it the Midnight Sun it's completely dark no world no body no thoughts no identity no memories nothing and yet you're fully completely awake what can that be so these are some fault lines Thank You dealers for a very subtle question thank you can we take a question from the internet audience yes why we've had actually a few questions regarding deep sleep all right and let's dig up those things what you've spoken about in the past when we wake up from deep sleep we have an overall feeling of well-being and bless this bliss has been attributed by many teachers to the natural state of consciousness the Ananda part of such chit Ananda but there's another kind of experience of falling unconscious this also feels like deep sleep but there is no sense of joy or bliss upon waking up there is no sense of continuity and like what happens with sleep it's not even an experience it is a total absence of experience question one could the blissful experience of sleep be due to sleep related hormones like serotonin endorphins etc and not due to the bliss inherent in consciousness - if not then why don't I feel blissful or continuous after recovering from unconsciousness if these were primary attributes of consciousness shouldn't they have continued in the background like what happens with sleep experiences could this absence of any kind of experience be the reason the Buddhists call it the void instead of chit Ananda in Vedanta that question was from Sharat and we do have another one did you let me take that for right I'm reminded of something funny if your multiple questions tend to forget the earlier one this is not relevant to the question I'll come back to the question but let me tell you the funny story it was many many years over 20 years ago where I was in our main monastery in Ballarat in Calcutta and we have a huge educational complex a place called Narendra poor near Calcutta and so there was a German delegation coming and they wanted to speak with the Swami's in Narendra poor and the Swami Narendra invited some other Swami's to be part of the the swami delegation which would talk with the visiting German bureaucracy it was a minister they were bureaucrats and so on so I was very young at that time I was a newly minted monk but one of the senior Swami's was going to be part of the panel told me come along you can tag along and be just watch what happened the proceedings you can you can sit on the panel so I went there and there was an interpreter and the German they'll review they were very German I'm not saying it in any bad sense but they were very very efficient and very serious so the interpreter said question number ones so-and-so you know what I remember the first question even now what how do you account for the the unbroken continuity of Indian civilization for the past 5000 years and our Swami's as they I want to do it immediately they were about to answer and the German minister said stop in German and he said let me ask all the questions and then you can answer so they asked five questions one after another and then interpreter said that is it please answer it now the Swami's we are very Indian so they suddenly looked at each other what was the question now luckily because I had nothing better to do I thought the senior Swami's would answer the question so I had the result in writing down the questions so I showed them here are the questions and the Swami's was so happy and they told the other senior Swami good that you brought this youngster along he's worth his weight in gold anyway that's the story let's take the questions one by one I remember the questions yes sir first is in deep sleep do we take the bliss the peacefulness that we experience so is that our under the bliss which we speak about in Vedanta such chit Ananda there itself is a mistake no that's not out of them it's a restfulness in deep sleep what happens is because the troubles of the waking world starting from you're not gauge to the annoying neighbor to the lack of parking space all these troubles are not bearing deep sleep the nightmares of the dream world where you have anxieties and phobias and express those dreams those are also not there in the deep sleep so no problems are there in deep sleep there is no problem no desire or effort to fulfill the desire so it's deep peacefulness and restfulness that is what accounts for the the positive experience we have about deep sleep when we come up and say that was good so it was just blank which was good no problem at all so it's restfulness a peacefulness look at the word peacefulness not peace itself but peacefulness something is full of peace so deep sleep is a state full of peace this is literally the translation of the technical term in vedanta ananda maya in vedanta speak about anandamaya kosha these sheet of bliss are the blissful sheath that is the experience of deep sleep it is not Ananda itself not bliss itself it's a reflection of Ananda in in the deep sleep there is a reflection of Ananda it is not such hidden under the ultimate bliss itself the brahman itself why well Ananda searched Ananda is always there in making in dreaming in deep sleep in happiness in misery the background is always there we just don't know it the restfulness which is experienced in deep sleep belongs to deep sleep only it's there in deep sleep it's not there anywhere else so it cannot be Brahman which is always there it's impermanent so the restfulness in deep sleep is because there is no trouble there is no misery we do not take the misery of the waking world in the dream world into the deep sleep that's why now he contrasts it with unconsciousness and he says unconsciousness seems to be different from deep sleep because of it seems to be completely blank and also after coming up from that I don't feel rested or peaceful I feel uneasy so ultimately if it is Ananda it should be there everywhere in in in deep sleep also in unconsciousness also but I've already pointed out the Ananda of deep sleep is not deep searched on under its on the Maya restfulness this topic of unconsciousness is actually discussed by Shankar Acharya and the brahma sutra the question raised there is why only talked about three states waking dreaming and deep sleep we also have intermediate steps states some people have daydreams some people have coma some people are knocked unconscious he gives the example of being hit on the head with a club which might not happen so often these days but I'm sure it happened in ancient India so being hit on the head with a club and then you fall unconscious and he mentions when you wake up from that it's not restful it's if you don't come out and say oh I slept like a log No so it's quite unpleasant so that's another state what Shankar Acharya says there is important he says yes there are different possible states depending on state of the mind of the body they could be coma or there could be trances they could be mystical experiences there could be daydreaming but what he says is in Vedanta we use only these three waking dreaming and deep sleep you know why because these three are common and available to you are all of us all the time every day we have waking dreaming and deep sleep believe it's not every day that you get hit on the head with a club thank God it's not every day that you follow unconscious thank God and it's not every day that we have mystical visions very few people have it anyway so these are common experiences and they are used in Vedanta because for analysis in order to point out the one consciousness behind waking dreaming and deep sleep so it is only natural to answer his question it's only natural that coming out of unconsciousness would feel different from coming out of deep sleep but the point in Vedanta is not that and then the question he follows on by asking so is it that the happiness of deep sleep is due to serotonin or something like that you are mixing up two things why only deep sleep in that case the happiness you get from having a cookie in waking state that also is it due to the Bliss of Brahman or is it due to a serotonin in the body that depends on your paradigm if you are taking a materialist reductive paradigm that everything is body and everything is generated by movements in the body by neurons firing by neuro chemicals like serotonin and others and the what we experience as happiness bliss cognitive events they're all byproducts epiphenomena that's the most most radical kind of reductionism it's a it's a gross materialistic reductionism and it's not working it's not working I refer you to as I often do to the hard problem of consciousness if you google it you will find it's a huge thing now the hard problem of consciousness why the brain and nervous system by themselves are and all your sir and everything are not enough to explain first-person experience how does a soup of serotonin or the other neuro chemicals involved in moods and dopamine how are they with little tissues called nerve cells neurons and their little electrical impulses jumping from synapse to sign-up how are the house that creating this experience you're having are seeing a red flower of smell expelling the incense of the sense of the body that you have of taste of sound of smell of of sight this first-person subjective experience it's a miracle how is it created by a small collection of chemicals it's not modern sighted a scientists are saying that you can't explain it we have to have a new theory of consciousness that's what consciousness studies people are saying an entirely new theory of consciousness is necessary and David Chalmers who's here in NYU he says he advocates what is called Pan psychism that consciousness is fundamental just like space time matter energy remember this is the person who is not at all from an Eastern philosophy background he is is coming at it from a purely rational modern scientific and philosophical outlook so he says that we we are driven to this position he calls it pan psychism that there is consciousness is a fundamental reality like time space matter energy it's like if you admit that that's as good as admitting Sankhya philosophy not yet or greater Vedanta but Sankey philosophy or yoga philosophy which says there are two realities in this universe consciousness and nature nature is matter energy time space and you are consciousness involved in nature through a body mind so that's david chalmers pan psychism and he remarks humorously as reading in one of his interviews that if you'd consider the problem of consciousness long enough if you consider the problem of consciousness long enough you either become a pan psychist that means you think that it has to be consciousness is fundamental or you go into administration so that's the answer consciousness is responsible for all these experiences including bliss and yes they're byproducts there if they are reflected in the body in the serotonin and the dopamine and the movements of the nervous system and the brain that's dead of course that's the physical counterpart can we go to the next question about at the end he does say though we can say the substratum of human consciousness is pure awareness how can we extend it to include the whole material universe and posit that pure consciousness is its substratum yes good question the three steps we can talked about the dirige the material universe I represented it by one object all objects are like this material universe something that you can see smell hear taste touch if it's not available to our sense organs then it's available to our scientific instruments you can have a huge instrument like the CERN in Switzerland to detect the tiniest possible particles there but they are all objects they're all objects and they are presented to you to me in our knowledge in our experience and all knowledge and experience is possible only in consciousness if you admit that then I'll give you some corollaries the corollaries are if two things cannot be presented separately then you have no right to say that they're two separate entities you have to seriously consider the possibility they are one entity I can show you the cloth and the book separately therefore you say the book is something else and the clock is something else they don't go together hence there are two different entities but no object in the world is it's possible for you to speak about our experience without knowledge every object that you've experienced is in knowledge and no knowledge so therefore you cannot speak of objective reality apart from subjective reality one similarly the subjective reality you cannot speak about it apart from consciousness in that case you cannot say that there is a separate subjective reality and consciousness that's easier to demonstrate so the objective reality reduces to the subjective reality which reduces to consciousness because you cannot speak up them separately you have no right to say they have an independent existence outside of your consciousness hence the entire material order is reduced to consciousness this is the conclusion of Advaita Vedanta if you don't reduce the entire material order to consciousness if you leave them separate then that Sankhya if you read take reduce the entire conscious order subjective order to the material reality then you have materialistic science in one sense science and Advaita Vedanta are at opposite ends of the spectrum Advaita insists on reducing everything to consciousness and science insists on reducing consciousness to matter all of conscious experience to matter and the interesting thing is there's a saying the opposite of a petty truth is falsehood the opposite of a great truth is another great truth Vivekananda said I am a materialist of a sort only thing is the material eye I believe in is consciousness not matter matter depends on consciousness not the other way round I'll write a question from the did we deal with the questions on yes is the question from the live audience yes mr. Swamy never stick in jealousy your name my name is Manu Tosh yes you said something very interesting you said the entire material order can be reduced to your consciousness yes you use the use you set your consciousness rather than saying just consciousness so that the two parts of my question one is so shall we assume that its each one of us has our own consciousness and if so what about events which affect all of us so if there is a natural calamity at this point right if there's an earthquake which affects everybody in this in this room yes and suddenly you know that's how do we explain that parallel parallel so a shared public reality yes right I use the term your consciousness more precise would be you the consciousness when you say your consciousness it seems to imply somewhere that you are something separate from your consciousness it's like saying your body your mind your idea your consciousness not your consciousness you the consciousness what are you according to Advaita Vedanta if you think about in that that way the three steps I mentioned you are yourself nothing other than consciousness when you think your consciousness plus the app called the mind when you see your consciousness plus mind plus eyes the instrument of seeing but basically the thing that you can the core of your own existence is awareness you can you can experimentally see it you can experientially think about it look at it here is the world clearly not me it's something different from me Here I am but this is the body am i aware of the body yes so the body is something in my awareness am i aware of thoughts yes so the thoughts are something in my awareness that awareness of consciousness and using the words without any difference so thoughts are also in my consciousness then why should I use the word my consciousness what do I mean by mine by my I mean body and mind or my property or my things all of those are objects then what am I in essence I am that consciousness only that consciousness is common to all of us after all why do we say we are different clearly we are different because bodies are different clearly we're different because minds are different minds are different what you know I do not know what I have experience you may not have experienced your memories are not shared by your neighbor so minds are different bodies are different but consciousness is not different if you differentiate consciousness from mind and body then you will suddenly see there is no different shading factor left in consciousness to distinguish your consciousness from his or her consciousness his or her depends on body thoughts make the difference between one mind and the other but in consciousness what is the distinguishing factor how will you distinguish one consciousness from another the differences between us are differences of body mind not of consciousness so via antha says we are one consciousness we though we think of comes when only then there is body mind there is one consciousness in the thirteenth chapter of bhagavad-gita Shri Krishna says answering this question second shloka written what thirteen chapter is little complicated because it is a issue there because there is one extra verse there the thirteen chapter or Juna starts with a question in some versions of the Gita in some versions of the Gita the question is not there so the one in which the question is there the words I'm referring to is the third verse in one in which the question is not that the verse I'm referring to is the second verse the reverse goes like this Chaitra diem job imam with the Tsarevich a three-issue bharata Arjuna Krishna says know me to be the one consciousness in all these fields of consciousness so there is one consciousness we are all one consciousness and that one consciousness behind all of us that is garden without them that is the meaning of tuk to Amma see that the word that is the meaning of a humdrum ask me I am Brahman how am i Brahman has this being called server pre Ananda no no no as the consciousness one consciousness behind server pre-owned and then behind everybody else in that sense unemployment so you are consciousness and in your consciousness appears this body and mind that consciousness limited by this body and mind becomes this individual the moment you give importance to the mind and body immediately start seeing difference so there is a world outside which you see is a common world shared with everywhere everybody am in which there is an earthquake or a snowstorm or something and there's an internal world only available to you in that body and mind which is called your own private mental world and then you make the difference between mental and external world but all of that external world and mental world differences are because you are looking at it from the point of view of the body mind look at it from the point of view of consciousness the entire universe is within you where is your mind in your consciousness where is the body experienced by the mind in your consciousness where are everybody else which you whom you're experiencing in that consciousness aren't they in your consciousness otherwise how are you experiencing them you will say the common answer to this is the question to them you know the rebuttal to this is no no I am experiencing them because they are really there outside look outside outside of what this skin isn't it moment I stand here then true they all become separate entities are apart from me moment I take my stand in consciousness that I am the awareness all of this is something in me the awareness not the mind there is even the mind is also in the awareness all right bill is going to ask a question but bill it doesn't have to come here he can ask the question from there itself yeah no I I can hear this question I think yeah now the question is is consciousness separate from the brain the straight answer from Vedanta is yes and a more considered answer is this when consciousness is functioning through the brain when you see and hear and smell and taste and talk then you it's something functioning through the brain and nervous system so always it seems to be together in the brain and nervous system from a materialist reductionist point of view the body is the only reality and in the body you find the brain and the nervous system now you cannot deny consciousness there are scientists would love to deny consciousness yes they must be zombies and The Walking Dead they are not aware they don't have consciousness there are some scientists who will say no no there is consciousness but it is generated by the brain so the brain is reality it is is the reality which generates a kind of epi phenomenon a secondary reality called consciousness that is basically the very nature the curve of the hard problem of consciousness that's what they are asking how is it possible for the brain to generate a first-person subjective experience it's not possible that's the difference between the materialist reductionist approach the matter is everything you are nothing other than matter and what you consider yourself to be thoughts the person that's just a by-product of the brain when the brain dies you die also you finish that's it no religion ever believes that you can't have religion in that not prove that perspective one philosopher said if you take that perspective he put up he put a bottle of coke on the table it's fizzing if you take that perspective basically what the materialistic reductionist perspective is telling you is you there's no difference really between you and that bottle of coke that bottle is there and it's bubbling and fizzing that and you are a little more complicated bottle of coke where it's bubbling and fizzing inside and producing mind and thoughts and consciousness but basically what it is it's just matter and interactions with matter so that's the materialist reductionist point of view the advaithic point of view is all of these are appearances in consciousness consciousness is fundamental matter is an epiphenomenon is an appearance in consciousness now which side should we take if you look at your experience what comes first matter or consciousness what comes first you are the other you in your own experience who is first whoa whoa what is it you're aware of yourself are the Central Park yourself you are first revealed to yourself and then comes the world what you cannot deny is the awareness what the awareness reveals is open to question but the awareness is there this is not open to question awareness is more fundamental than matter consciousness is more fundamental than matter that's what advaitha Volante insists and that's what our experience come always it always supports that that our experience our continuous experience is that that that we are awareness first and then anything else if you think about it for some time you will see that there is really no way of getting out of this this logic I remember I remember talking to a neuroscientist that is funny this lady was sitting next to me in the plane be applying from Portugal to Munich and not to Frankfurt I've gone to attend the International Day of yoga in Lisbon and this lady she was coming from England and she is going to India ultimately to attain some neuroscience conference and she's a neuroscientist and we were together in one flight only between the short hop between Portugal and Germany now she sat next to me and she said she was intrigued by this dress and she said tell me about this and she said I'm a Anglican button lapsed Anglican I really don't believe in all of that but yeah but tell me about what you people believe in so I gave her the short talk about Vedanta not just the three steps that's incomprehensible unless you are been coming to the Vedanta Society for a long time if you just tell them three steps it will be it won't make sense but the short version Cliff Notes version of we're anti-gay gave it to her very very intelligent very sharp she picked it up just like that she got it immediately and the end of it I think I spoke for about 45 minutes or one hour at the end of it and she had asked very probing questions including these questions at the end of it she said you know Swami and I taught her to see a Swami by that time you know Swami I am not convinced but by what you say but I cannot find a Fault in that argument there's no way I can answer what you are trying to the questions you are raising but I I can't have not convinced that's good enough yes so consciousness is fundamental because I shall be go back to an Internet question yes a couple questions from Verne chica and from Harry okay before we go into questions sorry to interrupt that little anecdote had a funny ending after we got down from the plane in Frankfurt she said you know I am scared of flying so if I find anybody interesting sitting next to me I engage them in conversation for the whole duration of the flight so that was the reason for an interest in Vedanta go ahead and say yes is it true that householders should not chant only ohm but instead they should use some syllable along with it like Harry ohm otherwise it has adverse effects and from Harry could nama come and Chama come be used as a worship mantra in rituals Roop asana self-knowledge or God realization two questions first I'll answer the question about using ohm and Hari o none of that these were all prejudices in India that only say a Brahman can chant the ohm or a woman cannot change the ohm they're they're very Orthodox people I've come I myself come across at least a couple of them very scholarly persons but very rigid and set in their ways this one Swami I remember very scholarly wonderful Swami now he's supposed to lead a chanting session now when the women are chanting he would start the same mantra with namaha not with all another Swami noted that and hauled him up what is that you're doing so he sort of sullenly kept quiet because he's very Bramnick a very traditional Brahminical family it comes from that now those who go to India you know did this chant of the Gayatri mantra or moomoobus were anuradha paudwal has recorded it and it's chants it goes on so outside the monastery that somebody was playing that the tape and so the you know in a lady's voice the Gayatri mantra was being chanted hour after hour continuously and it and that was just outside this Swami's room and I told this I had told this one it serves you right and he grinned sheepishly also yeah these are all prejudices absolutely not if you chant the ohm whether you're a householder or brandman or non-rhyming a woman or a man a child or an old person Indian or Western or Chinese whatever you can only benefit from it so there is no problem there and the second thing is the nama command Shama contains a particular very very highly regarded him to Shiva Vedic which is very popular in India many people have memorized it and the question that is asked is whether it should be used in writ can it be used in rituals or in new paths analogous what mental worship or in ghana god-realization brahma keanu the answer short answer is all three there is a very interesting insight about the Vedas all of the Vedas the Vedas themselves have three parts one is rituals Sanskrit karma karma means work but in Veda it means religious for rituals so the puja or the yoga puja is modern younger is ancient Vedic very the fire sacrifices there were physical actions that you did in worship of God so rituals and lot of the Vedas concerned with rituals the majority of impact in fact the second part of the way that is concerned with OOP asana mental worship when you don't physically do anything anymore you sit quietly apparently you're not doing anything but mentally you are worshiping all the actions that you did physically now you're doing it mentally and that is done in our modern puja also in the puja you will see the worshiper offers flowers and food and chants mantras and has several gestures you know this budros and all of this so they do these gestures all actions these are rituals but then the worshiper sits at a particular time quietly as if doing nothing but mentally he is offering all of this so it a mental simulation like a virtual worship is going on inside without any external environment the body is sitting quietly mentally you are not chanting I am physically verbally you're not chanting anything but mentally the whole worship is performed that is called loop asana it's meditation basically there's a whole range of koop asana meditation no physical action no verbal chanting but internally the third part of the Veda deals with gain or knowledge what knowledge knowledge of the self that part is called the Upanishads and the whole philosophy of a vedanta is based on the venetians so Vedanta basically here what we talk about here and what we try to teach and transmit here is the knowledge portion of the Vedas but the Vedas have three portions not only knowledge portion the mental worship portion and the physical the ritualistic portion Karma ooop asana gana karma OOP asana Ghana the last part the final part the highest part is the Aeon of the knowledge part this is what we talk this is what is meant by Vedanta so when you say Vedanta Society you're talking about the third part of the you're talking about the third part of the Vedas now the interest in this is well known and now as an aside let me mention that the physical action and the mental worship mental worship is also an action only it's mental internal so both are actions one is physical very actually doing some something with your hands and chanting mantras verbally and the other one is mental or internal but both are actions since both are actions they are clubbed together under the karma kanda the action portion and that leaves only the Guayana condor so sometimes where does are classified into two the action for the work related portion and the knowledge related portion but remember the work related portion has two parts in its the physical aspect and the mental aspect now the interesting insight is all the mantras of the Veda the entire radom some of which deals action some of which deals with worship mental some of which deals with knowledge all these mantras in the Veda they can be applied in all three I'll repeat all the mantras of the Vedas they can be used for ritual for worship and for knowledge karma Koopa sana Gianna this is something many people do not know a great scholar told me only some some of the rituals some of the mantras are obviously made for ritual to give them an interpretation for Brahma Ghana for enlightenment would be difficult if to stretch it but it can be done some of the mantras are obviously made for meditation and some of the mantras so for example if you say ah hum Rahm has me that to Amma see the word that clearly meant for enlightenment for realization but you can still use it for each other in fact there are texts which say that okay you are offering this to God and with that you chant the upanishadic mantras in the Durga Puja and in the big poojas upanishadic mantras are actually chanted those portions which relate to enlightenment together actually chanted in a ritual so the number command javac um can be chanted for a ritual as as third person says during mental worship if you are worshipping Shiva you can chant the moon number coming to Makkah mentally or so or if you look analytically if you analyze the meanings of the Nama conventional camp that will lead you to enlightenment so all three are possible with that very good we have run out of time okay there were two questions is Lady here can you come here and then I will take the question at the end that will be the last one can somebody tell me at the food is ready ready Swami ji namaste can you tell us your name my name is Deepa Nia is it on can you hear yes all right um so my question is one of your lectures you had described consciousness as the Sun that was reflecting on the moon and what we see from Earth is your moonlight so with this pure consciousness because even your the awareness is in consciousness not the awareness in the mind but the non ego non eye awareness so is that how we experience consciousness with this like is it always through awareness because in deep sleep there is no awareness but the consciousness is still there what do you mean by awareness like though like you're seeing and speaking not aware the one that is what you mean by well no but the one that is the one that's seeing the one that's doing the seeing so it's like that isn't that consciousness itself is like that's my question is the consciousness itself yes see the example she referred to here was something that I had heard from a Swami in Uttarakhand and I used it in one or two lectures it's like this one good way of understanding it is imagine the earth at night so it's darkness covered with darkness here's the world and there's the moon which shines and by the moonlight we can see things but the moonlight is not really the moonlight it's light from the Sun reflected on the moon which comes to the earth now keep this example in mind an unseen Sun at night the Sun is not seen an unseen Sun whose light shines on the moon and the moon reflects this light back to the earth and we call it moonlight and we use it to see things in the world now the examples that's the example what it exemplifies is this this world is the world what we experience with what we are sitting in and the mind is like the moon the mind lit up with awareness with consciousness with awareness uses eyes and ears and nose and skin and touch and all of that to experience the world what is the light with which the mind is experiencing the world it seems to be the light of the mind itself the mind itself through the body is in the world but the light does not belong to the mind according to Vedanta it belongs to the Atman you see Atman if you say body and mind and world everybody is okay with it because here is the world here is the body and if I look inside yes I can see the my experience the mind but the moment you say Hartman moment you say witness moment you say pure consciousness two problems arise one is what are you talking about I can't experience it one second problem is people sometimes mistake the mind itself or the witness the mind trying to play the witness and then they think yeah I know what you mean you don't if you really knew what I meant you would be enlightened but use that example the Sun the unseen Sun is like the unseen Atman here it's not visible but its light is what lights of the moon and illumines the earth the utmost consciousness or Atman is consciousness that consciousness or awareness is what floods our mind making our minds very very conscious and with that consciousness the minds used the sense organs and the body to experience itself and the world so that consciousness call it consciousness awareness whatever you call it the pure consciousness of pure awareness or pure witness is a one in that one it's the unseen theory if you are aware of it then it's then you are aware of something in the mind not that one that is the one which is aware it's it's it's you yourself it's the real you don't try to grasp that if you try to grasp it you will grasp something in the body mind and you will think that this is the Atman no or you will be unable to grasp anything in the body and mind you say it should avoid nothing is there no both are wrong it's not an objective thing in the mind it's also not non-existence also it is that light in which the objective thing in the mind and the absence called showing your void both are lit up and that is what you are additionally sometimes you find I seen any circuit at the DS books I am that you know he uses two terms remember those are our translations from Marathi so he uses two terms awareness and consciousness and that leads to confusion in those who are in vedanta he says consciousness after death consciousness will go away only the absolute remains but what he means by the absolute is what we don t calls Brahman or Atman or what I am calling pure consciousness here so don't get mixed up on the terms that which is the unseen seer unheard here if I may use the words the one which lights up the moon of my mind that Sun of consciousness that's my real nature and that's your real nature too thank you for that question I will let's just hear the question yes okay okay from there it says what is the question okay I get the I get the I get the drift of the question I get the drift of the question the awareness of consciousness Atma or Chaitanya whatever word you use is common to all of us rather we are that the difference is between us between say Vivekananda and the rest of us these are discussed how do some Yogi's have extraordinary power those differences are in the minds of those persons they have developed the potential of this subtle body called sukshma sharir our minds have tremendous potential we don't know it Vedanta hops and skips over those and go straight to the highest it takes you straight to the peak of Mount Everest and drops you there used you are on the top the highest realities you are searched on under that's finished but you have already skipped over many things the valleys which come before that so there are many things talked about in the Yoga Sutras or in the Tantra and they talk about extraordinary powers which can be gained which we learnt is not interested in advaitha vedanta it and wants to know what am I really that immortal reality by knowing which has be free of samsara but those powers are talked about in the Yoga Sutras in potential yoga Sutra third chapter you will find great discussion none of these powers you're talking about knowing the future knowing the contents of other people's minds things like that and then if you see that and it seems very easy like you oh I could do it too not so fast but but those did they say that the mind can be develop the subtle body can be developed to experience these powers I've seen a little bit of it in my own life I've seen some great masters so I cannot doubt that these things are possible all right let us bring it to a close it was very fruitful session and we have gone well over time Shawn hey Shawn hey Shawn he hurry he own that sat sri ramakrishna karna masta [Music]