Video 66

67. Mandukya Upanishad | Chapter 4 Karika 83-86

yes [Music] we are studying the mandukya karika and we are at the end of the last chapter that is the fourth chapter almost towards the end um we were doing the 82nd verse i think and what was going on was god father had taken up this this question about why is it that if we are existence consciousness bliss already we are the absolute already why is it that we do not see this why is it that we are suffering why is there samsara at all why are we in trouble if we are already the absolute and the answer was because of our immersion in duality see the problem is not that the world appears to us not that the body mind appears to us that is not the problem if you will note that even for enlightened people people who are who have realized their real nature even for them the world appears and the body appears and the mind appears and that's why we are able to see them as enlightened beings because they have a body and mind and they have it in quotes from their perspective no but from our perspective yes so for them it's not a problem the world is a world appearance is not a problem body-mind appearance is not a problem it is a problem when you take it to be the reality reflect back upon the example of the the dream which i told you about of being chased across the plains of africa by a lion now all of that is a problem only when i think it's real it felt real to me i am this person there is this terrible creature chasing me and here is a way of escape crack climber tree all of it seemed real the body seemed real and not only that i felt i am it and the danger i was threatened by that creature and there was a course of action i could take there is a way out of this problem all of it falls but the samsara was there because i took that to be the reality now after waking up when i look back upon it i remember it in all detail it was a very vivid dream i remember it in all detail but it's no longer threatening to me in fact it's it's nice it's like an aesthetic experience so what for us is real samsara the same thing appears for the enlightened person but for that enlightened person it's aesthetic experience it's like leela that the word leela what is samsara for us is lila for for an enlightened being the difference is they know the reality there and they have awakened to the reality in that samsara appearance which is the absolute we are seeing the samsara without appreciating the absolute which is right there turya which is right there and that's why we are in trouble so this experience of duality as reality i'll repeat that our experience of duality dweta as reality that is at the root cause of samsara and why do we do that we do that because we do not know ourselves as ethereum if we knew ourselves as thorium that appearance of duality would not be a problem to us so that's what he was talking about and then he says that not only ordinary people like us but highly trained philosophers they also fall prey because of their in fact sophisticated dualistic philosophies so now 83rd verse is going to talk about that is going to talk about the various philosophers different schools dualistic schools of philosophy and how they fall into the trap of samsara because of their because of their philosophical conceptions dualistic philosophical conceptions that's the 83rd verse we use the on the computer version verse number 83 [Music] the translation is by asserting that the self exists does not exist exists and does not exist or again does not exist does not exist the non-discriminating man does certainly cover it up through ideas of changeability unchangeability both changeability and unchangeability and non-existent okay what does that mean in fact if you um if you actually translate the 83rd verse literally what it means literally it means is is not is and is not is not is not so what does it mean luckily we have shankaracharya who in his commentary explains what each of these philosophical positions is so there are four philosophical positions which are taken up they're all different kinds of philosophers who were prominent in ancient india and gorapada attacks all of them what are these positions one is those who self those who say that the self the atman it exists there is such a thing in what sense that something other than the body and mind here is the body and the mind and apart from it there is a separate reality called the self body mind atma these are the dualistic philosophers and specifically here he may he means the nyaya vaisheshika very ancient philosophers hindu philosophers as against them comes the next nasty does not exist now you have to be careful here does not exist what does it mean it's it's not that it denies it completely this second philosopher is saying that the first one the way the first one puts it that there is an atman apart from body and mind no it isn't like that there is no separate thing called the atman apart from body and mind um who is this so shankaracharya gives a clue it is the buddhist whom we have come across earlier the vignavadi buddhist who says that there is only a stream of consciousness and nothing else flickering consciousness flashes of consciousness in which the world is experienced external world body mind all of them appear in that flash of consciousness and that flash is for only for one instant arises disappears arises disappears so this is the second one more um i mean swami vivekananda for example has pointed out in fact in his practical vedanta lectures number four he talks about this debate he says along came the buddhist who challenged the dualistic hindus to say where is this atman you're talking about i see only body senses mind intellect and in that some awareness is there i admit there is consciousness but that's in that mind only and apart from this a separate thing substance dravya the nayakas they say there is a thing called the atman a separate substance reality where is this separate reality called atman and what uses this separate reality called atman prove it and so there ensued nearly a thousand years of debates between the buddhists and the hindus the hindus the dualistic hindu said that there is an immortal soul not the body not the mind an immortal soul is there unchangeless self and one variety of the changeless self would be a changeless immortal god so the existence of god and existence of soul ishwar and atma these two things were the dualistic hindus and in fact you will see all dualistic religions whether christians muslims jews zoroastrians jains all of them they say that there is such a thing there is an independent soul and the buddhists attacked this where is this independent soul we see the body which is a stream of changing stream of matter we see the mind which is a changing mental stream and the buddhists would say the viganavadhi buddhist would say even the body and external world cannot be proved because they are experienced only in the mind where is this external body and and let alone an external self also so all i am trying to say is this the second one say when it says does not exist it only means that he is attacking the first philosopher who says there exists separate atma the second philosopher comes and says no separate atma it is just flashes of consciousness you make a mistake just as a series you remember the fire brand which is whirled around and it looks like a circle or patterns emerge but there's only one point of fire similarly this series of flashes of consciousness and people think there's a continuous self an illusion of continuity set up and you or dualistic hindu you think that there is a separate self this is a second position separate permanent self is not there and centuries so many books were written so much debate went on between the dualistic hindus and various schools of buddhism on the existence of the atman on various issues but the central issue was existence of an atman existence of a self before we go on how does swami vivekananda resolve this issue if just touching upon since i raised it in the fourth lecture on practical vedanta he says both of them are right and both of them are wrong i mean it doesn't say it but this way but this is what he means what does he mean actually what does he what is the solution he proposes so swamiji proposes this solution that it is true when the buddhist says that there is no separate thing called a self you see when um when you say the rope is appearing as the snake it's not that there is a separate thing called the snake which comes and sits on a rope not that there are two things called a rope and snake the rope itself is mistaken as the snake so ah it's not that there is a snake and in that there is a separate rope as if the way the dualistic hindus were saying so swamiji kind of says but this is right there there is no separate reality a third thing thing important is thing a thing called the atman like you have a body you have a heart and liver and all of that and this one atman not like that it's not there um so where the dualistic hindu is totally wrong that that there is no atman no they are right there is the atman so there is the atman but it's not a separate reality uh apart from the body and mind the solution is in advaita vedanta which says it is the rope alone which is mistaken as the snake it is not that there is a snake in inside which there is a rope or there is a snake which has come and is sitting on the top of a road not at all the rope alone is the reality it is mistaken as the snake similarly the atman alone is the reality it appears as body mind and universe so when you look into the reality into the examine this uh universe body and mind you will find the atman which is uh what the advaitan says so that's the solution that's there in the practical vedantal lectures now coming back third philosopher comes the third philosopher is the jaina philosopher who says it both exists and does not exist what did the first philosopher say the hindu dualist it exists atman exists second one that separate atman eternal we are talking about that one does not exist who is who says that the vikyana buddhist for him there's only instance of consciousness third philosopher comes the jaina the jaina philosopher very ancient religion those are from india you know about jainism so it is actually at least as ancient mahavira was old as an older contemporary of the buddha himself so two thousand five hundred years back but if you look at the the genus who uh the you know he is only the twenty third of the titankaras so there are so many more if you take that it goes back to prehistoric times anyway at least 2500 years or even more old and there the chinas have a vast and sophisticated philosophy in fact vedanta or the hindu philosophies have been studied lot translation has been done they are being taught also buddhist philosophies have enjoyed a revival and lot of work has been done i have seen it in the universities here in the west beautiful books have been produced in english translated many many a lot of literature has come more than in the philosophy in fact but jaina philadelphia has been neglected so far there is a vast philosophical corpus of jain in jainism lot of it in sanskrit and in fact our professor uh jeffrey long who gave up a couple of talks at the dance society all of all of you from vidan society know him elizabethtown college he is an expert on jainism i think one talk he gave about jainism and vedanta here so jainism very sophisticated and here one one particular aspect is highlighted here the jaina philosopher comes and says wait a minute there's no need to fight it exists just like you hindus say and just like you would this say it does not exist how is that possible so here is something interesting the central teaching of jainism is non-violence it's very very important and that pervades every aspect of jaina thought philosophy ritual practice religion so non-violence so even the philosophy is non-violent so what is the non-violent philosophy you must not attack other philosophers so the approach should not be to attack and destroy other philosophers like they are doing the buddhists and hindus or like god of others doing being extra clever making them fight against each other no vagina says each philosopher is right from their own perspective they have got an angle of the truth the reason they say this is in jainism one of the central doctrines is the reality has infinite aspects as infinite properties so from different aspects perspectives the truth will look different some of you may think this is similar to sri ramakrishna's as many paths as many views so many paths all religions are true similar and yet dissimilar we'll come to that later if anybody wants to know but first of all so what does this mean for jaina philosophy they developed about 22 or 23 centuries ago they developed what is today called multi-value logic multi-value logic is the logic is generally true or false so you have two values only either a statement is true or it is false true or false this two valued logic was known in india in in hindu logic in in buddhist logic in greek logic aristotle and logic so two valued logic it's only in the 20th century that we have started developing multi-valued logics and they are useful in various fields so not just true and false multi other values are also possible what we are just beginning to think about in 20th century jaina logicians not one many of them first they thought the earliest we can find in general logic 7 valued logic they developed some twenty two hundred years ago and not just one after that many logicians they developed this system it is called sapta bhanginaya i was wondering if dr long is here yet no okay uh so s because he's the expert i was thinking if he's here he could have said something about it is what is it like how can there be seven values a statement is either true or false what else is possible so it's like this um there is uh so seven seven values would be ste in some way it exists second value is nasty in some perspective or some way it does not exist what the for example the self you take anything like self guard after life so in some perspective it does not exist then third one sayatas teaches teacher in some perspective it exists and in some perspective it does not exist together that's the third value fourth value is so it is ah it it cannot be expressed object of so it cannot be expressed as the fourth value and the fifth one is um that it it in some perspective it exists and in some perspective it cannot be expressed and the sixth value is seat nasty seat objective so it in some perspective it does not exist and in some way it cannot be expressed and the last seventh one seventh value would be that in some perspective it exists in some perspective it does not exist and in some perspective it cannot be expressed so seven values uh it's actually a fascinating thing and recently it has attracted attention of computer scientists are philosophers also and they are trying to put it in symbolic logic in mathematical logic these seven values and trying to understand it so when they are faced with a situation where hindus say that there is a self atma and the buddhists say there is no self the jaina will come in and say in some way there is a self in some way there is no self so both of you should be happy usually none of them will be happy in any way now so is it um so like like srirama krishna's all paths are true somewhat like that and somewhat not like that somewhat not somewhat not like that because um because um srama krishna says all religions have that are true and you can attain realization through all paths but the jaina philosopher would not say that says all religions are true in some aspect they are not true in other aspects but the ultimate reality can be attained through jainism alone because jainism alone sees this the the infinite attributes or truths in all all in all things okay who else is there the fourth the fourth one is again we have met this is the shunyavadi who says nasty nasty not there not there not there like the hindus say that there is some reality called the self separate from body and mind not even like the other buddhists say that not apart from body and mind and there is this consciousness flashes not even that so in no respect does a self exist in no respect and china is automatically refuted because neither exists is true nor does not exist is true so in all respects there is no self nasty nasty means does not exist does not exist the first option second option did do not exist who says this the buddhist nihilist and so that's it now you will see the verse second line it says they have different they have different um characterizations challas means changing dynamic according to the hindu philosopher janiya by sheishika the athman is also the self is also the experiencer and the agent the doer of deeds and the experiencer of the results of the deeds enjoyer and sufferer kathy you might ask how is this different from what we are studying very different because um um the tyria is neither the doer nor the sufferer it's the witness it's what makes the whole drama possible it's like the screen of the movie so but then ashish says no no the self is the doer and the experiencer of the results of karma um and it is the one which transmigrates from body to body from lifetime to lifetime and there are many cells there are many cells according to nia shishika then satira according to the the viganavadhi buddhist it is still still means in what sense if it's a flash of consciousness then it does not come and go anywhere it just arises illumines and disappears so the each instant is there that is static but of course there's a changing stream of consciousness that's there so stera means that one flash of consciousness um which which is there for one moment only so there's no possibility of change in it i think it's a bit of a convoluted way of trying to explain the words terror there but what can you do that's that's the word god of other uses then the third one ubhayah both moving and non-moving so that's the jaina again according to the jainas this the self the atman it changes it its innate powers express it becomes more and more perfect as it goes through spiritual evolution they talk about i think 15 stages of spiritual evolution and so and so forth actually changes and then finally it reaches what is called kevala gyana that means the um the the solitary omniscience let us say becomes perfect and all knowing and then it does not change anymore so from the chinese perspective perspective in some way the as long as it is imperfect the self keeps changing and evolving spiritually and when it becomes perfect it does not change anymore so both are there change and non change and according to the sunni body very simple nothing is there above absence so these are all the four possibilities of these philosophers and by these conceptions according to godhapu these are misconceptions so by these conceptions of misconceptions they are they cover up they hide the lord that is consciousness the true nature the atman or thuriya is hidden by these misconceived philosophies who does this baalisha these fools shankaracharya comments here that if highly trained philosophers this is the their condition what to speak of others everybody else we are all of course we have no idea about the real nature of the self those who are investigating the nature of the self they have got multiple theories none of them ultimately correct so these become obstructions in their path of seeing the reality remember when i when i read this i get the vision of many many buddhist llamas and jaina monks and nyaya visheshika pandits all protesting and getting looking very annoyed and saying go about that's too too cheap because you're moving too fast these are not cogent arguments you're giving but gaudapada is not actually refuting them he is saying that these are all conceptions these are all theories these are all philosophies none of them actually reveal the truth of the theory remember what's the context here why are we caught up in samsara so ordinary people everybody we have the strong belief that what we are seeing is a separate reality and therefore we are caught up in samsara dwight duality belief in the reality of duality and these philosophers of different schools they are also caught up even though they are they investigate even they think about it and they come up with these theories they are also caught up in it ah because these are just um conceptual structures you might say so isn't advaith also conceptual structure we will see later what it is at this point before i go on to the next one um yes is there anybody who's asking a question oh thanks to peter phil uh he as uh guard upon the here has assumed the position of the sunday vadi yeah you reminded me i would have been wrong to miss this see anybody who has read madhyamaka the sunnyvale of nagarjuna would immediately would say hey gaurav is entirely borrowing nagarjuna system here because what is nagarjuna system nagarjuna system he says his method is called chatushkoti the tetra lemma the chatushkoti is um that suppose you ask what is shunya what is the void what are you what are you trying to say is it something that exists he will say no it is not something that exists second so it does not exist shunya means nothing just like godhapath is thinking that sunday means nothing nagarjuna says actually no it is not that it does not exist third one asti chanas teacher so it exists and does not exist something like the jaina nagarjuna says no and the last one which is where god apart actually changes the dialectic this is not the way nagarjuna uses it the last one is neither rasty nor nasty it is not that it exists and it is not that it does not exist so this is nagarjuna's approach then what is shunya chatushkoti vinir mukhtam tatwam the principle or the truth which is beyond these four alternatives so this whole language of chatushkoti and the way it is phrased it is almost literally nagarjuna who lived about five hundred six hundred years before gowdapada as far as we know but why did i say i'll come to peter just next to see that if this is what he meant but why did i say almost because when you come to the last the fourth you know of the tetra lemon it's called the tetralemma the fourth alternative nagarajuna it is not that it exists not that it does not exist and that god has changed into nasty nasty uh which denies the first two alternatives so this is that is that is the modification of the nagarjuna's tetra lemma uh peter are you there peter peter phil did is this what you meant did you recognize the tetra lemma yeah yeah no i mean i was going to say something longer but i kind of did send before i mentioned yeah i mean the irony is that gal nevada is essentially stepping in the shoes of the originator of the very dialectic to refute the originator of the dialectic by misrepresenting its its position yes i agree um the dialectic is very clearly borrowed from nagarjuna so this is one two points here this is one reason why uh scholars keep on saying that godupath must have been a buddhist but he's not a buddhist because of multiple many many reasons he's not a buddhist but definitely is working in a buddhist milieu because the terminology is buddhist the logic is buddhist and probably the opponents of his interlocutors are buddhist so this is one point the second point i also agreed when he says that the fourth opponent and he probably means the sunnivadi nagarjuna's people which professor patel in harvard calls the emptiness people so he probably means them and shankaracharya interprets it like that that he means these people if that is so then it's an unfair way of uh looking at the shunyavadi and this is something that's common throughout the advaitha tradition i found only a couple of times that a prominent advertising ancient advaitin has actually taken nagarjuna to mean what nagarjuna claims to me see the unfair enough unfairness of it lies here the ancient advaitans gordapada and everybody else and shankara also they say that sunivada means nothing exists they're claiming that they're nihilists there is no reality they're called asadvati the uh the nature of the self and everything else is ultimately nothing but nagarjuna himself himself explicitly denied that and in fact the tetra lemma the second alternative denies this very thing and nagarjuna in one of the karikas has clearly said now i am assadva that we are not nihilists yeah so i agree with you there the one or two advaitans shri harsha who wrote the kandana khandakari at the very beginning he says we have no quarrel with the the madhyamakas the sunni wadeens shankara himself we will see at the very end of this gowdapada karika um gordapatha says these things have not been taught by the buddha what i've just told you now the question arises that if that's so then why did you mention it you don't mention others you're just saying that this was not said by the buddha and shankar and his explanation days he says i think he uses the term the defect in buddhism is very small and i heard about some of the last great buddhist philosophers that nalanda when they mention vedanta if i'm not wrong they use the same term that alpha brother there's only a small defect in vedanta otherwise it's the one which comes closest to us so yes yes thank you for raising that i thought i would say it this is an important point the similarity to nagarjuna right here um shashank anybody else is asking questions yes i have been to several buddhist temples and my question is what is the difference between us worshipping sri ramakrishna's god and buddhist worshipping buddha as god because they worship in my i thought that they were essentially worshiping the buddha is god there first of all they wouldn't agree they wouldn't say that we have god a definition of god or ishvara would be the creator preserver and destroyer of this universe so the buddha is not as not such and they would have different views of the buddha so the theravadin buddhists would say that we don't worship the buddha the buddha is gone he was an enlightened being and he taught us this and we have to all become enlightened we don't become buddhas but we become arhats whereas somebody like the mahayanist in china or the tibetan buddhists who have a very developed what is now called buddha logi there's a term buddhalogy but in nowhere would have it considered god for for them god does not exist ishwara the way we understand it but as far as practice goes in practical terms what you see and the mental attitude they have same ritual same chanting same puja same devotion maybe more yes same prayers that my prayers should be fulfilled not just monks and llamas but also common people i would have visited chinese buddhist temples where they are not coming for philosophy or enlightenment or nirvana just let illness be cured let the business succeed let my children be happy and they light incense and give offering just like you would do for god yeah that that way you're practically you're right swami vivekananda says this very well in each religion the whole the central principle is to catch hold of something which transcends samsara it could be god it could be a perfected being like the buddha for example or the the gena in jainism or in advaita vedanta yourself your real nature that would be the point of it all so but the principle is the same something that transcends samsara yeah and it will become very god-like though they may object to the term god just excuse me a minute let me shut off the fan yes uh who else is there yes um you know uh in the past a couple of times you you have recounted the story of the king i think it was janaka who awakens from a dream and wants to know you know what state is real is the dream real or is the waking state real and so along that those lines my my question is this how can i tell at this very moment whether i'm dreaming or whether i'm awake am i dreaming that i'm in the zoom session with you and everybody or or am i awake you can't you cannot that was precisely godda father's um um insight which he uses to the hilt in the second chapter by that you see what he does in the second chapter is he reduces our waking state experience in status to our dream state experience the clear difference we make between dreaming and waking in our understanding he makes it fuzzy it does his best to erase the differences between them because he operates on the principle that there is no way you can differentiate and every objection that you have that no the waking is waking and dream is dream because of this each objection he takes up in fact nikhilananderjee in his collection of the upanishads he has an appendix where he takes up 10 objections this very question how do i know that i am not dreaming right now so that some 10 objections he takes up and he shows how gorda pada has shown that none of them stand at the end of it you will be left feeling very shaken in fact that's what janaka was saying how do i know this is true and what was ashtavakra's answer it is not true neither this is true yeah neither this only you are true only thing that it shows is undeniably consciousness is true otherwise you wouldn't be seeing it therefore advaita says do not give too much importance to the contents of your consciousness give importance to consciousness itself what happens to us is we become engrossed in the movie and the screen is forgotten we are looking at what is appearing on the screen good and bad pleasant and funny and tragic and we weave a samsara around it and we are caught but the screen is there without it no movie would be there similarly you are the screen here in which the movie of your life of the universe is playing out we are so engrossed with we are so engrossed with the world with our personal story that we forget that the world and our personal story appears and is possible only because of consciousness thank you bill is saying if you can fly you are dreaming two things you uh in dreams when you fly if you do fly it does not seem uh you wouldn't even raise the question that it's weird that i'm flying if you did you'd probably wake up come out of the dream and in waking two we fly all the time in aeroplanes and in gliders and whatnot and parachutes and so on so forth keeps on evolving till it becomes perfect yes so in recent times i don't think so i am no expert on aurobindo so he definitely talks about evolution spiritual evolution yeah but he is very vedantic in that but vedantic but he differs from shankara in many respects and he makes it clear that it is different from shankar in many respects but i am no expert in aurobindo ayan maharaj is an expert on arabindo and there are a number of others our professor randam chakravarti is an expert in our window yes shall we proceed shashank yes there's one more question yes this thing about things both existing and not existing would it be fair to draw a comparison with physics where you know a photon can be a particle or wave or other examples where you have at a certain fundamental level there's only four forces and then a slightly more manifest level you have force and matter fields and then a slightly more manifest level there's this thing called sequential spontaneous symmetry breaking where creation sort of emerges sequentially and becomes more and more concrete and at a certain level there are no atoms or molecules another level there are and um and so in that sense they both exist and don't exist i think giants would just love that i didn't i don't think they knew about all of these but the more you talk about it describe it in this way the giants would just love it i just want to add that sam harris no friend of religion he he said in one talk that there is one real religion of peace and that is jainism and then you're saying you're joking you're saying that the more fanatic they become the less you have to worry about them because they'll become more and more nonviolent uh so yeah so that's jainism all right let's move on to the next verse so if this is a problem it's confusion created by different philosophies so what do we do and isn't advaita itself adding to the confusion one more philosophy added to the mix um one second let me move on to the 82nd 84th verse [Music] cortisone these are four alternative theories through a passion for which the lord remains ever hidden he who sees the lord as untouched by these is omniscient okay let's parse this first of all four alternative theories but if you look at gaurapada's original term koti chatastra four alternatives this is actually literally nagarjunian language it's not for alternative theories but the four logical alternatives this is the called the tetralemma again very nagarjunian so the four ah alternatives by accepting one or the other of these these philosophers these wise within quote quotes with rise people they remain immersed in philosophical controversy and debate and the lord is covered over by this bhagavan abhir is sada avrita the lord means turya your real nature turya is hidden by this kind of thinking it doesn't allow you when you have a preconceived idea that i'm looking for something called the atman beyond body and mind you don't see what's right here if you think it's not there at all then you won't look you will miss it again again and again um so in this way um three problems with this kind of philosophizing one is that uh it leads to endless controversy which is not a very spiritual state of things um endless debating as i said over a thousand years now i am glad that happened at one level because that led to an enormous enrichment of indian philosophy so different groups debating each other and they had to sharpen their dialectical tools the philosophy of language developed epistemology developed and of course metaphysics developed greatly in order to prove their own positions and they refine their own positions when you are attacked again and again by opponents from very very different perspectives you have to refine your position and that's how you see um so for example what they do is in indian philosophy something like the atman or consciousness they will say you have to define it first you name it um then you define it uddesha lakshana pariksha this is the sequence of philosophizing ancient philosophies uddesha means you list the principles you're going to talk about maybe the sankian wants to talk about purusa and prakriti and the five tatwas and you know mahat things like that that's that's the list of things you're going to talk about next define each of them lakshana means define them each term must be defined there must be no vagueness at all and once you have defined pariksha's examination each of those definitions will be subjected to scrutiny by your opponents and they'll try to show it doesn't work and as your definitions come under attack you're allowed to refine them so each definition becomes more and more sophisticated for example um consciousness what is the self-luminous nature of consciousness literally it's called subprakasha self-revealing consciousness reveals itself and everything else how would you define it so one of the classic texts of advaita vedanta is found is written by an author called chitsukacharya in his book tatwa pradeepika one of the toughest texts of advaita vedanta very advanced scholars study it in that there is a section 11 definitions of consciousness more precisely subprakasha self-luminosity 11 definitions of self-luminosity 10 of them are rejected in favor of the last 11th one so each of them is you start with a simple definition and see why it does not work and then get a more sophisticated definition that way so anyway um but as you can see this kind of thing might not be immediately relevant to your project of nirvana or moksha or going beyond suffering it can only increase your suffering probably so that's one problem shankaracharya points it out it's a hot house of controversy he says uh this is one problem with this kind of philosophizing second is these are all veva harika part of the transactional truth these are all thoughts in your mind so whatever you think about it whether it's an ayah or a sankhya or a buddhist or a madhyamaka these are all conceptions in your mind in contrast to which what we are talking about so isn't that a conception in your mind no you might even think about it but it's all pointing back to the one consciousness which is revealing these consciousnesses and these concepts all these concepts in your mind are revealed by that one consciousness that consciousness we are talking about we are not talking about a particular theory so here some advaita teachers i know they would go so far as to say so here gorda pada is saying advaita is not a philosophy advaita vedanta is not a philosophy i would not go so far first of all it is obviously a philosophy if you go to philosophy department they teach it so it's a philosophy in that way in a very common sense way it's a philosophy if you take up an indian philosophy textbook there will be a chapter more than one chapter in advaita so it's a philosophy when you ask for the classification of indian philosophies they'll talk about six systems of philosophy one of which is vedanta so it is a philosophy so it's being too clever by have to say that it's not a philosophy it is a philosophy but i agree it is more than philosophy more than philosophy not in the sense of being religion that's the other end of the spectrum see indian philosophy has a problem it's charged with being not philosophy it's religion it's theology i remember talking to a group of brilliant indian people one especially many years ago and i was saying that see isn't it a characteristic of indian philosophy that it leads to enlightenment darshana darshana means to see the truth that it is the term which is used is so terriological it is self-transformative and manifestation of the potential and this indian philosopher said swami just don't go there we have spent a long time trying to convince philosophers in the western universities that indian philosophy is also philosophy there's a lot of merit in indian philosophy as philosophy not just theology that part is there but that's you can dump all of that and still have a lot of very interesting philosophy now if you bring enlightenment and guard realization back into it it will just throw water on our projector he's saying that bimal krishnamathilal especially worked very hard and many others he mentioned dalai krishnan and others of the earlier generation so yeah now my point is it is more than philosophy but not in the sense of religion it is more than philosophy in the sense that it is using philosophy to point to something which is beyond philosophical conceptualization it is using the intellect philosophizing to point towards something which is beyond conception how is it different from other philosophies so nyaya for example or sankhya it claims to be an accurate map of reality so when they say there's a body and a mind and a soul or atman they mean it they claim they seriously believe it and they want to prove that is true but as you have noticed with with gowdapada almost nothing he says is meant to be an ultimate ultimately he's not going to hold on to that he jettisons all of them they all serve a purpose to refine our attention draw our attention to something he says is obvious it's just that we don't see it we don't see it because of our polluted desiring grasping mind and the philosophers don't see it because of their conceptualizing mind who come across these four alternatives and things like that so these all have to be dissolved for that god upon the uses philosophy for example fighting letting the philosophers fight against each other and cut down each of the systems with the hope that that which the manduk upanishad reveals is so self-evident that once you let go of these conceptual conceptualization it will be clear that one consciousness which illumines the nayaka's idea of the atman the sanctions ideas of the idea of the purusa to or the began about this idea of a stream of consciousness all of these are illumined by that one thuria according to uh gordapada and for him it's not a it's not a not a philosophical construct uh he he wants us to let go of all philosophical constructs ultimately it's like a scaffolding which has to be let go of the nayaka or the sankhyan will not say that will not say that you have to let go of this scaffolding that is the map of reality according to them this is a little a lot similar to a very new and um new way of looking at philosophy in the west so someone like wittgenstein for example thinks of philosophy as therapy philosophical problems are due to language or due to confusions and the job of the philosopher is to dissolve the question not to solve it not to solve the problem but to dissolve it to see to show he says to show the fly uh out of the way out of the bottle so the bottle is there and there's one neck and it's open but it has to be shown how to come out of it so we are trapped in our concepts and the the best thing that a philosopher can do is to show that that problem is is an illusion created by our concepts something like that i wouldn't say that that wittgenstein and gordapath are saying the same thing not at all by long run but yeah so what does he say in the 84th verse the lord that means turia consciousness prishta it is completely untouched by all these philosophies what do you mean untouched by these philosophies because they are all virtis they are all conceptualizations in the mind whichever philosophy you take up they are all revealed by the same theory and that is the theory we are pointing towards that sage that enlightened one who sees this this truth says that one becomes omniscient that one becomes omniscient in the sense that one knows the reality the turia whereas the others are all caught in their philosophical conceptualizations okay uh at this point anybody yes welcome uh welcome dr long is uh jeffrey there yes good evening good evening namaste we i just took advantage of your absence to smuggle in lots of i'm sure very superficial stuff about uh jainism and giant philosophy um i was just saying that the giant has developed us multi-valued logic which we just began to talk about in the 20th century i think with uh yeah with polish mathematicians lukasevic and others but i think more than 2000 years ago the joiners were talking about multi-valued logics that's right that's right it started about 2 000 years ago and then they really took off with it about 1500 years ago and it's a collection of three distinct doctrines that are sort of logically interrelated yes which is the doctrine that things are multifaceted yes and then uh which is the the doctrine of perspectives that the truth of one's the validity of one's perception and the truth of one's claims uh is dependent upon the perspective from which they're made uh and then sort of the most kind of distinctive aspect that's really the multi-valued logic where depending upon the perspective from which your claim is made it can be true it can be false it can be both true and false it can be neither true nor false and then there are three non-redundant combinations of those four making for seven possible truth values i was talking about that objective or objective i think uh what cannot be yeah yes yes and uh they were um they got in trouble with both uh vedantans and the buddhists because uh uh they were trying to bring together things which according to vedanta and advaith and buddhism are contradictory yes but they were saying that's the nature of our experience and trying to work from that sort of metaphysical realist perspective right thank you we were just discussing that anybody want to come in here shashank has anybody got a question or a comment yes so there are actually three questions on the channel let me take a look one one is from yeah youtube video at harvard university presentation you mentioned your himalayan experience and said you'd later say more about that in another video i'd like to hear more about this um yes one thing related to this is it's not relevant directly right now but some people have been asking me to give um like a presentation on what happened at harvard what did you do and what was your experience and share the experience and what better than having a captive audience to show your vacation slides to you know that's the cliched way of boring people so i've decided to do that i'll i'll announce the date um once we finish the mandukya we will have something about not about the himalayan experience but about the harvard experience then then there's one more from yes shabany bit confused why ajata was associated with deep sleep paradigm deep sleep want to differentiate it doesn't the creation exist in seed form and potentially give birth against right so only one aspect it's an example so the waking world is taken as an example or a paradigm for srishti rishti and the dream experience is taken as a paradigm for drishti shrishti and the deep sleep as a paradigm for ajata in deep sleep notice that there is no experienced duality so subject object seems to be merged we talk about coming out of deep sleep and reflecting back upon it and saying that i was in peace and i enjoyed happiness but that's only after coming out when you are in there you do not even have the experience i am sleeping or i am experiencing deep sleep if you do then you are not in deep sleep so uh so that's that paradigm for ajaya wada there is no separate world which is experienced there remember in the wake in the waking world the entire world is experienced and in sriti you would realize that this is all a projection of maya from ishvara and all of that in sri district and in rishikesh it will be like the dreams where all of this is an appearance in the consciousness which you are like a dream is an appearance in the dreamer's mind and in ajayatavada it's just brahman there is no world at all what are you talking about when you talk about the world so in that way what is the defect which both claim the others have um where is this abhijit would you want to come in at this point abhijit yes [Music] he was just uh i had the question was about uh sunnyvales and the dwarvens they were saying that at the end is that there's only little bit of uh the buddhists are only little bit wrong yeah you said that even they said that the only a little bit wrong we'll come to that verse later on where uh god father says this is not this was not taught by the buddha it's the very end of the fourth chapter of manduka karika and why would you say that if there is uh i would suddenly say it wasn't said by xyz unless you are riffing of xyz for your or your is there some plagiarism going on or something like that so shankaracharya takes it seriously enough to comment and he says there's actually very little difference between what god is saying and some of the buddhists so the difference is very small and the buddhists also say that about advaita ved some buddhists it's very interesting that i came across a very one of the earliest mentions of buddhism um in an early text of one of nagarjuna's followers who figures very prominently as a villain in later tibetan buddhist philosophy as the source of the swatantrika heresy sort of let's say but i didn't know that he had written about vedanta and this is long before gowdapada so i came across a research monograph in the weidner library in at harvard where bhava vivekar is also known as bhave veka uh he comments on one chapter on sankhya refuting sankhya from from a sunni body perspective on democrat perspective and one chapter on vedanta refuting vedanta now when i read the vedanta chapter eagerness i found he refused vedanta as being a completely incoherent philosophy and vedanta at that time was apparently a minor player the big players were nyaya and mimamsa and sankhya among the hindus if you read that account of vedanta which he refutes bhava veka if you took vedanta just as some of the upanishads purusha suktam e quotes from purusha-suktam mahana and upanishad and that's it all of this is brahman but without maya without vivar tawada without the you know all of adihasa without shankaras bhashyam if you leave those out and try to say what the upanishad says like a spider projected its webs in the same way brahman has projected the universe now it's very easy to cut it down logically how can that unchanging brahman be this changing universe so in this way he dismisses it 700 years down the line shantarakshita kamala sheila in the the nalanda school the last of the maybe the last of the great buddhist philosophers they say there is very little difference between vedanta advaita vedante by that time the advaita vedanta they are dealing with has got the theory of maya has got a whole wide range of epistemology logic it has got vivarta the apparent transformation theory it has got the multiple most importantly multiple layers of truth the paramatic viva harika and about all of them not all but almost all of them were imports from the buddhists themselves and now 700 years later when the buddhist philosophers are looking back at advaita vedanta they're saying that almost like us so this is the transformation 700 years yeah i mean literally if you want to an oversimplified way of putting them together if the buddhists agree that the consciousness which they're talking about are not flashes of consciousness but just consciousness we have no problem and the buddhist would say you are saying that consciousness is the only reality just admit it that the consciousness is a stream of flashes um every moment arising and disappearing then you are the same as what we are saying but that that's where it gets stuck we want it that there's there's no change godupath is absolutely clear about that and the buddhists say that that which does not change is not real actually there's a whole bit of logic behind that anyway so this is what's going going on and there's one from peter dawkins about ajaya yes let me just see ajata was exclusive to advaita vedanta um yeah prime minister is very vedantic actually so that as a term is applied to gora pada's way of presenting advaita vedanta but i guess you can come across similar thinking in some greek philosophers um the neoplatonists for example there is a book thomas mccabley i think about greek philosophy and indian thought where he takes up this issue not the jata particularly but the vedanta and the similarities with some greek philosophers and that's all i'll say at this moment all right moving on eighty-five prabhu sarva gyatam kritsnam [Music] does one make any effort after having attained omniscience in its fullness and having reached the non-dual state of brahmanud which has no beginning middle and end so it's a beautiful verse this verse and the next one gorupada is telling us so what happens when you overcome our natural dualistic tendencies to see the world as real the presented world is real and then get involved in samsara or the philosopher's tendencies to set up multiple systems of philosophy and then obscure the reality of the theory what happens if you can overcome all of these and become enlightened and then what is the result what you get after enlightenment so what do you get prabhupa-sarva-gyatam you get complete omniscience now what does this omniscience mean in advaita vedanta there's an important point normally when you talk about omniscience in religion it means god so god knows everything everything in the sense of an encyclopedia let's say everything god has got everything stored up in his servers and all data is there um he has hacked into every network and everything so god knows everything but this is not the omniscience that god is talking about gorapada when he says or advaita vedanta also when he says the enlightened person the jeevan mukhtar is sarvagya all knowing the way it is to be understood is server and gear server means all so it is the turiya which is the all when the enlightened one realizes i am the turya the enlightened one knows that the entirety of the universe is not different from himself as the turya sarva means here all all in the sense of the waking universe jagrat prapancha the dream universe the the swapna pra pancha and the deep sleep the potential universe in the deep sleep the karana prapancha of uh sushupti this is all and all of these is an appearance in the tudya it's not different from the theory when you when the wave knows itself as water it knows that i as water am all the waves indeed i am the entire ocean so in that sense the enlightened one says i am the all as brahman as today means consciousness as consciousness i am the all so i am pure consciousness which is the reality of all of this now it is not the omniscience of of an encyclopedia or of the internet not in that sense not omniscience knowing everything in detail so the enlightened person if you say he become own mission so does that enlightened person know all the languages of the world you know english and french and german and swahili and french and japanese and chinese no that person would have to learn by just like everybody else if that person wants to know language and art and science and all of that maybe that person because of being a sadaqa might have extraordinary powers of concentration like yogis do like say swami vivekantha does and they might learn much better than us might retain much more but still it's not by virtue of being enlightened that you become you'd still have to work through it i was reading somewhere that elon musk as a kid he read the encyclopedia britannica twice so that was an extraordinary there right there but that's the other kind of omniscience knowing things in detail now i must say here so this is what this is the vedantic position advaita position but i can see jeffrey looking carefully at her but if you go to the jaina idea of kevala gyana or the buddhistic idea of the omniscience of the buddha the perfected one they would say both you know the reality whatever is the reality in your system the enlightened one knows that but somebody at the level of the gina or the buddha would also be omniscient in the other sense knowing everything in detail knowing everything encyclopedia would that be right jeffrey you have to unmute yourself yeah yeah okay very good uh yes in fact uh i know particularly in the giant case uh there's a strong insistence on literal omniscience for the enlightened being and some of the other indian schools of philosophy would ridicule this by posing the rhetorical question who needs to know how many mosquitoes there are in the world yes but mahavira knows that according to uh i i wasn't aware that that claim was there in buddhism as well my understanding was always that from a buddhist point of view to be sabring was to know what other beings need to be taught in order to become awakened and they have that perfect skill but there may be more as well but that's what i had heard right i was i came across this as a debate in tibetan buddhism in professor garfield's jay garfield's class on india tibetan madhyamaka so where they have the debate about the way the buddha's awareness is presented it seems that the buddha knows everything that's going on in all the worlds and one of those things is of course the perfect skill of the bodhisattva in liberating other beings but in detail the buddha knows everything is going on in all the worlds and in some descriptions it's the buddha who knows absolutely nothing because the worlds are false that kind of knowing is a false knowledge and the buddha is free of that so they had a term for that uh professor garfield was saying we call it uh brainstem buddha yeah you've been reduced to a comatose state and only the vegetative state so is becoming a buddha like being reduced to your brain stem uh hopefully not that debate goes on it's an interesting solution i think a very reasonable solution which govern advaita vedanta offers what you become enlightened about is you know you are turya and turiya is the reality of all things and you know that reality now the variations of that reality created by maya are infinite and you don't know them but whatever they are they are you know that it is the turia that it is brahmana so um to put it very simply knowing everything in advaita vedanta means you know that everything is brahman not just by reading it you actually feel it you know that for example my dream about i shared with you a couple of classes ago about being in africa and being chased by animals and all of that now i know though i don't know how many kinds of animals were there what kind of plants were there what the weather situation was what the temperature was but i know all of that was my mind and i know that for a fact because it was a dream in the same way the enlightened one knows everything that you can anybody has ever experienced or can possibly experience in this universe is nothing other than consciousness which you are enlightened being is okay moving on yes what is the next thing that you get sarva-gyata knowing everything in this particular sense brahmanyam the true state of brahminhood so the shankaracharya quotes here who is a true brahmin it's not the one who has a sacred threat or which belongs to a brahmin family is one of the upper castes in india in a hindu society no it is the one who realizes i am brahman one who becomes enlightened so the upanishads say that the one who before dying realizes i am brahman who gets enlightenment before death that one is a true brahmin and the others so called brahmins who may have the sacred thread and be initiated into brahminhood they are just the pseudobrahmins let's say the real brahman is the enlightened one so this is the you get the fulfillment of brahman whoever you are you are now fit to be called a real brahman what else do you get padam advayam you become non-dual everything there's nothing in this universe which is apart from you and that's qualified by the next verse which is not touched by beginning adi madhya means middle antha means end basically you become free of all limitations what is beginning middle and end it's only an existence in time that you have a beginning in time there was a time when this body was not there and then was born and godhapath has exhausted the last so many verses showing that there is no birth of the self of consciousness so there is no birth there's no middle existence as you know as a as a child or a young person or a middle-aged person or an aging person that's the body no there's no middle existence like that and there is no end also in time like death or even a cosmic dissolution none of them uh pertain to you because you transcend time time appears in consciousness consciousness is not in time time is in consciousness according to godhapada so um so so you are non-dual you are not limited by time therefore you are eternal in that sense then you are not limited by space that means you are not located in space space appears in you if i ask you the planes of africa which i saw in my dreams so was i actually in the plains of africa as i experienced it or would it be more true to say that plains of africa which you experienced was in you in your mind it would be absolutely true to say it was the whole thing was in my mind so you are not located in space space is located in you in a very real sense and then last is all objects every being in this universe just like the the uh lion and the body i saw myself in in the dream and the tree and the sky and the plains of africa and none of them were a second reality apart from the mind of the dreaming server priyanka they were not a second reality the only non-dual reality was the dreamer server prior under there similarly the only reality here is the consciousness which you are which appears as endless types of beings and creatures and events and activities places and objects stars and planets and protons and nutrients okay that is adwayam so this is what you gain that limitlessness non-duality and the last one is you gain kimataparam having realized your infinitude what else remains you attain purnathwam completion fulfillment there's nothing remaining for you to gain or attain in this world somebody said that's a very boring state no you are fulfilled now whatever you do in this world and believe me you will be probably be more active than anybody else of course there is no rule an enlightened person might be very dynamic and active or may not maybe completely withdrawn like ramana maharshi or somebody sitting in a cave but that enlightened being has nothing more to attain for himself or herself knowing oneself to be the limitless consciousness what else is there to attain the punch of the she says having done what is to be done krita kriti having known what is to be known having known what is to be known having gained what is to be gained imagine the joy and fulfillment of this one this enlightened one so the absolute rest and the serenity and the fulfillment of this one even if you are engaged in tremendous action for the welfare of others or completely unconcerned in every case you are infinite and fulfilled so this is a beautiful verse which shows you what do you gain out of all of this um just one more verse 86 and i'll go back to the questions and we'll wrap it up this continues the theme 86 continues the theme of what you get a very beautiful verse this is the modest modesty of the brahmanas this is called the natural tranquility and this is their natural self-restraint resulting from spontaneous poise having known thus one gets established in tranquility vipra means usually a brahmana but it means a wise person here the one who has realized so all the qualities which you would associate with jivan mukta or an enlightened being all of them come naturally to you before this when your spiritual seekers you're struggling to get these why are you struggling to get this to be a good person to be yogi to meditate well we know that we have to be moral and ethical struggling to be saints so make believe saints but and that's natural the spiritual struggle is absolutely necessary and that's hard work but that comes all of that comes and at the highest degree of excellence effortlessly to an enlightened being shankaracharya says in the gita bhashya when arjuna asks krishna what is the characteristic of an enlightened being sitha pragasya kabhasha in the second chapter of the bhagavad-gita shankaracharya comments there kritartha yani lakshmanani sadhakas those which are the characteristics of a of a perfected one those are spiritual practices for the rest of us for for the spiritual seekers because you can attain that by practicing these things so there are characteristics of the enlightened one what we see on the path to enlightenment tell the truth be self-controlled be loving control anger and lust and greed all of these which are struggle for everybody else is naturally found in this this enlightened one vipranam vinaya over here this is their excellence means humility one thing you see among spiritually advanced people i don't know if they are enlightened or not but definitely highly spiritual people i've seen in my life and many of you have seen they are they are genuinely humble people there's a genuine humility to them not a practiced humility it's just uh they don't see themselves as special and we all the rest of us we see them as most special people in the world and they don't see themselves as special at all um people make a mistake about it you know i met up this monk who is a writer and i would say has certain ideas you're saying i'm going to write a book about this enlightened person nobody knows he's enlightened he's enlightened and he moves about just like a fool among everybody else but inside he has contempt for them i said whatever that is that's not enlightenment that might be megalomania or whatever it is but enlightened person never has it's impossible for them to have contempt you the all those you see they are non-different from you according to god they are you they are the highest reality shining forth in all these ways how can you have contempt for anybody the enlightened being is one characteristic they have is that they see that same divinity everywhere and have contempt for none not even their critics and their enemies people who misunderstand them or vilify them never it's impossible and there is genuine humility they really don't see themselves as different swami ranganathan and was the 13th president of the order uh i had a funny incident i remember he was very vedantic a very uh manly person uh i remember once in shivaratri in balurmat whole night puja is there and the four times you offer water on the shiva linga and there's always a rush among the monks there are lines of the monks who to go and offer water and the shiva linga so he stood and generally we let the senior or old elder monks go first then i found somebody standing behind me i was a young monk or a brahmacari at that time a novice brahmacari in fact i think and i looked back and i saw swami ranganathan ji was the vice president of the order standing in queue like everybody else and we all wanted him to go ahead but of course he wouldn't uh i remember when he first became the president of the order and when he the first day when all the monks in belurum are going to go and offer pranams to him so we are all in queue and the president newly installed president of the order swami ranganathan he's the 13th president of the ramakrishna order so we all go forward and it's like having a new pope or dalai lama you know so we all bow down and he's asking why have they all come and somebody said to him swami you are now the president of the order and they have come to bow down to you and he said there are so many monks let them go and bow down to the other monks why just to me and he meant it he was just i remember i'll never forget that the first day after everybody had finished bowing down and because i was a junior at brahmacharya i was at the end of the queue so i was leaving the room and it was over hundreds of monks had passed through and swami ranganathan you were sitting there and because it was almost over and i was one of the last ones to walk out of the room the sevaks the attendant monks they had gotten up and they were going out of the room the only person left in the room was swami ranganathan and i saw you know what he did he got up after having received the you know salutations of hundreds of monks and devotees and all he got up went to the switch burden one by one started switching up the fan and the light and then the the attendance rushed back and swami we'll do it for you and swami said no this is important it should not be wasted electricity should not be wasted and from that day onwards till this last day as the president i would see just as the pronouns ended one of the savox would rush forward and start switching up the light and fan before he could get to it yeah so humility such is the natural humility of the enlightened one sri ramakrishna was mistaken for a gardener somebody came to visit sri ramakrishna and asked the gardener where is the paramahamsa and he pointed it about it's there and when he went to the room he sriram krishna sitting there so he's so humble and he they wouldn't correct you they would think it's perfectly natural this is the natural humility of the enlightened one is mental poise or inner tranquility dhamma is external control so both external control and inner tranquility inner coolness that comes naturally to the enlightened one it's not a practiced calmness once swami turiya anandaji was suffering very much from old age diseases and somebody asked him samia is it very painful are you suffering a lot he said it's just the body and in bengali i'll translate it he said by the grace of sri ramakrishna the inside is all ice it's as cool as that i'm completely unaffected by the storms raging at the level of the body the body aging disease weakness problems are there swami shivananda he is asked he suffered a lot from asthma the whole night he couldn't sleep he was the president of the order at that time the second president next morning the swamis and the brahmacharis came to bow down to him devotees came and somebody asked him swami are you all right and chivananji with a smile he said oh i'm perfectly fine then they said but we heard you couldn't sleep last night you had jasmine then shivanji looked and said oh you mean the body oh it's not good at all it's in a very bad shape so as if he's talking about something oh you mean i can't believe it's not at all good it's not doing well at all so that is the inner coolness the external control also control of greed and anger and all of that which we have to practice as spiritual seekers it's absolutely natural for the enlightened person now why is it natural i'll end with this prakriti dantatwad the very nature of the turiya is peace tranquility pure consciousness just this radiance unchanging radiance uh this is what you are you know this fully you are immersed in it the mind and the senses the knowledge of this is this is clear in the mind that i am that that ever present unmistakable radiance shining through every experience every thought every feeling every person in the world i am that and this has a cooling effect on the mind and the senses so the the control of the senses control of our reaction to troubling events in the world is uh much easier i mean for the for enlightened person they don't have to struggle with it like v2 and he ends with with duan the one who knows this i am brahmana toriyama evam rajet this is the tranquility of the enlightened one a very beautiful verse and those of us who have the had the blessings of seeing enlightened persons or spiritually very advanced people in our lives you know how this matches their lives you can see it in their lives all right any questions there is a question from babu yes would you like to ask why are you dead yes i swallowed hello my head is churning so i like to i like to see if i can do this correctly i read one of the western constructs of consciousness he likened the three states of consciousness we refer to sleep dream and breaking as gays of consciousness would you comment on that and parallelly in that model where does the faith and also as i begin to think as i'm thinking about this how did this all come about somebody would sit down and say look i'm sleeping i don't know anything i'm dreaming i know something i'm awake and all this world is there so there must be maybe this is just a projection of my consciousness is that all the basis for this entire philosophy how did this come about what is the genesis of this idea genesis of what the idea itself or how did this world come about what are you asking genesis of the idea that there should be another state of consciousness that's so deep and underlying to all of this yeah as we have discussed many times over the last few chapters the turia is not another state of consciousness we have studied this again and again is consciousness and the states are waking dreaming and deep sleep states of what waking dreaming and deep sleep are not states of consciousness they are states of the mind it is the mind which wakes and interacts with with the world through sense organs that's the very definition of waking it's the mind which falls up asleep and generates dreams within itself and it's the mind which goes to sleep and there are no dreams no waking experiences that's deep sleep so these are states of the mind the mind which wakes up again to the waking state and this entire thing is illumined that awareness which shines upon all of it that is the tudya it is in and through all these states so it is asking how did this idea come about rishis who discovered it they will say if you ask god or father he will refer you back to the mandu kyopanishad we know this because the mandukka tells us and points it out to us and then we see yes so it is how do we know it because governor podha and shankara and all have transmitted this idea so anadi guru parampara and they will say trace it back to narayana yeah so this is experiential and subjective essential it's definitely experiential and then the whole thing is set in the form of philosophy through reason and supporting you know logic and all of that yeah and you have to see it for yourself in order to be free of samsara it's just not enough so that's why god is pointing out it's not just a philosophy so you can study it as a philosophy as which we which it's done in textbooks and classes but that's not the point of it the point of it is to see what is being pointed out by godopath and see the story as i see surya then it then the magic happens what we are reading now just now these last two verses the results of it that will come only when you see it as i am thoria um questions okay swamiji there's a question from rodrigo on the chart let me see um rodrigo does the enlightened one have access to para pasyanti vaikarin madhyama while accessing the truth um this is something which i guess some someone like bhatri hari would talk about or in kashmir shaivism you talk about it not something that advaita vedanta would necessarily use this structure access to para the para is the enlightened one it's like asking does the enlightened one have access to brahman the enlightened one is brahman not you're not something apart from brahman that you have access to it now you've got the password for brahman or something like that no you are that its like asking um does the pot which knows itself as clear an example suppose the part knows its reality is clay now does it have access to clay it is clay it is the reality of it yes so we have gone out of time just will i'll take up one or two comments but those who have to leave we should uh we should go ahead right now yes strange my question is this enlightenment seems digital in its behavior in that you're either enlightened or you're not and if you're not then brahman and maya and everything remains a concept concept based on first-hand accounts but by very few people got a father vivekananda etc there aren't that many jivan mukti's walking around but my question is can you get a glimpse of your true state occasionally to sort of encourage you on the path to to indicate progress that you're making or or or is it is it flat and then is it zero and one or i mean if you're driving everest for example you can occasionally get a view of the peak yes and you know you're moving in the right direction the answer to your question is first of all straight answer is yes occasionally we do get a glimpse remember the glimpse is not enlightenment some people make the mistake they do get a flash and for them the this whole thing about god or the self or whatever the buddha nature it becomes a reality for them that it yeah it's it's not a concept i saw it it's there but if that happens that's just on the way it's enough to encourage you and to confirm that something like this is possible even after this doubts are possible slipping away is possible not attaining is possible lack of stability in that attainment is possible all of these things are possible after that but what gowdapada is saying is that it's not a concept it may seem like that to you but the claim is again and again it's being made is if you talk about nirvana if you talk about vaikuntha say something like vaikuntha the abode of vishnu or the heaven which you mentioned in scriptures of religions that's a concept that's something you have to have believed because you have no access to it right now and then you can say that books tell me so another example would be the mystical experiences suramar krishna sees kali christian mystics are visions of the mother mary or jesus or so multiple mystical experiences are found in the mystical literatures of the world there you can say some people have experienced it i have not um so i only have to go by their word but gowdapada what gaurupada is presenting here is not like that what is it that you have not experienced have you not experienced waking us you know i have experienced dreaming yes i have experienced deep sleep yes i have experience godu father says that's enough you don't need any more experience then what do i need now you need to reflect on this experience of waking dreaming deep sleep and how do you reflect this is this is the way i'm going to show you in fact right now after this saying what you get out of it then you'll go back to waking dreaming deep sleep and tudya again he'll repeat one last time uh the first chapter what we saw in couple of verses and in a very stripped down bare bones uh fashion yeah so the turiyama is making a leap from from the experience of waking sleeping dreaming to the experience of brahman there is there is a discontinuity there um there's a discontinuity as far as knowledge is concerned god or father would say there's no discontinuity in reality it's just that for us it seems like a discontinuity that uh here is the world and there is the parent there's supposed to be a paradigm shift a sudden upside down everything is um i mean is it a discontinuity from an earth-centered universe to a heliocentric universe yes instead in the sense of our knowledge is it's a huge shift paradigm shift but the reality is that um so it's like asking um is it's like asking how does the pot get access to the clay how does the wave get access to the water the only thing is if the wave if it could think if it thinks that it is not water there is something to be done to be given access to water all you need to do is is clear up its confusion that it is not water it should come to see that yes i am water there is nothing other than water i am water in the same way we have a confusion about what studium is and what we are experiencing and that god upon is trying to clear up the next uh after a couple of verses go gurapatha will make some stunning beautiful poetic verses he will say turya is always experienced you're just not acknowledging it he will say you are all not only you are uh thorium you are already enlightened you are forever enlightened you will say does it feel like it yeah i know so go if your time would go through it what the way the teachers would do a traditional teacher you know at this point he would say all right let's stop here what does it feel like and he would start with your experience he would take up whatever you say your subject object and investigate that and try to show you what is it that you are experiencing and hopefully that way we come across the reality good we'll do it sometime thank you all right one more and then we're done um yes uh swamiji is it possible that when we give up this more and the lower relationship we like sort of enter a unbound darkness as we itself is the support you yourself are your own support yeah it can feel like a darkness it can feel like you're entering into a profound depth where even the entire universe is very superficial compared to the depth you are entering but that's just your own reality you are that and then you will realize you the turia are the support of the entire universe what is the support of the wave the water what is the support of the ocean the water without whatever what do i mean by that without the water no wave would be possible without the water no ocean would be possible also so you are the water the consciousness which appears as this person and which appears as god also now the person when you do not know yourself as this consciousness is thuriya the person takes itself it's personhood as real and guards god who's as real and then person tries to hold on to god as support once the person realizes the turya knows that i am that absolute which appears as this person the devotee and also as god devotee worships god somebody put it very beautifully it is consciousness illumining consciousness it is consciousness which appears as mind knowing consciousness which appears as matter your consciousness you appear as mind as this person and you also appear as the universe and then the person knows the universe or the person worships god but underneath you are that consciousness yeah all right let's bring it to a close we're going to meet tomorrow again and continue this discussion um sri [Music] my