The Greatest Discovery About the Self & Reality | Swami Sarvapriyananda

0:00 If I'm not the mind, if I'm just bare light, what am I thinking?

0:04 Nothing.

0:05 What do I need?

0:06 Nothing.

0:06 Who are my enemies?

0:07 Nobody.

0:08 Fear comes when the mind kicks in.

0:10 As long as I'm a mind, a person, everybody's a person to me.

0:13 The moment I stepped back from physicality, I realized everybody is that light.

0:18 The day I finished my last assignment in college

0:21 and went straight to the monastery [music] and joined.

0:23 That's how I became a monk.

0:25 We have been born many times and we have died many times.

0:27 And that's not good news.

0:29 But the really important promise is here and now in this life.

0:33 You can have possessions but not be possessed by the possessions.

0:36 [music]

0:37 Well put.

0:37 You can have things just the things don't have you.

0:40 Yes.

0:41 Comfortable life right here and now means no progress.

0:43 It must be pushing the envelope somewhere.

0:45 It's a human limitation that we think if

0:47 this is right everything else has to be wrong.

0:49 In meditation when we calm down that's what the ego hates.

0:53 This is how you thin out the ego.

0:54 So we sit still closing the eyes when we are ready.

1:04 This is actually the first No Thyself podcast with our new uh background set.

1:09 Oh, I see.

1:11 Yeah.

1:12 Yeah.

1:11 We're making some changes.

1:13 [laughter] So, it's it's good to have you in the studio.

1:15 Um Swami G, thank you so much for being here.

1:18 Thank you for having me, Andre.

1:20 I have been loving watching your talks and reading

1:24 some of your books over the past few years

1:26 and the conversation today is one I'm very passionate

1:29 about and it's been very much so your life study

1:32 for people that don't know what is adveta vanta

1:37 well advanta is um a very ancient school

1:41 of Indian non-dual um spiritual philosophy um if you back

1:47 up a little bit the big picture kind If

1:50 you see the study of spirituality and philosophy in India,

1:54 it's like a big project you can discern

1:57 from all the way back long before the Buddha.

2:00 This quest to know um reality, reality about the world, reality about ourselves.

2:08 It was not like our modern scientific quest.

2:12 Rather it was a quest that there is something if we uncover

2:15 that if we realize that or find that out then our life becomes fulfilled.

2:20 So that was the quest.

2:21 This quest there it went by many names.

2:24 Moka freedom, MTI which means freedom, Nirvana, Kalia.

2:28 There are multiple names and multiple traditions.

2:32 Many of them were based on the Vedas which are the root texts of Hinduism.

2:38 Even those which are not directly based on the Vedas

2:40 were often reactions to the Vedas like the Jinism or Buddhism.

2:45 And in the Vedas you have these texts called the upanishads.

2:50 Um which are the sort of the final the highest spiritual teachings of the Vedas.

2:57 And based on these upanishads came multiple

3:01 schools of what are now called Vanta.

3:04 Vedanta just means the end of the Vedas and not

3:08 in a literal sense as the end of the book but also uh in the sense of uh the end

3:15 teachings the final teachings or the highest teachings but these upanishads

3:20 themselves were interpreted in a variety of ways one

3:24 of the ways and one of the most well-known ways

3:26 is the way of adita vanta adwita just means non-dual

3:31 so non-dual vanta it's a non-dual interpretation of the upanishads.

3:36 Based on the upanishads,

3:37 there is a text called the Brahma Sutras and the most well-known text of Vanta.

3:43 I guess that's the one book everybody would have heard of in the world,

3:46 the Gita, the Bhagavad Gita.

3:49 So that is the textual basis and background of Adita Vanta

3:53 and it has continued down from that time onwards till today.

3:57 It's a living tradition.

3:58 There are millions who follow it, who study it, who practice it.

4:02 There are thousands and thousands of of monks also uh like myself,

4:08 I'm one of them who have made it their lifelong pursuit to study,

4:13 practice, live by and manifest this philosophy.

4:17 So it's a living tradition.

4:18 It has been for millennia.

4:21 It's central teaching is radical.

4:24 Um you are that in Sanskrit.

4:29 You know one beautiful thing about vanta although

4:32 there's a ocean of literature but it can

4:36 be expressed the central teaching of vanta can

4:38 be expressed very elegantly in half a verse.

4:43 Um so there's a Sanskrit saying brahma

4:46 jagata ja which means brahman alone is real.

4:51 The world is an appearance and you are that ultimate reality.

4:55 The sentient being is that ultimate reality.

4:58 You can compress it further into a short sentence.

5:01 You are that means you are that ultimate reality.

5:06 That means if we were to really inquire and find out who or what we are,

5:10 if we knew ourselves, we would discover something amazing.

5:14 That's the promise.

5:14 Something the greatest secret of all the in fact the point

5:18 of it all rather um other sentences are there in the opishads.

5:24 Aam brahasmi I am Brahman.

5:26 I am the ultimate reality.

5:28 Brahma consciousness is the ultimate reality.

5:31 I am atma Brahma.

5:33 This very self is the ultimate reality of the universe.

5:37 You can um compress it further into single words.

5:41 Just the word Brahman, not the Brahman which is a cast in Hinduism.

5:47 Brahman literally means the vast, the limitless.

5:50 Sometimes in the opanishads it's just called t that um

5:56 the word pam which means complete or whole or limitless.

6:01 Anandam which means limitless you can make it even shorter you can just say

6:07 and if you unpack that the mono syllable om you would get all of vanta.

6:12 You can make it even shorter just silence.

6:14 They say the vanta can be expressed as silence.

6:19 So what is the promise that this way of knowing

6:24 this end of knowledge or culmination of of knowledge is providing?

6:28 In essence, what is Jivvan Mukti and uh what can

6:32 by virtue of listening to this podcast can our audience

6:35 community listeners uh hopefully get a bit of a glimpse

6:39 into uh of that same goal or or promise there?

6:45 That's a good question and the promise is really really big.

6:48 Doesn't get any bigger than this.

6:50 Um I can put it in two ways.

6:51 One is the traditional way it is put in India.

6:54 Not just for Ada Vanta but for all these paths, all these ancient paths.

7:00 Um it's freedom from the cycle of birth and death.

7:04 That's how life is understood in India and that's not peculiar to one school.

7:08 All it's sort of exumeatic across all schools

7:11 except the materialists who say everything ends at death.

7:14 Uh but other than that all other schools

7:17 ada vanta the other schools of vanta um you

7:21 know the sha schools the shakta schools the Buddhists

7:25 the giants the seikhs uh every shade of religion

7:29 and philosophy in India they have sort of exiomatically

7:32 said the description of life uh is this cycle

7:35 of birth and death we are not this is

7:38 not our first time here and won't be our last.

7:41 We have been here many times.

7:43 We have been born many times and we have died many times.

7:46 And that's not good news because we have

7:49 been repeating this cycle of birth and death.

7:51 And it's a limited existence.

7:53 It's full of suffering and limitation and sorrow

7:56 and struggle and a freedom from this cycle is possible.

8:00 So that's seen as the ultimate goal.

8:02 So now that's the way it is traditionally put in advant

8:07 the the result is moka freedom from uh the cycle of birth and death.

8:12 But if you want to put it in less theological terms if you will um

8:17 something much more universally acceptable when when I

8:20 came here to the west they warned me

8:22 that this talk about the cycle of birth and death doesn't go down so easily

8:26 in the west in America especially as it does

8:28 in India because it's sort of exumeatic in India.

8:31 But suppose one doesn't have those presuppositions.

8:35 What can be put something you know in a form that is

8:38 universally acceptable to everybody is um um the attainment of deep lasting

8:45 happiness or bliss if you will and overcoming of suffering um a deep

8:51 solution to the problem of suffering the existential problem of human life.

8:56 So basically it amounts to the same thing overcoming the cycle of um

9:00 you know um transcending the cycle of birth and death and overcoming suffering.

9:05 basically the same thing.

9:06 This is also the language in which the other schools are also put.

9:10 You know Buddhism also the Buddha said life is suffering and there is

9:14 a possibility of freedom from this suffering and that's what he called nirvana.

9:19 Exactly in the same way says deep lasting

9:23 fulfillment is possible in Sanskrit word ananda bliss

9:28 is possible and uh freedom from suffering is

9:32 possible and that's what it aims to deliver.

9:35 This is the promise and this is sort of universally acceptable.

9:39 This is the the principle on which the United States was founded.

9:43 The declaration of independence,

9:45 the pursuit of happiness and of liberty and the right to life.

9:51 So life, liberty and happiness, if you put it in vantic terms,

9:55 the pursuit of happiness is anund, the bliss.

9:57 The pursuit of life would be eternal existence.

10:00 That means freedom from death literally.

10:03 and um uh freedom, liberty, there was um I don't know if the founding

10:10 fathers made me meant it in a vantic sense,

10:12 but they hit upon something very profound, very deep.

10:16 Now, Vanta also says that this realization is possible.

10:19 It's not a postmortem spirituality that you have to wait after death.

10:22 You know, after death you go to see get to see

10:25 God or after death you get to go to heaven.

10:27 Quite possible and I do believe that's possible.

10:29 But the really important promise is here and now in this life.

10:33 So that's the word you refer to.

10:35 Jan MTI the Sanskrit word jvan mti means free while living in this body.

10:41 So that's what the adantin uh aims at.

10:46 That is not common to all the schools because some of the schools

10:49 would say that you really cannot be perfect in this life.

10:52 You have to die and be uh go go to a higher state of existence.

10:57 All that might be fine but Vant you know

11:00 it is that way it is very very practical.

11:03 It says that uh what is uh there must be here too.

11:08 There's a saying if you have it here you have it there.

11:10 If you don't have it here you won't have it there.

11:12 So the enlightenment which you get here will serve you there.

11:15 There means maybe after death or in heaven or wherever it is

11:17 that that so realization of this and living it in this life.

11:24 Swami Viveanandanda he put it beautifully.

11:27 He said basically spirituality is the manifestation

11:30 of the divinity already within us.

11:32 So the divinity already within us our real nature to know it

11:36 and not just to know it but to live it to manifest it.

11:39 He put it in other words he said my mission in life can be put in a few words.

11:43 Viveand this Vandanda he says it is to teach unto humanity their inner

11:49 divinity and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.

11:55 in our thought, in our emotion, in our speech, in our actions.

12:00 So that is the promise.

12:03 And adva vanta as a path within what you might say

12:07 is the umbrella of yana yoga as a vehicle towards self-realization.

12:12 We all have our own individual constitution

12:16 and maybe resonate towards specific paths which I'm sure

12:19 we could you know uh elaborate on but there's

12:23 something that has resonated so deeply within me the path of yan yoga to be able

12:27 to experientially verify claims and uh in our real

12:35 time experience and especially as an intellectually and analytically

12:39 dominant society and culture um I think is

12:42 a really beautiful pathway and in and opening

12:44 of the door for people to start to examine

12:46 the nature of self and reality and uh and you do that and you help guide people

12:52 and in in that as well um so

12:54 beautifully and so when you think about the epistemic

12:58 orientation of Jana Yoga of the way in which

13:01 we come to know could you expand about that

13:04 yes so I'll just touch upon this you know you just mentioned

13:07 u the our constit constitutions Erh you hit upon something very deep there.

13:15 One reason why a variety of paths is desirable.

13:21 Well, there are two two aspects to this.

13:23 One is the nature of that ultimate reality.

13:25 It could be in fact we hold that the nature of that ultimate reality

13:29 which we are seeking um our ultimate reality and the reality of this universe.

13:34 This is what vanta's inquiring and vidanta's teaching is

13:37 that they are the two the two are are the same.

13:40 Our ultimate reality what we truly are and what

13:43 this universe truly is is one and the same thing.

13:46 In vant it's in vantic language it's atman is equal to brahman.

13:50 Atman means our inner self.

13:52 Brahman is the reality of this universe.

13:54 It's the same reality.

13:56 So one thing is that the ultimate reality is

13:59 so capacious that you can approach it in different ways.

14:02 You can have different theologies.

14:03 and different philosophies and all would be right.

14:06 Uh it's a human limitation that we think if

14:09 this is right everything else has to be wrong.

14:11 This is something really beautiful about ancient India until

14:15 today it's part of Indian culture that there can

14:18 be multiplicity of viewpoints and it doesn't mean

14:22 that one is right and every everything else is wrong.

14:25 They could all be right.

14:26 In fact, we hold that they are all right also.

14:30 That's from the perspective of the ultimate reality.

14:32 But from our perspective, as you said, we are diverse.

14:36 Human beings are of many kinds.

14:38 Uh the internal constitution.

14:40 So it makes sense to have multiple pathways.

14:43 Some more emotion related, heart related,

14:46 some more intellect related, some more actionoriented.

14:52 Vand in fact was the opinion that he was of the opinion

14:55 that you should have all of them in your spiritual life.

14:57 A balanced spiritual life should be intellectual, should be devotional,

15:02 should be meditative and should be actionoriented also.

15:06 All of them can be and should be part of a wholesome spiritual life.

15:10 All right.

15:10 But now to your question about the epistemology of Ghana yoga.

15:13 Yes, you're right.

15:14 It's extreme.

15:15 I find it extremely attractive and I see large numbers

15:19 of people are drawn to that side of Ghana yoga.

15:22 Let's put it this way.

15:24 All these paths work.

15:26 But let's put it under three broad paradigms to I'm

15:30 just trying to bring out the uniqueness of Ghana Yoga.

15:32 What makes it so special?

15:34 One path of spirituality is something

15:36 that is very common immediately understood.

15:40 You might call it the devotional path.

15:43 There's a Sanskrit word for it bi love of God or love devotion.

15:48 So if you see temples, churches, mosques, they're all devotional paths.

15:52 Here we are told that there is an ultimate reality.

15:54 Call it God or Vishnu or Shiva or father in heaven or Jehovah or Allah.

16:00 And how do we know that?

16:01 If you ask an epistemic epistemic question,

16:03 the answer would be you know it by tradition, by faith.

16:07 and uh because your masters have told you so,

16:09 because your religion tells you so,

16:11 your holy book tells you so, uh the testimony of the saints and so on.

16:15 So you know it that way.

16:16 It's primarily a path of faith and the way it

16:21 is practiced is also if you look closely it is love,

16:24 devotion, prayer, music, uh surrender, uh adoration.

16:30 It's a worship of the other the divine as the other god.

16:34 The problem with it's a beautiful path and it's a genuine path.

16:37 It has produced mistakes and genuinely enlightened people

16:40 across the centuries and it's the most common

16:43 path which you which is what you get when you come to religion first of all.

16:48 But if you want to play the devil's

16:50 advocate especially in this day and age we have

16:53 never had so many atheists or agnostics ever

16:57 in the history of humanity as we have today.

17:00 Um because in this path because it's based

17:03 on faith it's possible to believe it's possible to disbelieve.

17:08 It's possible to believe otherwise.

17:11 So yes I believe in God just not in the way as you do.

17:14 Uh yes I I have my own holy book.

17:16 You have your own holy book.

17:17 The problem with faith is one may believe one may not believe.

17:21 One may believe differently.

17:22 One may believe strongly or less strongly and one may disbelieve.

17:28 And because it's not immediately experiential,

17:32 it's based for a long time on faith.

17:34 Although ultimately it does culminate in experience, it can be doubted.

17:40 And that's why you have all these this day and age.

17:43 If you talk too much about God and faith and devotion and love,

17:47 you're going to run up against,

17:48 you know, Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or his his uh

17:52 past uh or Sam Harris or and the militant atheists.

17:59 Um you'll run up against your own sense of reason.

18:03 This path it does not tolerate questioning immediately.

18:06 It act it is based on you have to start on faith.

18:10 So this is the problem with this path the path

18:12 of belief again genuine path if you have belief go for it

18:17 but this is the weakness of that and if one

18:19 is on a purely on a belief path in the long

18:23 run also there are there are problems one can one's belief

18:27 can be shaken life has a way of shaking you up

18:31 um one's belief can be weakened one can go very far

18:35 in this path and still have doubts I read a diary,

18:40 Mother Theresa's diary, quite advanced in life, and she says very touching.

18:46 She says, "I pray and pray and pray

18:48 into the darkness and there's no reply." So that can happen.

18:53 In contrast to this, you have a second

18:55 path that is the path of direct experience.

18:58 Let's call it the path of the mystics.

19:01 uh in Sanskrit we can use the Sanskrit term the yogic path

19:06 where we are told no no not a question of belief it's

19:09 a question of experience as Vandanda

19:11 said religion is realization and this experience

19:14 is open to everybody we can all have that experience and not

19:19 only can we have that experience we must that's the whole point

19:22 of human life that's why we are here um and how do you

19:26 get this experience this is there is there are practices you sit

19:29 in this way you breathe in this way You focus in this way,

19:32 you visualize, meditate in this way and eventually you will see for yourself.

19:37 The claims of spirituality can be verified in our personal experience.

19:42 So an experiential way.

19:46 A classic example here would be the Patanjali yoga sutras.

19:50 So they don't start with any demand for belief in anything.

19:53 You just have to have a working belief that there's something in this.

19:56 Let me investigate it.

19:57 And the point would be actually to experience it for yourself.

20:01 But notice even even here also if one were

20:05 um to be a little bit of a devil's advocate

20:07 you know try to find fault here also notice

20:10 the weakness is these mystical experiences these are not public

20:17 experiences these are not shared experiences these are not

20:20 easily available experiences and that's exactly why we it takes

20:24 so long and so hard and so rare they're when

20:28 they're genuine they're powerful they're

20:29 transform formative and they're conclusive.

20:32 For those who have had genuine mystical experiences,

20:34 they don't need any other proof.

20:35 And that's the testimony of mystics in every religion.

20:39 They are people who saw men and women across the centuries,

20:42 across civilizations, across religions, the testimony of the mystics.

20:48 But if you were to look at the lives of the mystics, how were they received?

20:55 When they say, "I'm hearing the voice of God or Sri Ramak Krishna would have

20:59 a vision of divine mother Kali." The first

21:02 reaction of people around them is you're crazy.

21:05 Why?

21:06 Because it's outlandish and we don't see it.

21:09 You say you're seeing it.

21:10 As the philosopher Hume said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

21:16 You're saying God, where is the extraord There's not even ordinary proof,

21:19 let alone extraordinary proof.

21:21 There's that saying,

21:21 the psychotic drowns in the same oceans that the mystic swim with delight in.

21:27 Beautifully put.

21:28 Yes, I've read that somewhere.

21:29 And there's the other side of it that um yeah,

21:32 there can be a psychopathology of it.

21:34 There is.

21:35 You can't deny that if there are genuine mystic experiences,

21:38 there are also minds which are profoundly disturbed.

21:42 There are ways of distinguishing between the two.

21:44 But the ways can be subtle.

21:45 They cannot be they may need not be entirely obvious and we have one

21:50 of the superpowers which we all have

21:52 is fooling ourselves deluding ourselves minds can

21:56 do that they're very powerful that way in this day and age maybe in more

22:01 political times politically correct times nobody's going

22:05 to accuse of you of being crazy but the neuroscientist will come and say

22:08 I'm sure you're seeing the light you're seeing

22:10 God or if you're feeling one with the universe sure you're doing that I'm not

22:14 denying it But it's just because you have a stroke on the this hemisphere

22:19 or the brain or the you know some

22:22 neuroscience will come up with a physical explanation.

22:25 You're not one with the universe.

22:26 Certainly not.

22:28 Will you just feel like that because there's a stroke

22:30 in your brain or there's some bleeding going on.

22:33 Some a tumor pressing against such and such neuron.

22:36 Or they will just say what are you smoking?

22:38 Especially here in California or even now in New York.

22:40 What are you smoking?

22:42 Are you high on something?

22:45 So the mystical experience in principle is not

22:50 conclusive and there can be many explanations of that.

22:55 Meaning it's not externally verifiable because it's

22:58 a subjective transpersonal experience that is within your experience.

23:03 It's still a very good strong claim because it it

23:06 says like science do this and you'll see for yourself.

23:10 But then there's a whole question

23:12 of distinguishing it from uh um neurological problems,

23:16 from uh mental illness, from wishful thinking or from drug induced experiences.

23:23 How is that any different from this?

23:26 Um as against that there is a third paradigm of spirituality.

23:32 So we have the belief based paradigm, the bacti traditions,

23:35 we have the direct experience paradigms, the mystical,

23:38 the yogic traditions which are all very powerful and the bacti

23:42 traditions themselves would culminate eventually

23:44 in a um exper mystical experiences.

23:47 That's what how it is understood in India.

23:49 You would eventually Mira would see her beloved Krishna.

23:53 But it starts with belief whereas the yogic path start with practice.

23:58 Whereas um the third paradigm now I'm narrowing

24:03 down to the question about epistemology of advita vanta.

24:07 This path of knowledge ghana yoga simply means the yoga of knowledge.

24:12 It is not based on faith.

24:15 If you believe it well and good we told

24:18 that you are that ultimate reality your limitless consciousness existence place.

24:22 If you believe that well and good for you but that's not the point.

24:25 One has to um come to grasp this and to realize it for oneself.

24:30 It's like going to college and if the professor is teaching math

24:32 or physics or something and you say well I really like you.

24:35 I believe what you are saying.

24:37 The professor would just be exasperated.

24:39 He says you don't have to believe what I say.

24:41 I I hope you come to see it for yourself.

24:43 It's important that you learn this.

24:45 So vanta is first of all it's not belief based.

24:49 Second uh it's not even based on special experiences.

24:55 See in vanta it is experiential

24:57 but in a much broader much more acceptable universal sense.

25:01 What do I mean by that?

25:03 We wake we have a waking state.

25:06 We dream we have dreams.

25:08 We sleep we have deep sleep.

25:10 All of us these three states are common to everybody.

25:13 You don't have to be a mystic.

25:14 Just about everybody is awake and we sleep and dream.

25:18 Even animals do that.

25:20 And vanta says that common universally acceptable

25:24 experience is enough to begin our inquiry.

25:27 Uh what vanta does is it takes that and then step by step shows us

25:32 clearly demarcated methods methodologies which will point

25:38 to us what vanta wants us to realize.

25:40 They're saying that what the reality we're trying to point

25:43 out you know yourself well you are right here and what

25:47 we are trying to point out about yourself is also right

25:50 here it's just that we don't see it and vanta aims

25:53 to help us to see it so [snorts] it is not

25:57 faith belief based it is also not based on special mystical

26:04 experiences it's based on experience that's a great you know claim

26:08 to our attention that It's based on uh already available experience.

26:14 Waking, dreaming, sleeping or the five layers of the human personality,

26:17 the physical, the vital, the mental.

26:19 All of us have it.

26:21 And all that vanta does is it looks inside.

26:24 It's also entirely rational.

26:26 Every question we must ask questions and every question does have an answer.

26:31 It's been worked out.

26:33 It's not freethinking in the sense of doing

26:35 philosophy because it's more like pointing out.

26:38 The masters they already know what they're talking

26:40 about and they want us to see it.

26:42 So the goal would be to listen carefully to them try

26:46 to grasp what they are saying and then look for ourselves.

26:50 In fact, that's the method of vanta.

26:52 The three-fold method of vanta to listen

26:56 and to uh reason and to meditate in Sanskrit shraana.

27:02 Shravana means hearing, listening.

27:04 Uh you listen from a teacher or you study it.

27:07 But the core thing is actually listening

27:09 from a living teacher and then uh reasoning about it.

27:13 Question it, analyze it, threadbear.

27:15 One needs to have um conviction.

27:19 This is the path of knowledge.

27:20 The intellect must be thoroughly convinced.

27:23 The intellect by itself cannot help us to become enlightened.

27:27 You can't argue your way to God.

27:29 But the intellect can block us.

27:31 It can throw up.

27:32 It can tell you that this is crazy or this is not real.

27:35 So intellect must be convinced.

27:37 It must see for itself.

27:38 Yeah, I get it now.

27:40 And then it must come to see for itself also.

27:43 So there is a gap between understanding and then the realization of it.

27:47 So there is the hearing,

27:49 there is the reasoning and then the real the realization.

27:51 But that's how knowledge works.

27:53 You go to a classroom and you want to learn something.

27:56 That's how it works.

27:57 You ask questions, read, listen, argue, and then you have the ureka moment.

28:04 Oh, I get it.

28:06 So this I think is a special appeal of ada vanta.

28:10 It's also the way of the I'm joking here

28:13 tongue and cheek the way of the lazy one because

28:15 it's the uh uh the claim seems to be you

28:20 want it instantaneously or you want to work for lifetimes.

28:22 I want it instantaneously.

28:24 All right, you'll get it.

28:25 Do you want it it effortlessly or do you want to work

28:28 really really hard for decades before you get a glimpse of it?

28:31 I want it effortlessly.

28:33 Of course, there's a fine print to that instantaneous effortless.

28:36 True.

28:37 But that is um very at the end of a long road of seeking and investigation.

28:46 Yeah.

28:46 Now, how important do you feel it is to acknowledge one's own

28:51 ignorance to be to to then begin the the acquisition of true knowledge?

28:56 How important is the awareness of our own ignorance?

28:59 Oh, very important.

28:59 That's where it begins.

29:01 If I, you know, invest that we do not know who we are.

29:09 The problem is we think we know.

29:11 In fact, that's the last place we would like we would look.

29:14 We're looking over for the ultimate reality of all things for God,

29:18 for um enlightenment.

29:21 We think we know who we are and we

29:23 are quite convinced the answer lies out there.

29:26 Adita wants to show us the answer lies within you.

29:30 In fact, you are the key to it.

29:32 But for that, it has to show us that we

29:34 don't really know ourselves through the discovery of our own ignorance.

29:38 that there are great depths to myself.

29:41 Um that is the first step in advant you know person

29:48 I'll show you why it is so important Deart um Kjarum

29:54 I think therefore I am you know he started his project

29:58 of skepticism doubting whatever could be doubted to find the ground

30:03 of all knowledge the one piece of knowledge which can never

30:06 be doubted nobody ever doubts that and he says it's our own

30:08 existence just the fact that I'm doubting Just the fact that I'm

30:12 thinking shows that I exist and that fact cannot be doubted.

30:16 Nobody ever doubts do I exist or not.

30:18 Even in the act of doubting you are proving your own existence.

30:22 The doubter exists.

30:25 Um so that part of it is famous I think therefore exist.

30:31 But a little further down in the in the meditations,

30:34 Decart says very touchingly,

30:37 you know, he says that we know so little about ourselves.

30:41 He says, "It is passing strange that which I am um utterly convinced about.

30:48 That which I can never doubt.

30:50 I know so little about it.

30:52 And that which I know so much about is always

30:55 open to doubt." We know so much about the world.

30:58 And now 300 years of after decad we know much much more about the universe

31:02 but it's always open to doubt and correction and we one thing we know

31:08 that can never be changed that I exist but this I which exists surely

31:13 inubitably Deart says I know so little about it I don't know anything about it

31:19 but then he stopped this is the difference between vant and he stopped because

31:23 his quest was outward how can I justify all this knowledge He wanted a firm

31:29 basis for all the knowledge of science or religion or whatever it is and he

31:33 found it in the initable existence

31:34 of the self that he did not investigate further.

31:38 I exist absolutely sure of that.

31:40 Now let's get on with the business of justifying knowledge.

31:43 Whereas vanta says wait a minute I exist.

31:48 The self exists there's no doubt about it.

31:51 But what is the nature of that self which exists?

31:54 Let's investigate.

31:56 Tikart sort of had the intuition you can't find out anything more about it.

31:59 Even Kant had that kind of an intuition that it

32:02 is but then we can't know anything more about it.

32:06 Vanta says oh we can we can know a lot

32:08 about it and in that discovery lies our salvation.

32:12 So that intuition knowing yourself it is

32:15 entirely possible but possibly in a special way.

32:18 They can't can't they were right.

32:20 It's not in a sensory way.

32:21 We can't see ourselves,

32:22 hear or smell or taste or touch that reality which we are pure consciousness.

32:27 We can't even express it adequately in language.

32:31 Not even express it except indirectly in thought.

32:34 Still, we can know it.

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34:03 Back to the episode.

34:08 So I would love to have you walk us through

34:12 from the belief of a separate egoic individualistic self to the experience

34:20 of I am that the experience of the consciousness um which

34:25 is the more fundamental a aspect the fundamental aspect of of self.

34:31 Um, and so when you take somebody just walking living their conventional life

34:35 on the randomly pick them off up off the street and you say,

34:38 "Who are you or what are you?"

34:41 There are all these presumptions about our name, our ethnicity, our religion,

34:46 our cast, our creed, um, who we are as a mind and a body.

34:51 and what you're proposing here,

34:53 which is not foreign to people who have listened to the show before,

34:55 from the various different mystics and sages

34:57 to the consciousness researchers and physicists.

35:00 We've explored this um but I'd love for you

35:02 to walk us back into examining the our who

35:05 who we are in our most fundamental essence um

35:08 and consciousness as it's often referred to as light.

35:13 I would love for you to draw on that metaphor as well if you could.

35:16 Yes, as you said, it's not new

35:19 and it's not in particularly unique to Adita Vanta.

35:23 Though I believe in all my explorations of literature

35:26 um in the field in the east and the west,

35:28 modern and ancient, uh nothing is developed as deeply

35:32 or in such a sophisticated way as Ada Vanta.

35:35 In many traditions, it's there uh but it's

35:38 been either marginalized or even actively persecuted.

35:42 This non-dual teaching that you are that ultimate reality.

35:45 Sometimes it can seem extremely blasphemous.

35:47 In vantic schools also there are dualistic vidantic schools which consider

35:51 us the non-dualists just outside the pale because you guys are crazy.

35:55 You're megalomaniacs.

35:56 You think you're god or something.

35:58 Um [snorts] so yes the path of advant is analytic

36:06 and it starts with experience and analysis of our experience.

36:11 um experience here the path is what philosophers might today call

36:15 phenomenological looking into how it feels [snorts] uh as I said

36:20 it is not unique you as you you know have you

36:23 have talked to people who would have said more or less

36:25 the same thing but it's good to cover that ground again

36:29 and again listen carefully and see where it takes us so

36:34 it starts with the misconception that we know who we are

36:40 and first that must be dissolved to know who I am.

36:44 Adita Vanta starts with deconstructing who I am.

36:48 Um so if you as you said ask the person just

36:52 off the street who are you and I like the question

36:55 what are you who are you is more catchy but who

36:58 can be misleading especially in our day and age who

37:01 means oh am I a musician or am I a scholar

37:04 or am I a good person or what kind of person

37:06 am I or what what's my profession what's my destiny

37:09 in life what's god's plan for me that's what how I

37:12 define who I am that's not what advant is talking about

37:16 it's much more literal sense what exactly are you and then

37:20 if you push the person in fact it's helpful to ask

37:25 point to yourself then we generally would say here I

37:29 am this so ada would say um so you are

37:34 the body so I guess I am well notice something I

37:40 the self I say I'm the body but notice that the body

37:45 is an object object like this glass, like this table.

37:50 It's an object.

37:51 It's something that I experience.

37:54 I the experience of the subject and the object are not literally the same.

38:00 It's in fact even not allowed

38:01 either by grammar or philosophy is self-referencing.

38:05 So you the object must be distinct from the subject.

38:10 And then in that case the body is an object.

38:14 Clearly it's an object.

38:15 Uh the another way of looking at this is that um

38:21 I I am the experiencer and the body is the experienced.

38:26 Um I see I can see the body.

38:29 I can smell I can taste.

38:30 I can touch.

38:31 I can even hear my tummy rumbling.

38:33 So like all my senses operate on the body

38:36 as an object as they do on other things in the world.

38:39 So that which is uh an object of experience and that which is the subject

38:45 of experience in vantic terms the seer

38:48 and the scene they are never literally the same.

38:52 So that is an intuition which we apply.

38:53 These arguments are not geometrical proofs you know they're

38:56 not mathematical proofs but they are more like legal arguments

38:59 like a lawyer would argue in front of a jury

39:03 trying to persuade you with a battery of arguments.

39:06 So one is the intuition that I am the knower the experiencer

39:11 um the subject of this body which is the known the experienced

39:15 the seen the heard the smelt the tasted how is this different

39:18 from anything else that I see or hear and I don't say

39:21 I am that thing I see it that doesn't make me

39:23 a glass I see the table doesn't make me a table that's ridiculous

39:28 why does it suddenly change when it comes to this object which

39:32 is also a thing it's a biological machine of enormous complex lexity.

39:36 But why do I think I am this?

39:39 Um then another argument even more subtle argument would be

39:43 notice you are conscious and you're conscious of the body.

39:49 What vidant is trying to do here is argue we all accept that we are conscious.

39:53 Nobody denies it.

39:53 We are conscious but we think we are a body with consciousness

39:56 or we are a bundle of body mind consciousness and all of that.

40:00 But Vante is saying no you are consciousness with a body.

40:03 In fact, more precisely, you're conscious.

40:05 We are conscious of a body.

40:08 If we ask the question, you and the body,

40:12 on which side would you put consciousness?

40:14 You and that object, on which side would you put consciousness?

40:16 Where does it what does it feel like?

40:18 Does it feel like consciousness is there and I'm here?

40:20 No, it means like I am here.

40:22 I am conscious of that thing.

40:24 I have no feeling of whether that thing is conscious.

40:28 In fact, the only place where we find consciousness is in ourselves.

40:32 Immediately I must clarify.

40:34 People will say, "Well, you're surrounded by people.

40:36 Andre is conscious." But I'm not conscious of Andre's consciousness.

40:40 I'm conscious of Andre's body, language, behavior, um,

40:44 you know, the visual evidence, body language, all of that.

40:48 If I were a telepath, I would look into Andre's mind.

40:51 But at no point, it's just uh technically impossible.

40:56 It's impossible in principle to make consciousness an object.

41:00 That's very interesting.

41:01 Everything else can be objectified.

41:03 So you find consciousness is always on the side

41:05 of the self and the body is an object.

41:08 Consciousness is not on the side of the body.

41:10 This thing is an object and I am aware of it.

41:13 So that which I'm aware of and I the awareness these two must be distinct.

41:18 Another argument could be the body is a stream of changes.

41:22 This matter continuously changing here.

41:24 I'm eating and uh the body is persspiring or evacuating eliminating waste.

41:31 Matter is continuously flowing through this machine.

41:34 And I had the intuition of being the same person.

41:38 The baby's body and the child and the young person and the middle-aged person.

41:43 So different has changed so much.

41:46 But a common sense tells me, memory tells me,

41:50 law tells me you are the same person.

41:53 That baby and the child,

41:55 the young person and this middle-aged person, you are the same person.

41:59 Then the same person and the everchanging body,

42:01 the neverchanging person self, the everchanging body.

42:05 How can never changing and everchanging be the same thing?

42:08 They can't be the same thing.

42:09 Literally not the same thing.

42:11 And like this so vidanta will do is point to something

42:15 in our experience subject object seeer in the scene conscious not conscious

42:21 changing not changing and begin to convince us I whatever I am

42:27 not literally the body I the unchanging cannot be the everchanging body.

42:32 I the consciousness cannot be the object uh which is the body.

42:36 I the seer cannot be seen or heard or smelled or tasted which is the body.

42:42 So psychologically, intellectually at least a gap opens up

42:46 between myself and the body and then I'm trained.

42:49 Take your time, settle down and regard, see the body as an object,

42:53 feel it as changing, as not literally me, not literally I.

42:59 And then our attention is drawn further inwards um

43:03 to the breath which is part of the prana,

43:06 the the forces which keep this body alive.

43:09 And the same arguments apply to it.

43:11 Changing unchanging in breath, out breath, short breath, long breath.

43:16 Um the prana which is healthy or sick

43:19 uh or hungry or fulfilled you know satiated.

43:22 So it changes like the tides in the ocean

43:24 the the prana flows in and out of the body.

43:27 But I notice if you look at it from the perspective of the self I am

43:31 the same self which breathed in which experience breathing

43:35 in and I'm the same self which breathed out.

43:38 You say what's the point?

43:40 The inb breath and the out breath are not the same.

43:42 They're two different breaths.

43:43 But I'm the same self which experience both.

43:47 So the self is unchanging.

43:49 The breath is changing.

43:50 The self is the observer.

43:52 The breath is the observed.

43:53 And that's the basis of all mindfulness meditation that you observe the breath.

43:56 What vanta takes away from that is consciousness

43:59 is the observer is the experiencer is the subject.

44:02 The breath is the object the experienced.

44:05 um conscious and um consciousness is on your side.

44:09 The breath doesn't feel conscious.

44:11 I feel conscious.

44:12 I am conscious of the breath.

44:14 I am aware of the breath.

44:16 Uh the breath is not aware of itself.

44:18 The breath is not aware of anything else.

44:20 The breath is not aware of me.

44:22 I am aware of myself.

44:23 I'm aware of the breath and I'm aware of lots of other things also.

44:27 So awareness or consciousness is on my side.

44:29 In this way we argue the same arguments will hold for the breath.

44:33 And then vanta interiorizes it further.

44:35 You know, we've gone from the body to something subtler.

44:39 Interior means not physically inside the body.

44:40 Because if you go physical inside the body, you'll just find more body.

44:44 But in in our own experience of ourselves,

44:46 breath in interiorize further, make it more subtle.

44:50 What do we find?

44:51 The mind.

44:52 If immediately when we look inside, we find the mind.

44:55 thoughts, feelings, pleasant, unpleasant,

44:58 happy, sad, miserable, depressed, energetic,

45:02 uh whatever it is, our feelings, our emotional states,

45:05 our vital states, um perceptual states, that's the mind,

45:10 memories, desires and impulses arising and floating away.

45:14 So, uh that also same arguments will apply.

45:19 Vant will point out, does it change?

45:20 And we say, oh boy, does it change all the time.

45:23 And yet I am the same one.

45:25 The one who experienced depression, now I experience joy.

45:29 The one who experienced restlessness, now I experience peace.

45:32 I am the same one.

45:35 Restlessness and peace are just not the same.

45:37 They're de diametrically opposite.

45:39 So the mind changed dramatically from restlessness to peace,

45:43 from depression to joy.

45:44 But I am the same one.

45:46 Then I can't literally be the mind changing and unchanging subject and object.

45:52 Even the mind.

45:52 See here it becomes interesting.

45:54 Until now we regarded the mind as the subject.

45:57 I am the mind and I am the subject of this world.

46:00 I'm I'm basically what I call a person.

46:03 But now even the mind becomes an object because we can examine our own mind.

46:08 We can objectify our own thoughts and feelings.

46:11 Just requires us to introspect a little bit.

46:13 We notice these feelings appear and disappear.

46:16 Thoughts and memories appear and disappear.

46:18 So the mind is also object and I'm the subject.

46:22 And most dramatic of all, I am conscious of the mind.

46:27 The mind by itself is not conscious.

46:29 It's it's not something that I'm stipulating.

46:31 It's very important to come to realize this.

46:33 It's extremely important for advant to realize

46:35 the difference between mind and consciousness.

46:39 Um I'm aware of the thought.

46:42 If I just think a thought, it's very easy to do this experiment.

46:46 Let's just think ABCD.

46:48 I'm thinking ABC D.

46:50 Now I notice I am aware of ABCD.

46:54 Um, ABCD is not aware of me.

46:57 I'm aware of myself.

46:58 ABCD is not aware of itself.

47:00 ABCD is not aware of the next thought.

47:02 1 2 3 4.

47:04 I am aware of both these thoughts.

47:06 So consciousness is on my side, not on the side of the mind.

47:11 Even the mind is by itself non-concious.

47:14 When I say ABCD, it's just like mental talk.

47:18 So I am conscious of the mind.

47:21 Consciousness and mind are not literally the same thing.

47:24 Just a little segue, a little you know footnote here.

47:29 This whole issue of AI now I think it just goes to prove this point.

47:34 People are uh scared of AI because AI seems to be doing

47:38 more or less the stuff which we thought only we could do.

47:41 Be creative, write stories, make compose poems or songs, make a movie.

47:46 AI is doing all of that.

47:48 Um, we thought, you know,

47:50 the robots will come and take over the hard work, the laundry and the cleaning.

47:54 Now it's we have to do still have

47:56 to do the laundry and the dishwashing and the cleaning,

47:58 but the machines are taking over the higher order human functions,

48:02 creativity, decision making.

48:04 So where are we?

48:06 Vanta has the answer.

48:07 Vanta says it's no surprise that these machines are able

48:10 to do that because you are not even the mind.

48:13 The as the body is a biological

48:15 machine um the mind is a psychological machinery.

48:18 It's a machinery.

48:19 It's extremely subtle and powerful still machinery and it's

48:23 no no wonder that you have come up

48:25 with another kind of machinery a silicon based

48:28 machinery which can duplicate the activity of the mind.

48:30 But notice guess what there's one thing that these AIs are unable to do.

48:35 They are not conscious.

48:38 Ask any of the experts in Silicon Valley.

48:40 uh is your AI conscious?

48:43 They will say even some of the most

48:46 optimistic ones would say rather defiantly why not?

48:49 But do you really believe they're already conscious

48:51 or they could be conscious and they would say no.

48:53 Most people would say they're not conscious in that sense.

48:55 They don't they don't have feelings.

48:57 They are machines extremely clever machines and they are intelligent.

49:00 There's nobody who doubts they're intelligent.

49:03 There's very few who would claim that they're conscious.

49:05 That means you can be intelligent without being conscious.

49:08 going to prove what Vanta is trying to show

49:10 you that the mind and consciousness are different.

49:14 Um, and it could go further.

49:17 Suppose you dismiss the perception of the world, dismiss perception of the body,

49:21 dismiss perception of the mind,

49:23 just utter stillness and silence, something like deep sleep.

49:27 If you can simulate it there also that silence,

49:31 the absence of everything, that too is being revealed to consciousness.

49:36 That's also an experience.

49:37 The silence of deep sleep or coma um

49:40 or general anesthesia is not an absence of experience.

49:45 It's an experience of absence.

49:48 Whenever you have experience, consciousness must be there.

49:51 So there is a very you can debate about this because this is seems very radical

49:56 but there's consciousness even in deep sleep even

49:59 in general anesthesia even in consciousness doesn't go away.

50:04 In fact in principle it's impossible to Imagine the absence of consciousness.

50:09 If you could visualize the absence of consciousness, there is consciousness.

50:12 That's what's experiencing the absence of consciousness.

50:16 So now you do this and dissolve the sense of self in the body mind.

50:23 So what we have what have we achieved so far?

50:25 We deconstructed ourselves.

50:28 I'm sure I know what I am.

50:29 I have this intuitive feeling.

50:30 I know what I am.

50:31 That's the first thing I know.

50:33 But now whatever candidate I put forward to the question

50:37 show yourself body now I have to admit I'm not literally

50:41 the body I'm not literally bones or flesh or blood

50:45 the breath prana I'm not literally prana the mind thoughts my own

50:50 story my memory my narrative about myself I'm not literally

50:54 that either those are also objects the intellectual understanding of who

50:57 I am that also is the part of the intellect it's

51:01 part of the mind dismiss everything that also is an object.

51:06 So whatever I put forth as I know myself but yet I can't point to myself.

51:14 Whatever I point to I have forced to admit no not quite I'm not quite that.

51:20 So what we have achieved now is a deconstruction of our sense of self.

51:26 If I stopped here I would be a good Buddhist.

51:29 That's where the Buddhists stop.

51:31 They say this is enough the no self but we still

51:36 left with decart and his intuition that I still do exist.

51:39 I can't deny my own existence.

51:41 So vant asks us this point now that you

51:46 on one side you are sure that you do exist

51:49 and yet you can't point whatever you pointed to as yourself

51:52 now you yourself admit that I can't be that.

51:55 So we are left with the question this absolutely sure sense of uh

52:00 existence in indubitable sense of your own existence but now I can't point

52:04 to what am I then what is this absolutely sure existence what's it mean

52:08 as long as I'm the body I can point to what I am is

52:10 this this is what I am as long as I'm a mind I

52:14 I can point to myself that I am this bundle of body and mind

52:17 at least I can know what I am this person but if I'm

52:22 not the body not the mind and yet I do exist What am I?

52:27 And there vanta says what is the one thing that you cannot dismiss?

52:31 Consciousness.

52:32 Existence.

52:33 I can't dismiss existence.

52:35 And I can't dismiss that I'm conscious.

52:37 Not conscious in the sense that I'm thinking.

52:39 Even if I drop all thinking, here is where we leave theart behind.

52:42 Even if I drop all thinking, I'm still aware of not thinking.

52:48 I asked a philosophy professor that I think, therefore I am.

52:52 Every time Decart falls asleep, he stops thinking.

52:55 So does he not exist?

52:57 Does he pop into existence every time he wakes up?

53:00 In fact, there are gaps between thoughts even when we are awake.

53:03 So does he pop in and out of existence?

53:05 There's a school of of Buddhism,

53:08 the mind only school which actually says this that our existence

53:11 is actually a series of flashes of consciousness.

53:14 But Vanta says even the gap between

53:16 the flashes is also illumined by consciousness.

53:18 So consciousness is also existence.

53:22 Existence is consciousness phenomenologically speaking.

53:26 There we have the bare nature of the self.

53:30 But that consciousness is not an object.

53:32 It can never be an object.

53:33 Everything is an object to it.

53:34 It can never be denied.

53:35 And yet it's not an object.

53:37 It's something utterly different.

53:38 For the first time we're confronted with something

53:42 utterly different from anything that we have ever known.

53:45 All that we have known were objects.

53:48 The objects to consciousness.

53:49 In fact, even the so-called subject,

53:51 even the so-called self was an object to consciousness.

53:55 Now we are left with the pure subject.

53:57 This is what it means by pure consciousness.

54:00 Doesn't mean a consciousness which is very clean

54:02 or uh um you know pure in a moral sense.

54:06 It's just pure because it is bare consciousness or bare awareness.

54:10 This is who who we are at our uh at the ground level.

54:15 Okay.

54:16 So this is only the beginning of Vanta Adita Vanta.

54:21 This is where a school like Sanka a very ancient school it stops here.

54:25 It says that so we have two ultimate kinds of reality consciousness and objects.

54:31 We are consciousness and the universe is objects.

54:34 This collection of objects which call the universe

54:36 they give it a name nature procriti.

54:39 So they have a thoroughly dualistic

54:41 system purush and procriti consciousness and object

54:44 and that's intuitive kind of because that's

54:46 how we experience the world subject and object.

54:48 It just goes pushes it to its limit

54:50 and says everything objective is includes your body,

54:54 includes your mind, your thoughts, our it's not yours.

54:57 They're all they all belong to the object.

54:59 They all belong to nature and you are bare awareness itself.

55:02 The utterly non-objective pure subject awareness.

55:08 But Vanta goes further.

55:10 Um it says that what is the relationship between subject and object?

55:16 The next question it asks is that uh all

55:20 right I am awareness but here is this objective universe.

55:24 It contains everything I knew so far entire universe but also what

55:29 I thought I I was the body is part of this universe.

55:33 Physics says the body is part of the universe and we go beyond physics.

55:37 we go to vanta saying even my thoughts my mind um the personality

55:42 I consider myself to be that's also part of the universe that's also part

55:45 of the of uh objective nature um then what's the relationship between me

55:52 the consciousness and all these objects what's

55:54 the relationship between purusha and procriti sananka

55:58 says they're different they interact and the problem there would be if we

56:02 go by first principles by argument is

56:07 How would two utterly different things interact

56:10 in two things which are as Shankara says like light and darkness they can't

56:18 interact and yet they seem to interact why why can't they interact where would

56:22 they touch the point at which they

56:24 interact would that be consciousness or object

56:27 it's everything is either object or consciousness

56:30 and they're interacting you use the light

56:33 metaphor in Vanta we often use the met but you know there it

56:36 has it limitation too because light is also material light and this is also

56:41 a material table or a glass and it's reasonable that material light can

56:46 interact with this material objects but if

56:48 consciousness is not not a material light

56:52 then how can it interact with a material universe which is utterly different

56:57 from it and so adanta comes

57:01 to this conclusion that they are not utterly different.

57:07 They are in fact one and the same thing.

57:09 And here it might be confusing.

57:10 Didn't you expend so much energy trying to separate the two?

57:13 Yes, we did.

57:14 But notice the fine print.

57:16 We said that you pure consciousness,

57:20 you are distinct from everything that you experience.

57:23 The entire universe, including your body,

57:26 what seemed to be most intimate to you in your personality.

57:29 You're distinct from all of that.

57:30 You are this impersonal consciousness.

57:32 And we hold on to that.

57:34 But now what we are saying is we never said you are distinct from all of this.

57:39 But what about all of this?

57:40 Is all of this universe distinct from you?

57:43 The vanta says no.

57:45 What does it mean?

57:46 In our dreams, the dreamer experiences

57:50 a dream world and dream people and actions.

57:53 In fact, a dream body also.

57:54 We are ourselves there in our own dreams like an avatar in a virtual reality.

57:58 So we are there.

58:00 But when I wake up, the whole thing disappears.

58:03 I the dreamer I am distinct from whatever I dream

58:07 about the contents of my dream because I can exist

58:10 I exist before the dream I exist during the dream

58:13 I exist after the dream but the contents of the dream

58:17 they don't exist apart from me they are all

58:19 projections of the dreamer's mind similarly what adavant is saying

58:24 the final conclusion it comes to is yes you are

58:27 this impersonal consciousness pure consciousness

58:30 um bare consciousness the ultimate subject.

58:33 It is true.

58:35 But whatever you experience this entire universe,

58:38 physical and mental, all of this is also you.

58:43 You are appearing to yourself as your own object.

58:47 [snorts] So just like a dreamer experiences himself as everything in the dream,

58:52 you are distinct from the entire universe.

58:54 But the universe is not distinct from you.

58:56 This is the meaning of nonduality.

58:58 There is no second reality apart from you,

59:00 the bare consciousness, the pure consciousness.

59:05 This is what's called Maya.

59:06 That pure consciousness can appear to itself

59:09 as a physical vast physical universe, as time as space,

59:13 as objects in time and space, as bodies,

59:16 as personalities, as lifetimes, birth and death, all of that.

59:22 And yet it continues to be nothing other than pure consciousness.

59:25 So this is the meaning that Brahman is all.

59:27 This is the meaning of you are that tutwa.

59:30 This is the meaning of nonduality.

59:32 Non-duality in what sense?

59:33 Non-duality of the universe with consciousness.

59:36 It's like if you look out at the Pacific Ocean,

59:39 you have thousands and thousands of waves.

59:41 But the nonduality of the all the waves with regard to water.

59:44 If you if we count water then there's

59:47 only one thing in the in the Pacific Ocean.

59:48 You can't say there's water and a thousand

59:50 waves because then you're double counting.

59:52 The waves are also water.

59:54 So the waves are nondual with respect

59:56 to even though there are thousand or 10,000

59:58 in number and always changing they are nondual

1:00:02 with respect to the waves with the water.

1:00:05 If you see the water there's only one thing there that's water.

1:00:08 The 10,000 waves are also that same water.

1:00:11 They may be continuously changing but what

1:00:13 does not change is that they are water.

1:00:16 Um they may be big and small.

1:00:18 There may be tsunami waves or little bubbles

1:00:20 but what does not change is that they are water.

1:00:22 And of course this water wave analogy has its limitations.

1:00:25 But here consciousness itself is appearing

1:00:28 as its own object and experiencing itself.

1:00:32 This makes you one with the universe.

1:00:36 That's why it's non-dual.

1:00:37 Nothing in the universe is separate from you.

1:00:40 This makes you the ground of this entire universe.

1:00:43 I mean I like the Buddhist language that uh that primordial ground

1:00:47 of being if you do not know it it appears as samsara.

1:00:52 If you know it it appears as nirvana.

1:00:55 This thing itself it appears as samsara as long

1:00:58 as we do not know who or what we are.

1:01:01 And when we know realize who or what we

1:01:04 are this itself will appear as nirvana as freedom.

1:01:08 So this is the basic theory of advant philosophy and teaching of ada vidant.

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1:02:27 So this distinction of falsity uh that the world

1:02:32 and its many different appearances and essence are is non-dual.

1:02:38 It is not distinct actually in the way that we

1:02:41 were describing as subject and object but that water

1:02:44 is the one pervasive uh thing that everything is made

1:02:48 up of like the many different waves in the ocean.

1:02:51 Now can you help us kind of close this gap to be able

1:02:54 to understand and experience for ourselves and maybe you have a guided practice

1:02:58 maybe it's just more through the reasoning um how cuz for many I

1:03:03 think it that's the big jump is to say that okay I can see

1:03:07 that I am from a fundamental place my conscious awareness is observing my body

1:03:12 my breath my sensations even my thought and subtle fluctuations of my mind

1:03:18 um even absence itself And yet to make the claim that like ontologically

1:03:30 speaking that the that the universe is is not separate from that field.

1:03:36 How would you how would you walk us to that understanding?

1:03:40 Yeah.

1:03:40 So that's a big jump.

1:03:41 Um the first the first part of it is not

1:03:45 all that difficult to come to that I am awareness.

1:03:48 The first part of it is going from I'm yeah I

1:03:52 admit I'm aware who doesn't we're all aware we're all conscious.

1:03:56 So I think of myself as a body with consciousness

1:03:58 and from going from there to consciousness with a body I think

1:04:02 of myself as this bundle of body mind consciousness going from there

1:04:06 to consciousness with a mind and a body that's the first step

1:04:11 and vanta says it's already a fact it is trying to get

1:04:16 us to see that it's not get us trying to get us

1:04:19 to change anything at all except our perspective of it getting us

1:04:23 to flip that and there's actually a moment of an actual breakthrough,

1:04:28 you know, where it suddenly falls into place.

1:04:30 Oh, I see.

1:04:32 But then there's the further inquiry

1:04:34 into this universe of experience um are they they

1:04:40 seem to be things out there where says it's only because we are body based.

1:04:45 If I'm this body, clearly all the other bodies

1:04:47 and all the living and non-living things are outside me.

1:04:50 This is quite clear.

1:04:51 If I'm mind then my mind refers to objects which might be outside

1:04:55 the mind or at least even the thoughts they they come and go.

1:04:59 But as consciousness in which all of this appears

1:05:02 is all of this ontologically separate from consciousness or not.

1:05:07 Is it a separate independently existing reality?

1:05:11 Vanta would claim not.

1:05:14 That's the doctrine of the falsity of the world.

1:05:16 Uh it's like saying there are 10,000 things

1:05:20 ever changing things in this ocean called waves.

1:05:24 Uh as long as I don't know what water is and then somebody

1:05:29 would be right in pointing out what you are thinking of is not real.

1:05:33 What you are thinking of are the reality there is water.

1:05:38 You're thinking there are things called waves independently existing

1:05:41 out there without an appreciation of what water is.

1:05:44 The moment you understand what water is,

1:05:46 then the waves are also explained what they are in reality.

1:05:50 So that's the doctrine of the the the falsity of the world.

1:05:54 What the Mahayana Buddhist would call the emptiness of existence.

1:05:58 Uh in itself they are not independent separately existing entities.

1:06:03 Before we go into the practice, we take a little philosophical step back

1:06:08 and say what alternatives could there be to this?

1:06:12 Take the most common alternative materialism.

1:06:16 Materialism is also a kind of monism just says that the one reality

1:06:20 of the universe the one nondual reality

1:06:22 of the univer materialist can also say I'm

1:06:24 a non-dualist but I'm the non-dual reality

1:06:26 which I'm talking about is matter and everything

1:06:30 else is nothing but matter whereas

1:06:33 the adin says the nondual reality is consciousness.

1:06:37 Even matter is nothing but consciousness.

1:06:41 So what is this relationship between matter and consciousness?

1:06:45 Today it's this is the hot subject.

1:06:47 It's called the hard problem of consciousness.

1:06:50 Going back to the question about AI and consciousness.

1:06:53 Notice that um it should have been easy to replicate consciousness.

1:06:59 Why?

1:07:00 Let me tell you why.

1:07:02 AI is doing some really complex stuff.

1:07:04 Creativity is difficult.

1:07:06 AI is doing it.

1:07:07 Decision making is difficult.

1:07:09 AI is doing it.

1:07:10 Driving a Google car waybo taxi is difficult.

1:07:13 AI is doing it.

1:07:14 These are very complex tasks.

1:07:16 It requires billions of dollars and thousands of hours

1:07:20 of training to get the AI to do that.

1:07:23 Such difficult complex,

1:07:25 high order tasks which human beings no other animal even is capable of doing it.

1:07:29 But AI can do it.

1:07:31 Whereas consciousness is very simple.

1:07:33 It does only one and one thing only.

1:07:36 All that consciousness does is give you the feeling of it feels like something.

1:07:40 It gives us experience.

1:07:42 The complexity of experience is entirely

1:07:45 the complexity of the object being experienced.

1:07:48 It is not the complexity of the experiencing consciousness.

1:07:51 The complexity of exper conscious the experiencing consciousness is simple.

1:07:56 It's just bare consciousness.

1:07:57 It's like like bare light.

1:07:59 It there's no complexity there.

1:08:01 Whereas uh what we find as a very complex

1:08:05 experience of life entire complexity is the objective universe.

1:08:09 So this very simple consciousness why is it so difficult to replicate?

1:08:14 If it was nothing more than the mind or the body should have

1:08:17 been easy to replicate or take a look at the heart problem of consciousness.

1:08:24 Um if the brain is just another organ

1:08:27 of the body which it is the kidney is an organ, the lung is an organ, the brain.

1:08:32 So why should it be so difficult to you know pin down what it does exactly?

1:08:39 If if we if we assume that it produces

1:08:42 consciousness should have been pretty simple to pin it down.

1:08:45 These processes are the ones which are

1:08:46 producing consciousness and here we demonstrate it.

1:08:49 But we run up against that hard problem of consciousness.

1:08:52 the wall that objective processes you can break

1:08:55 down complex objective processes into simple objective processes.

1:08:59 The last thing that you can observe in the brain,

1:09:01 the subtlest thing with our fMRI

1:09:03 machines and all are minute electrical activity,

1:09:06 neurochemical activity, electrical activity in the brains,

1:09:08 but just neurochemicals and electrical activity.

1:09:11 It's not music, it's not a glorious sunset,

1:09:16 it's not the feeling of pain or sorrow.

1:09:19 There is no feels like about that electrical activity.

1:09:22 Where does that come from?

1:09:25 You just have to say somehow.

1:09:27 No, nobody knows that.

1:09:30 Therefore, this movement, now we're back to ontology again.

1:09:33 This movement to reduce consciousness to matter,

1:09:37 consciousness to brain is running up against huge obstacles.

1:09:43 We have we have no way we have we don't even understand it.

1:09:47 That's a very interesting thing.

1:09:49 You get a traction on a problem when

1:09:51 you have one or two explanations of contending theories.

1:09:55 Take a guess how many contending explanations of consciousness there are.

1:09:58 Robert in his closer to truth podcast,

1:10:01 he talks about a landscape of 325 theories,

1:10:06 distinguishable theories, 325 competing explanations of what consciousness is.

1:10:11 The latest issue of Scientific American has an article which talks about

1:10:16 29 major theories of consciousness and they are very different from each other.

1:10:21 And what does it mean?

1:10:23 It just means we don't know.

1:10:26 In science when you come narrow down on a particular theory and we

1:10:30 the peer reviewed process says okay we agree this is the explanation

1:10:34 of this phenomenon that's when science says we know now it can become

1:10:38 a published paper or part of your textbooks that's called knowledge in science.

1:10:42 When you have one theory, you can revise it later.

1:10:45 But if you have 29 competing theories or worse 325 competing theories,

1:10:50 it just means we have utterly no idea of what's going on.

1:10:54 We are grasping at various possibilities.

1:10:57 Therefore, the movement to reduce consciousness to matter,

1:11:01 brain, neurological processes,

1:11:04 they were um or a broader attempt to reduce the subject to the object.

1:11:09 There was a movement for example in 1950s

1:11:12 and60s the common language philosophy in Oxford University.

1:11:16 So uh Gilbert Ri um this uh the concept of mind

1:11:23 you can reduce consciousness or mind to a way of talking.

1:11:27 There's no such thing.

1:11:28 It's just an illusion created by the way we talk about it.

1:11:31 None of that works.

1:11:33 The question still remains on the other hand if we

1:11:38 entertain the possibility that matter can be reduced to consciousness.

1:11:43 The first immediate thing we see is that tallies with our experience.

1:11:49 If that's your ontology that consciousness is primary,

1:11:51 notice then ontology and epistemology agree happily.

1:11:55 Epistemically, knowledge and experience-wise consciousness is prior.

1:11:59 Nobody denies that.

1:12:00 Nobody.

1:12:01 Even the materialist does not deny that consciousness has to be prior.

1:12:04 It's consciousness which experiences.

1:12:06 So everybody agrees epistemically consciousness epistemologically it's first.

1:12:10 Ontologically what is primary or prior?

1:12:13 Materialist says matter is prior.

1:12:15 Our experience says that it is to consciousness that matter appears.

1:12:20 The philosopher Gallen Strawson says that uh you know

1:12:23 he wrote a tongue-in-cheek article in the New York Times.

1:12:26 Uh the hard problem of matter.

1:12:28 He says there is no hard problem of consciousness.

1:12:30 We are conscious.

1:12:31 That's the first fact.

1:12:32 It's before every fact.

1:12:34 And then matter appears to us in consciousness.

1:12:37 So the question is what is matter?

1:12:39 Not what is consciousness?

1:12:40 And when we investigate matter uh we find

1:12:44 it is disappearing before our very eyes you know

1:12:46 into subatomic particles into quarks now they're talking about

1:12:49 super strings and whatn not it's becoming more and more

1:12:52 mysterious um in this context I remember um

1:12:57 the physicist cosm cosmologist Penrose I heard a quote about

1:13:05 he says I'm uncomfortable being called a materialist Because

1:13:10 you see I do not understand what matter is.

1:13:14 It's becoming more mysterious and curiously enough somebody

1:13:18 pointed out that in the last 20 years

1:13:20 in physics conferences there's a curious new entrant

1:13:25 consciousness which is the last thing you would expect.

1:13:28 You'd think consciousness is a biological thing product of the brain.

1:13:32 Why is it back into the fundamental nature of of the universe again?

1:13:36 This points to the adic thing that uh maybe the two are not different.

1:13:41 On one side time, space matter, energy, on the other side, consciousness.

1:13:45 If you can't reduce consciousness to matter, then it stands to reason how

1:13:51 about treating consciousness as something fundamental.

1:13:55 Leave them apart consciousness and matter.

1:13:58 But then you have the interaction problem of Sanka.

1:14:02 So if you do the other way

1:14:03 around in principle consciousness is something that is

1:14:06 that which is experienced in um matter

1:14:09 is that which is experienced in consciousness.

1:14:12 Notice it preserves all our scientific findings and it solves the hard

1:14:15 problem of consciousness also

1:14:17 in the sense that consciousness becomes fundamental.

1:14:20 What does consciousness do?

1:14:21 It gives you experience.

1:14:23 It feels like something to experience.

1:14:26 If it then the implications of it if consciousness cannot be

1:14:30 reduced to brain in that case it opens up the possibility

1:14:34 that when the brain dies consciousness need not die if it's

1:14:38 not being produced by the brain if the brain is something like

1:14:41 the door everybody who is here has walked through the door

1:14:45 but we don't say that door is amazing how did it produce

1:14:47 all these amazing human beings no you can learn something about

1:14:52 the stuff in this room by looking at the door certain dimensions

1:14:55 and limitations don't so you can learn something a lot about

1:14:59 mind and consciousness by studying the brain as we are but it

1:15:03 doesn't explain conscious doesn't even explain mind so um here is

1:15:08 the onlogical justification you can Indian philos by the way these are

1:15:14 not final answers because Indian philosophy thousands of years did deliberated

1:15:18 upon this and came up with every possible um alternative which

1:15:23 is there in the world today all those 325 theories were

1:15:26 also prefigured in many of the Indian thinkers centuries or millennia ago.

1:15:30 There are materialists, there are idealists,

1:15:32 there are subjective idealists, there are absolutists,

1:15:35 there are um positions which has

1:15:38 still not got any corresponding modern equivalent.

1:15:42 But I find adic answer very satisfying

1:15:48 philosophy reason but also your personal preference.

1:15:52 It locates um the ultimate reality in yourself.

1:15:57 It locates the ground of all knowledge in yourself

1:15:59 and it also locates all value in yourself.

1:16:03 Sat chit ananda if you look at philosophy

1:16:07 um there's a study of reality ontology.

1:16:10 There is there's study of knowledge epistemology and there is also

1:16:14 something called axiology where you club together all questions of value

1:16:19 of beauty of value of goodness of morality and look

1:16:22 at what vdanta does it says that there is the ground

1:16:26 of all ontology is this being or existence sat what makes

1:16:30 all knowledge possible is chit or consciousness what makes all value

1:16:34 possible is this anand or bliss and then goes further and says

1:16:38 these three are not separate They're in fact the same entity.

1:16:42 That which is ontologically primary is

1:16:45 also epistemologically primary is also exologically primary.

1:16:49 And then it makes the most stunning claim of all.

1:16:52 It is you.

1:16:54 It is the real nature of the self.

1:16:56 It's not that the self is part of that ultimate reality.

1:16:59 No.

1:17:00 Uh the self is that ultimate reality and that ultimate reality is the self.

1:17:06 I always like to start with a really

1:17:09 profound story uh well-known story of the 10th man.

1:17:15 So these um it's old Indian story of how

1:17:17 10 people were friends were on a journey and they

1:17:21 crossed a river and then they had a doubt

1:17:23 whether everybody's crossed or did somebody drown and let's count.

1:17:27 So one person starts counting and he counts 1 2

1:17:29 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 that can't be right.

1:17:32 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.

1:17:34 And he says, "Oh, the 10th person's drowned.

1:17:36 He's not here.

1:17:37 He must have drowned." And somebody says, "No,

1:17:39 you're you're not doing it right." And that guy counts.

1:17:42 Everyone who counts finds only nine.

1:17:44 And then they sit down and start wailing and weeping.

1:17:46 Oh, our poor friend, he drowned.

1:17:49 And a wise passer by comes by and he says,

1:17:53 "Why are you crying my friends?" Well, we were 10 and our poor friend drowned.

1:17:58 Now we are.

1:17:59 Uh, how do you know that person's drowned?

1:18:02 Well, we counted.

1:18:02 There are only nine of us left now.

1:18:04 And so the clearly the 10th man is not here.

1:18:07 He must have drowned.

1:18:08 We just crossed the river.

1:18:10 And this guy, this person must have counted that them and found they were 10.

1:18:14 And he understood what's going on.

1:18:16 Then he says, "The 10th person is there.

1:18:19 Don't worry.

1:18:19 Don't stop crying.

1:18:21 Really is there.

1:18:23 Will you show us?" Yes, I'll show show him to you.

1:18:25 It's perfectly all right.

1:18:27 How?

1:18:28 Uh and he says, "You count.

1:18:30 We've already counted.

1:18:31 Just humor me.

1:18:32 Count again.

1:18:33 So one of them got up and started counting.

1:18:35 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I told you nine.

1:18:39 And this passer by catches hold of the counter's

1:18:42 hand and turns it around and says 10.

1:18:44 You are the 10th.

1:18:45 In Sanskrit dashamasi, thou art the 10th.

1:18:48 And this man goes, "Oh, I see.

1:18:52 I'm the 10th." 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.

1:18:57 Wow.

1:18:57 Others say, "Let me try.

1:18:58 Let me try." And they try and everybody finds the 10th one.

1:19:00 and they're very happy.

1:19:02 Now, Adita Vanta uses this story.

1:19:05 In fact, in more than one text,

1:19:07 it's been used in one text specially called the panchadashi.

1:19:11 So, it illustrates the uh seven stages

1:19:15 of the spiritual journey in the adita path.

1:19:19 So, there's the first the um ignorance about the existence of the 10th person.

1:19:26 Then the error that um the 10th person is drowned.

1:19:31 It's like samsara we do not know who we are or what we are.

1:19:34 Then the error comes sorrow, struggle, suffering, life and death samsara.

1:19:38 That's the second stage.

1:19:40 They're like they are weeping for the 10th person.

1:19:43 Then the third stage is the um wise person comes along and tells

1:19:49 them the 10th person is there that they still don't know what the problem.

1:19:52 They don't know what the solution is.

1:19:53 Where is the 10th person?

1:19:55 But they believe the um wise person they take it that it's true.

1:20:00 This is called indirect knowledge in vanta.

1:20:04 When we read about vanta and we are told about Brahman,

1:20:07 existence, consciousness, bliss and all the stuff,

1:20:10 we begin to form a general idea of what is which way we are going.

1:20:15 So such a thing is there and somehow I am that and therefore everything is fine.

1:20:20 Um so this is indirect knowledge.

1:20:22 It still is not.

1:20:24 Then um then comes the um the direct realization the the stage

1:20:35 where da the 10th and you suddenly realize a brahasmi I am Brahman.

1:20:43 My ignorance is removed.

1:20:45 next stage and then the sixth and seventh last stages is

1:20:49 um that um you know my sorrow goes away the result

1:20:53 of it and bliss is found so the stages of uh

1:20:58 this story when you realize oh the 10th person is there

1:21:02 I am the 10th person 10th person is there and I

1:21:05 am the 10th there's a world of difference between the two

1:21:07 there is Brahman there is an onlogical ground of being

1:21:10 an ultimate reality great but what about me I am that reality.

1:21:16 If that becomes clear, suddenly it flashes.

1:21:18 It's it makes all the difference.

1:21:20 And then there's a further stage of the sixth and seventh stages of where

1:21:23 progressively in our lives we see the disappearance

1:21:26 of sorrow and the pervasion of bliss.

1:21:29 All right.

1:21:29 So this is the story and then we go into the practice.

1:21:34 So there are multiple modes of inquiry in advant.

1:21:37 We shall sample one of them.

1:21:41 Um so when we are ready we can sit comfortably.

1:21:45 Vanta by the way can be done in meditation

1:21:48 posture with eyes closed or with eyes open.

1:21:50 But you are Brahman regardless of whether you are in meditation

1:21:54 or you're working or playing or relaxing all the time.

1:21:57 You're exactly the same reality and it's equally available everywhere.

1:22:01 But initially it's easier if we are quiet.

1:22:05 So we sit still and [snorts] keeping the back straight.

1:22:10 Closing the eyes when we are ready.

1:22:15 Breathing in and breathing out.

1:22:17 Relaxed.

1:22:22 Let us bring our attention to the body.

1:22:26 Opening the eyes, we look and down at the body, at our hands, at our lap.

1:22:33 Closing the eyes we feel the sensation of the body from internally the little

1:22:40 aches and pains are the sensation of warmth different parts of the body.

1:22:46 This is the body and question is am I literally the body?

1:22:56 When we are invited to notice that the body has changed dramatically.

1:23:02 Look at what it is now.

1:23:04 And what it was when it was a baby.

1:23:07 So very different in size and shape.

1:23:09 And as a child, as a young person,

1:23:14 even what it was 5 years ago, it has changed dramatically.

1:23:18 It's changing further.

1:23:20 The body under goes the so-called sixfold changes.

1:23:23 Traditional vanta talk about the sixfold changes.

1:23:27 Birth and then coming into existence.

1:23:31 then childhood, then youth and maturity, then aging and death.

1:23:39 So the six changes and yet I feel I am the same one.

1:23:44 I was the one who was in that baby's body.

1:23:48 I was the one identified with a child's body.

1:23:50 And the same one at one time claimed to be a young person.

1:23:54 Now I claim to be a middle-aged person.

1:23:56 I am the same one.

1:23:58 The same and the not the same.

1:24:00 The changing and the unchanging cannot literally be the same.

1:24:05 Cannot be one and the same thing.

1:24:06 So I the unchanging and the body the everchanging.

1:24:10 I can't literally be the body relaxed.

1:24:16 Stay with that idea.

1:24:20 Now another thing I see that the body is an object to all my senses.

1:24:28 I can see the body.

1:24:30 I can touch the body.

1:24:33 I can smell the body, taste the body, even hear the sounds in the body.

1:24:38 The body is objectified by all the senses.

1:24:41 It is that which is seen, known.

1:24:45 And I am the subject, the seer, the knower.

1:24:50 The seer, the knower is never known.

1:24:53 Never become.

1:24:54 I never become an object to myself.

1:24:56 The body is an object to myself.

1:25:01 Therefore, I the seer and the body the scene cannot be the same thing.

1:25:04 I the subject and the body the object cannot literally be the same thing.

1:25:12 Relaxed.

1:25:12 Take a breath.

1:25:18 I'm aware of the body.

1:25:20 I'm conscious.

1:25:23 I notice I conscious I notice myself.

1:25:26 I am conscious and I notice the body also.

1:25:31 And as far as I can notice in my experience,

1:25:34 there's nothing to suggest that the body knows me.

1:25:36 The body is aware of me or the body is conscious of itself.

1:25:43 It's an object in my consciousness.

1:25:45 I am conscious.

1:25:46 The body is not conscious.

1:25:51 And if I stay with that I see I the conscious

1:25:55 and the body the non-concious cannot literally be the same thing.

1:26:01 Hence I conclude even as I am experiencing the body I feel the body now

1:26:09 that this body the changing body and I the unchanging I cannot be the body.

1:26:16 The body which is seen an object of knowledge and I the subject the knower.

1:26:22 I cannot be the body.

1:26:25 The body which is not aware.

1:26:29 I am aware of the body.

1:26:31 I the consciousness the awareness and the body that which is

1:26:34 not conscious or aware in itself cannot be the same thing.

1:26:38 I am not the body.

1:26:41 We take a breath.

1:26:42 Relax.

1:26:45 gently draw our attention to something more

1:26:49 subtle in our experience of ourselves phenomenologically.

1:26:54 The breath itself.

1:26:56 Breathe in and out.

1:27:02 Notice how it is ever changing.

1:27:05 In breath, out breath, short breath, long breath, shallow breaths, deep breaths.

1:27:15 And I am the same one who experienced the inb breath,

1:27:20 out breath, long breath, short breath etc.

1:27:23 I do not change with the varieties of breath.

1:27:30 I the unchanging, the breath, the everchanging, everflowing.

1:27:36 And I know the breath.

1:27:39 I am the knower, the seer.

1:27:44 I'm mindful of the breath in mind mindfulness meditation.

1:27:50 The knower and the known cannot be the same.

1:27:53 So I the knower of this knowledge the subject and the breath

1:27:57 the object of this knowledge of the breath are not the same thing.

1:28:04 Third I'm clearly conscious and I'm conscious of the breath.

1:28:10 I'm also conscious of myself,

1:28:11 my own existence and I'm conscious of other things.

1:28:15 But as far as I can experience, the breath is not conscious of itself,

1:28:19 nor is it conscious of me,

1:28:21 nor is it conscious of anything else, including the next breath.

1:28:25 Therefore, I the conscious and the breath

1:28:28 and non-concious cannot literally be the same thing.

1:28:34 relaxed.

1:28:38 I look inwards further.

1:28:41 Not body, not breath.

1:28:44 Subtler inwards.

1:28:46 Thoughts are there.

1:28:48 Memories are there.

1:28:50 Sensations are there.

1:28:53 Impulses and desires are there.

1:28:55 Likes and dislikes come and go.

1:28:58 This is the mind.

1:29:01 And similarly same arguments apply.

1:29:05 I notice let us notice the everchanging nature of the mind.

1:29:09 That is something we can notice immediately.

1:29:12 How much the mind changes in the course of a single day.

1:29:18 We look further and we notice the mind can be known.

1:29:24 I can introspect and know my own thoughts, my own desires,

1:29:29 can register them, my perceptions, my feelings, my memories.

1:29:36 The mind, the known and I, whatever I am,

1:29:39 the knower of the mind, I cannot literally be the same thing.

1:29:49 I the knower, the mind is the known.

1:29:53 Moving on, a very subtle observation.

1:29:58 I'm clearly aware and the mind most startlingly the mind is not aware by itself.

1:30:06 Think a thought.

1:30:09 ABCD or 1 2 3 4.

1:30:11 Just think it right now.

1:30:13 And notice the ABCD is something that I am aware of.

1:30:17 ABCD is not aware of me.

1:30:20 I'm aware of myself.

1:30:22 ABCD is not aware of itself.

1:30:24 ABCD is not aware of the next thought or the preceding one.

1:30:28 I am aware of all the thoughts.

1:30:30 If I choose to direct my attention, I will objectify the thoughts.

1:30:36 So I the unchanging, I the knower, I the consciousness,

1:30:41 I cannot literally be the thoughts of the mind,

1:30:44 the feelings in the mind which are ever changing,

1:30:46 which are known, which are not conscious.

1:30:56 Breathing normally relaxed.

1:31:01 Let us bring our attention to the higher mind.

1:31:04 The intellect knowledge.

1:31:07 The very instrument which is doing all this analysis right now.

1:31:10 Whatever we are doing now is being done by the intellect.

1:31:14 That which knows.

1:31:15 That which has a firm sense of ego.

1:31:17 I am so and so which is clear

1:31:19 to itself even that changes whenever I learn something new

1:31:24 intellect has changed and I was the one who

1:31:28 did not know now I know I'm the same one

1:31:33 I the same the changing intellect cannot be

1:31:36 the same cannot be identical I know the intellect I'm

1:31:41 aware of when I don't know something I I

1:31:44 can see that I don't understand when I understood it.

1:31:47 I could see that I did understand it

1:31:50 and therefore I am the knower of the intellect.

1:31:53 The various stages of the intellect and the intellect is

1:31:56 the known and finally I am conscious of the intellect.

1:32:01 The intellect just like artificial intelligence is not conscious of me.

1:32:08 It's not conscious in itself nor is it conscious of me.

1:32:12 So I the unchanging the intellect ever changing I the knoworth intellect

1:32:18 the known I the consciousness intellect non-concious

1:32:24 I cannot be the intellect also relaxed

1:32:30 breathing normally let us look back the physical body let us feel the physical

1:32:40 body which I am not it's there but But I am not it.

1:32:44 And breathe in and out.

1:32:46 This breath here it is this breath but I am not it.

1:32:53 And the mind thoughts memories it's there subtle.

1:32:58 I can look at it but I am not it.

1:33:02 And the intellect which is doing this kind of an analysis

1:33:05 that also I am not because I'm aware of it.

1:33:08 It is changing.

1:33:12 All of this I drop the physical, the vital, the mental, the intellect.

1:33:19 I drop.

1:33:20 They disappear into nothing.

1:33:21 They simulate a complete blank.

1:33:26 What is it like to be in deep sleep?

1:33:30 What is it like to be in general anesthesia?

1:33:37 That utter absence, even the absence of an eye,

1:33:41 the experienced self, that also goes, there's nothing there to experience.

1:33:46 That nothingness itself is the object of experience.

1:33:53 Consciousness is still there,

1:33:54 but not obvious because there's nothing to experience.

1:34:05 So I am not that blankness that nothingness also

1:34:09 that darkness of deep sleep or general anesthesia that two

1:34:14 comes and goes that too is known that too

1:34:18 is a non-concious object or absence of objects relaxed.

1:34:25 Next.

1:34:32 Now I bring to mind the 10th man's story.

1:34:37 How they counted the 10th man counted all

1:34:40 the other nine and did not count himself.

1:34:44 But why did he not count himself?

1:34:47 That's because all the other nine are objects.

1:34:51 All along he's used to counting objects, noticing objects,

1:34:55 dealing with objects, speaking about objects,

1:34:57 thinking and feeling about objects.

1:35:02 Never about the true self.

1:35:06 And thus when he counted the nine,

1:35:10 he couldn't find the 10th because there was no object to count as the 10th.

1:35:15 Where would he look for the 10th?

1:35:17 exactly where he found the other nine outside as objects to be counted.

1:35:23 But the 10th is not an object to be counted.

1:35:25 It does not mean that the 10th doesn't exist.

1:35:27 It's drowned.

1:35:28 No, he's himself the 10th.

1:35:32 And so the turn comes from the ninth.

1:35:35 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.

1:35:37 Then turning towards oneself and noticing oneself as the witness

1:35:41 of the nine as the counter of the nine that completes the 10.

1:35:48 Similarly, let us do it now.

1:35:52 Relaxed breathing normally.

1:35:58 This we will just notice here is the body.

1:36:02 I notice the body.

1:36:04 Feel the body.

1:36:07 Here is the breath.

1:36:09 [sighs] I notice it.

1:36:11 I feel it.

1:36:14 Here are thoughts, memories, sensations.

1:36:18 That's the mind.

1:36:22 And then there is the intellect which is doing all this thinking.

1:36:26 Then visualize the absence of all of them.

1:36:28 Nothing.

1:36:31 Now quick to whom or to what are these five?

1:36:35 The physical, the vital, the mental, the intellectual, the absence.

1:36:41 What are they appearing to?

1:36:45 Don't try to answer it.

1:36:47 Be it.

1:37:11 breathing normally relaxed as the attention goes to the mind breath

1:37:19 and finally the body and we become aware of where we are sitting.

1:37:23 Notice that light that bare light that bare consciousness to which

1:37:29 the physical the mental the vital the intellectual by appearing

1:37:32 and changing and disappearing that one will still be there

1:37:37 when we open our eyes and interact with the world.

1:37:40 It wouldn't have changed.

1:37:45 Gently open our eyes.

1:37:48 Look around.

1:37:49 It is by that that light which experience the mind,

1:37:53 the intellect, the breath, the body.

1:37:56 It's by that light I'm experiencing the world.

1:38:00 That light I am.

1:38:03 And now let's use the intellect to appreciate what we have found.

1:38:07 If that light is not the body,

1:38:10 then the properties of the body belong to the body and not to that light.

1:38:14 The aging is aging of the body.

1:38:18 The sickness or hunger and thirst is of the prana, not of that light.

1:38:24 That light neither ages.

1:38:25 It can't.

1:38:26 The body ages.

1:38:28 The light reveals the aged body.

1:38:31 That light does not sicken.

1:38:32 The prana sickens.

1:38:34 That light reveals the health and sickness of the prana.

1:38:38 That light cannot be depressed.

1:38:41 It notices the depression in the mind.

1:38:42 It illumines and reveals the depression in the mind.

1:38:45 The arisal of depression like a dark cloud

1:38:47 in a blue sky and the disappearance of that cloud.

1:38:51 The vast blue sky is unaffected.

1:38:53 The light that which shines upon the depressed

1:38:55 mind that light in itself is not depressed.

1:39:00 Confusion, incomprehension, understanding,

1:39:03 a dull intellect or a sharp intellect,

1:39:05 brilliant or just plain dumb.

1:39:08 Those are attributes of the intellect, not of the light.

1:39:14 So I am the witness unaffected of the five layers of the human personality.

1:39:20 The physical, the vital,

1:39:23 the mental includes the emotional also the intellectual and the absence of all

1:39:29 of these all appear and disappear to that one light which I am.

1:39:34 And that one light shining through these bodies and minds is what we truly are.

1:39:41 This is the result of this first discovery in adv not mind.

1:39:48 Shankarachara sings I'm not the intellect.

1:39:51 I'm not the memory.

1:39:52 I'm not the ego.

1:39:54 I'm not the mind.

1:39:56 I am bliss.

1:39:58 I am consciousness.

1:39:59 I am Shiva.

1:40:00 I am Shiva.

1:40:06 He says this is exactly what it means.

1:40:11 It's something available to us all the time.

1:40:13 We can notice it.

1:40:16 All right.

1:40:18 That's one of the kind of inquiries that we do.

1:40:20 Notice here it's a meditation but not quite a meditation in the yogic sense,

1:40:24 not quite a meditation in the mindfulness sense.

1:40:28 Yeah.

1:40:29 Thank you for that guided practice.

1:40:30 I found it very beautiful.

1:40:33 And also to picture however many thousands or hundreds

1:40:38 of thousands of people may have joined in on that collectively

1:40:41 and just to feel the energy uh and the image

1:40:45 of all those people sitting touches my heart.

1:40:49 Um and uh and the potency of that reminder.

1:40:53 To me, this is where the intellectual understanding

1:41:00 by tasting it experientially becomes an embodied way of being.

1:41:05 When you took us from the Ten Man story where you go from the state of ignorance

1:41:10 of self to awareness of ignorance to awareness of self

1:41:16 to then you could say the end of suffering,

1:41:18 the rejoicing in bliss of your true nature, of your true self.

1:41:22 To me, it fundamentally completely changes

1:41:26 your life and how you perceive pleasure, pain,

1:41:29 what freedom and liberation is, and how possible it is for us all individually.

1:41:33 Because right now we are living in a paradigm

1:41:37 that is baked into po postmodern culture

1:41:40 that says happiness comes by virtue of externally

1:41:44 arranging your out external circumstances in a certain way.

1:41:49 The acquisition of more and the more money the more followers uh the more

1:41:56 power you have the happier and you know the more increase in well-being.

1:42:01 And what this experience coupled with the reasoning allows us

1:42:05 to to really see in our life is that we

1:42:09 have all of those uh sensations all that that experience

1:42:13 of freedom and liberation within us irrespective of what's happening externally.

1:42:18 And so to me, this is where I would like to ask

1:42:21 and inquire with you around this energy of what renunciation truly is.

1:42:28 Not as a mere turning away to go into the seclusion

1:42:30 of forests and a sort of resignation and retirement from the world,

1:42:34 which is I think conventionally thought of, but as an inner orientation

1:42:39 towards how I believe Socrates was quoted going to Athens and saying,

1:42:44 "Who knew there were so many things in this world in which I do not need?" Wow.

1:42:48 Yes.

1:42:49 And by then having this experience where we

1:42:53 just went through a guided practice and you

1:42:54 carry that and and it resonates and you

1:42:56 build that experience into more of your daily life,

1:42:59 it fundamentally changes how you orient towards your work, your relationships.

1:43:04 There's not a single area in which it doesn't transform.

1:43:07 And so I would love to get your perspective on that that quality

1:43:11 of renunciation as it changes fundamentally how we relate towards all life.

1:43:16 I'm glad you asked this question about renunciation.

1:43:19 Um, Vanta gives a tremendous emphasis on this renunciation.

1:43:23 Swami Viveant has said renunciation is the turning point in all the yogas.

1:43:28 What he means by that is spirituality starts with renunciation.

1:43:34 This is not stressed enough.

1:43:36 Not just in California or in America or but even in India.

1:43:40 It's not something that we want to hear.

1:43:44 First of all, it seems rather dark and bitter.

1:43:47 Oh, this is a nice world.

1:43:48 I have to give up all this.

1:43:50 The answer is that genuine spirituality is not possible without renunciation.

1:43:58 What consider what is the the counter the the opposite of renunciation?

1:44:04 It's going around in this world of objects.

1:44:06 If I am consciousness itself, then I'm going around in this world of objects

1:44:09 with a begging bowl with a hat in hand looking for handouts.

1:44:14 Make me happy.

1:44:15 Make me happy.

1:44:15 Make me happy.

1:44:16 Give me this.

1:44:17 Behave this way with me.

1:44:18 Say nice things about me.

1:44:20 My fulfillment, my happiness depends on the object.

1:44:25 Whereas it does not.

1:44:28 My real nature is this everfilled consciousness.

1:44:32 If I'm not the mind, if I'm not even the intellect, if I'm not the memory,

1:44:38 if I'm just bare light as bare light, what am I thinking?

1:44:43 Nothing.

1:44:45 What do I need?

1:44:46 Nothing.

1:44:47 The need comes when the mind starts acting.

1:44:49 But if I've shut down the mind and just bear light,

1:44:53 illumining the shut down mind, what do I need?

1:44:56 Nothing.

1:44:58 What am I afraid of?

1:44:59 Nothing.

1:45:01 Fear comes when the mind kicks in.

1:45:04 Um then what who who am I against?

1:45:09 Who who are my enemies?

1:45:10 Nobody.

1:45:12 The moment I realize I am awareness, I am this light.

1:45:16 Then I immediately realize everybody is this light.

1:45:18 Why?

1:45:19 As long as I am a body, everybody's a body to me.

1:45:22 As long as I'm a mind, a person, everybody's a person to me.

1:45:25 The moment I step back from physicality and personhood into that light,

1:45:31 then I realize everybody is that light and bodies are different.

1:45:36 Even persons are clearly different.

1:45:38 Vanta gives another dramatic insight.

1:45:40 Vant is full of these um what our senior swami used to call thought bombs.

1:45:45 Uh it an explosion which says oh how many consciousnesses are there?

1:45:52 I think Shreddinger said consciousness is that singular which has no plural.

1:45:57 Is it possible that we are all one light, one consciousness?

1:46:02 Then we are all one being literally not

1:46:04 just the brotherhood or sisterhood of human beings.

1:46:07 No, that's just rhetoric.

1:46:09 Literally one being we just one.

1:46:13 And then shining through multiple bodies and minds,

1:46:15 we become all these beings, all these sentient creatures.

1:46:20 So Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita one undivided appear

1:46:24 as if divided into many one undivided light which I am not

1:46:28 part of it the whole of it there's no part and whole

1:46:31 there actually it's undivided so indivisible I am that as everybody

1:46:35 else is now from that perspective if I forget

1:46:40 that and I engage with the world is basically I'm going dependent

1:46:44 on the world I'm incomplete and I need the world to complete

1:46:47 me and it'll never because I'm operating on a wrong premise.

1:46:52 I am fundamentally complete.

1:46:55 So to turn away from that to step back from that is what's called renunciation.

1:47:01 Without that even spiritual practice with practices will be again part

1:47:07 of my project of trying to find completion in the world.

1:47:11 It will become part of my repertoire and you know I learn languages.

1:47:14 I also learn meditation.

1:47:16 uh I learn um um philosophies I also learn adita it's all

1:47:21 part of the same project it won't work I mean to some extent

1:47:24 it'll give its results it's pleasant it's very nice but the enlightenment

1:47:29 which I'm seeking crucial to that is this renunciation what is the renunciation

1:47:34 that this world for the first time you realize what is it really

1:47:38 to be I am not dependent on the world there is nothing really

1:47:43 and deeply that I the world can give I can demand a million

1:47:47 and one things from the world and the world will give me everything.

1:47:50 Vander says do not desire anything because you will get it.

1:47:56 We think desiring is will lead to frustration.

1:47:59 No, if you desire something you will get it in this life

1:48:02 or the next and you will realize you it didn't do anything for you.

1:48:05 Nothing will do anything for us because it cannot.

1:48:09 It's not meant to you are already complete.

1:48:12 So when so to discover the treasure within to discover

1:48:15 that I am complete I must give up this illusion that I'm

1:48:19 ever dependent on the world for stuff initially we try

1:48:25 to rearrange the world to our liking a little wiser thing is

1:48:29 to rearrange my life to to make myself happy that's

1:48:33 a wiser way of doing things even wiser than that is

1:48:36 to rearrange my inner life my thoughts emotions meditation does that devotion

1:48:41 inner not change that that's where most of positive psychology stops.

1:48:46 Vanta says go further not changing stuff in the world.

1:48:52 You can change stuff in the world.

1:48:53 You can't help it.

1:48:53 You will keep changing stuff in the world in our own lives in our minds.

1:48:57 All very good.

1:48:58 But stepping back from all of them with the query who am I apart from the world.

1:49:03 Who am I other than the body?

1:49:05 Other than my thoughts and when I

1:49:07 discovered that to discover that renunciation is necessary.

1:49:11 Now that renunciation doesn't mean you have to be a monk.

1:49:14 You have to live on top of a mountain in Tapanga.

1:49:19 Uh do you have to do that or can you be in a city?

1:49:23 Can you be in the midst of life?

1:49:26 I saw that book Maharaj.

1:49:30 Yeah, I am that.

1:49:31 I am that.

1:49:32 So one story I like about him is when he became enlightened,

1:49:35 he had this enlightenment moment.

1:49:37 Um he thought that's it.

1:49:39 I'm done with this.

1:49:40 He used to live in a very poor area of Mumbai and he would

1:49:44 sell these hand rolled cigarettes the cheapest kind and it was a difficult life.

1:49:52 So he thought I'm going to give I don't need any of this.

1:49:54 I'm off to the Himalayas.

1:49:55 I'm going to spend the rest

1:49:56 of this this physical existence in immersed in bliss.

1:50:00 And then he thought what am I doing?

1:50:03 That which I have found what is there in the Himalayas is equally here.

1:50:06 What is here will just be the same in the Himalayas.

1:50:09 Why am I making a change externally?

1:50:10 And he came back and he lived in that in those circumstances very

1:50:14 difficult circumstances for the rest of his life in great bliss and joy.

1:50:18 So this is renunciation.

1:50:22 Often renunciation is put in such a way that you

1:50:24 must give up your family, you must be a monk,

1:50:27 you must give up sensual pleasures,

1:50:29 you must give up uh all artistic intellectual pursuits,

1:50:33 uh property and all of that.

1:50:35 then only it seems like a dry and suicidal advice you

1:50:40 know that you're asking me to give up everything I know I

1:50:43 know you're promising me infinite existence Brahman but all those are

1:50:46 words those are concepts but this is physical life so Vant said

1:50:52 it's like a man who was troubled by a mosquito

1:50:56 and his friend came and said that look I'll help you just sit

1:51:00 still and he gave such a blow he killed the mosquito

1:51:03 but he killed his friend So renunciation seems to be like that.

1:51:07 The advice is you give up everything.

1:51:09 Maybe it'll help me but it's at the same

1:51:11 time it's destroying everything that I know.

1:51:13 That's my life you're talking about.

1:51:17 What renation really means Viveand says is to see the divinity in everything.

1:51:22 Wherever you are whomever you are with that ultimate

1:51:25 reality which you're seeking is already here.

1:51:27 You are that and all of this is also that reality.

1:51:31 To see that is renunciation.

1:51:32 One of the opanishads ishopishad there's

1:51:36 a very famous first line which Mahatma Gandhi

1:51:39 said that if all of Hinduism were to disappear and just that first line

1:51:44 of the ishopishad remain all of Hinduism

1:51:46 would remain and the oponyish first line goes

1:51:49 all this in this universe which moves and moves not is to be covered with God.

1:52:00 Now covered with God means what?

1:52:03 The commentator Shankarachara says covered with God means to uncover God.

1:52:07 It's already there.

1:52:09 Not by imposing, not by positive talk, affirmation.

1:52:14 It's gone.

1:52:14 It's God.

1:52:14 No, not like that.

1:52:16 Uncover God is already there.

1:52:20 And what how do you uncover?

1:52:21 He says discover.

1:52:23 How do you discover?

1:52:24 Now it's pretty easy.

1:52:26 Easy means you know the path.

1:52:27 Now dis any discovery requires inquiry, inquiry into ourselves.

1:52:32 So um this is real renunciation.

1:52:36 It can be entirely in the midst of life uh with people

1:52:43 with property and all except that one has to be monklike inside.

1:52:49 Externally monk or not that depends on one's karma.

1:52:53 Really we believe that someone asked Raman Maharshi a lady do I

1:52:57 have to be a monk living in a mountain like like Ramanarshi

1:53:01 to be enlightened and he said no you can continue to be

1:53:04 a housewife and can be in the kitchen and be enlighten enlightened then she

1:53:08 asked him why are you like this and he said that is my karma

1:53:12 to be here your karma is you're a housewife in in the kitchen

1:53:16 but equal in both of us can be enlightened that's the thing

1:53:20 that's the thing that is her renunciation but it's an internal switch.

1:53:25 It's equally dramatic but it's internal to become monklike internally.

1:53:33 Yeah.

1:53:31 It means I affirm firm conviction what

1:53:37 I'm looking for this world cannot give me.

1:53:41 Turning away from the project this this world is going to I'm

1:53:45 going to squeeze out like toothpaste my fulfillment from this world.

1:53:48 it will not give me.

1:53:50 Giving up all hope that will give me there.

1:53:52 And then turning inwards in our spiritual practice through meditation,

1:53:56 through philosophical inquiry, through devotion, through service.

1:53:59 Service to the word, not for getting something rather for giving.

1:54:02 Instead of getting, giving and then realizing the truth within.

1:54:08 Uh this is renunciation.

1:54:11 Having a project about the world,

1:54:12 the world will give me stuff and then I'll be fulfilled.

1:54:16 That is non renunciation.

1:54:17 that sabotages all the spiritual paths then we'll spirituality also

1:54:21 will become a part of that project of getting stuff

1:54:23 from the world um even after realizing even after enunciation

1:54:30 and I am this witness consciousness already realizing the perfection within

1:54:35 the project of the world can continue you can

1:54:38 and should look after the health of the body we can

1:54:41 and should look after people in our lives we can

1:54:43 and should develop our potential of the body of the mind

1:54:47 of of the our creative powers of the intellect

1:54:50 to the maximum possible and one day they will fail 30

1:54:54 40 years down the line the body will fail the mind

1:54:57 will weaken that's also perfectly all right because I am

1:55:00 perfectly all right anyway so the project of improving

1:55:05 our lives can continue but without any com without any investment

1:55:10 that that will that is the way my life will

1:55:12 be fulfilled no uh instead of asking life to fulfill me.

1:55:18 I will use life to manifest the divinity already existing.

1:55:22 I will realize what I am and then live it.

1:55:28 Yeah.

1:55:28 I really love the Dowist maxim.

1:55:31 The master does nothing yet leaves nothing undone.

1:55:35 Yes.

1:55:35 And to me it speaks directly to this what

1:55:39 you're referring to and how the Gita and many

1:55:41 different texts have referred to as you can

1:55:44 have possessions but not be possessed by the possessions.

1:55:49 You can have things just the things don't have you.

1:55:53 Yes.

1:55:52 Um and I think that's really important because

1:55:54 for many of us especially that are listening

1:55:56 to this podcast right now likely aren't going

1:55:58 to live a monastic life in that sense.

1:56:02 and that if we are going to have a family,

1:56:06 build a business, the more involved we are in the world,

1:56:09 like you referred to, and I'm glad you gave the reminder

1:56:11 of, it will increasingly require us to have this embodiment of this realization

1:56:16 to be able to not be swayed by the whims and the cravings

1:56:20 and aversions that life inevitably is going to bring towards us.

1:56:25 There's a story about the emperor Janaka who was enlightened

1:56:31 and the monk uh Shukadeva who's also enlightened but he was a monk

1:56:35 that the emperor was an emperor he had an empire and the monk

1:56:39 Shukadeva was a monk he had only u a change of loin

1:56:43 cloth and nothing else and once and he would come and they

1:56:46 would discuss philosophy non-duality once they were talking about it and news

1:56:50 came that you know some part of the capital city has

1:56:53 caught there and the monk ran out like a shot and disappeared.

1:56:59 After some time he came back panting

1:57:02 and the emperor asked him what happened my friend.

1:57:05 He said the place which caught fire I remember I took a bath in the pond

1:57:10 there and I washed my loin clo and and I put it out there to dry.

1:57:16 I was worried it might be consumed by the flames

1:57:18 cuz that's my only change change of loin cloth.

1:57:21 So he went and I went there to make sure and I was fine.

1:57:23 It's fine.

1:57:25 And then the emperor smiled and said it's a famous saying in Sanskrit

1:57:34 if my capital city were to burn down nothing of mine would be burnt.

1:57:39 Not that he played the fiddle while Rome burned like Nero.

1:57:43 He did whatever had to be done.

1:57:44 The emperor and yet uh with enormous positions he was not attached.

1:57:51 The point of the story being I have no possessions at all.

1:57:54 The only little thing that I have I have tremendously attached to it.

1:57:57 I'm quite anxious about it.

1:57:59 A loin class.

1:58:01 So this is not being possessed by the possessions.

1:58:04 It's a it's a beautiful analogy into what also I feel like Jesus was hinting

1:58:10 at or in the New Testament was referring

1:58:12 to when they said that the foxes have holes,

1:58:15 the birds have nests, the son of man has no place to rest his head.

1:58:19 Um, we also heard another teacher refer to the bad

1:58:23 news being you're falling through the void with no parachute.

1:58:27 The good news is there's no ground.

1:58:29 waking up to our true nature.

1:58:30 In many ways, we stop relying on the external

1:58:34 world to fulfill us like we thought it once would, which to some initially,

1:58:40 prematurely in a juvenile sense makes it seems

1:58:45 like we're throwing away the world or where there's

1:58:47 a there's this big negation of the world

1:58:48 and that you no longer can be involved in the world.

1:58:51 And yet you're a perfect example of somebody

1:58:55 who's yes taken up the monastic life,

1:58:58 but you're also very much so in the world and you're

1:59:00 giving these talks and building these relationships and all of these things.

1:59:02 And so uh I think that's just an important

1:59:06 reminder because it it helps bring in to our day-to-day

1:59:10 life this possibility and not oh one day

1:59:14 some other lifetime when I go be a monk.

1:59:17 But this realization is available to us in in every given moment.

1:59:21 Um, now I'm curious because as somebody who is deeply

1:59:24 passionate about my my devotion to seeing life as it is,

1:59:30 to be able to see clearly, one cannot but help see the various different

1:59:36 ways in which we color perception in life,

1:59:39 the vasas and this uh personality structure

1:59:43 that we are so often perceiving the world through.

1:59:46 And as you gave us a glimpse

1:59:49 into that meditative experience where you kind of go back

1:59:53 and be be experienced the witness that's beyond all

1:59:56 these uh arisings phenomenologically uh is is is really potent.

2:00:01 Um but when you think about the individual

2:00:04 and how often our psychological makeup and constitution is coloring,

2:00:10 shaping, distorting whatever we're perceiving.

2:00:12 I'm curious your thoughts there because it's uh it's

2:00:16 quite wild to just perceive how often we are self-deceiving.

2:00:21 You're absolutely right.

2:00:22 That's the framework of samsara.

2:00:24 Our cravings and our dislikes, preferences and dislikes.

2:00:29 Um that's what constitutes our worldview.

2:00:34 And spirituality is stepping back

2:00:35 from that and discovering that one sameness underlying everything.

2:00:41 One characteristic of a truly spiritual person is the evenness or sameness.

2:00:46 Nothing truly will upset such a person.

2:00:49 Nothing truly uh can will tempt such a person.

2:00:53 We are always driven by temptation or terror.

2:00:56 The stability of mind equinimity would you say equinity will come.

2:01:00 Where does this equinimity come?

2:01:02 Where does this serenity come?

2:01:04 Because they have this is psychological equinimity of serenity but is

2:01:08 grounded in the spiritual ontology of this um the ultimate nature

2:01:13 of things which is the thing which you can utterly trust

2:01:17 and because it is you you can never lose it also.

2:01:20 Once we realize it a great um relief

2:01:25 comes because we found the ground of ultimate security.

2:01:30 This is one thing we're searching for.

2:01:31 We are afraid so we search for security.

2:01:34 We want fulfillment.

2:01:35 So we search for pleasure.

2:01:37 But the ground of all fulfillment and all security is is there within us is us.

2:01:42 Actually all you have to do is discover it and remain and relax into it.

2:01:48 Life will continue.

2:01:50 Now do you throw away life?

2:01:53 No you don't.

2:01:54 In fact now you now you remodel life.

2:01:59 It becomes a an enlightened project and let's

2:02:02 call it an enlightenment project in one sense.

2:02:04 Uh what do you do now?

2:02:06 You manifest what you have already found.

2:02:09 Instead of continuously trying to fill an unfillable

2:02:13 hole within ourselves by grabbing stuff from the world,

2:02:16 now I feel I feel I'm full.

2:02:20 Now life still continues.

2:02:22 Here is the body.

2:02:23 Here is the mind.

2:02:24 Here are people and opportunities all around me.

2:02:26 You radiate what you have found and that's a beautiful way of living.

2:02:32 There's something really potent about that phrase uh only

2:02:35 what I do not give can ever be lacking.

2:02:39 Uh when you look at it from the physics lens of how color works, right?

2:02:43 We know that light is comprised of you know you could say seven main colors

2:02:48 and that whatever we are perceiving as a color

2:02:52 is what the object is actually giving away.

2:02:55 Yes.

2:02:55 And that a black object is actually absorbing all seven colors.

2:03:01 A white object is actually giving away all seven.

2:03:04 And so in a similar way I think about the the nature

2:03:07 of these these uh these qualities of being uh these joy, love, peace, happiness,

2:03:12 equinimity just the orientation of how once we give it

2:03:16 we essentially are it and we have it in a sense

2:03:19 not in the way we possess it uh permanently

2:03:21 but in a sense where uh yeah we we are that.

2:03:26 So I'm just curious your thoughts on that how when

2:03:29 we give we are in the act of being that thing.

2:03:32 Yes, this is true.

2:03:33 Um, very beautifully put.

2:03:35 The I never thought of that metaphor of the black body and the white body.

2:03:39 White body is that which is continuously radiating out.

2:03:43 Um, that's true.

2:03:45 It is the childish, instinctive, almost anim animalistic,

2:03:50 insecure psychology which always seeks to take to extract

2:03:56 uh without any thought of giving back anything physically,

2:03:59 emotionally, materially, um intellectually all for me, I me myself.

2:04:06 For a little child that might be fine.

2:04:08 The children need they need to take in order to grow.

2:04:11 But once we grow out of childhood even

2:04:14 for a certain stage in childhood desire to share and socialize

2:04:20 with others that's the giving that must come otherwise

2:04:23 one is has not grown up has not matured.

2:04:27 Um so this uh radiating outwards from this limitless source we find

2:04:36 that we are full being full now I interact with others in between

2:04:43 is most people the the the crudest the child the insecure one

2:04:48 seeks to extract most ordinary people have a transactional view of giving.

2:04:55 I give you stuff and you give me stuff.

2:04:57 I give you love and you give me love.

2:04:59 I give you appreciation, you appreciate me.

2:05:02 Um, I like your posts, you like my posts, things like that.

2:05:07 This is shopkeeping, buying and selling.

2:05:12 But higher than this is that fullness

2:05:14 which comes through a genuine inward spiritual real.

2:05:17 It's a reality.

2:05:18 It's a fact.

2:05:19 And then one can be entirely uh giving

2:05:24 There's nothing that you want really from anybody.

2:05:28 Uh there's no question of taking.

2:05:30 There's also no question of giving in return for take getting something.

2:05:34 Rather, it's your nature.

2:05:36 It's your very um joy,

2:05:38 a bliss in radiating like that white body to radiate outwards continuously.

2:05:43 It becomes very natural to you.

2:05:45 You're not doing an act of philanthropy or being kind or charitable to somebody.

2:05:50 No.

2:05:51 Um, it can also be an act of worship since you find that light everywhere.

2:05:58 You're overwhelmed by it.

2:05:59 And as Viveand said, let the give, let the receiver stand up and receive.

2:06:04 Let the giver kneel down and offer.

2:06:06 You feel like you're offering to that that awesome divinity all around you.

2:06:13 Yes.

2:06:14 So the transformation from satisfying my own likes and hungers

2:06:18 and appetites and uh um assuring my own fears and insecurities that's

2:06:24 the one in between is the transactional and the spiritual perspective is

2:06:30 to give because you're full you really don't need anything from anybody.

2:06:35 Yes.

2:06:36 It makes me think about how when we're under the presumption we

2:06:40 are an individual uh individualistic conventional

2:06:44 relative self between subject and object.

2:06:47 We don't understand or have the experience of self as other.

2:06:51 Then we're going to continually record things on a personal basis, right?

2:06:54 We're keeping the scoreboard of giving and taking.

2:06:57 It's a transactional relationship uh within all life.

2:07:01 And when we come to experience our mind, our body, our thoughts,

2:07:07 our emotions, not as us,

2:07:09 but as something as objects in consciousness essentially.

2:07:13 Um, it makes me think of this analogy when, let's say,

2:07:17 you just bought a brand new Porsche and you go and drive it on a really rocky,

2:07:22 rugged road and you're terrified cuz you just got this car

2:07:24 and you really want to take care of it and so it's frightening.

2:07:28 Um, and you're being very careful and you're taking care of it in a sense.

2:07:33 If you now imagine that car, that Porsche was a rental.

2:07:37 You know, there's a certain liberation with uh being able

2:07:40 to it's it's becomes a joy ride all of a sudden.

2:07:43 Yeah.

2:07:43 Not an egoic position, right?

2:07:45 Um, and there's and there's something that is

2:07:48 very analogous to understanding about these human relationships,

2:07:52 our mind, body, um, constitution.

2:07:55 And I'm curious how you think that relates to to love because a lot

2:07:59 of people are under the presumption of love

2:08:03 really enacting from our preferential uh stamp

2:08:07 standpoint of of somebody's uh orientation towards

2:08:12 us and what our values and likes and dislikes are as opposed to recognizing

2:08:17 the self as other where true intimacy is born.

2:08:20 And so I'm curious what our uh misguided perception of love

2:08:25 typically is and what love in essence actually is from your perspective.

2:08:31 The advita view of love is it's very interesting.

2:08:34 There's one of the major upanishads the briadicishad

2:08:37 there is a dialogue between husband and wife.

2:08:40 The um husband is teaching nonduality to the wife who becomes his student now.

2:08:49 And he talks about love.

2:08:51 He says, "My dear, the husband is loved not for the sake

2:08:55 of the husband but for one's own self, for one's own sake.

2:08:59 The wife is loved not for the sake of the wife but for one's own sake.

2:09:03 Children are loved not for the sake of children

2:09:05 but for one's own sake." And so on he goes on.

2:09:08 Wealth, people in the world, living beings,

2:09:11 God, everything is loved for one's own self.

2:09:14 Now that might sound like a very selfish way of looking at things.

2:09:17 Then he says but this self is the self of all.

2:09:23 There is only one true self.

2:09:26 So what we are loving in others is this one underlying reality.

2:09:31 That is the source of all joy and fulfillment.

2:09:35 That's the connection between love and nonduality.

2:09:38 The nonduality of the self uh is manifested as love between everybody.

2:09:45 When it when it manifests as duality in this world,

2:09:47 as multiplicity in this world, what happens?

2:09:50 What happens to that non-dual existence, the s the pure being,

2:09:54 it appears as existing things which no longer seem non-dual.

2:09:58 They seem very dualistic.

2:10:00 What happens to that non-dual consciousness?

2:10:02 It appears as subject and object, as the knower and the known,

2:10:06 as somebody experiencing a variety of experiences.

2:10:09 What happens to that non-dual bliss?

2:10:12 It appears as love.

2:10:14 It can appear as desire.

2:10:15 It can appear as love.

2:10:17 But because we do not know ourselves as that underlying non-dual self,

2:10:23 then that love becomes transactional.

2:10:25 It becomes limited.

2:10:27 Adwita says if you fall in love with one, you're trapped.

2:10:32 If you love all, then that's the manifestation of your uh of your non-dual self.

2:10:37 Because the what you are loving is present equally in all beings.

2:10:41 It radiates out unconditionally.

2:10:44 Conditional love, there's some ignorance involved,

2:10:47 some distortion about who I am and who the other person is.

2:10:51 Unconditional love, it's not for I am already full.

2:10:55 I don't need anything from then I can only give in love.

2:10:59 I don't demand anything.

2:11:01 And this loving itself is a manifestation of the non-dual self.

2:11:06 So, uh that's what it is.

2:11:08 And it can't be done all of a sudden.

2:11:11 It might be difficult to swallow all this immediately.

2:11:14 But the more one brings this nonduality into love,

2:11:18 the more one brings unconditionality into love,

2:11:21 you'll see that love will become much better, much healthier,

2:11:25 deeper, more fulfilling, more independent,

2:11:29 no longer dependent on the moods and the whims

2:11:32 of the other person or the conditions of the other person.

2:11:36 Yeah.

2:11:37 It makes me wonder when you first reason your way to the experience

2:11:45 of having a non-dual experience essentially you

2:11:49 realize the absolute completeness fulfillment of consciousness.

2:11:54 Why would we go on this game of forgetting taking on this individual notion

2:12:00 of a self to then go on through all this effort of realizing that in which

2:12:06 we fundamentally are curious if there is any meaning to that outside of a person

2:12:13 who's obscribing the meaning um and why this game is is unfolding the way it is.

2:12:19 If you have some insight into that.

2:12:21 Yeah, this is a question one comes to at one some point or the other

2:12:24 when you're talking about non-duality and the answer

2:12:26 to that also is very interesting.

2:12:28 The if the practical answer is if you ask a monk

2:12:31 and this the answer they give you don't try to prove ignorance cut

2:12:36 down ignorance they will say oh monk do not try to establish

2:12:39 ignorance cut down ignorance if you ask why is there ignorance why

2:12:43 don't we know ourselves from the very beginning why all this drama

2:12:47 um and that to life after life they will say if you

2:12:51 think it's you're ignorant of of your real nature then realize your real

2:12:55 nature and be free don't try to find not why this happened.

2:13:00 If you push further, no, I want to know why this happened.

2:13:03 They will say there's no why.

2:13:05 Ignorance is not causally linked to uh reality.

2:13:10 The rope appears in ignorance as a snake.

2:13:13 Now, if you ask the rope, why are we appearing as a snake?

2:13:15 The roof said I didn't what looks like a snake to you is your problem.

2:13:21 The reality has what I mean is the reality has no causal link with appearance.

2:13:28 The reality is entirely free of the appearance.

2:13:31 The desert which is dry of water, it appears as a mirage full of water.

2:13:37 And if you ask the desert, how is it possible?

2:13:39 Why are you doing this?

2:13:40 The the first answer is I am that nothing has happened.

2:13:43 I'm still this desert.

2:13:45 Now it looks like that there is some you know

2:13:48 there is some mechanism because of which the mirage appears there.

2:13:53 It looks like this.

2:13:53 There's a mechanism.

2:13:54 The mechanism is ignorance and then there's an error

2:13:56 and then the error is followed by suffering all of that.

2:14:00 But if you want to link the ignorance to the underlying reality,

2:14:04 want to link all this to Brahman, there's no link.

2:14:09 If there were, we would be in serious trouble.

2:14:12 Then it would be causally linked.

2:14:14 Then we would say Brahman wants this to happen.

2:14:17 No, it doesn't.

2:14:20 And luckily first we are Brahman regardless

2:14:23 of whatever trouble we are going through.

2:14:25 That's one.

2:14:26 Second the door is always open.

2:14:28 Knowledge is always open.

2:14:29 The day we come to it we can realize it.

2:14:33 And third then we see the meaning in all this.

2:14:37 Once you realize you're this non-dual Brahman then all

2:14:40 of this becomes very fulfilling because it's like a mo movie screen.

2:14:44 If you realize the movies are unreal.

2:14:46 The screen is reality.

2:14:47 But then if you say that it just has to be a screen,

2:14:50 it would be a very boring screen indeed.

2:14:52 Uh if it now displays the movie one after another,

2:14:55 then you enjoy the whole thing.

2:14:57 Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy or a science fiction or a horror show,

2:15:01 all of those you can enjoy.

2:15:02 And that's the potential of the screen that it can appear in all these ways.

2:15:06 It would be absolute being would be very

2:15:09 boring if it could not be existing things.

2:15:12 You know, existence itself.

2:15:13 It sounds nice.

2:15:14 But if there are no existing things,

2:15:16 it would be a very povertystricken existence.

2:15:19 Pure consciousness sounds very nice.

2:15:22 But if there were no conscious experiences,

2:15:24 it would be a very boring kind of pure consciousness.

2:15:27 Pure bliss.

2:15:28 But if there were no blissful experiences,

2:15:31 then it would be it wouldn't amount to much.

2:15:35 So the potential of being consciousness bliss is realized in these ways.

2:15:40 If you know yourself as that, if we don't know ourselves as that, we suffer.

2:15:45 We struggle through this.

2:15:48 So do you think then that the suffering

2:15:52 is an inevitability and almost a cost of admission

2:15:56 for the illusion of separation which allows us

2:15:59 the joy of then realizing our true nature.

2:16:03 Suffering means there's something wrong.

2:16:05 Um and then we investigate it and we find

2:16:08 the doctor investigates the symptoms and goes back to the cause.

2:16:11 Root cause and the root cause here suffering in samsara

2:16:15 we find the root cause is ignorance of our real nature.

2:16:19 By the way ignorance of our real nature

2:16:21 is replaced by knowledge of our real nature.

2:16:24 We realize the truth and then the external world still continues.

2:16:28 One can still get sick.

2:16:30 One can there can be suffering at the you know

2:16:32 so somebody said u pain is unavoidable but suffering is optional.

2:16:37 So what enlightenment does is it um it takes it helps you to transcend

2:16:42 that suffering although at a physical level

2:16:44 suffering might go on um that story about

2:16:47 the Buddha the two arrows story where uh uh you know a monk goes

2:16:53 to the Buddha and this is actually

2:16:54 from the original sources not something invented later on.

2:16:58 The monk asks the Buddha that I have a question.

2:17:01 You said the goal is to overcome suffering.

2:17:04 And you said suffering is old age, disease and death.

2:17:08 Yes.

2:17:08 What is your question?

2:17:09 The question is that we are following your teachings

2:17:13 and we're still getting older and we still get sick.

2:17:16 Some of us have died and you are clearly enlightened but you're still getting

2:17:20 older and you are getting sick and I suppose one day tragically you will die.

2:17:25 So how have you overcome suffering?

2:17:28 How has enlightenment helped?

2:17:29 The goal was to overcome suffering.

2:17:30 It's still it's there.

2:17:31 Old age, disease, and death.

2:17:33 And then the Buddha says the nature of suffering is like

2:17:35 a man hit by an arrow and then hit by a second arrow.

2:17:38 The first arrow is what the world throws at you.

2:17:42 The second arrow is your reaction to it.

2:17:45 What I teach you will remove the suffering from the second arrow.

2:17:49 Of the first, I cannot do anything.

2:17:51 So the world will continue.

2:17:52 What knowledge does is it does not change the setup.

2:17:58 The setup will be like this but it makes

2:18:01 sure you will no longer be upset with the setup.

2:18:04 You have found something so deep that it

2:18:06 uh nothing in this world matters anymore.

2:18:08 You are deeply fulfilled.

2:18:09 It's not that you somehow make do and you sort of resign yourself to it.

2:18:13 Well, it can't be changed and so it's not defeist.

2:18:16 It's rather maximalist.

2:18:18 Krishna says in the Gita, having found that after which nothing

2:18:21 greater remains to be found being established

2:18:24 in that um after which even the heaviest of sorrows cannot shake you.

2:18:30 So you have found that and then this world becomes bliss.

2:18:34 Even the so-called previously what was called suffering, old age,

2:18:37 disease, death, none of it is any problem for you.

2:18:41 So for each of us that are going about our life maybe

2:18:46 sit in the meditation practice they listen to this conversation they have

2:18:49 a deep resonance they see the intellectual

2:18:52 rigor uh rigorousness of of the understanding

2:18:57 and we still fall back into ignorance in our day-today life.

2:19:01 Uh can you share some thoughts on the evolution

2:19:05 of the stages of this realization and how we can come

2:19:08 to have it not be a uh so often recurring

2:19:13 insight or experience but a pervasive experience in our day-to-day life

2:19:18 in the Gita u Krishna teaches all this to Arjun in the second

2:19:22 chapter at the end of the second chapter Arjun asked this question

2:19:25 so what are the characteristics of the sage of stabilized wisdom it's

2:19:29 very interesting instead of saying enlightened

2:19:31 sage He says of stabilized wisdom.

2:19:33 So we have this wisdom now.

2:19:34 I've heard it from you.

2:19:35 I've got this wisdom.

2:19:37 Maybe I I've got an inkling of it, an intuition of it also.

2:19:40 But it's not stabilized.

2:19:42 It doesn't help me to live life.

2:19:45 It should nourish me and transform me into a real sage.

2:19:49 How do we do that?

2:19:51 And the answer is practice.

2:19:54 The four yoga.

2:19:54 And what practice is there?

2:19:56 Also the four yogas.

2:19:57 Very beautiful classification by Swami Viveananda is first this inquiry

2:20:03 this inquiry should go on now that we have got the hang

2:20:07 of this inquiry um do it often especially in trouble so

2:20:13 here is the pain um but isn't the pain an object

2:20:17 and I'm the one aware of the pain that which

2:20:20 is aware of the pain is the pain in that awareness

2:20:22 or is the pain in the body when you think like

2:20:25 this it may not be that the pain will go away.

2:20:27 But a psychological space opens up between you and the pain.

2:20:30 A logical space opens up between you.

2:20:32 Intellect wants the logic.

2:20:34 The mind wants the psychology of it.

2:20:36 Emotionally you become um insulated from the the anxiety caused by the pain.

2:20:41 The pain may be there.

2:20:42 The suffering is optional.

2:20:43 You begin to suffer less.

2:20:45 So the inquiry must go on.

2:20:47 What we did all now till now.

2:20:49 It is all adita.

2:20:50 It is inquiry.

2:20:51 But it's also understood in the tradition that this is the last word.

2:20:55 This must be preceded by careful preparation.

2:21:00 So preparation at the level of the mind inquiry is

2:21:03 there of course preparation at the level of the mind.

2:21:05 Meditation some technique of meditation must be a daily.

2:21:10 We must not always be engaged with the world.

2:21:13 We must be able to step back from the world.

2:21:16 We must not be afraid of boredom.

2:21:19 We must not be afraid of disengagement.

2:21:21 So at one time every day we must step back from the world.

2:21:25 into just ourselves.

2:21:27 Not the world, not people, not activities, not the phone,

2:21:32 not even the body, not even the thoughts,

2:21:35 not even the memories, not even plans and projects,

2:21:38 not even regrets and memories or desires and impulses, none of that.

2:21:43 And see if I'm fine without all of that.

2:21:45 When we try to do this, the first thing

2:21:47 we'll realize is how how disturbed our minds are.

2:21:50 No wonder none of this inquiry stuff really works.

2:21:53 Our minds are so um like jelly they don't take form.

2:21:59 Shopopenhor said a weak mind the characteristic of a weak mind it's like

2:22:04 a soft pillow which retains the impression of the last bottom which sat on it.

2:22:08 The weak mind retains the last book which it

2:22:11 read [snorts] impression of the last book which it read.

2:22:14 You know the mind must be strengthened through meditation.

2:22:17 focused steady we must have a very high boiling point monk

2:22:24 said don't boil over so easily the liquids with low boiling

2:22:27 point it's just when the temperature rises boils over some problem

2:22:32 one swami put it this way if the setup is not

2:22:35 to my liking I get upset no the setup may not

2:22:38 be to my liking I don't get upset I deal with it

2:22:42 another swami put it so beautifully what vdanta does for you

2:22:45 ish you move from what to so what you're dealing with it.

2:22:52 It's not that you're escaping.

2:22:52 You're doing dealing with everything but internally you're serene and that's

2:22:56 everybody must admit that's a much better way of living life.

2:22:59 So meditation helps us there.

2:23:01 Another practice is uh devotion a deep faith in God.

2:23:07 These are helpful for that self inquiry.

2:23:09 Often people play them off against each other.

2:23:11 Oh you people are you know believing in God.

2:23:14 That's kindergarten.

2:23:15 I am non-dualistic.

2:23:16 I'm self in no the two go along well very

2:23:19 well together if you see the lives of the saints

2:23:21 the non-dual masters in India especially here also you'll

2:23:24 find they are all devoted in their own way maybe

2:23:26 very privately so they have a devotion um an acceptance

2:23:31 of a great power you call it Ishwara or god

2:23:33 or the god of religion which guides and controls

2:23:37 the world it's a great thing to have on your side

2:23:40 none greater so a heart full of devotion surrender

2:23:44 faith love then uh karma yoga spiritualization of one's life

2:23:50 activities how can I be of service to what

2:23:54 can I do for you so these broad preparations altruistic

2:23:59 life a life of selflessness and service that is

2:24:03 karma yoga devotional life a life of love worship adoration

2:24:08 internally to the supreme then a meditative life this is

2:24:14 plenty to be doing every day and the self inquire.

2:24:17 The self inquiry cocooned by these practices germinates into stabilized wisdom.

2:24:24 Without that it flickers in a flickering light

2:24:26 the results of self inquiry will also come and disappear.

2:24:30 Uh in a mind filled with a 100 desires self

2:24:35 inquiry might come up and we'll be disregarded the next moment.

2:24:38 The mind suddenly gets distracted like a little

2:24:40 child and runs after something in the world.

2:24:42 In a selfish mind, it's all about I, me, myself.

2:24:47 Self inquiry might reveal to me

2:24:48 a 100 times that you are limitless consciousness,

2:24:51 but my feelings are all about this limited person.

2:24:56 Yeah, I might be limitless conscious.

2:24:58 Right now I have to take care of this guy.

2:25:01 Viveand says, notice this is renunciation.

2:25:03 The turning point in the yogas in karma yoga,

2:25:06 renunciation is the renunciation of selfishness.

2:25:10 very difficult but one must try and to the extent

2:25:14 that one tries one gets benefits immediately.

2:25:17 In bi yoga, the the yoga of love and devotion,

2:25:21 it says to channelize a hundred a thousand desires flowing towards

2:25:26 the world to channelize them into one almighty love of God.

2:25:30 That is renunciation.

2:25:32 And in in the meditation,

2:25:34 the raja yoga the dhana yoga of meditation the renunciation

2:25:39 of every outward movement of the mind and the senses.

2:25:42 I want to see no.

2:25:44 I want to hear no.

2:25:46 I want to talk.

2:25:47 No.

2:25:49 I want to touch.

2:25:50 No.

2:25:51 I want to taste.

2:25:52 No.

2:25:53 Okay.

2:25:53 Sit quietly.

2:25:54 Now the mind kicks in.

2:25:55 I'm going to think.

2:25:57 I'm going to remember.

2:25:58 I'm going to plan.

2:26:00 I'm going to grumble and you know dwell over my hurts and insecurities.

2:26:06 No.

2:26:07 Not.

2:26:07 You're not permitted a single thought.

2:26:09 You're not permitted a single feeling.

2:26:11 Stop.

2:26:12 That's a great renunciation.

2:26:14 It's a renunciation of every discrete experience so that you can fall back

2:26:19 into that one white light before it breaks up into this, you know,

2:26:23 the seven colors of the wine.

2:26:25 All of these uh this is what makes that inquiry sustainable, stabilized

2:26:33 for your own personal path of the embodiment of that realization.

2:26:38 I'm curious as somebody who is way

2:26:41 more than anybody probably who's listening right

2:26:43 now is going to have spent your life absorbed in the studying of this material,

2:26:48 the understanding and synthesizing of this material.

2:26:53 Also rigorously studying various different contemplative practices,

2:26:57 seeing how they compare,

2:26:58 how they differ like Majamaka Buddhism and uh it's really it's amazing

2:27:03 to see the level of devotion you've carried throughout your life to this point.

2:27:08 How has it worked for you?

2:27:10 I think I'm very ordinary.

2:27:11 That's where I bring in the miracle of uh formal monastic life.

2:27:17 So all that you said uh it falls into place because I'm a monk and a very

2:27:24 ordinary um I I really find myself pretty

2:27:27 mediocre when I look at the other monks,

2:27:29 my brother monks, the way I've been a monk for more than 30 years.

2:27:32 I see how they have developed over the decades

2:27:36 and I'm filled with amazement and reverence really.

2:27:40 I remember when I became a monk I was so reverent to the senior monks.

2:27:43 I found them to be these amazing beings full of grace and holiness.

2:27:48 Now I'm seeing it's working.

2:27:49 I'm seeing it in my friends who 30 years ago were young boys coming to be

2:27:54 monks and we grew together and now when

2:27:56 I look at them I am filled with reverence.

2:27:59 I would bow down to them because I see the same holiness

2:28:01 beginning to blossom forth in them and it's just staying with it.

2:28:08 The structure has been given monastic life there is this line because you

2:28:11 are a monk there's this line drawn a lot of nonsense is already you

2:28:16 know thrown out of your life what do I have to wear it's not

2:28:20 a decision that you have to take every morning because you wear the same

2:28:23 thing so there's no decision to be taken there at all what do I

2:28:26 eat exactly what's given to you so I don't decide I have to go

2:28:30 to this hotel or order out food no so what do what is

2:28:35 my entertainment exactly what the asham pro provides um what do I do today?

2:28:41 The four yogas you serve, you worship, you meditate, and you inquire, you study.

2:28:49 So because this monastic paradigm,

2:28:52 the formal monastic paradigm, it's a good vessel.

2:28:57 It I can see how it helps.

2:28:59 It answers those questions automatically.

2:29:01 Um it's no guarantee that one is going to develop spiritually.

2:29:06 As I've seen people develop in holiness,

2:29:08 I've seen people fall by the wayside also.

2:29:10 One can ruin it.

2:29:11 The mind is good at ruining even the best of things.

2:29:14 Yeah.

2:29:16 Yeah.

2:29:15 I'm curious how people would I think maybe have

2:29:19 this false presumption and I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

2:29:23 just speculating here, but like as a monk,

2:29:26 uh the the acts of ego and identification see

2:29:30 just go away or maybe get easier in some sense.

2:29:33 Uh I could see how it would could very much bring it up

2:29:36 to the surface and you're really have more material to work with there.

2:29:40 But when you reflect on Aamar and this act of identifying and the ego's

2:29:44 way of uh very cleverly clinging on to whatever it can even the identity

2:29:49 of being a monk or being spiritual

2:29:51 or being uh a podcaster who's bringing virtuous

2:29:54 conversations or it it will find anything it can grab on and I'm curious uh

2:30:00 what what you've learned in that process

2:30:02 um about the ego the nature of identifying

2:30:06 because I think a lot of people would think that as a monk you

2:30:09 have uh it's easier and maybe to some

2:30:11 degree there's easier aspects of that but it

2:30:14 doesn't remove suddenly magically this act