Video 27

27. Vedantasara | Texts 153-158 | 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 we were on text number 152 i think um let me just read it out we have done it i think we've read through it but i'll just start from there because we missed a class last time so the gap is quite a bit and we tend to lose track of what we were doing so this is text number 152 um so this is what we did last time um the second relation of visheshan abhishe bhava is this in the same sentence this is that devadatta the meaning of the word that is devadat existing in the past and the meaning of the word this is they were existing in the present they are contrary ideas but they still qualify each other so as to signify a common object similarly in the sentence that thou art that the meaning of the word that is consciousness characterized by remoteness etc and the meaning of the word thou is consciousness characterized by immediacy etc they are contrary ideas but they still they qualify each other so as to signify a common object okay that sounds like gibberish but actually it's not very difficult what we are trying to do here is to understand the great sentence mahavakya that thou art which is the essence of advaita vedanta and if you wanted to say advaita vedant in one sentence it would be that thou art and we know enough by now to me we understand that what they mean by this is that i am brahman i am that ultimate reality in some way i am that ultimate reality i am not this little person or at least not just this little person but the thing is it's not that simple when we take up the sentence that thou art we see to understand that sentence we have to go through quite a bit of trouble actually um when we take up the sentence we are told that we are we have to go through three steps a process with three stages or steps in order to get the final meaning that you are brahman to get that meaning we have to go through these three steps why what are these steps why do we at all have to go through that um as we go through the steps or these stages we realize the importance of these stages the three stages or three steps are sama nadi number two first one is the second one is speciation of vishesh bhava and third one is lakshya lakshanabhara translating into english it means the first one is that all that they have a common locus number one number two the adjectival relationship number three the uh implied meaning relationship i'm giving a very rough translation what is going on here it's a semantic grammatical exercise note what we did earlier till we started all this what we did before this the superimposition and superimposition which was which was more metaphysics and epistemology but now from from there we have moved into grammar and some semantics because now we're trying to understand a sentence uh that thou art what's going on here the first step will be in a sentence there are many words and words mean things so if i have a word like book it means this in sanskrit the word sanskrit for word is pada and the sanskrit for the object meant by the word is padartha so the word is book and the object is this thing so in sanskrit the brother is book or bustaka in sanskrit and the object would be this thing padata would be this thing so the word and its object now all the words refer to the same object or do all the words refer to different objects that thou art we all know it must refer to one reality brahman that's our whole project advaita vedanta is to point to one non-dual reality you are that one brahman we are talking about one non-dual reality non-dual itself means without a second so there can be no second object but the problem is um words mean different things so generally in a sentence when you have multiple words i have a book in my hand see i've used so many words and each word refers to something else to do something different i refers to me book refers to this my hand refers to this in my hand refers to a relationship so each of these words means different things and if that thou art those words meant different things then you can't have non-duality so the words do they mean the same thing or do they mean different things are they all pointing to the same locus same adhishtana which is in sanskrit or are they pointing to different things and we saw we solved that problem by showing that there are some sentences in which you might have different words but they all mean the same thing so this sentence is also like that that thou art tattva masi i am brahman in such sentences all the words mean the same thing so that means the same thing as thou means and this is called a special relationship and the relationship is between the words words of what words of the sentence the words there s a relationship of samadhi karanya which means basically all it means is that a sentence many words but one thing they are all referring to then the second step to process this is is that how are these words related yeah they all refer to one thing but how are these words related they're different words so how are they related they are one and the same thing they are they are they are intimately related to each other but how usually the way it works is when multiple words are related to one object often it is an adjectival relationship like a the classic example that is taken is a blue lotus blue lotus um the two words blue and lotus actually mean the same thing lotus means this lotus flower and blue means the blue this blue lotus flower blue doesn't mean a blue sky or a blue shirt or anything it means this lotus flower so the second relationship which we have to apply here to understand the relationship between these words uh it's actually called vishesh navisha bhava and this is a relationship which is between the objects between the objects so uh blue lotus when you say blue lotus and vishwana vishashi of hawa the adjectival relationship this is the second stage the adjectival relationship is not between the words blue and lotus it is between the meanings of those words the objects blue the color blue and the flower lotus what are we trying to say that the flower lotus has a blue color it's a blue lotus lotus is a flower it's an object it's in a philosophical language it's a substance and blue is a color a color is a property in substances they are located in substance the technical world is that in here they inhere in substances so blue cannot hang in the air by itself it must be in some substance so the relationship is um substance and property substance and property what's the substance flower the lotus and what's the property blue it's just a fancy way of saying the lotus is blue so this is the second relationship blue lotus and how does this work what we just read is just a fancy way of saying how does this work what it does is um when you say blue and when you say lotus they work in what is called um a neon nearby that means they mutually work in ex to mutually exclude other alternatives i'll repeat that how does this go how does this work they work to mutually exclude other alternatives what do i mean mutually exclude other alternatives it's pretty simple actually um when i say blue lotus when in the word the moment i say blue it means you it yellow lotus is excluded and the red lotus is excluded the white lotus is excluded all other colors are excluded except blue so blue means it excludes all other colors and when i use the word lotus that also works in the same way it excludes every other blue object except the flower so when i say lotus i'm excluding blue sky blue shirt blue pen all that it means is this lotus blue lotus so the word blue when you use the word blue it excludes all other colors when you use the word lotus it excludes all other blue objects except um the blue lotus itself so what are they doing when they work together they mutually exclude all other options nobody thinks in this way if you ask fetch me a blue flower and there's a plate of flowers and fetch me a blue flower nobody's thinking i must mutually exclude all other alternatives and then select but that's what we do actually that's how we locate something when you specify give certain properties that's how we locate we narrow down the options and select one thing so this is the second uh relationship appreciation of how and remember all of these we are applying to what to the sentence that thou art let's not forget let's not be confused with blue lotus or the other example so i am they were the this is that they were and so on um those are examples all we want to do is understand that thou art now uh one more step is remaining and that is called lakshya lakshana bhava implied meaning how does that work we will see in the 150 third text by the way at this point some of you may be if you're following carefully you may be a little confused blue lotus is fine but that thou art doesn't quite function like a blue lotus right that now what that means let's remember what do the words mean that and thou thou means simply you i it just means this fellow server prayer and thou and that means god in in our vedantic terms consciousness qualified by maya maya chaitanya consciousness qualified by maya is the meaning of the word that just as when i say book book is a word it means this object when i say that in the that thou art that means god technically be more specific what does god mean consciousness plus maya consciousness qualified by maya consciousness limited by maya let us say you can put it another way also consciousness empowered by maya consciousness is up to all these games and mischief because of maya only it's empowered by maya maya is the shakthi so consciousness plus maya consciousness qualified by maya whichever way you put it that is the meaning of the word that tat and what is the meaning of thou it is consciousness limited by ignorance a part of maya again or more specifically consciousness limited by an individual ignorance and say what is this individual ignorance we have studied it all you have no right to ask that all of this we studied with the when we were talking about ignorance having a total aspect ignorance having an individual aspect all of that we saw now when you say blue lotus blue lotus is not a problem because a blotus can be blue blue is a color lotus is a flower so why can't they go together it can be a flower has a color it can be a blue blue color blue blue lotus but that and thou can they be related like that like a substance and a property is it god qualified by me or is it i qualified by god who is the subject who is the substance here who is the property who is the noun here who is the adjective it doesn't make sense this this second relationship adjectival relationship bishop is doesn't make sense correct it doesn't make sense we will see that later but before that he will mention the third relationship which is the final step um implied meaning lakshya lakshmana what is this relationship between it is the relationship between the sentence that thou art and pure consciousness the sentence that thou art will point to pure consciousness lecture election of how means pointing implied meaning which is the pointer the sentence and what is pointed pure consciousness why are we saying pointing why aren't we saying that it denotes or says you can't say it no no words can objectify that that reality so these words can only point to it or in sanskrit lakshya lakshana means the one which points out lakshya means the implied or pointed out thing so that one is mentioned in text number 153 this is the final relationship and by the way this is just being introduced we will go into further detail just after this so the third step in understanding tatwa masih is the lakshya lakshmana power that is one text number 153 foreign the third relation that of lakshya bhava is this in that very sentence this is that devadatta the words this and that or their meanings by the elimination of the contrary associations of past and present time stand in relation to employer implied with devadatta who is common to both similarly in this sentence toward that also the words that and thou or their meanings by the elimination of contrary associations of remoteness and immediacy etc stand in the relationship of employer and implied with consciousness which is common to both again not difficult it's actually pretty simple what what they're trying to say implied meaning this is the final step we will have to go through to find the meaning of that thou art here first let's understand the example he's giving an example and then we will understand what is how to apply it for that thou art or tatavamasi what's the example the example is um this is that devadatta soyam devadatta this is that devadatta i've already mentioned this example the number of times earlier this is that they were devadatta means there was just some guy devadatta whom i had seen in mumbai and now i'm seeing in here in manhattan so mumbai there and manhattan here who might seen then 30 years ago and who i am seeing now just now so then and now past and present that devadatta who was young and then and now the the same devadatta is now old uh that they were who was fit and now this table doctor who is obese and so on now all these qualities are contradictory mumbai and manhattan how can it be the same person um past and present how can it be the same person old and young and old young then old now how can it be the same person fit then and um you know obese now with a full head of hair at that time and bald now how can it be the same person they're so different and yet we have no no problem in understanding such a sentence if somebody comes to you and says that oh um this is that same person i saw 30 years ago you have no problem in understanding what do you do how do you understand this do you first see the problem the problem is that there are so many contradictory qualities involved here but you still understand this is the same person how do you understand this what you do is you leave out the contrary qualities you leave out the contradictory qualities and take the person what we what we automatically instinctively do we don't have to go through so many we don't know that we are doing such fancy things like lakshya election of our implied meaning we don't know that but we are doing it actually we automatically do it all the time what do we do what we do are spontaneously naturally is that we we disregard then and hear past and present old young and old fit and obese with a full head of hair and balding all that we disregard and we say it's the same person it's the same person we're talking about the same person just that many properties have changed place has changed time has changed properties have changed the look has changed all of that has changed but we say it's the same person so all of it points to one person we disregard contradictory qualities and we find out the common reality underneath it so this is an example and we always do it we use it so many times in some in our daily life exactly like that you have to do it for that that thou art that thou art the contradictory qualities that god is you um shayta ketu's father said in the chando yo panishad you buy at that guard that reality which reality in the shantokyo finished if you go back you will find oh my dear child before the beginning of this universe there was one reality one without a second from that the entire universe appeared because we are talking about the creation or projection of the universe we understand they're talking about saguna brahman consciousness with maya so which is ishwar or god or sagun abram whatever you call it that that god is you this person not just right shaytan talking to each of us you my dear man or my dear lady you are the ultimate your god but how immediately we see the contradiction i am it says upper auction the thou the g was upper rochester means i directly experience my own existence apart directly experienced i am before i experience anything i know myself i am directly evident to myself the way that descartes you know it says i think therefore i am even more than that i am therefore i think you can reverse it actually so my own existence is indisputable i can dispute anything else but this my own existence i can't dispute you know people sometimes i see this suppose you don't exist you can't suppose that people who say that don't even know what they mean it's impossible even to suppose that you don't exist you have to exist shankaracharya says whoever denies the existence of the self is the exit self of that denier so i exist this is called apparatus directly evident incontrovertibly so and that god is paraksha paraksha means indirect it's not directly evident to me i have just read about it my religion has told me about it vedanta tells me about it you know holy people have told me about that there is such a god maybe reasoning has told me about it that the universe exists there must be a first cause to this universe so theological reasons are there there are scriptural reasons for believing in god there are traditional reasons for believing in god maybe i grew up in a you know in a church or in a religion which told me about the existence of god all of it is put in one word paraksha indirect literally it means beyond the range of our sensory knowledge it's a something that you read about reason about but you don't experience directly so these are contradictory i am directly experienced that god is indirect and how can it be how can it either directly experience and the indirect be the same thing how is it possible okay do you see the contradiction in this just look at your own experience look at how you feel about yourself and how you feel about the god that you worship you know father in heaven or shiva kali vishnu shiva kali vishnu durga father in heaven allah all of it is a matter of faith maybe reasoned faith may be good of course solid reasons for believing in it but it's still not directly experienced the way you experience your own existence so it's very contradictory it's completely opposite baroque not only that there are many other contradictory qualities god i read about god as um all pervading and i'm not all-pervading i'm just barely pervert even if i'm very overweight i'll pervade one chair that's it so i don't pervade the whole universe i don't even pervade this room and god is all pervading god is all-powerful i have very little power a server server shakti man i have very little power very little capacity very little capability and god is the creator preserver destroyer of the universe at least that's what i read again contradictory server god is all-knowing omniscient i know so little and whatever i get no i so much effort i have to put into it and i keep forgetting it so alpagya these tremendously different qualities are there how are they the same so you have to do exactly what you did for soyum devadatta leave out the contradictory qualities and take the consciousness which is common to both what is god consciousness plus maya what are you consciousness limited by individual ignorance leave out the maya and the individual ignorance what will remain consciousness that consciousness is common to you and god so when you say that thou art it only means the unlimited awareness when you limit that awareness with maya you call it god when you limit that awareness with your individual body mind you call it yourself other than the individual body and mind other than maya the consciousness is basically the same thing exactly the same thing that is the meaning implied meaning of that thou art it's something really worth thinking about this is the door to enlightenment we'll see how it's applied later on but every advaithic text does this this is just setting it up so it seems sounds very theoretical it's not theoretical it's actually talking about something very vividly available to all of us all the time we just don't know it all right so you see the text here um okay i will not go into the details but you get the basic idea now all this was simple now we are going to get into difficulties why these difficulties are it's not necessary for saddam and the yoginta to bring in the extra wrinkles the complications which are going to start now but for some reason he has put forth some just to give us a taste of how much is really involved in trying to extract the meaning of that thou art so here comes the first big complication remember the second step the blue lotus and if you have you know if you have a feel for what was going on it's not quite like that thou art blue lotus is understandable but how do you put that which is the color and which is the flower is the is god the flower and are you the color and you'll be like is it like a u-colored guard like a blue colored lotus that's weird i mean it doesn't doesn't fit so that question will be raised now in what sense the question is in what sense are you applying that second relationship so far they have accepted the opponents have accepted uh the first one samantha karanium all right let's take it for um granted let's let's admit that that thou art that and thou refer to the same reality and that's a very very big admission very very big admission means we've already moved beyond dualism the dualist would like to interpret that thou art in a dualistic way that is not that literally you are that but that is the lord and you are the servant that is the father and you are the child mother and you are the child some kind of dualistic interpretation that will be comfortable for a dualistic religion they have let go of that now they are the opponents are saying all right we understand there's one reality but now come to the second one which you did which you want to apply um the blue lotus example it doesn't fit you must be aware of the problem there then only the what's going to happen is pretty complicated it's going to make sense then i'll i'll go through it and uh it's complicated you will listen to it if you get it fine if you don't just listen to a second or third time when the recording is put up and you'll get it it's a lot of complication for nothing much but the complication is there hundred fifty four year me eva bhaga lakshmi text number 154 this is called one type of implied meaning called bhaga lakshana what is it talking about 153 what we did just now about this is that devadatta that example that's a one type of implied meaning what do you mean one type of implied meaning don't worry don't be in a hurry it's all waiting for us there are many kinds of implied meaning and we'll be asked to choose between them all those things are going to come up later on but right now right now we have a more pressing concern the second step is problematic text number 155 this is this is an objection the literal meaning in the manner of the sentence the blue lotus does not fit with the sentence that thou art is an objection that hold on yeah they're going to rain on our parade so hold on it doesn't work you gave the example the blue lotus that thou art is not like the blue lotus blue is a color lotus is a flower and blue is a property lotus is a substance that and thou are not colors and flowers that and thou are not properties and substances with dao means you the individual sentient being that means god how how is it the same kind how can you go ahead like this so he's going to explain the problem why doesn't fit and then what can you do about it i'm on text number 156 in the phrase the blue lotus the meaning of the word blue is the blue color and the meaning of the word lotus is the flowered lotus they respectively exclude other colors such as white etc and other objects such as cloth etc thus these two words mutually stand in relation of qualifier and qualified and this relation means their mutual qualification or their unity this interpretation of the sentence since it does not contradict any other means of knowledge is admissible all right what did he say here if you look at the sentence itself tatratu there but there there in that that phrase blue lotus there what's happening there neela padartha neela gone the meaning of the word blue what is the meaning of the word blue the color blue when you use the word blue what do you mean you mean the color blue ut the meaning of the word flower the word flower and the meaning of the word flower the meaning of the word flower is what that lotus that flower so what do they do onion nearby they operate to mutually exclude other meanings they operate to mutually exclude other meanings other meanings means the word the color blue the moment you mention blue it excludes his uh he writes here the white etc we have discussed this already there's nothing new um moment you say blue lotus the word when you hear blue you automatically exclude white and yellow and red and pink or whatever whatever whatever kind of lotus cells is available there you exclude them you think it's only blue and when you mention lotus that excludes patadi pata means cloth so you you understand that what is being said is not a blue cloth or blue chair a blue pen or a blue sky or blue shirt no all it means is a flower a lotus so when you say blue and lotus they mutually exclude other options they exclude other colors and they exclude other objects and they mutually qualify each other how um as as the color and the flower as one and the same thing a blue lotus they mean one object only so they mean a unity very intimate oneness so for that is they're always there between this is this all comes from the nya vaishishika philosophy substance and attribute so white milk it's an intimate oneness notice when you say white milk blue lotus tall man fast car when you say such things when you're qualifying an object with a certain property you know fast tall white blue colors and size and you know qualities so all of these these things they exist together intimately one you can't have fast tall blue floating in the air it must be a fast car or a fast horse it must be a blue flower or a blue cloth or something so color and the object property and substance they exist in intimate oneness existing intimate oneness this is called samsarka so some sarga is a sanskrit term which means an intimate oneness which exists between substance and property but they are not literally the same thing a color and a flower are not the same thing height and a man are not the same thing tall man tall is not equal to man man could be short a tree could be tall so tall is a property height and man is a substance a person and they exist in intimate oneness but they are not literally the same thing so this will not work for us when i say you are brahman i mean you are literally the same thing brahman and you are literally the same thing it's not that you are a property and brahman is a property holding object or a substance no no no it's not like color and flower you and brahman are literally the same thing it is like soyamd this is that devadat it is literally the same person so you are brahman means you are literally brahman brahman is you you are brahman that's what we mean it's not like property so it's not sansar this is what is the blue lotus works because it's samsara so he says here samsara i think he uses the word samsara samsar gasiya okay so this is one kind of oneness which you can use another kind of oneness is vishishta vishishta vishista means qualified what does it mean both of these we are going to reject both of these both of these means two options what are the two options samsara vishishta samsarga is what i just mentioned like a blue lotus like a tall man a fast car a property and an object and a substance they are they are yes they are one but they're not literally the same thing it's one is the property one is a substance and they are in intimate connection to each other intimate existence i mean there are precise terms in nyaya and by shishika for this this is samawaya sambandha is there but anyway we can't use those terms here so they are in intimately together another option is vishishta the second option again not acceptable to us as non-dualist but what is that option we have to understand that that's what makes for the complication of this passage um another way you could think about it is vishishta vishishta means like this nilotpala blue lotus instead of thinking blue is a color and lotus is a flower how can color so instead of saying that it's a blue colored flower one may further be a little nitpicking an object here sort of semantic objection how can a color and a flower be the same thing how can they be one it is one we understand in common sense everybody understands but um philosophers they go little deeper than this a flower is one with a flower how can a flower be one with a color so when it says blue lotus it means blue here kneeler neela means nilothpala it means that blue lotus itself and lotus means lotus i'll repeat it it is a peculiar idea to get your head around so one meaning of blue lotus is blue colored lotus that is what we have done some sarga the second one which we are doing vishishta here a little bit of complication has been introduced blue lotus here means blue lotus lotus the word blue means blue lotus and the word lotus means lotus it's not as strange as we think it is if you think about it if you ask the question which kind of lotus it you must give me an answer in terms of lotus don't say blue blue is a color i'm asking you to select a lotus which kind of lotus you will say blue lotus so what are these when you say blue lotus what does it mean blue lotus lotus let me explain it in another way which i explained in another place where we were doing vedanta so many of you are settled here in the united states and many of you have come from india and many of you have children here who are born here now there's a big difference the children who are born here are indian americans okay now how do you understand this term indian american is it an indian and an american that's not possible you can't have how can you have an indian and an american is it american qualified by an indian indian qualified american no what does the term indian american mean it means there are many kinds of americans there are anglo-saxon-americans there are african-americans there are native american americans and there are indian american americans so when you say indian american which applies to your children or if somebody here has been born here in the united states it applies to you what what you mean when you say indian american you mean indian american american you mean i am an american what kind of american indian american so put it all together you are an indian american american so all of them are americans american is a general term all are americans but among them there are specific kinds of americans there are those with an indian heritage with an asian heritage with a latin latino heritage with an african heritage so there are and those people are also americans but they are americans with this specific uh heritage so you are an indian american american you're a asian-american american african-american american and they are all americans but different kinds of americans now when you apply this to the blue lotus what will it stand for it will stand for what kind of lotus you you shouldn't say blue you should say blue lotus there are many kinds of lotuses here pick something you have to pick when you pick it you will pick a blue lotus you will not pick a blue so i'm i won't belabor the point too much you get the point this is another more sophisticated way of understanding the term blue lotus this is called vishishta it amounts boils down to the same thing but it's a more sophisticated way of understanding it and if you look at the case of indian americans it makes us it makes sense especially with is if you in your own case uh many of our are immigrant families so the difference between you and your children children who are born here so you are indians living in america by the children in many cases but in the children are indian american americans they are american so the point i made and with the children liked when i when i talked about it children liked it that you are not indian and american you are americans but with an indian heritage so you're indian american americans similarly here blue lotus lotus so but what does it all mean for us nothing you can be glad that even if you have not understood anything about what's going on here don't worry because it's all rejected it doesn't work for us it doesn't work for us when you take tatwam asi that's our art neither samsara blue lotus doesn't fit nor vishishta blue lotus lotus doesn't fit why doesn't it fit because because of this take tatthamasi that thou art which is the adjective and which is the noun which is the substance and which is the property is it um you the is it god qualified by you are you qualified by god in the case of blue lotus is very very clear it's a lotus qualified by the color blue or even more details you want to go it's a lotus qualified by blue lotus blue lotus lotus but that thou got an individual how will you do that you might even press further and say why what's wrong let's let it be like blue lotus god qualified by individual i'm an individual and i am like an adjective and god is like the noun god is the substance i am entering in god it won't work why blue lotus fits easily because blue is a color and lotus is a flower but if you and god try to fit in like that it will not work why not because all powerful and little powerful can they go together then what will be the combined entity blue lotus combined entity understood all powerful little powerful consciousness how is it possible i am less pervasive god is all-pervading omnipresent i am not only present minimally pervasive and a maximally pervasive consciousness how how can the same thing be all pervading and minimal pervasion how can the same thing be um you know extraordinarily powerful supremely powerful and powerless sarva shakti man and alpha shaktimaan consciousness how is it possible see you can say blue big blue lotus because the blue and the big they don't contradict each other the flower can be big and it can be blue but can you say big small lotus you can't say that can you say blue white lotus or blue red lotus you can't say that can you say um blue fragrant no smell lotus how can it be fragrant and no smell at all at the same time it cannot be so the same consciousness you cannot describe it as all-powerful and minimally powerful you cannot describe it as all-pervasive and minimally pervasive you can't describe it as baroque most direct and then the most clear objection would be paraksha paroksha my own existence i feel directly directly felt consciousness and indirectly you know believed in consciousness they are the same consciousness how so contradictory qualities can cannot be affirmed of the same locus so when you try to say that thou art is like the blue lotus no it doesn't work neither um neither would you call it samsara nor vishishta does not work as a blue lotus does not work as a blue lotus lotus it doesn't work then how does it work what do you want the opposition is asking us because we are going through this second stage so how are you guys applying the second stage these are the only two options we have got so we are applying the second stage in this way we means advaitans we want a third way of applying this this second stage of vishnu bishop shabhava here we all that we want from vishesh abhishe shabhava is not adjective and now not property and substance we just want that first thing what it does mutually excludes other things mutually excludes other things to give one uniform meaning akhanda what meaning do you want we don't want samsara intimate contact we don't want vishishta no blue lotus lotus but what do we want akanda one indivisible reality how will you do that we use it to exclude you know remember when i said blue lotus it does it does mutual exclusion blue excludes all other colors lotus excludes all other entities and then they qualify each other as a blue lotus we want that property how here is the beauty of it you see why all this abstract reasoning what it points to really very grand idea when it says you are brahman that thou art we say you are brahman we mean by that you are nothing but brahman all the other things are excluded you are brahman means you are not the body you are not the mind you are being awareness when i say brahman is you [Music] it should exclude brahman is not we don't buy brahman we don't mean shiva vishnu kali father in heaven allah unless they are you if there's something apart from you then we don't mean that we mean only you when i say you are brahman we mean you as consciousness and consciousness only when i mean brahman is you i mean brahman is you and you only you the consciousness not allah vishnu maheshwara durga kali unless they are in some sense one with you do you see that what a tremendous thing we are saying what we are saying here is the second stage is saying you are nothing but god and even more radically god is nothing but you the real you if you put them together like this then it becomes the meaning which we want to express we don't want to say one is the property of the other property of the other it contradicts that funny story is there um one gentleman wanted to go to a party he was going with his wife and he was wearing smelly socks the wife said what is that awful smell oh you haven't changed your socks put on fresh socks and so they went to the party and in the party that awful smell was there so the wife came close to the husband and whispered i told you to change your socks and the husband said i did and then the wife said but where is this how's the smell coming oh those socks are in my pocket the old ones so the smelly smell bad smell will not go away if you put the socks in your pocket similarly if you say if you make jiva the sentient being as the jiva is a property of of god god is omniscient omnipotent fine but if the jewish still there is the jiva then the the bondage and the smallness and the powerlessness and the helplessness those that smell will still be there along with the infinitude of god it will not work you have to leave aside the the quality is imposed by maya and take consciousness only how will you do that jiva means nothing other than brahman and brahman means nothing other than jeeva means what then you have to leave brahmana and jeeves separate the qualities aside and mean consciousness only they mean together when you put them together they will mean consciousness only so this is what has been said so far let me just see the next text 100 57 so 157 says this why it doesn't work trying to put you know put it like blue lotus that thou art is not like blue lotus so that objection is putting forward attra to but in this sentence that thou art the meaning of the sentence that is consciousness associated with remoteness etc and the meaning of the word thou is consciousness associated with immediacy etc if it is maintained at these two ideas since they eliminate their mutual distinction stand to each other in the relationship of qualifier and qualified meaning their mutual qualification of the unity it involves a contradiction with direct perception and other means of knowledge and therefore is inconsistent if i break up the sentence you'll see it comes out very easily all that i have said till now it comes here atratu in this case unfortunately but unfortunately in this case which case that thou art what was the earlier case blue lotus you can take it as a blue lotus or you can take it as a blue lotus lotus samsung sister works but unfortunately in this case atratu in this case that thou art the word that it means consciousness associated with remoteness god whom we believe in and all that meaning that is experience your own existence directly if you use the principle of mutual exclusion setting everything else aside and then you try to apply one of the two like blue lotus or blue lotus lotus what are you talking about are you talking about um jiva ishwara or jiva shwareshwara jiva is like blue and ishwar is like lotus so blue lotus gyswara doesn't work they are they are totally different you can't put them together and so this is where why these discussions are important one reason is that the dualists when they continuously accuse non-dualists of sacrilege blasphemy you are saying you are god they have a point they are looking at it this way that you are you god is god how can you say you are god this is crazy and see that's what we are we're dealing with that issue here we don't mean that um he says samsara garcia and vishishta to take the meaning of the sentence means to accept to accept the meaning of the sentence doesn't work it is not consistent why not because every every instrument of knowledge opposes this oneness i know directly with my own experience what i am i know by reading books and hearing holy people and all what god is it's clearly we are not the same so we cannot be qualified like blue and lotus and things like that so it doesn't work taduktam he is quoting from panchadashi here in support of what he just did all of what we discussed is somewhat summed up here therefore it has been said in this sentence that thou art the correct meaning is neither the union of the two ideas that is samsara nor their mutual qualification vishishta the real meaning of the sentence according to scholars or according to the wise is an absolute homogeneous principle akanda e karasa how do you do that as i showed you are brahman means you are not the body mind notice when shankaracharya sings i am not the mind not the intellect not the memory not the ego then the sense organs i am not i am not the five elements then only he can say so and god also by god i don't mean a deity who is away from you it was a different entity called shiva or vishnu or something so god is also nothing different from me and i am not something different from god in that sense one homogeneous entity is being referred to here okay so that is what did we do now we solved one we just hit one road bump on our way to being one with god or seeing our identity with god the road bump was the second step how do you use qualification the adjectival relationship this is how we use it not in the sense of blue lotus in the sense of this is that devadatta we'll use it like that this is that and then more details will come in the next class okay so this is where we are let me see there's activity in the chat prabhupada says if we accept this we get vishishta dweta correct we accept this we get vishishta pradeep says here that refers to saguna brahman but ahmed ramahasmi are we referring to nirguna brahmana against always when you say ahamram has me tattoo masi it always refers to jiva and saguna brahman when you say i am brahman so what that i will be this individual person and then you have to do this these three steps same three steps will apply on every um yeah so because if you say i am nirguna brahman it can't be done moment you say i what do you mean you mean i the person i serve priyanda then i have to let go of my physical attributes my mental attributes this thula sarira sukshmashi let go means know that they are appearances and so if i start with myself as the jiva and try to understand myself as nirguna brahman then i have to start with brahman as uh sagunda brahman saguna brahman is realized to be nirguna brahman i am jiva is realized to be nirkuna brahman when you realize your nature as nirguna brahman it's called atman when you realize saguna brahman's real nature it's called guna brahman and atman and ingula brahman are the same thing the sakshi chaitanya and nirguna brahman are the same thing that is that is the whole process of advaita vedanta and technically also there'll be a problem if you say i am nirguna brahman then you are able to denote nerma brahman by language you can't do that language will always refer directly to sagunabrahman or to this individual only by implication it can refer to nirkuna brahman rick says although thou that thou art refers to saguna brahma in chandragupta could also said to be referred to brahman yes we are coming to that see that's why the third step is there when you say refer to the references of two kinds one is direct reference one is implied meaning till now we are using direct reference the direct reference is always to sagnobraman and the implied meaning is to nit guna brahman this is the implied meaning is what is important if you say tell me simply what am i according to advaita vedanta according to advaita vedanta you are nirgungram but that's the implied meaning and that's what we're going to come to in the third stage which will happen next time so if you ask no tell me that and thou in these sentences that thou art what do they refer to do they refer to the jiva and the ishwara the the individual and god or do they refer to new guru brahman they initially refer to jiva and ishwara to begin with the process starts with jivanishwara there's no other place to start with where do you start you start with jiva jagateshwara the world god and you and where do you end up in one reality a non-dual reality so initially they are they refer to saguna brahman and jiva and ultimately when you have completed the process it will refer to nirguna brahman what will refer to nirguna brahman thou will refer to nitkuna brahman that will refer to nitkuna brahman aham brahmasmi i am brahman i will ultimately refer to nirkuna brahman starting it refers to me the person ending at the end of the whole teaching it refers to nirkuna brahman i am brahman starts with sagunabrahman ends with nirkuna brahman and this process will be accomplished as i said in three steps these three steps we have to go through you know if you just think about it quietly why can't you simply straight state that i am nir guna brahman think about what is meant by nirkuna brahman you can get no objective meaning for nir guna brahman you can point to sagunabrahman that which is talked about by all the religions of theistic religions of the world that which is the object of my devotion my worship my meditation my adoration my faith sabuna brahman you can't refer to it but directly but it's the reality language can't refer to it directly then shweta is asking intuition is a parochial production intuition is apparent intuition is appropriate the kind of intuition that i mean here that is meant in advaita vedanta that is approximate intuition may be american there can be an artistic intuition there can be a detective who sees by intention this is the criminal that's that's into a different kind of intuition um but this the spiritual intuition which we are talking about here the highest that catching i am that that is the upper rook that's always appropriate your very nature is upper option punita ji is asking is the sheer simplicity of the sentence that makes it hard to accept and live by sheer simplicity yes the difficulty of this statement is the sheer simplicity i would say that you might say what's simple about it it might be simple to puniti but everybody is saying what what is she talking about it's so complicated actually it's not complicated it is wonderfully simple everything else is complicated all complications are based on this this is really simple but then that's why it's very difficult to catch and hard to live by once you catch it then you live by it but living by it is called jivan mukti when you get it and you live your life accordingly that is called freed freedom while living shiva priya is asking hence you have to pass through saguna to reach nir guna what is non-dualistic without dualistic all inclusive is brahman why complicated we are dualistic by existence no we are not dwelled by existence consciousness with maya is my ignorance so so so as soon as i know that ignorance it is inclusive um i don't know uh when you see when you try to put this try to put this in the framework which we have learned that is the purpose of this framework see all throughout last few months we have been learning definition after definition after definition right so that you can even put these statements in clear terms using these definitions nitin says the mantra in chandragupta that includes mahavaca also that that in i am that refers to nirna brahman so why do we have to take that as sagunabram and explain the meaning of that as an implied way why can it not be taken as same as jiva brahman opera is it to settle an argument of an opponent as i said all this time we have been discussing this first of all you cannot directly refer to um nirguna brahman by language and if you look at the original gopanishad that does not directly refer to nirkuna brahman if you go to the sixth chapter of chandragyopaneshwar what does it say sade was if it says that what what is that it's already something that shweta ketu's father has been talking about many times he has mentioned it and he always mentioned it as the source of the universe but what is the definition of god in in vedanta in fact in all theistic religions as the creator of this universe so that means the creator of the universe you means individual and the two terms will be equivalent or identical only when you see that that is pure consciousness and you are pure consciousness do you notice what is happening if you say i am brahman i am nirguna brahman and then we have got two terps terms in one term and i what do you mean by that i you must start with yourself otherwise this this is all a method of teaching right if you already realized you're gonna brahman all this is not necessary for you but if you have not realized then what do you think yourself to be what does the i stand for tum thou stand for thou is the pada means object book is the word the object is this when you say i it's a word object is what object normally for us is this body and mind and then you have to go through the process of drigrish or avastatra or something like that and finally arrive at natguna brahman if you are doing that kind of torture for the term i or thou what about the term tat it must also go through a similar kind of process this is called analysis or inquiry into the terms that and thou even in the terms of symmetry you will find it strange if you only apply um the analysis to the term thou and leave the term that alone both must be analyzed to reach common reality and yes is it to settle an argument of an opponent all those arguments as you can see are being settled on the way it's all on on the journey and rather is asking why do we need the second one second one means the vishana vishesh bhava because the see this is how we normally first of all when you have these identity statements they usually are of the form blue lotus white chalk and so this is how you that's this is where most people stop so it comes on the way now um for us as we said we are rejecting the normal application of the this second step the normal application is sangsargar wishes to both do not apply to us neither blue lotus is applicable to us not blue lotus lotus is applicable to us they have nothing to do with that though art but in one sense it is applicable that is the sense which we took it just we just said akhandartham that means by the word tat and by the word tum we exclude every other possibility what i normally think by the word i the body mind that is excluded because i am brahman abraham is not a body or mind and by the word brahman god what we mean shiva vishnu kali durga that is all excluded because what i want to say is uh that that brahman is nothing other than but you the consciousness it is not the individual consciousness which is the little being you but is also not the cosmic consciousness which is um consciousness plus clothed in maya and the cosmic mind and the you know the ishvara hiranga bhavirat not even that you see how it is all this we are discussing is coded into om om the three components of om and the silence beyond that the individual is the waker the dreamer and the deep sleeper uma and the real you is the silence beyond uh the waker dreamer deep sleeper is the consciousness which is the witness of wake up dreamer deep sleeper the cosmic is in the waking state it is virat the entire universe consciousness plus the entire universe in the dream state or subtle state it is consciousness plus cosmic mind hiranyakarbha in the causal state it is consciousness plus maya ishwara but beyond virat hirani garba ishwara beyond the gross subtle and causal states is the reality which is the silence beyond uma in that silence the cosmic and the individual you and god are one reality which is pure consciousness all of what we are discussing is all encoded into ohm another interesting thing i realized just today one she pointed out that um om oh uma refers to shravada and true the actual teaching of vedanta has to be done in the gross state like like now the thinking about it and understanding manana has to be done in the subtle state in your mind and then needed samadhi is equivalent to the deep sleep state not that you have to fall asleep it's where subject and object merge but the reality which is being pointed out is neither in the waking nor in the dream nor in the deep sleep it is the witness of all of them so it is the thuria all practice is at this level and the practice is gross this is learning like this thinking about it subtle and meditating upon it causal beautiful i never thought of it earlier alpanaji is saying if possible in another vedantissar class could you explain pancho shishlokas 150 to 152 related to tatwa masih i have to take a look but if you're interested in detailed discussion of the mahavakyas i did um um what do you call it like a retreat panchodashi chapter five is the whole chapter whole chapters is a short chapter it's the shortest chapter in the panchayat taken up and in brief analyzed there that is chapter 5 and i did a retreat on that and that's available online on youtube um yes swamiji it is specifically the objection raised by the purvu pakshi about whether the brahman is cervical or miracle he uses this argument to just say that everything is unreal and that's a very beautiful one but i'll take a look i'll take a look next time yeah thank you very much prabhupada was saying isn't it more easily explained by using jahad lakshana as you had done you taught this at hollywood yeah that's coming next the type of laksana election means implied meaning we have not done it yet we are going to use that in the next uh the third stage lakshana means implied meaning that implied meaning is going to come now um sridhara says one level above the common denominator which is consciousness there seems to be another common denominator which is ignorance correct at the level of ignorance this is the causal state karnavastha at the level of ignorance we are saying ishwar and jiwa are contradictory but they seem like part and whole correct isn't it like vesti part of samashti like tree and forest we saw earlier correct correct but that's at the level of ignorance already at the level of ultimate reality they are not part and whole they are exactly the same the part and whole relationship comes only when you introduce maya so it's not that ishwar and jiva are part and whole consciousness is one and the same but it is their upadhis samashti maya and vesti are ghana they are part and whole and they tend to give the impression of a part and hold ishvara and jiva so yes when you introduce maya then the part and whole relationship is it starts that's where the differentiation starts between cosmic and individual even at the deep sleep level notice at the deep sleep level it still does not feel like part and hold it feels it doesn't feel like anything the subject and object are one it's blank but when you come to the subtle level and especially to the physical level then the difference between part and whole is huge i'm a tiny being as a body and this is an enormous physical universe of which i'm a tiny tiny part as a mind i'm one mind in a cosmic mind in deep sleep i'm at the causal level and it's part of the cosmic causal maya but that is only it seems only theoretical because it doesn't feel like any differences there so sridhama important point you raised so this relationship between part and whole fine if you apply it at the causal level but then the causal level is also false it's an appearance and what we're talking about that thou art is at the ultimate level the paramount thicker ultimately is there a cause and is there a part and whole relationship no is there a qualified and qualified relationship no it is identity it is exactly the same thing it is one undivided reality sravani has patiently raised her hand so shahvani i must say that there's lot of verbal semantics going on and it feels like i almost getting lost but i have to ask this so in the in initially when this discussion started in 41 44 and 45 those were texts uh three meanings of dao and that were introduced like the red hot iron ball like saguna brahma and the nirna and then uh also the maya correct now from there how did we just come here where we are just talking that that means to sagona uh and thou refers to only the individual consciousness right now the red hot iron ball example that was part of the at adhara papavata and the final conclusion of all those discussions we said think about it this way that when you have a red hot iron ball there are three aspects to it and there is the fire there is the ball and then the mixed up fire and ball together red hot iron ball so what we see there there are three aspects to it similarly here also there is pure consciousness and then there is um uh maya and what you see is um is the together maya and pure consciousness together so there is pure consciousness the upadhi maya and pure consciousness plus maya which is the segunda brahmana now the thing is in that example you cannot dismiss the ball but in the case of maya and brahman you can actually dismiss maya and all the products remember go back to the very beginning only brahman is the reality from maya downwards everything is an appearance so we have to in this in this experience of the universe you have to see what is the one underlying reality so which is nirguna brahman because of maya it appears to be saguna brahman and because of saguna brahman it appears to be all this it was also said that uh neruda brahman is the implied meaning so if you take that as an implied meaning then that's fine and i think that's where we are getting ultimately we are going going towards the implied meaning you have to catch the implied meaning the implied meaning is the actual meaning and the direct meaning is direct the direct meaning of that is the direct meaning of tum is you the person shaving more precisely the direct meaning of is um i mean if i give the exact definition according to uh vedanta direct meaning of tat is maya chaitanya consciousness limited by maya the direct meaning of tau is a chaitanya consciousness limited by ignorance after ignorance comes subtle body grows body and then it becomes shravani or sarvapriyananda but in reality it is consciousness only yeah i was just trying to see it is it kind of is it mapping like from we start from the direct meaning the three stages and then we ultimately go to the implied meaning if you map it you will see it it maps very beautifully okay we will look at it later on when we finish this implied meaning and come to the conclusion of that though art then we will see all that we learned earlier adiaro papawa the superimposition di superimposition how does it all map how do you apply it all and then you have to understand it and after understanding you have to meditate upon it in this meditation in the meditations you will see that understanding becomes very clear it's just it seems to be a matter of fact the whole thing is an appearance in consciousness thank you yes all right then let's end here [Music] to [Music] you