Video 23

23. Vedantasara | Texts 132-136 | Swami Sarvapriyananda

[Music] i take refuge in the self the indivisible the existence consciousness bliss absolute beyond the reach of words and thought and the substratum of all for the attainment of my cherished desire so we are reading the section on the inquiry into who am i the various ideas of the atman of the self what's going on in this chapter remember the whole teaching is in the form of adheropa bhava the superimposition and de-superimposition we are brahmana but we have superimposed that means so superimposition means taking something for what it is not taking a rope to be a snake by mistake by error we do not realize that we are brahman but we experience a world and a body and a mind and we think of ourselves as limited beings as jivas and involved in samsara so this is our current state this is called adhyaropa superimposition how did we come to be in this state this is what is going on from brahman up to this universe and with the body mind superimposed here we are so what do we superimpose what do we think about ourselves why is that question important at all it's because if you think about it um from what we have learned so far this world and [Music] this body mind this is not made by us no matter how spiritual you are no matter how advanced you are you cannot wipe out the world you cannot wipe out this body so uh even after uh spiritual knowledge enlightenment you'll still see and you see a world you'll still see this body why because now we can answer this we have studied where did all this come from the five um primal elements and those five primal elements it's that's a mixture that's the what has created this entire world matter basically and all of that came from subtle matter sukshmatan mata the five subtle elements and all of that came from maya and maya is nothing other than the power of of brahman so the power of god let's put it this way saguna brahman with maya creates this universe or project this universe not us you haven't projected this universe i haven't projected this universe nor have you projected this body not even this mind so um even after enlightenment you can't you can't destroy all of this this will still appear but what we have done is at our level as individual beings right now what we can do is to repair the damage that we have done what we have done is we do not know ourselves as and we do not know that this entire universe which you are experiencing is nothing other than brahman we think of it as a real threatening or tempting threatening or tempting ragadveisha a world out there and we think of ourselves as these limited bodies born and aging and prone to disease and accident and you know coronavirus and whatnot and death and we are these minds also which are prone to sorrow and frustration and you know being unhappy and we have we are in samsara this is this damage we have done ishvara has not done anything in all of this what i'm saying in hindi they put it very nicely the creation of god actually does not give suffering suffering is due to our ignorance we often we make make the mistake thinking about vedanta god created this universe and what a kind of problem he has put us in why did he do all of that actually god has not put us in any kind of problem you know what is the test of this after vedantic enlightenment what what would you expect to become a given mukhta free wild living that's the goal then look at the people you think who have become enlightened they all lived in this very world they all lived in the body of an old body aging diseased body they lived there and yet they claimed they were free of suffering they are transcended or they did not complain oh we have become enlightened but just for this nasty little universe why did god create this otherwise i'm fine no no none of them ever complained anymore before that we complain after that no complain in fact one way i say about enlightenment one marker is you cannot complain after enlightenment so don't be in a hurry to become enlightened no more grumbling allowed after enlightenment why no more grumbling around there is a serious issue here the issue is this that what we grumble about the world and our own bodies and our own state of mind all these are the things which we grumble about this problem is ours we have created it and what vedanta can do is to remove this this this damage that we have created the damage that we have created is a technical name for that in vedanta it is called jiva shrishti the projection the superimposition the errors committed by us in ignorance and this we can repair by knowledge vedantic knowledge i am brahman all of this is an appearance in brahman will repair the damage the appearance will continue and now we can see from the what we have read so far why the appearance will continue brahman limited by maya is called saguna brahman and with that maya has projected the five subtle elements the five gross elements and out of that constructed the fourteen worlds and all these bodies and all of that so that will continue that that is always there it is there now and it will continue this appearance will continue but we will realize that it is an appearance and hence be free of all sorrow and suffering so now we have seen what are the kinds of errors that people ordinary people and great philosophers also they make about the self we have seen nine such points of view nine the um ordinary man on the street who said my children are myself then comes the first materialist who said no no body is the self i am body then comes the next materialist who says i am the sensory system then and these are all pretty sophisticated positions you can actually argue them out pretty well and then comes the next materialist who says i am life and living body has to be only life has to be identified with self not the body or just senses then the next materialist comes and says no i am mind then comes the first buddhist the mind only school if you remember the sixth position was the mind only school of buddhism who said the vigana maya kosha the flashes of cognition stream of cognition is called self or it generates the illusion of a self and then comes the mumsa school and the niya vaisheshika school prabha karatarki ko we remember and they say that the anandamaya kosha that is the atman i'm not explaining in detail and then comes the next school of meewam sakas the kumari lavata school which said consciousness plus the anandamaya kosha is the atman and then the finally the ninth position was that of the uh emptiness school of buddhist the show the most sophisticated we saw a little taste of what nagarjuna did last time very sophisticated dialectics which proves the emptiness shunyata sarvadrishthinam of all philosophies that is the the views are empty so the shunyavadi who says actually there is no self as such it is empty what is empty that we can debate about uh one view would be as the traditional vedantins took it to be emptiness means nothing um and it should not be dismissed that emptiness means nothing at all that seems very unfair to say put it like that because nagarjuna himself and chandra kitty after him has taken pains to show that no we are not saying that there is nothing we have something deeper to say but it should not dismiss it entirely how is it possible that just about every one of the opponents of the emptiness school have interpreted them as nihilists including the pedantics the vedantes the meemam sakhas the niyah school all of them held at this particular group of buddhists which is the core philosophy of mahayana by the way they are saying that nothing exists and um i was talking to this professor of philosophy at harvard and he i still remember standing in emerson hall in the hallway and talking about this and he said i was saying the shankaracharya dismisses the madhyamaka school as say that's nihilists as they say that nothing exists and it's sort of unfair i'm not non-dualist i'm an advaitan and still i seem to think that this is he has been too cavalier in this just dismissing them like this and this professor he said you know after all after all of nagarjuna's sophisticated dialectics it still might amount to that that he is saying it is nothing so note that the great vasubandhu who was uh nagarjuna's successor yeah successor and a great philosopher of the mind only school he too buddhist he too dismissed the madhyamaka as saying that that the animalists that they said they really mean that there is nothing anyway so this debate goes on um our view as advaitan's modern advaitans and that was the view i think of um many of the modern film vedantic philosophers dr radhakrishnan [Music] whom i referred to yesterday and certainly swami sharodanandaji and the number of abu dhabi i think vivek and vivekananda also so our view is that uh that is just another way of expressing brahman the the absolute not nothing all right now these are the nine positions and here comes the great hero now to end the the climax of the whole whole section is the advaithin of course is going to come and it's going to show that they're all wrong and the self is sachidone and the existence consciousness place the self is pure consciousness is uh is pure being is ultimate bliss uh as revealed by the upanishads and um and the positions taken by them are wrong and this uh this conclusion the non-dualist or advaitan will do in two ways one way is first of all that the thing will say i don't have to prove anything notice that each of these positions they have cut the previous position so each philosopher comes forward and gives a quotation from the shruti the upanishads to support his position and an argument reasons good reasons to support his position and um a corresponding experience anubhav but those are cut down by the next philosopher who comes along and that that position is cut down by the the one who comes after that so they have cut each other down at the most you can say the final and the most sophisticated and subtle position is that of the madhyamaka of nagarjuna that might remain but basically everybody else has been defeated already so i don't have to do it you have you have done it yourself you fought against each other and you have decimated yourself so i don't have to go and uh case by case and take up each one at the most i might have to defeat the uh madhyamaka philosopher or the sunni valley so that was that'll be one approach they cut each other down and this is something he's taking from it's a very uh interesting approach which which if you remember gowdapada has done in the mandukka karika paras he says this is asparsa yoga vedanta is the no contact philosophy of non-duality all other philosophers contradict each other but we have no contradiction with any of them why it seems that you are contradicting all of them we have no contradiction with any of them because they're all false how can the reality have a kind of contradiction with the faults guru father gives the example of all these other philosophers are like this in on a village path suppose you're going on your elephant and there's a madman on your path who says come charge your elephant against my elephant we'll let's have an elephant fight but the madman doesn't have an elephant he's just standing there so you can't have an elephant fight with a madman because there is so similarly all these philosophers they have no position to defend anyway this is all false and therefore uh uh advaitha need not have contradiction with that or so this is one way he will do that now the second way will be no let's do the hard work of taking up each position and showing that they are wrong and establishing the non-dualist position by giving shutti yuktyanubhuti quotations from the upanishad support from the upanishads uh arguments good arguments and uh experience so first 132 text number 132 [Music] now it will be shown that all these from the sun to the void are not the self all these all these nine positions which we just talked about and remember these are not just nine positions there are many more it's just a sampling of the major philosophies the traditional classification talks about twelve philosophies six astika philosophies and six nasty astika means uh the orthodox which accept the vedas as uh revealed scripture as a source of spiritual knowledge and the six um unorthodox or heterodox which do not which which reject the vedas so the six orthodox schools are the niya the vaishesika the sankhya the yoga the purva mumsa and vedant these are the so-called shara darshan six philosophies but there are six other philosophies uh which are with outside the orthodox hindu fold so there is the charvaka the materialists and we just saw there are many kinds of materialists some crude some sophisticated there was a charvaka and then there is the the jaina school which we have not seen in this the text there is the buddhist school there are four buddhist schools um the shotranthika vaibhasika the of which we have seen two the mind only school and the emptiness school we have seen two of them so there are total of 12 in this classification there is a title that if you are a master of all of these 12 philosophies you get the grand title of um the lion who stalks in the forest of 12 philosophies that's your title so you'll have to spend lots and lots of time with dusty old sanskrit texts to get that title and another book if you go to the server darshana sangra which is a compendium of ancient indian philosophies written about 500 600 years ago um by madhava chadya not madhubacharya madhavacharya in that book you get 15 different philosophies so there are many many positions of which only nine have been taken here so he says these nine which say that the self or atma is nothing but putradinam son or child etc son or child or body and senses and life and mind and intellect and the causal body and so on or or emptiness anat bhakthwam none of them are the self and that will be explained now they're going to explain that why they are not the self first remember two approaches first this approach we will see [Music] since in all these fallacious citations of scriptural passages arguments and personal experiences made by the different case classes of people enumerated above beginning with the extremely deluded in support of their respective views about the self the subsequent views contradict the previous one it becomes clear quite clear that all these items from the sun to the void are not the same okay what is what was said here by all of these positions starting with the uh you know the ordinary person and the materialists up to the emptiness school they have given various theories and all of them all these theories are they do not give a correct view of the self ah they are refuted why are they refuted because the um these the citations from the upanishads the arguments they give and the experiences they cite they are not real they are not correct why are they not correct this is a means appearance false shadow we are quoting from the upanishads why is it a shadow why is it false it's false because what you are quoting the we are saying to them what you are quoting is not the the purport the meaning in sanskrit tatpanya the conclusion of the upanishads so for example um somebody said body is the self and that person could that philosopher quoted from the upanishads saying annamaya atma printed very convenient to mine for these sentences what you're doing is you're plucking out a sentence at random and the this is not the purport of the whole text if body is the self and that was the teaching of the upanishad the upanishad should have stopped there but the upanishad itself cuts down that position what does the upanishad say the self is anya not the body it is subtler inward antara and the self is prana life but then again that position is abundant and then it goes to the mind that position is abundant mind is also not the self it goes to the intellect wikiana maya then it goes to dhananda and so on so um these are not positions that the upanishad sticks to then why is why is the upanishad said it everyone might say this is called arundhati nyaya the uh uh arunity star is to be pointed out it's a very faint star so it's pointed out by pointing to first the bright uh first the branch of the tree and from the branch of the tree next to it look at the bright star and next to that you see notice the um a fainter star and near it you will see the faint much more faint arundhati you can't just if you just point look there's arun that you may know which one it is but the person who doesn't know it can't make out in the mass of stars so you go from the gross the most obvious to the more subtle to the less obvious until you point out what you wanted to point out so people who identify themselves with the body you have to start there there's the method of a good teacher is to go from the known to the unknown from the near to the far here it's not far it's a closer in fact from the outer to the inner and from what is to what shall be from what what you are comfortable with or to what the vedanta wants to teach you so that's the method of a good teacher and that's what it's going on that's what's going on instead of seeing that you are you different positions there are different philosophers you are picking out random statements which support your position and quoting that that is not the meaning the purpose the ultimate purpose of the text you have to read the whole text before you come you can quote something so this is called shruti abhasa a false citation of the text of the scripture scriptures this is english saying that the devil quotes the scriptures or something like that then comes the uktiyabhasa false arguments wrong arguments and these wrong arguments have been refuted by themselves you see somebody said my son is myself and remember the next uh person who came along and said that the body is the self and gave an argument you may agree or not agree with the argument there's an argument which shows that one abundance one's children if one's body is threatened so therefore the child cannot be the self the body is the self that's an argument and that argument cut down the earlier arguments so this is called yuktiyabhasa your arguments have already been refuted each one argument has been repeated refuted by the one coming after you then what's what's next means experience but these are experiences i feel my child is my own self or i feel the body is me i feel it actually how can you say this experience is false this experience is not false but the meaning that you are deriving from that experience because i'm so attached to the body therefore i must be the body no it does not follow so the next experience will come along and they say i am the sensory system for example the body is paralyzed i don't feel the way i feel this hand is mine if this hand is paralyzed i will not feel that it's me in that way it just looks like a there's no sensation nothing there but this will feel like me because i can move it and feel so that means the sensory system is important in the sense of self and the person will say senses are the self then somebody will come and say no no mind is the self i am always closely identified with the mind when i'm dreaming i have no connection with the sleeping body i have no self connection that means the sense that i'm i do not identify with the sleeping body i do not identify with the sleeping senses rather where am i i'm identified with the dream body and the senses in the dream world so what is going on i am identified with the mind the dreaming mind so the mind is the self so this kind of argument this kind of experience it cuts down the previous experiences all of these experiences are cut down ultimately you come to the emptiness so and so as you say they are all cut down they do not prove what they are meant to prove they do not the upanishad scriptures quotations you are showing they do not prove that the self they have done you have not shown that the self is body or mind or intellect the arguments do not show that the experiences you have quoted they also do not amount to showing that the self atma is body or mind or intellect or whatever so now he says um by each the earlier one has been cut down uttar author means the ones who come afterwards they are cut down by the shruti yukti anubhava abbasi they're all like shadows they're all false quotations false arguments and false experience of course we are saying it i'm sure all those philosophers would be very annoyed they don't think that their faults are arguments or quotations um so this is he says it's very clear whatever you have said is not the atma is not the self now at this point they may say that's very clever mr non-dualist or mrs non-dualist you you you are avoiding the hard work you must like each of us we give quotations from your upanishads so you also must give quotation from your opponent to show that the self is consciousness and you know pure being sachidananda and you must use those quotations to show that our quotations are wrong can you show us from the opening of that what we said body is the self show us that it's wrong from the upanishad one then you must give arguments on top of that to cut down our arguments and then you must show it in experience where do we experience that we are existence consciousness place so do the hard work don't just here we have cut down each other and good goodbye finished it's all refuted so now the second approach comes where the actual hard work is done of step by step refuting each one so long sentence text number 134. video [Music] [Music] so this text cuts down all the nine positions how in one sentence long sentence where the lot has been packed into it what is he going to do now he's going to take give you he's going to give us he means the uh sardar and the yogindra who's taking the side of the non-dualists we're going to give us quotations from the upanishads to show all the earlier quotations our quotations are wrong the claim that they are all shadows they're false they have been wrongly applied not that the open issue sentences are wrong it's just they've been wrongly applied it's going to show that they do not apply they do not pertain to the real self then he's going to take up arguments which will cut down their arguments and then it's going to take up experience which is going to cut down their experience and therefore show that all of those theories about the self are wrong now let's look at the open ships first nine quotations to cut down each of those nine nine uh positions who had quoted their own preferred upanishad sentences so tincha moreover i've already shown you contradict each other but now more if you want me to tell you in detail all right i'll tell you moreover so each word i will take up and i'll show why he's making this quotation each word is actually um it points to a quotation from the opening he's not giving the entire sentence he's just taking a word from each sentence of one particular upon issue so you're supposed to know everything all the upanishads if you just quote one sentence you should know oh this is one word you should know that this comes from this sentence of this upanishad so he says what is he quoting here he is quoting so in i don't know if you've got this book in page the next page you'll find all the details are given where are the quotations from so he's quoting from the qatar panishad um qatar banished verse very nice verse important verse in qatar panishad which shows why is it that we don't realize ourselves as sachidan sachi dhananda and who will realize the sachidines that become enlightened so the the mantra goes on [Music] so it says that we have been created sort of damaged you know or created in such a way that our senses flow outwards and we do not see the reality in words parang pasman and kashidhira some patient some um heroic spiritual seeker takes the trouble of shutting down those external experiences shut and turning the attention in birds and discerning using viveka the help of the upanishad in vedanta discerning the real atman in all this experience kasjidhira avrita chakshu not being engaged in the world outside literally means covering guys but it means not being engaged in sensory activities realizes the inner self and why would you do all this amrita mitchum desiring immortality there is no immortality to be found in the world outside there's only you know death and disease and suffering and aging but immortality desiring immortality desiring freedom from death this person turned in words and realized the inner self all right so here are from all this he has taken one crucial word realize the inner self he has taken one word inner why what was the first theory my son is myself where is the sun inner or outside outside so clearly the self is inner the cut open you should say the self is innermost within yourself you are the the core of your being not something outside of someone outside so this cuts down your position that the self is something outside upanishad cuts it down then you see how this is this is the way he is going to go each one he will take up then the next word asthulam not gross not physical um this is a quotation from the bread neck upanishad us [Music] upanishad the quotation is given here the self is uh not gross uh not atomic um not short not long and so on everything is denied native nate everything is denied of the self therefore but the key word is us not gross who is the second position the the second philosopher who came along body the gross body physical body is the self and look here is a quotation the upanishad says that which is gross or physical is not the self so your position is wrong then comes the next word he says so this is the quotation you will see from means without literally without eyes without sensitive senses without sensory system uh this is a quotation from the the mundaka punisher very beautiful section we will do all this eventually that's why we are reading the vedanta sarah as a sort of in entry into all of this there is a very beautiful section in the mundaku panishad where the student shawnaka he goes to the teacher [Music] so so this was a very well to do householder notice he's a householder he goes to this master and angiras and asks him sir what is that by knowing which everything is known everything in the universe is known inside outside everything by knowing one thing then the teacher tells him that knowledge you're seeking knowledge but first of all back up a little knowledge is of two kinds two kinds relative and uh supreme lower and the higher so he said unto the student there are two kinds of knowledge the higher and the lower the transcendent and the relative parapara and this is what we have heard from the great masters of the who have taught us about brahman so immediately what aman becomes curious so what is the lower knowledge and what is the higher knowledge what is the relative knowledge what is the transcendent knowledge so the teacher goes on he says the upper the lower lower wisdom the lower knowledge is basically all knowledge whatever you learn in the university or the whole syllabus the rig veda yajur way the sama way the atharva veda the six auxiliaries vedangas which are useful for studying the vedas shiksha kalpa nirupta chanda jyotisha all of that all knowledge what you know as knowledge whatever you read in school everything is lower knowledge if everything is lower knowledge and what is the higher knowledge you have just covered everything in the syllabus so no the higher knowledge is that by which god is realized the ultimate race realized the word used for the ultimate reality is akshara the unchanging the akshara by which you realize the akshara that is called the higher knowledge now see how the teacher is building up to answer the question what was the question what is the one thing by knowing which i can know everything and that one thing is going to answer now so i'm going to point out that one thing what you are asking for is this akshara now what is this what is this like the ultimate reality [Music] um so that ultimate reality which we are going to realize you asked about that is is um uh it is beyond all the senses uh it is adrian adrisha means you can't see it here it smell it taste it touch it um and again it is beyond the range of all the the motor organs like the five organs of action you can't walk to it you can't catch hold of it with your hands and so on um then i still remember a very little funny incident silly but just came to mind there was once this brahmachari who was very intense um it was always very serious i never saw him smile he ultimately left so it goes to show that you have to be a little relaxed even in spiritual life because it's not a sprint it's a marathon so he was like he's going to realize god within the next week or so by the weekend and he was always very rigid and very very uh you know tense so i remember once after food in ashram we're going to wash our hands mr machadi suddenly he rushes forth and he opens the tap and then he's washing his hands like this and the old swami was in charge of the ashram he looked at the brahmacharya he is telling me look how he grabbed the tap it's like he's grabbing brahman catching all the brahman that's so that's how i in bengali was saying okay but you can't catch hold of brahman it is um anyway silly hindus have a lineage so you have if you ask what is your go through you trace out we trace our lineage back to some rishi or the other but here uh gotra means no lineage no source your consciousness where have you come from from nowhere everything has come from your appearance in you but you have not come from anywhere you are the causeless cause let us say in one way so agotra means without any so it is by itself that ultimate reality is by itself it's not come it's not part of the chain of causation actually it is not even a cause um then our literally without color that means without any characteristics nir gunam without any any characteristics and then he says um so it is not a sentient being with sense organs with eyes and ears or with hands and feet no we are not talking about this jiva here we are talking about just consciousness itself which which does not have eyes and ears and and you know all these things so that is the thing he has picked up um when he says this portion the ultimate reality which is yourself is is without sensory system you then what is this that charvak or that material is two said the self must be identified with the sensory system it's only when the senses are functioning that we have a sense of self he said no the open should rejects that also see all of this just one word is giving this is all packed into that word then aprano amana akata so each of them is cutting down one position for example a pranam this is from the mundaku panishad without the vital force and without the mind pure pure means pure consciousness munda cooperation same thing is quoting and then so mind and and prana are are rejected by this quotation itself then then there was one buddhist who said vigna maya atma the mind school mind only school of buddhist viganavadhi he said the vigyanamay kosha is the atma the sheath of intellect here he says akata the non-doer remember agent ship is a characteristic of the vigna maya quotient and here we are quoting from the upanishad which says the self pure consciousness is not an agent it's not a doer where where is this quotation from so then the self you the self you are limitless you appear as the universe and you are not a doer of any action you are not an agent of an action so akata then there was another group the prabhakara tarkika naya vaishishika school and one school of the meemamsa who came forward and said the anandamaya kosha what you experience in deep sleep when everything is resolved into a potential blankness that is the real nature of the self then he says he gives a quotation from the evaluation very beautiful quotation value upanishad which says i the self no one can know me i am not an object for anyone then how is it known i'm eternally conscious i am light shining forth by my shining forth alone i am known by myself but i am never known as an object i am not an object to anybody so this quotation did exists no with the knower of mine then who am i saddam i'm always of the nature of consciousness this cuts down that position that we are of the nature of the deep sleep experience blankness no i'm always consciousness then you remember the next group came along and said your consciousness plus that blankness in deep sleep the kumari la bhaktapur pulverma philosopher we are light and darkness together then he gives a quotation consciousness only not consciousness plus ananda maya kosha not consciousness not light and darkness light only where is this quotation from this is from the again from the kind value i am pure consciousness i am of the nature of the eternal being sadashiva and then sat the final quotation is from the chandukyopanishad sadeva madam before all of this universe manifested there existed only one pure being and that that being pure being you are auschwitz nine times in the chat you are that you are that why is he quoting this he's cutting down the school of the void emptiness we're saying assad non-existence if you interpret it in that very simplistic way non-existence is the self he says no self is existence itself so all the nine positions have been cut down by these quotations from the scriptures at this point one might object hey wait a minute they also quoted scriptures when somebody said um [Music] the body is the self it's a quotation from the upanishad you are quoting that it's not because you quoted it is not not the gross body but who is to say whose quotation is right is your quotation right or his quotation right both are quotations we have to see then how do you decide there is a whole process of deciding the point is to decide what is the purpose the meaning in sanskrit tatparia the whole point of the text what are they trying to point out are they trying to point out that the body is the self are they trying to point out that the body is not the self and that consciousness is the self so if you read the text and if you apply those methods there are very interesting methods to actually process a text it's called shad with the linga it will come up later in this book how do you understand the text how do you scientifically systematically methodically derive the meaning from a passage so by that we realize that what we are seeing is saying is the purport of the text that body is not the self prana is not the self mind is not the self intellect is not the self the immortal consciousness which we are that is the self and so this is the purpose of the text of the open issues so your quotation is not right our quotation is from is a stronger sentence from the open stronger means it points to the purpose of the upanishad yours is further away so he says because your quotations contradict stronger quotations which we are giving asiya all of this from the son of the child up to the emptiness all of this is so now he's going to give argument so now this position our quoting the upanishad is over i have shown you that your quotations are weaker our quotations are stronger we win we have overruled your objections are overruled now argument can you give a reason to show that we are wrong that the body is not the cell that the mind is not the self we have given so many reasons why don't you give us some of your reasons to show that these are wrong and so he says one very powerful master stroke he gives he says up to emptiness all the nine candidates you have put forward for being the self they are all experienced by consciousness they are all objects to consciousness including the most subtle proposition you had that the emptiness is the self but that is also revealed by consciousness who thought of it to whom does it appear what realizes that emptiness so all of this body mind even emptiness they're all illumined by revealed by consciousness they are objects being objects they may be a gross object like the body or they may be a very subtle or abstract thing like emptiness but they are all objects to consciousness what are you are you an object already consciousness your consciousness you are always consciousness is always on your side and what is an object is an object to consciousness you cannot be an object you are the knower of the object you are the experiencer of the object you that's why you are called the subject all of these are illumined by consciousness they are objects they are insentient being insentient they are matter and matter all of matter starting from maya down to this universe is continuously changing on item it changes maya itself is not an item but all the products of maya are anitium they're subject to change the subject to change they cannot be the self why can they it's a little convoluted argument here why can they not be the self see how they're doing it is they are objects to consciousness if you are stopped there that itself would have been a very strong argument that i am conscious i am aware this is very clear and if you show anything that is i'm aware of then i can't be that the first principle of drinkdrishya viveka you can stop there but he has gone a little further all the things that you said the child or the body or the senses or the mind these are all objects to consciousness whatever is an object is material jara and whatever is material is subject to continuous change whatever is subject to continuous change is non-eternal it has a beginning and an end you might say so but it is non-eternal it can't be the self the self cannot have a beginning and an end so here's a very complicated argument and a slightly complicated argument the self cannot have a beginning on an end why not suppose you see yourself as a become beginning and end it cannot in the sense that uh it this goes against the fundamental tenet of all indian philosophies remember he's arguing against different indian philosophers the law of karma the law of karma states that whatever we are experiencing is because of our past karma causes have effects conditions have given rise to these things so causes have consequence consequences actions have consequences causes of effects that is karma it is our past karma which is manifesting as this present life now imagine if i the self had a beginning then i would suddenly be manifested with a body and a mind and a family and good and bad things in my life where did they come from where did they come from because you're saying that i did not exist earlier so it cannot be the result of my past karma this is called akrita bhupagama the sudden arrival the contingency the sudden arrival of things which are uncaused this is taken as a great uh error any philosopher you can push to this position is defeated it's like being checkmated so you have you're saying that things can happen without any cause they hear some of the theistic religions what do they say god created all of it then the problem will be god will be responsible for the differences in the world god will be partial then whereas in indian philosophy what happens in all the schools of indian philosophy it is our karma which is the result which has resulted in this life cause has given rise to this effect second big problem will be if the self comes to an end then a lot of karma which we have done that we will not get the results some people may have done evil things and suddenly the self comes to an end yeah self is non-eternal self comes to an end then who will get the results of all the evil deeds this is called kritanasa what has been done is destroyed without giving results but no the law of karma is one common idea among all these philosophers except the materialists all these philosophers they hold that um whatever we are experiencing is because of past karma and whatever we have done it will give rise to uh effects so the self must be eternal and that's why the jeevathma the self is regarded as eternal in all indian philosophies except the materialists even the buddhists immediately many people will say no no buddhists don't agree with this even the buddhists they say itself is momentary but the stream of consciousness with their momentary selves moment to moment that is eternal that goes on forever so um non-eternal self cannot be admitted but if you say body is the self or mind is the self these are all non-eternal why are they non-eternal because they are material why are they material because they are objects of consciousness why are the objects of consciousness because they are experienced therefore the argument is or just take the simple core argument all of these candidates you put for all these nine candidates for being the self they are all experienced by the self how can they be the self just you can take that much of an argument so this argument is a very good argument and it cuts down all those other positions actually it's a pretty deep argument experience please give us an experience we have quoted innumerable experience innumerable experiences to show body is the self or mind is the self can you give us an experience to show that body mind and not the self brahman whatever you say is the self he says so i am brahman is the experience of enlightened beings and that is a more powerful experience than all your experiences why what he's saying here is yes i am brahman this is experienced i am the i'm the self is brahman is brahman is an experience all enlightened people experience this experience dismissed they know this they realize it one might say but there's so few in number there are billions and billions of unenlightened people so our experience i am the body or i'm the mind i'm a miserable creature this must be reality just because a few people feel that they are god they must be deluded they are megalomaniacs we are not god we are just this body mind no um a true experience will always cut down a false one just as no matter in your dreams suppose there are millions of people who say that this is real this is real the moment you wake up the one dreamer wakes up the all the opinions of millions of people in the dream is immediately cancelled so who can say this is right or wrong a person who experiences the world just like us and then goes on to become enlightened and sees it from the other side that person can say who can say that it's not a snake it's a rope the person who has seen the snake just like us by mistake and then corrects it and sees that it's a rope that person can say unless we see both sides of it we have no right to say he is wrong and we are right i am brahman do you have any idea of what is brahman have you ever experienced that no then how do you know that that is wrong and you are right experience that realize that then say no no there is no such thing i am the body is the final answer nobody has ever said that okay and so he says all those earlier quotations from scriptures arguments and experiences they have been refuted cancelled negated by um by what we have just said from the child onwards to emptiness all of those are not the self they are not atma so now all these people they're saying all right so what is the self it's a wise guy so you're a wise guy what is the self tell us what what's the self in your opinion now he will come quote he will state the advaithic position therefore the innermost consciousness which is by nature eternal pure intelligent free and real which is the illumina of all those unreal entities which was mentioned earlier that is the self this is the experience of the vedantists or the illumina the persons who have had vedantic realization then he says in text number 136 so this is the limit of superimposition this above is an account of superimposition which one what we had started from text number 122 if you go back no not 122 is wrong what had started from so from 32 from text number 32 long way back text number 32 what is the mistake taking taking the rope to be a snake that is called superimposition um so taking brahman to be the world it is superimposition so from that till now what we were discussing is superimposition why did we come to be in this state why are we in this sorry state now so this is the whole discussion but remember the d superimposition has already started because when you went through this exercise of i'm not the body not the mind not the intellect and you say why those are wrong and i am the witness consciousness why that is right the already superimposition has started okay the next chapter will be d superimposition proper let's quickly take a look at activity in the chat okay girish says is it fair to say that in madhyamaka philosophy objects are real but inherently non-existing in contrast or the weight of objects are unreal but pure existence um not quite because in madhyama philosophy the objects are real only in the sense that they're conventionally real bodies minds people things their real convention nagarjuna introduced this distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth he said the buddha taught two truths means transactional truth relative truth which we call in advaita so yes all the objects are conventionally real but in advaita vedanta also all the objects are conventionally real in our day-to-day life it's real if you consider the body to be real then this chair you are sitting on is also real you can't say i am this body and the chair i'm sitting on is unreal then you'll be fall flat on the floor in no time so both are of the same order of reality but ultimately you realize these are unreal or appearances and brahman alone is real rick said he said that all these philosophers are deluded to varying degrees starting with extremely if you understood your collectively last week you said all of them could be enlightened how could one be both deluded and enlightened yeah all of them could be enlightened you're right but uh i will modify my statement and say i'm leaving out the extremely diluted the the very worldly person also the materialists who say body is the self and so and so forth and those who could be enlightened would i would include only the ones who were starting with the buddhist so i will leave out the um the materialist and the just the simply ignorant person they are not enlightened obviously the madame philosopher for example might be considered enlightened depending on what interpretation you give to shunya girish says how can emptiness be equal to equivalent to fullness yes so that is something for example swami saradanji says what we call purnam fullness infinite is what they call empty shunyam think about it this way golden ornaments for example now all the ornaments are they the gold itself is the reality of all the ornaments but in the gold are there any ornaments this is a certain question i'm asking take the gold itself think about the gold itself so obviously there is the for example the necklace yes but which part of gold is a necklace none of it necklace is the form well at least the form is the necklace but no where is the form in the gold which form belongs to gold if there is a form which belong to gold if the norman belonged to gold it would always be with the gold would always be a necklace but it isn't same gold continues to be a bracelet it can be a brick of gold it can be a lump of gold it can be a ring of gold so the ring brick lump necklace they come and go gold in itself is empty of all ornaments similarly the ultimate reality is empty of all entities it is shunyam you can think of brahman as a void because not because nothing is there everything the entire universe being there brahman is completely empty you the atman you're completely empty of the universe nothing is there actually from you know just makes it clear again and again enlightened person sees this universe and knows it to be nothing at all so in that sense brahman pure consciousness is pure being pure consciousness is empty is empty of entities and the other way around um and yet from an advaithic perspective the other way around everything is full of brahman everything is full up there is nothing else except drama here it is full the universe is pervaded through and through there is a phrase used in the upanishads olta proto author proto means uh the warp and the woof when you make a clock you um you know you spin it this way weave it this way and that way so this is called other pro the everything in this universe is filled to the brim with brahman in that sense because there's nothing but brahman you know sadhu nutra can put it this way tazatas bharpur everything is packed with brahman there is where will the universe exist there is no space for anything to exist except brahman and see why it's right here see if other than existence what can exist if it is something other than existence it's non-existent and if it is one with existence then it's nothing but existence just like the golden ornament if it is anything other than gold it will disappear but if it is gold then it's nothing other than gold it's not an ornament so golden ornament is always full of gold but the gold is always empty of ornament in this sense um okay well rodrigo is saying sandhya and rajiv are saying is it right to say manas plus buddhist we have defined chitta remember now i'm going to catch all of you all definitions have been more or less given to you what is body what is chitta what is ahankara what you know the intellect the five koshers what is gross what is subtle what is causal everything has been explained so chitta is the function of the mind which is memory or the mind all together is called chitta which will include so mind what is mind buddhi what is intellect ankara what is ego what does it do what is its function anjita memory what is its function so in specifically memories called chitta are all four together memory ego mind and intellect together are taken and called chitta those char workers acknowledge the law of karma no they don't this is a big thing they don't and they say that it all begins with the birth of the body and ends with the death of the body there's nothing before that nothing after that individually of course matter goes on physical matter goes on they deny it alpana is saying that is consciousness intelligent okay again sanskrit words consciousness chaitanya intelligence buddhi says consciousness itself intelligent no is it stupid no intelligent stupid applies to conditions of the buddhi and both are illumined by consciousness so for example a computer the laptop i'm using is it conscious as far as we know it's not is it intelligent in a sense yes in the from the behavioral perspective it can do intelligent things a mouse is it uh intelligent no it's pretty dumb is it conscious yes it's conscious all right um then punitaji is saying two facts i seem to take for granted that i was born i will die i have no direct experience of either the only direct and persistent experience i have is that i am conscious yet i find it hard to live by the fact that i am pure consciousness all the hold of maya of course that is true but this direct and persistent experience i have that i am consciousness i am conscious or i am consciousness often we are saying we have a direct experience of that our attention is not there actually what vedanta is doing is persistently drawing our attention to this fact of that we are consciousness what is consciousness and that we are always conscious it's a great thing to become aware of pradeep bose is saying in text 135 attributes like intelligent supported but brahman is free of attributes so would you please explain text number 135 is intelligent means intelligence here means consciousness always free satya existence in that sense then vishwanath is saying so shri krishnan chapter nine verses four and five it says maintaining these points purnam and devoid of all points of bhutan and then he denies that not your master that is a great section in chapter nine raja vidya raj yoga that is uh um i in all beings exist in me i am that one infinite existence in all beings exist in me and the next he says just the next verse krishna says behold they don't exist in me this is this is what was going on right now good very good question abhijit krishna says mouse example was tricky as you mentioned just after the computer it turned out to be conscious yes so it can be conscious without being particularly intelligent a mouse why i mentioned it was i heard a talk by anil set he is a consciousness researcher dr anil said in england so he gave said something which resonated with me very much in one talk he said you don't have to be smart to suffer you don't have to be smart to suffer you have to be conscious to suffer so a mouse is not smart it can't do many things which computer deep blue can play chess but the mouse can't play chess it's not smart it's not intelligent but it can suffer if a cat catches the mouth you can clearly see the mouse is suffering very much suffering requires consciousness the deep blue computer very intelligent it can't suffer so mike why i'm saying this is the question was is consciousness the same as intelligence no there can be consciousness without intelligence and there can be intelligence without consciousness all on the on the of course the transactional plane ultimately there is only consciousness what you call mouse what you call computer they are not they are all appearances like the gold ornaments the reality is consciousness only only in the mouse consciousness is manifest uh because of the antakarana computer doesn't have an antha kerner so consciousness is not manifest there okay rick says and yet once in the body of a mouse is more complex yes so there's a kind of intelligence inherent in nature but i'm talking about the intelligence which is part of our minds okay dimitri will conclude with his question oh yes uh swamiji doesn't mean that ultimately there is still um a hint of some face that is needed because until you have the enlightenment ultimately you you have no proof of this theory like there is a lot of practicality to it there is a lot of things that you can observe and verify as true but uh the ultimate one that you know the brahman is the multimodal existence and risks and consciousness is verifiable only at the enlightenment point and therefore it sort of requires some face in it until that point comes yes and no you see it if it was something that you have to do these practices and then you'll have an extraordinary burst of an experience which will verify all the claims so like um say in patanjali yoga or some tantra systems fine that's one way and that's also a valid way that's what you are saying but actually here it is not like that this is the beauty of the advaita system it's much more like what you understand in mathematics for example so you don't have to have anything more than understanding it in mathematics to get it you have you work at it you take it that much for granted that the equations are right it's not false you work at it till you get it similarly you work at it till you get it and this getting it is deepened into what we call enlightenment there are not two different things you get it technically you get it theoretically i've got it now but now i have to wait for enlightenment in advaita vedanta it is on the same spectrum that getting it itself deepens into enlightenment there will come a point where you will not even ask this question you you might say that you might not claim enlightenment but you will have to say this must be right there's no other way what else is right right the thing is that what what challenges uh kind of the ideas that come to my mind when i try to think about this is that yes it all seems very logical and clear but at the same time i have very short period of time available to me through my observation right what it is like there is nothing that can i that would that i could claim that let's say why it's not an infinite infinite regress of the observers like during my lifetime yes i definitely can see there is no infinite regress on that service there is one but i have very short period of time available to me to actually use as a data points to for thinking like uh the the the thought that i cannot explain by logic is that well if i if i extrapolate the time available like well maybe it is an infinite regress i have no way to prove or disprove it um look at it this way if you raise the issue of time even time is illumined and revealed by consciousness even scales of time so i might in my dream think that i have had a long and fruitful life of 50 years 70 years and wake up to realize it was a dream of a few minutes see even the scales of time even the duration of time is actually dependent on our psychological experience of time it's only when you take a very realistic reductionist material view of the universe then then it's fixed space is fixed time is fixed the theater the stage is fixed for the drama of life i can't do anything to it but uh when you take an advertising perspective the stage is not fixed the whole drama of life appears in you are the stage itself including time and space they appear in you don't put yourself into the user consciousness don't fit yourself into the framework of time and space rather time and space are fitted into the framework or appear in consciousness just think about that even the question you asked of a regression of infinite regress of observers and that i have only a thin slice of time which is already accepting a realist worldview yeah thank you things are appearing to me that nobody can deny that you have to accept but what does it mean does it mean that there is a physical universe out there with respect to consciousness notice that the entire reductionist materialist worldview has not been able to incorporate consciousness into it so far and they can only go so far as to say in somehow living matter produces consciousness yeah it's worth thinking about and the beauty and the beauty of the advaithic approach sounds so dramatically you know radical and yet if advaita were true all of science would be true there would be at no point there would be any conflict with science it's just the reductionist materialist viewpoint which would not be the final viewpoint every scientific discovery would still be valid at its own level yeah that's the beauty of advaita i think that's the thing why it is so compatible with the deepest modern understanding of the universe all right let's end this here [Music] sri krishna rupa namaste