It does not matter...

It is the mind alone that is simultaneously the door to bondage and liberation. How one tunes and understands one's mind determines whether one gets freedom or stays in bondage. It is the mind that creates an identity for us - known as Ego. Indeed Ego and Mind are synonyms - two names describing essentially the exact same thing. But even in writing we use words such as MY MIND or OUR MINDS. Clearly, we treat them as possessions and not our own selves. The writing in itself serves as a dead give away to what our scriptures declare - We are not the mind. However, the mind is so powerful that the association it creates becomes a crutch to which we stick all our waking moments. It is what makes us think who we are.

The Maharshi used to say that the mind has to be dealt with closely. This has to be understood clearly. Who is it who is dealing with the mind? What is that Entity which wants to deal with the mind? This entity has to be something which is bound to be different from the mind - in other words there has to be a subject-object relationship between this entity and the mind. All our daily practical experiences will clearly demonstrate that there indeed is an entity that stands in the capacity of an observer - doing nothing - participating in nothing and yet being present in every instant. Even in deep dreamless sleep, this entity is the one that understands and experiences a complete lack of all physical phenomenon which we experience in deep sleep or even otherwise in the other two states - viz waking and dream sleep. If there were no such entity - this observing entity - our continuity would be lost. We might sleep as John and wake up as Abraham. Now - this entity is what our scriptures goad us to observe carefully. Let the worldly drama carry on is what the scriptures insist we understand. Once this understanding dawns on us - the next step would naturally lead us to what we call DISCERNING. We begin to discern the true nature of the events around us. Of course by all means continue what you are doing. But the moment a particular situation begins to affect you adversely - think about who you truly are and what is your real association with the thing that's affecting you. Every other thing then begins to fall in place.

Mind always presents a catch-22 situation. As mentioned earlier - it is the mind alone which creates our identities and every instance of our life goes through the process of being analyzed and brewed upon by the mind. The mind is a lot more complex than we can ever imagine. It sees, senses, observes, filters and analyzes a mind boggling volume of data. Of course something as intricately complex as the mind will never allow its own annihilation. But the end result of all pursuits leading to true self realization has to ultimately involve a complete annihilation of the mind. The catch-22 however is that mind alone has to annihilate itself. Through mind alone mind has to be convinced of its unreality. But one cannot kill the mind simply by wishing it away. When we say we have to kill the mind, what is meant is that we need to loosen its grip on us. And its grip will be lost only by understanding its true nature and how it plays its games. Once the real understanding takes place mind will cease to bother us until a point will be reached when the mind will be found to be completely gone. What needs to be understood is that there is an entity which is observing all these things. The fact that there is a mind, the fact that there is a world, the fact that someone is getting troubled or someone is enjoying life and such --- all these things are happening in a certain realm whose observer is actually neutral to all this drama. Just as a street light throws its light regardless of whether the street is silent or whether somebody is being robbed - so too is this entity which serves only as a spectator. It has no role to play - just as the street lamp has no role to play except to shed light. Similarly, this entity - which is indeed the basis for all the drama is completely unconnected with the drama itself. Once the understanding that we are not the actors of the drama but that neutral observer - all the rest disappears even as the snake disappears from the rope once the true knowledge dawns.

Till this understanding does not take place - the world will either be fun or hell. The ups and downs and the vicissitudes will continue because they are not in anyone's control. All this talk of free-will, destiny, fate, luck, chance etc is for mere intellectual consumption alone. They all happen in the realm of Avidya or Ignorance. All teachings are in the realm of Ignorance. The Teacher and the Taught are in the realm of Ignorance. Whatever is the not-self is merely in the realm of ignorance alone. But of course, the drama is profound. Its grip on us is profound. So we tend to suffer or enjoy and try to find out reasons behind our state and course of emancipation etc. Then one fine day, through some grace of the Lord, the reality dawns. Indeed there is no lord in isolation from us. He is not sitting there in heaven tasked with dispensing justice to errant souls or rewarding the beautiful ones. It's as illogical an exercise as anything else. For if He were sitting somewhere else - He would simply become another entity - howsoever powerful it may be - it would just be another entity. And that contradicts the omnipresent, omniscient nature of God. God, cannot exist in isolation. Of course, there is no sufferer and there is no suffering. But tell this to a person who has defaulted on his credit card bills or who has just lost a loved one. He will retort back and say - all this is pure myth. Such is life. Such is this drama. And it will go on. To the one who understands, it doesn't matter. To the one who does not understand, it will never matter.

The Trilogy of People, Circumstances and Events in our Lives...

I have recently been thinking a lot on three fundamental aspects of our day to day living – the People surrounding us, the Circumstances we find ourselves in and the Events that keep taking place in our lives. I would like to give a more compact term to the Trilogy of the People, Events and Circumstances – and since I am not much of a creative person, I would just call it the Trilogy of Existence – or Trilogy in short. The matter of this article rests on the fundamental premise of Upanishads – that the Aatman (or Brahman) alone IS. The rest is merely Adhaysa (or superimposition). While this assertion will need to be almost axiomatically accepted, what follows can still be perceived even at an intuitive level with some amount of common-sense. But for the more rigorously minded folks, the basis for the arguments herein can be traced to Vedanta. I wanted to get this submission laid out in advance so as to preclude any further doubts as to the basis of the statements to follow.

The rest of the article seeks to establish the overwhelming effect of our “thought patterns/desires or Vasanas as they are called in Sanskrit and Vedantic Literature” in shaping the nature and form of the Trilogy mentioned earlier. It seeks to eventually establish that what we see around us, invariably disguised in the trilogy mentioned earlier, has its roots firmly grounded in our Thoughts alone (conscious but mostly sub-conscious). It is a position that is – as we will shortly see – in juxtaposition to commonly held thoughts and beliefs as to the nature and cause of the Trilogy surrounding us.

The world we see around ourselves does not exist independently of us as commonly understood. This is the principal purport of all Upanishadic Teaching. This misconception - which is resolved in the Upanishads by the concept of Adhyasa (or superimposition, alluded to earlier) - is one of the fundamental causes of human misery even though in itself it is not the root cause. The root cause lies in a different locus - and that is the locus of our very own Self. Without going into the nitty gritty of what Adhyasa is all about - for it is too gigantic a subject in its own right - Adhyasa is how Brahmasutra explains the nature of all that we see around us. In simple terms, Brahman alone is the reality and the rest of the Cosmos we see around is merely a superimposition which appears Real and Independent owing to our Primal Ignorance of our own True Self. This ignorance - as has been pointed out in earlier articles - is akin to the Rope appearing as a Snake and Water appearing as a mirage in the desert. Both the Snake and the Water are false - but for the duration that the Snake appears - it causes fear in us and vanishes when true knowledge dawns, and the water in the mirage ceases to excite us because its truth is known to us and yet continues to be seen even when the truth of it has been established. In a similar fashion, it has been argued that the World is Unreal - insofar as it has no Independent Existence - but its existence derives from the Brahman. Whether concurrently with the knowledge of Truth, the world disappears as does the Snake from the Rope or continues as does the Water in the mirage is hard to tell - but is irrelevant to our current discussion. Besides this is not what I intend to discuss anyway - but since I will be using the premise of Brahman's reality and non-reality of the world as a fundamental pillar to establish the case of the Universe being an outward concretization of our inner state of mind - some reference to the underlying literature seems appropriate at this point.

When we see a beautiful (cute, good-looking) individual, we attribute the occurrence to chance or luck because that's what we are given to understand through our general experience. We believe almost unquestionably in the truth of the following statements – this person makes me sick; oh how I hate him (or her); oh I wish I didn’t have to undergo so much pain just to get a simple thing done; why is he (or she) behaving this way?; why doesn’t she (or he) “get” me?; what have I done to merit what I am getting?; why is God so unfair to me when I have never hurt anyone ever in my life?, and so on. All these are verily a matter of routine experience. We firmly believe that it is the circumstances or the people or the events such as these that are making us sick and causing all the ills in our lives. What this article seeks to establish is the exact opposite. It seeks to turn this notion on its head by arguing that inasmuch as these people are bereft of an independent existence, their reality therefore is merely a projection of “some aspect” of our own state of mind. The Trilogy itself is merely an outward reflection of the turmoil (or bliss) within us – only it appears to us in the form of a person or an event or a circumstance. It’s not as if these People, for example, existed in their own zone and zoomed into our focus to make life miserable (or, by the same token, pleasurable – though this aspect is not being debated for it causes no problems to us to be a subject matter for debate) for us following some inexplicable quirk of destiny or fate, which is the commonly used argument to describe the reasoning behind our current situations.

Insofar as the Universe is merely a projection of our own Thoughts, it can be shown that the beautiful individual (or the despicable event or circumstance we find ourselves in) we see is simply a manifestation of our own desires (known in some cases and sub-conscious in most others). By the same token, when we seem to be surrounded by loving, caring individuals, it is a direct response to our love for our own self. The foregoing exposition in itself may not translate into a ground-breaking finding, but its implication has the potential to fundamentally change our perspective of life as we know and see it.

When we see people who we believe hate us, what we are seeing is actually a progeny of our own hatred for our own selves. It is this hatred – the cause of which may or may not be directly known to us – that materializes in the form of a Person (or event or circumstance). We believe that this Person or Event or Circumstance came about independently and has no connection with our inner state of mind. What follows then is the struggle to “fix” the person, or event or circumstance so as to make them more conducive to us. It is here that I challenge you to reverse your position, following the teachings mentioned earlier, and look into the possibility instead of the Trilogy being fashioned out of your own inner turmoil, the Trilogy itself being merely a “concretized reflection” of an essentially abstract emotion buried in your own self.

The Universe is created by our own imaginations. This statement has been analyzed in an earlier article on the Reality of Existence in my blog and follows from the Upanishadic lore. Our imaginations in turn are created from an innate and natural power residing within us. It is erroneous to ascribe an independent status to people, events and circumstances around us. We are their creators and we are their sustainers and we equally are their destroyers. This has been elaborated in the article mentioned earlier. If the Truth of this is questioned then the rest will become meaningless. But if the testimony of Holy Sages and the Upanishads is held sacrosanct then the discussion can continue.

Now let’s see from practical experience how far what has been mentioned thus far is validated. How often we have seen that when we are happy, everything around us seems happy and joyful. Conversely when we are sad, everything around us seems to evince sadness. When we are in Love, the whole world seems lovable. When we are heart-broken, we begin to think the whole world as treacherous. Some of these statements may sound sweeping in nature and intelligent ones amongst us would be ready with counter-arguments. But if you pause to reflect on the matter calmly, the truth will be evident in full force. On account of the foregoing therefore, it can be reasoned that it is actually our thoughts (conscious, but mostly sub-conscious) that generate the People, Events, Circumstances trilogy. The obvious implication is that by the power of our thoughts we have a capability right in our own hands to influence to a huge degree, if not completely, the composition of the Trilogy, for better or for worse!

Tomorrow, when you see a sulking boss, a furious wife, a pestering friend or even a lovely woman or a cute child or win a lottery of a million dollars, pause to think a while before ascribing the happening to mere chance or luck. Something far deeper has colluded to bring about the kind of trilogy surrounding you and know that the power to determine its nature is actually in your own hands. Know the force of your thoughts, for the truth is that there is no one else out there existing independently of you anyway. It's just YOU, the True Self, Brahman that exists in Reality. All else is Adhyasa (Superimposition of the world on the True Substratum or Brahman).

For so long as the bodily journey continues, an appreciation for this knowledge can give you some degree of control in governing the trilogy, and even if you cannot control or govern everything, you will at least understand the part of YOU that's causing the despicable portion of the trilogy surrounding you. This way at least you will stop the blame game and the analysis/paralysis syndrome that eventually follows when the trilogy goes bad. You will be much more contented and happy.

So before you blame your spouse as the source of your misery, know that the spouse in reality has no existence of his/her own. The problem which you are ascribing to your spouse has its roots in YOU alone. Analyze and fix that first before dashing to the family court to file for divorce. Chances are that once you have reached the core of the issue and fixed it, the errant spouse would seem to concurrently undergo a massive 'transformation' of sorts and would seem to become one with you, with all your issues/problems vanishing in thin air. The wise one knows all along that it isn't the spouse that needed the fix - it's YOU who needed it and once that's done, the ”errantness” of the spouse disappears even as the source of the errantness itself is annihilated.

An ode to myself...

Oh! the endless stupidities of Life...Get a grip now...

And yes, I write all this stuff that makes no sense to anyone - only to keep myself alive...though i myself fail to fathom the reason why I want to keep living. Perhaps, perplexingly against all logic and evidence that life has given hitherto though it may seem, the tryst with life continues unabated in the hope that one fine morning the sun would be bright enough to dispel the gloom from my life. Until then,,,,,,,, gotta carry on......

God is everywhere

Many a times in life, we are faced with unpleasant situations. You head out of your house for work and suddenly on the way down in the elevator, a gentleman who is the very incarnation of Satan and whom you cannot despise and hate more than anything else crosses your path... What do you do? A sudden burst of anger causes a seething sensation down in the very core of your being. Yet on some other occasions, somebody very dear to you causes you immense and unbearable grief by some action or deed. You feel as if you've lost all faith in mankind itself. The list of such woefully and regrettably familiar incidents is unfortunately endless. There seems to be no direct emancipation from them nor a recourse to a favorable solution for them. What do you do?

Now one of the most fundamental spiritual attitude that is taught in Spirituality Classes (hopefully it is done, though I am not hundred percent certain it is being done now a days) is to see God in everything. This is a very simple tool to combat negativity around you. But it was only today that I realized the true import of this concept through a divine intervention of sorts - while I was in conversation with a friend. I was speaking to him about some problems I am facing these days and my friend said - Saurabh ... why don't you see God in that person? Why don't you see that the intractable behavior you are seeing in this person is not the making of that person alone - but is actually God's way of testing you? Immediately, I was seized of a force that's almost impossible to describe... I said Yes! why didn't I think about it that way? We all say we love God and we trust God and that God is our only refuge. Why then do we not accept what God has to offer - not just in material aspects of life but also in the kind of people God chooses to surround us with? Why can't we see that people in and of of themselves are mere bodies and their substratum is no different than our own - viz the eternal Brahman. So in essence, they are nothing but God. There is actually no escaping from God in anything and everything we get to deal with. It's just the orientation of our minds that needs to be set aright. Next time you see somebody who sickens you to the core - accept that individual's existence as being divined from none other than God Himself. He is verily God. And if it helps matters - just think that the Divine Will of God ordained him to come into your life. Now deal with it as if you were getting the highest love of God ... for coming from God Himself ...what else can you ask for? Indeed this is what Gita calls as having a Prasada-Buddhi ... meaning the realization that everything is God and comes from God and belongs to God alone. We are mere players in the larger scheme of things. It helps in humbling the Ego and aids in building the divine connect with the One True Source of all that exists - Brahman!

Reminds me also of a beautiful line from a Song that I so love.... MUJHE GHAM BHI UNKA AZEEZ HAI, KE UNHI KI DEE HUI CHEEZ HAI...I used to interpret this line for what it literally stands... it's the rendering of outpourings from a beloved's heart for her beloved... But delve deeper and you see the spiritual connect in it as well...hats off to Raja Mehendi Ali Khan who wrote these lines (or so I think)...

The Jiva and Brahman

The question arises as to why at all there is this confusion? When the Real is so different from the Unreal why can't Reality be seen of its own accord and why is one forced to follow a certain regimen to understand THAT which one verily is? This question is quite puzzling and is indeed an eternal one. The fact however is that Reality and Unreality are actually two sides of the same coin. Unreality has no independent existence. Indeed Unreality exists only if Reality exists (though vice versa may or may not be true). Unreality requires what is known as the Adhishthana (locus) or a source from whence it obtains its existence. You cannot see a snake in a rope UNLESS the Rope exists. The Rope becomes the Adhisthana (locus) for the snake. Snake (if indeed there is one) is said to be Kalpita (Adhyasik) in the Rope. If the rope were not there there would be no snake as well. Thus the fact of I as the self-existent reality alone causes all this drama of the world to unfold. Now the question comes - since the Self is verily the One without a Second and all the worldly drama we see is nothing but a figment of imagination - WHO is it that is imagining? ALL the individuals (human beings) are under the source of this Universal Spell of Confusion. But then the Shruti says there is only one Self - and yet there seem to be so many individuals struggling to gain freedom from the quagmire of Life. Who are these individuals then who are struggling? And suppose even if one of them gains the Knowledge of Truth (Self or Brahman) and gets liberated (so to say) - His liberation still does not lead (as it should if the theory of One Abiding Self were True) to others' liberation. Each one seemingly has to fight his or her own battle to gain freedom from Unreal. This seems to be a source of big confusion with respect to the Vedanta Shastra. Also - if the Self is eternal (Reality is eternal) so will the Unreality be because the latter derives its existence from the former. If such is the case one will never truly get rid of unreality for good. Then what is the use of such Knowledge for it seems incapable of truly eradicating the Unreality for good?

So we have brought in two questions - Why does the ONE ABIDING SELF appear in as much variety as we all see. And given that Unreality draws its existence from the Real, the Real being eternal, the Unreal should as well be so and then if this be the case - there is to be no ever lasting freedom.

Let's take the first point first - How does the One Self appear to be so many? In fact as has been mentioned in so many places - Who is it who is born, Who is it who is getting confused, Who is it who is asking all these questions, Who is it who is feeling the bondage, Who is it who is suffering --- these are the questions that need to be answered foremost. Some people say that due to Maya - the Self (Brahman) IMAGINES itself in bondage and then through Knowledge finds the answer to its questions and becomes free from suffering. If this were to be the case then if the Self has actually become many - there cannot be a scope for it to become Self again. For it has changed already. And once it has changed, it has lost its fundamental character. It is no longer what it used to be. So we have to discount the theory that it is the SELF that has become many or alternatively that there are many individual Selves (seen in the many indivduals seen around) that are struggling to be free. So what is the many we see? Shastra says that the MANY that we individuals see is the imagining of the Individual itself. The Individual is distinct from the Self - just as the Snake is from the Rope even though the Snake needs the Rope for its existence. Similarly - the individual Jiva is an adhyasa over the Primordial self. Now in the Rope Snake example the Rope doesn't know that it has become Snake nor does the apparent Snake of of itself know that it is appearing superimposed upon a rope. There is a third entity - the observer who is seeing all this. If the observer is not there - the Rope and the snake have no existence. Thus it is the observer who is lending reality to the existence of both the snake and the rope. However in the case of Jiva and Brahman - the Jiva appears superimposed on the Brahman. So the question arises: Who is it who is seeing this superimpostion of the Jiva over the Brahman? Here the answer becomes tricky - the Jiva is a superimposed entity and is fundamentally non-existent. So it by itself should not be capable of thinking that it is superimposed on some real thing. And as far as the real thing is concerned - The Brahman itself - it is not capable of thinking as we human beings are (through the faculty of mind). So verily the question WHO is the thinker here? Jiva being unreal cannot think. And the Brahman, while being real, cannot think as it does not have the means to think. So who is it who is thinking of himself as being a Jiva - a limited being - with a multitude of problems etc? This is the heart of the Vedanta Vichara (Vedanta Enquiry) in my opinion. Once this question is answered all others would fall in place. Shastra says that Jiva is unreal - it is Kalpita. It also goes on to say that the mind is unreal as well. And it is verily the mind which is asking all these questions. I mentioned earlier that the Jiva thinks through the mind. But I also raised a point that Jiva is unreal. So it cannot think. But one unreal thing can think through another Unreal thing and that is exactly what happens here...the mind being unreal in the Jiva is the one that lends the capability to the Jiva to think. Indeed it is the mind which creates the primordial confusion. And that's how the Jiva thinks that it is born, that it is the doer, that it is suffering that it needs salvation and so on. Both are unreal. And both have the Brahman for their Adhishthana. Here, unlike in the rope snake example where the observer is distinct from both the rope and the snake, both the observer and the observed have no fundamental reality. Just like one sees the snake superimposed on the rope, so the Jiva sees itself. And just like the observer accords reality to the kalpita snake in the rope, so the Jiva accords reality to itself. That the jiva is able to do so (meaning that it appears at all) is because the Adhishthana (Brahman just like the Rope) is a REAL entity. Were the Brahman (Rope) to be unreal, there would be no Jiva (Snake).

The foregoing being the case however there seems to be no escaping for the Jiva because given that the Adhishthana is real, the Unreal should keep appearing and so the Jiva would keep appearing. The difference however is that once the Jiva realises its source of reality and its own unreality, there is no more confusion and the Jiva itself vanishes - just as the snake does when the knowledge of the rope dawns on the observer. The Jiva is seen no more. So long as Ignorance prevails - the Adhaysa seems real and the Jiva continues its existence. So to say that this bondage or suffering is never-ending because it draws its existence from a real adhishthana (brahman) is not true.

The next question is: are there multiple Jivas - as it seems to appear because we see so many people around. The straight answer (and this requires Shraddha (Faith) for it cannot be proved by any known means of knowledge avaialable to us) is that just as the Jiva itself is Kalpita (in its own imagination) the other Jivas that it sees are equally Kalpita. The superimposition does not stop at itself alone but extends to create verily the whole universe the Jiva sees around itself. That's why it is said that the entire Universe - not just the Jiva - is actually unreal - being no more than kalpana (imagination) of an essentially Kalpita Jiva. The adhishthana - or the Supreme Self is the one abiding truth and is the substratum of all the variety seen around us. So the Jivas that are in the thralldom of ignorance will continue to be so till the Kalpita Jiva realizes the Truth of its existence and relinquishes its unreal existence.

Continuing the enquiry further, Jiva being unreal - one might ask, is it capable of grasping Reality? And what happens to other Jivas when one of them obtains the Knowledge of the Truth. This question was raised earlier as well. Does the emancipation of one lead to emancipation of all because they are all essentially one? The answer is that while, essentially there is only one Self, the variety of Jivas seen around is with respect to the Jivas themselves. The Jiva itself is seeing the variety. The variety is in Jiva's eyes alone. Once the Jiva vanishes - so does the variety - BUT with respect to that Jiva that has vanished. The other jivas that are yet to achieve the knowledge will continue to see the variety. So many people ask this question - do Self-Realized people see the world? It is useless to ask these questions - because what we are terming as Self-Realized is merely in the imagination of the person who is asking the question. There is only one supreme reality - even self-realization, the attempt to realize the Self, and Self-Realized Individuals are as much imaginary as the Jiva itself.

With respect to the Jiva that attains the knowledge of the Truth, there are no more Jivas for it to deal with - because in reality there are no jivas to begin with anyway. They were Kalpita from the start and their disappearance duly follows the appearance of True Knowledge. But for those who are not yet there, the thralldrom continues. This should hopefully answer the truth of Variety that's seen around us and also how emancipation of one-self affects the emancipation of others.

All this talk of Emancipation, Freedom, Bondage, Suffering, Life and Death has to be realized to be from the point of view of the one who is born in the first place - viz the Jiva. Since the Jiva itself is in merely in its own imagination, there is actually no birth and hence no nothing of the sort we are discussing here. There is no abiding reality in all that has been discussed - from the point of view of Brahman. Brahman is unaffected by all this drama. It alone is the supreme reality, one without the second.

To strike at the heart of all Vedantic Vichara, people raise a fundamental question - How do we know Brahman exists and is the Supreme reality and all that we see around (ourselves included) are mere imagination of our own self? How can we believe that we ourselves being unreal, there is something real (apart from we imaginary beings) that exists? How can unreality of its own accord know itself to be unreal? This is the debate. An unreal thing that has no existence has caused all this drama. Knowledge of Truth alone is capable of relieving the unreal being from the trauma of life. This needs to be understood meticulously - from the point of view of Brahman - all this is verily non-existent. From the point of view of Jiva - all the variety seen is existent - BUT only so long as the Knowledge does not dawn upon the Jiva. As soon as knowledge dawns all the drama comes to an end. Can Knowledge dawn on an essentially unreal Jiva? The bare truth is that both the Knowledge and the Jiva are kalpita. This might leave you gasping for breath. The truth is that the since the struggle itself is unreal, so is the notion of Knowledge causing deliverance. There is no struggler to begin with (for real that is...imaginary struggler is surely there and is the subject of all this verbal exposition so far) so there is no emancipation and equally no emancipation-inducing knowledge. All this is contrived, make believe stuff. So why does it all appear so real and why do we have to consistently keep up our fight against ourselves...and the answer is that Try and realize the Truth...all these questions will vanish like water vanishes as vapor.

And yes, who is helped in the process is the next question? Because the one who was asking all the questions, one who was in samsara, bondage suffering etc ceases to be. And the one that is eternal never asked the question in the first place....This vaccum is too great for many of us to fathom. The fact that this surreal drama is mere imagining of an imagined being and that there is no reality to it and that knowledge leads to its annihilation and leaves what was there all along (Brahman) is perplexing and mind-boggling. Then why all this struggle? Why this imagining in the first place? There are no answers to these questions. How can we answer something that cannot have an answer. How can you determine the sex of a child born to a barren woman? How can you find water in the Desert? It simply is inconceivable. So are you in bondage? Are you suffering? Are you happy? Are you rich, poor, tall, short, ugly, beautiful? If you want to think that way, no body can stop you. But till the time you continue to lead your life in ignorance, all these questions will keep haunting you. Once you realize the Truth, that's true deliverance.

Hari Om...

Ego - The basis of the World around us

Ego is Life.
Life is Ego.
Beyond the Ego lies the True Self.
Ego depends on Self.
Self is independent of Ego.
Surrendering to God helps in leading an ego-less existence.
Leaving everything to God is not fatalistic. It is realistic.
Realizing that our control is only in action (if at all) and not on the results thereof is a practical approach to life.

Those who cannot comprehend that life (or the world around us) is unreal need only to observe carefully what happens in deep sleep. The Self Exists in deep sleep but the body (or the mind and sense) is not existent. The body is not existent in deep sleep precisely because it is not real and the Self exists precisely because it is real. There is no reason why the body-mind-sense complex would not have continued to exist even in deep sleep - just as the Self does - were it (body-mind-sense) to be real. One can argue that the proof that the body exists even in deep sleep can be found from the testimony of those who were awake while one was asleep. However the fact is that the entity offering the proof (the one who was awake) is as much a part of that unreal world whose existence is being sought to be verified by the questioner. Hence their (the ones who were awake) testimony is as unreliable as anyone else's.

However, all said and done - it's hard to believe there is no body mind sense in reality and that it simply is a projection of the Ego generated by Maya. So long as one continues to believe that the body mind sense is real (meaning it has an independent existence of its own) it's best to have Shraddha (Faith) in what the scriptures declare and continue seeking the Truth till one is undoubtedly convinced of the Original Error - the belief that the world is real.

Sages have very carefully established the parameters for Reality and Non-Reality. It is almost axiomatic that a Real thing continues to be Real always regardless of Space and Time and can NEVER be unreal. In a similar fashion - a Non Real thing can never be real even though it may appear Real in some space-time dimension. The fact that it appears real is no proof of its binding reality. Its unreal all the same. Life is a drama in Unreal space, appearing to be ruthlessly real when it truly is unreal in the strictest sense of the word.

This fact has been thus stated in the Bhagavat Gita Ch II, 16) - नासतो विद्यते भावो नाभावो विद्यते सतः
Existence never belongs to the Unreal, nor does non-existence belong to the real.

That being said, many people question - how are we to lead our lives then. Granting that life and the world is but a figment of imagination, unreal as it were, how are we to conduct the "lives" that we seem to lead all our waking moments? How do we tackle life's problems, relations, jobs, pleasure, pain and such like. Ramana Maharshi used to say that the answer to these problems would become unnecessary once the Truth of our True Selves is discovered. However till such time as the Truth is discovered - one has to have Faith. Logic is helpful for negating things. But establishing a conclusive truth requires more than mere logic. We are so dependent on that very thing (Ego or Ahamkar), which we are seeking to negate, that it seems well-nigh impossible to see the Truth beyond the seeming rigmarole. How can Ego in all its vanity allow its own negation? It will do everything under its control to annihilate any force that seeks to kill it. Hence Life as we see and know it will go on.

Indeed there is a time and place for answers to questions cited in the previous paragraph. They will become irrelevant once knowledge dawns alright. But, another question is - why and how would they become irrelevant when knowledge dawns? And the answers is that the questioner itself would not exist when the knowledge dawns for it is the false association of the questioner with the unreal that has created these questions in the first place. Once that false association is conclusively overruled, there are no more questions. Answering these questions in the wake of true knowledge is akin to trying to find the answer to the question - what is the sex of the baby born to a sterile woman - she cannot conceive and hence there is no question of a baby much less a question of what its sex would be.

Yes it is amazing and preposterous too it may appear to some. How can you deny all that we see around. But somebody had said, Truth is Stranger than Fiction. I cannot agree more. Truth indeed is stranger than Fiction.

Many people also ask - how do sages (or self-realized people) such as Ramana Maharshi see the world then? Since they know it's a false appearance - are they aware of their bodies and the world around them? Because they seem to respond as normal people do and there does not seem to be any difference between them and a 'normal' person. Again, while it's impossible to find the truth of this particular question, the answer is that first you realize who you truly are and then you will know what the sages see. If you don't realize the True Self yourself, your Ego will make appreciating any answer provided to this question meaningless anyway. Whether they see the world is meaningless. The Truth is that there is no world out there except in the imagination of the Ego. So the answer is obvious.

There is another argument advanced to falsify the notion of there being no world around us - namely that all OTHER people too see the same thing as each one of us does. For example when you watch a movie in a cinema hall - obviously, all the people are watching the same scenes being enacted. How do we explain this? While it can be explained - the fundamental thing to be understood is that the basis of all these questions - the primary ego - is the one that's posing these questions in the first place. Since the realm of the Ego itself is in question, everything else associated with it stands falsified a-priori. For instance, a conceived fight between two donkeys with horns on their heads is falsified right from the start simply because a donkey with a horn does not exist to begin with - so there is no question of witnessing a fight between two such donkeys. Similarly, the answer to the Movie Question is that we all continue to see the same thing because the True Self inhering in us all is the SAME. That's the Advaita principle - there are no individuals in reality - there is only one True Self which inheres in the seeming variety we see around us. So it's not surprising that we ALL see the same thing around us.

Questions are many - but the answer is only ONE. The world is false. What we see around us is false. The only thing we can say for sure is that our existence-awareness-consciousness is our true identity. All the rest, we simply OWN - just as we own a house, a car or a medal. They are mere possessions but not US. And even as possessions, they are mere imaginations of the Ego - they appear real because essentially everything (including the Ego) derives from the Supreme Brahman. Call it whatever you will - Universal Spirit, God or Brahman. That's the one abiding reality. Everything else is a mere projection.

So people would say - Oh you mean to say all is Null and Void? That the Science we are so fond of has made no advances? That we have not evolved from Apes to Humans? That we did not create fire by rubbing stones? That we did not create the Taj Mahal? That September 9/11 did not take place? That aeroplanes, rockets, Jupiter, Mars, Venus do not exist? Oh the endless list of questions this point attracts! And then when you answer - the response is - well the easiest way to negate your opponent is to deny his (or her) existence itself. No opponent, No fight. Similarly, Advaita Vedanta too - in one seemingly arbitrary sweep of a magic wand - seems to attack directly at the very existence of all that we see around us - and thus seems guilty of promulgating "an escapism of sorts". True, any "normal" person would see in the foregoing an urge to break free, an urge to run away from the problems surrounding us; indeed there is a fancy term for it - the urge to be in DENIAL MODE. Well, so be it. As I said before - this is not a matter of academic debate. This is Para Vidya - a matter of Direct Experience. Just as one can never be free of one-self twenty-four-seven during our perceived life spans on earth, so too this existence-consciousness-awareness is our real, true identity - that which never fades away no matter what.

I am not a Self-Realized individual, but I stand convinced that what I have read from the scriptures and from the writings of our Sages is the real Truth. This does not mean I have stopped living my life and have abandoned myself to the mountains. I continue doing what I have to. I haven't stopped doing Karma and I continue to experience the full sway of all the three primal qualities of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. The only way to rationalize what I am doing with what I have said so far is this - so long as I am aware of my body and my existence in this body, I have to continue doing what I have to in order to live. There is no escaping that. However, I do perceive a marked shift in my Attitudes and Values presumably as a direct consequence of what I have learnt from the Scriptures. My desire to make a mark, to win, to defeat opponents etc is slowly losing its hold on me. But until the Truth is fully experienced, Life will go on. I am not denying Life. All I am saying is that it is NOT the TRUTH.

I have something in me which Swami Dayananda ji says - Shraddha Pending Discovery. Since this is a matter of Self-Realization - this is a journey each one has to undertake personally. The universe can only aid us, but the effort has to be our own. There are ways to do this. I will address some of what I know in my next article.