What is Vedanta?
It is an analysis of experience that frees you of attachment objects and produces complete satisfaction with yourself as you are at any given moment and complete satisfaction with the world as it is at any given moment.
Direct knowledge/experience of the self-evident Self
Aparokshanubhuti is a compound word. Paroksha means “what is remote.” Aparoksha means “what is near.” Anubhuti means to know, realize, and/or experience. So, the word means direct experience or knowledge gained without the need of “media”, which is to say instruments of knowledge, eyes and ears, for instance. That I exist and am conscious is the lion’s share of Self knowledge, but it is not all I need to know eliminate suffering, gain freedom and non-dual love.
Indirect Knowledge
If indirect knowledge is knowledge of something away from us, direct knowledge happens when what is remote is experienced by us. We are always in “direct contact” the self-evident self, existence shining as consciousness, because we are existence shining as consciousness.
What is Experience?
Experience only happens when your attention, reflected consciousness, comes into contact with an object. Objects are anything but you, the subject. The mind is required for experiencing objects. The direct knowledge of consciousness, or awareness if you prefer, is available all the time because you are always in contact with the mind because the mind is you, even though you, awareness, aren’t the mind. If this is so, why do we need knowledge of awareness? Because people don’t know that they are whole and complete unborn non-dual existence shining as ordinary ever-present blissful awareness, the essence of their experiencing selves. They have been misinformed since infancy that the self is a limited, incomplete, and inadequate body/mind entity. Furthermore, they are missing highly treasured information; the Self is immortal bliss because they believe that bliss is solely a feature of objects! So, they need direct knowledge. However, seekers usually require indirect knowledge before they can assimilate direct knowledge. We never lack self experience, so there is no need to work for it.
Vedanta Introduces You to Yourself
If somebody is standing in front of you and you want to know them, you need to be introduced. Self experience is not a new experience, but it is new knowledge because we are all born ignorant of our unborn self. The knowledge we gain from our senses is only partial knowledge of what we need to know to survive. We don’t gain Self knowledge because the Self is not an obtainable object. If we are fortunate we may lose ignorance, which amounts to a gain of unborn always available bliss.
What am I?
I am not a part, property or a product of a dependent material substance. I am the unseen independent substance from which all things and beings originate. I am unborn non-dual ever-present existence shining as whole and complete consciousness, beyond all names and forms. I survive the death of all objects.
Invocation
1. I bow to the all-pervading pure awareness, the first teacher, destroyer of Ignorance, and the cause of the creation.
The first verse is an invocation of God, the intelligent creator, regulator, and destroyer of the universe, to ensure circumstances conducive to losing Self ignorance: appropriate time, place, effort, and removal of unanticipated obstacles. You don’t need a vision of God if your senses are working. Everything you experience is God all the time. It, is, has, always has been and always will be this way. However, conducive circumstances are very helpful, and God controls your circumstances, so it pays to invoke Its grace and make a friend. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Verses 2-11: Who is qualified, the benefit of Self knowledge, the relationship between the text and the subject matter, and the target audience.
2. Those who are pure of heart should constantly meditate on the truths contained in this treatise on liberation.
A pure heart is an uncluttered mind gained by qualifications. Failure to appreciate the value of Vedanta, a means of Self knowledge, is due solely to lack of qualifications. No one is employed to improve the wheel; it worked the day it was discovered, and it works today. Vedanta is never a problem. It experience-based body of knowledge has been setting people free for thousands of years.
If you are new to Vedanta, you will naturally ask, “Qualified for what?” Good question. For the freedom that is unconditional non-dual love, the nature of the Self. It is freedom from binding likes and dislikes or converting them to preferences. It is freedom from suffering, which is what we gratuitously add to what happens that doesn’t conform to our fears and desires, likes and dislikes.
Freedom is Successful Failure
Of course I am happy to succeed, but I should be happy to fail also because failures are an inevitable component of life. The principle is, don’t worry about what can’t be changed. Although I have some influence on the results of my actions, success and failure are the product of a myriad of factors. Freedom is freedom from the fear of failure, not failure itself. While we are at it, let’s amend the conventual definition of success. If you are happy to get what you don’t want and/or fail to get what you do, you are a big success.
Only noble, mature people with dharma-confirming lifestyles are qualified for freedom. Disaffected morally challenged people…those who need it most… need not apply. Those uninterested in freedom and unconditional love are merely immature despite their age; they are not bad people. However, whereas immortality and Vedanta mix nicely, immorality and Vedanta are like oil and water. It’s not a casual study, but a well-designed causal investigation into truth. Take a professional attitude and you will fulfill your true purpose here on earth.
Qualifications
3. The means of attaining the knowledge that causes liberation, are acquired by devotion to God, simple restrained living, and the proper performance of duties pertaining to one’s social position and stage of life.
No Special Path of Love
The karma yoga attitude and five karma yoga practices, meditation, austerities and Vedanta are the means for attaining Self knowledge. More on that as we go. There is no special path of love because love is my nature and all actions are motivated by devotion to one’s self. All rituals, sacred and secular, fall under the karma category.
4. Pure Dispassion is a state of mind that treats sense enjoyments with the same indifference it treats the excreta of a crow.
A worldly man said to his friend, “You are great indeed because you gave up worldly things to gain freedom”. His friend replied, “No, you are much greater. You gave up freedom to pursue worldly things.”
Dispassion born of circumstances…wealth or frequent failure, for instance…is good, but dispassion born of an acute appreciation of the zero-sum nature of life, is best. Thanks be to God that I can’t win or lose the quotidian pursuits: security, pleasure, fame, power, or virtue. Now I am free to investigate important things.
5. Discrimination is the settled conviction that only the seer, awareness, is permanent and experienced objects are impermanent.
Discrimination is knowing the difference between the seer (existence shining as awareness) and the seen, experienced objects. The seer is real and the seen is apparently real. If this fact is well-known, one will be indifferent to the blandishments of the seen, which will gift a curious intelligent person with an opportunity to resolve troubling existential conundrums.
6. Abandonment of desires as they arise is called shama and restraint of the external functions of the organs is called dama.
If, knowing that objects of desire are not real, one avoids identifying with them, they have no opportunity to generate bondage. If one is unable to renounce desires, but keeps the senses away from desired objects, you may be a hypocrite but there is still no opportunity for actions to generate bondage to action, which is always good.
There is no need to direct the senses toward new objects of desire because the senses are always hooked up to objects by one’s karma. Redirecting the senses to different objects creates additional karma and leaves one’s original karma unresolved. How clever is that?
7. Turning away from sense-objects is called uparati and patient endurance of sorrow or pain is known as titiksha. Both are conducive to happiness.
Discipline is not necessary to satisfy desires, but lack of discipline hinders the development of the qualifications because it allows likes and dislikes to become binding as one indulges worldly tendencies. Nobody seeks pain and sorrow, but they are facts of life. Quietly endure them.
8. Implicit faith in the words Vedanta and the teachers who unfold their meaning is known as shraddha and concentration of mind on the Self is samadhana.
Faith, not blind belief, required for Vedanta to work is provisional, pending the result of Self inquiry. Belief is converted to knowledge as the teachings assimilate. To assimilate the teachings an inquirer needs a teacher and needs to see scripture as God’s words and the teacher as a pure devotee or as an instrument of God’s will, not as a person delivering personal knowledge.
God, the innermost Self is love. It is the duty of a disciplined seeker to assume that Vedanta has no other agenda than to bless oneself with freedom and non-dual love. A teacher established in the Self as the Self lives a dharmic life, teaching by precept and example. If the words are true but his or her life is inauthentic, the teachings will not assimilate. If the teacher is only a model of dharma, it is not the kiss of death, but unless he or she is able to skillfully wield the means of knowledge, the teachings will not assimilate. Dead teachers, like pets, can do no wrong, but they only teach what you already know, so freedom is on hold until you grow up.
Consistent fixation on the meaning of the teachings is called samadhana. It is much more than mere memorization of the concepts, although the definitions of the essential terms need to be committed to memory. It is a lifelong commitment to spiritual growth.
9. A burning, all-consuming desire to be free is called mumukshutva.
Desire alone is not enough without the aforementioned qualifications, an impersonal means of knowledge, a qualified teacher, and the grace of God. I may intensely desire to know quantum physics but unless I start with counting on my fingers, learn my ABCs, attend elementary school, secondary school, university etc. it is not going to happen.
10. Those in whom these means are highly developed should constantly desire Self knowledge for their own good.
If you are out to save the world, you are not qualified, except in so far as if you save yourself from ignorance, you remove one fool from the creation. Desire for freedom is born of basic compassion for oneself caused by an acute appreciation of the zero-sum nature of life, not necessarily a personal tragedy. It is an enjoyable, healthy obsession. It is sustained by the hard and fast conviction that knowledge is the only path because I am already what I seek to know. It is further nurtured by the conviction that freedom is my nature, not an event, and that intuition is unworkable because there is no way to tell the difference between it and imagination. I need to make a commitment to inquiry and fearlessly engage in a down to earth dialog with a qualified teacher. I cannot read my way to freedom.
Summary Verses 1-10
I should consider liberation my top priority and a simple dharmic life as a necessary auxiliary means. I should be endowed with a spirit of renunciation. I need to see that my life is centered around the teaching and eagerly commit myself to practice karma yoga. I need to establish a relationship with a qualified teacher and willingly implement his or her suggestions.
By implication, someone who does not have these qualifications will be unsuccessful. Dropping out to pursue liberation because of an inability to cope with life’s problems does not work. I need to meet life’s challenges head on with the karma yoga attitude and assimilate their meaning with reference to scripture’s point of view, not my likes and dislikes.
What is Inquiry?
11. Just as objects are not revealed without the presence of light, Self knowledge does not occur by any means other than Inquiry.
Vedanta exposes the unexamined logic of human experience which generates the knowledge that removes ignorance of your wholeness.
Because reality is non-dual, seeking the Self as a personal discrete liberating experience is pointless; everything we experience any time is the Self. The failure to stand free of objects then can only be due to ignorance concerning their power to permanently satisfy my desire for wholeness. Ignorance can only be removed by knowledge and since Self-knowledge does not happen on its own, a means is required and one needs to seek it.
12. Inquiry is investigation into the nature of the Self, how the world is created, what created it and the substance of which it is made.
The Self is everything that exists: the material world, conscious beings and existence shining as bliss-full awareness/consciousness. I cannot simply pose the question, ‘Who am I?’ and expect an answer from beyond. I need a comprehensive vetted means of Self-knowledge. The Self doesn’t have a problem with my ignorance and the answer is well known anyway.
Scripture says I am existence shining as consciousness and not the objects that present themselves to me, particularly my doing self. Even if it weren’t well-known and the answer somehow appeared out of the blue, how would I know what it means to be awareness in terms of living a happy life?
guna creation chart – scattering and shattering)
The World is Created by Ignorance
Maya, a Spider and Its Web
What is Maya and What Does it Do?
(1) It is the intelligent and the material cause of the universe.
(2 ) It reverses the subject, consciousness, and the objects It presents to consciousness, causing inexplicable suffering.
(3) It is a power that creates matter out of existence shining as consciousness in three stages.
(4) The creation of matter causes great confusion.
Am I a spiritual being with material tendencies or am I a material being with spiritual inclinations?
(5) It also causes attachment to objects, which seemingly conceals my unborn blissful wholeness.
(6) Although It is unseen, It is not non-existence because it produces effects.
An effect is a cause in a form.
(7) Its effects are not reversible, just as cheese can’t be converted back to milk.
You can’t go back to what you once were.
(8) It is not the same as consciousness, the subject, but It is not different either.
A child isn’t different from the mother and father, but it isn’t the same either.
(9) Maya is not real, but it seems to be real because we experience its effects, the birth and death of our experiences. Experiences, our changing karma, is caused by Maya but Maya is unborn and unchanging.
That it can’t be perceived doesn’t mean it is non-existent.
That we can’t perceive love doesn’t mean it is non-existent
(10) What is seemingly real is as good as non-existent.
A sage once joked, “Maya and the world are appearing non-existence.”
(11) It is eternal but unreal because it is actual and potential.
The Self, however, is neither manifest nor unmanifest.
(12) When an object like ignorance exists, it is possible not to know it.
(13) What is unreal does not stand alone, so It is unreliable, but Self knowledge depends on existence shining as awareness, which is reliable because it stands alone.
(14) It superimposes the creator and creatures on existence shining as consciousness.
(15) Maya is a great wonder because it makes the impossible possible. It generates a visible tactile world out of an invisible untouchable substance.
(16) People imagine that It hides awareness, but it does not conceal awareness.
(17) Because it is beautiful, intelligent, all-powerful, all-pervading and omniscient it cleverly deludes everyone.
(18) It controls every object in existence.
(19) It is inexplicable and indescribable yet it is revealed when Self knowledge removes it.
(20) You are only free when it is negated.
(21) Then it reflects the love light of awareness, exposing the bliss of awareness and lending joyful existence to objects
What is Inquiry?
13. Inquiry is the conviction that I am other than the body-mind sense complex, which is an assemblage of gross and subtle material elements.
Self inquiry is the consistent practice of discrimination between the Self and its many forms and an unwavering affirmation of one’s non-dual identity in light of the mind’s conviction that the self is limited, inadequate and incomplete. It is the firm conviction that the objects that the mind presents to me are incapable of providing lasting satisfaction.
14. Inquiry is understanding that the thoughts in the mind are the creator, that thoughts are produced by ignorance and that they are rendered non-binding when Self knowledge dawns.
One’s life is created by actions stemming from one’s thoughts. Two root thoughts stand behind the myriad daily impulses expressing in the mind. Desire is the thought that the attainment of object X will make me happy. Fear is the thought that object X can make me unhappy. The belief that desired objects will complete oneself is based on ignorance of the nature of objects, the nature of the mind, and the nature of the one entertaining desires. The dawn of Self knowledge is the realization that satisfying desires and eliminating fears are useless life strategies because the ever-present Self is always complete.
God is Not Out to Get You
Awareness, the Self, does not consciously set out to create ignorance of itself. In fact, it is absurd to think that the Self ever forgets who or what it is because it has no memory. However, because awareness is limitless it enjoys limitless power; if it did not have the power to forget when it is associated with a human body, it would not be limitless. Nonetheless, Self-forgetfulness, which belongs to created individuals, is not limitless. If it were, reality would never be known to be non-dual, as investigation guided by scripture proves. However, because inquiry reveals that everything that is ultimately resolves into awareness, awareness is said to be the cause of Self ignorance. Ignorance in Vedantic literature does not refer to ignorance of subtle or gross objects, only to ignorance of the Self.
Where is the world when you aren’t thinking about it? Deep sleep, for instance. At the macrocosmic level ignorance is called Māyā, the basic material which appears as the universe. In the wake of Self knowledge everything material, including thoughts and feelings, is discovered to be immortal awareness. Removing the cause removes the effect. Rope ignorance is the cause of the perception of a snake in twilight. Rope knowledge dissolves the projected snake.
When you go to sleep, duality comes in the form of dreams. When you wake up from a dream, dream duality is transferred to the waking state entity, who takes the waking state as reality. If both the waking and dream states are taken to be real, which is real?
One definition of sleep is ignorance of the waker. At the time of dream the dreamer me doesn’t know myself as a person lying comfortably in bed. Taking the dream to be real is nothing but ignorance. Waking up is nothing but trading dream ignorance for waking ignorance. Sleep is going to a place where there are no problems because the waker and dreamer are not there. The waker, dreamer, and sleeper are not real because they come and go. Immortal existence shining as whole and complete bliss-full awareness…myself…is real because it is always present and unchanging.
Is God a Big Fickle Person with Likes and Dislikes?
Vedanta says God is an intelligent creator with the knowledge and the skill to create the world. However, if God is the intelligent creator, why does It make some people good and some bad, some healthy and some sick, some rich and some poor, etc. Why not just create a wonderful world? Is God a pervert?
The design of the world is not determined by God alone but by the karma of the individuals. Judges mete out punishment based on law, not on their likes and dislikes. The reward/punishment motif embedded in the blueprint of the creation is intended to eliminate guilt and to neutralize and dislikes. It prepares the mind for Self knowledge, which is tantamount to freedom and unconditional love, which we know is desired by everyone. It is only possible by Self knowledge, not by gaining discrete experiences, because everyone is already free, whether they know it or not. Discrete experiences add nothing to me. As soon as they begin they are as good as finished.
Aparokshanubhuti says ignorance, desire and karma are intelligent and are born out of desire. If I cook, I have a desire to eat. I come to Vedanta because I want to know what I am. God creates because It wants to create. In the case of ordinary people desires are binding and in the case of Self realized people and God, desires are non-binding. Non-binding desires benefit the world, bless devotees, hinder extroverted adharmic entities, and purify the world. Whether our desires are fulfilled or not doesn’t interest God unless it is the desire to know God.
15. Just as earth is the material cause of a pot, existence is the material cause of ignorance and the thoughts it produces. This is how you should view your mind and the world.
Existence lends substance to the world. Where sugar is sweetness is. Where oceans are water is. A tree is the visible effect of an invisible cause. The seed is the visible cause of invisible future karma. Objects borrow their isness from existence because they have no essence of their own. But Isness doesn’t borrow because it is full. However, it lends meaning to objects without depleting its reserves. There is only an apparent difference between God, the cause and the individual, the effect. Reality is non-dual, unborn ME.
Ignorance is beginningless but it is not produced by existence. If there is something knowable, not knowing is possible. There is no causal relationship between the Self and the world even though both are beginningless.
We say that awareness is the content of ignorance, but it is not the cause of ignorance. Ignorance is beginningless because awareness is beginningless. All you can say is that ignorance “borrows” existence from awareness.
Reflection Teaching
16. “Without doubt I am the non-dual witnessing unchanging ever-existent knower.” This is how one should inquire.
Original consciousness reflects in many minds, which are composed of sattva and produce a reflection. The Bible says, “Man is cast in the image of God.” Therefore, it appears as if there are two knowers: a thought free knower and a knower that is imprisoned in a web of thoughts. But there is only one knower appearing as two. Awareness illumines the mind by its presence, the mind reflects the original awareness and illumines the senses, which in turn illumine gross physical objects.
Awareness, the material cause expresses as existence in the world, its effect. Gold expresses as various ornaments, so wherever there is a bracelet, ring, chain, etc. the isness of the ornament is borrowed from the gold alone. Ornaments are non-essential. Gold is essential.
17. It is ignorance to identify the body as the Self because the Self is partless and the body has many parts.
That the Self and matter are diametrically opposite principles is repeated in the following four verses. If there are no similarities, confusion is impossible. Ignorance is wonderful because it makes the impossible possible.
Sorting knowledge from ignorance is inquiry. Sunlight is indivisible, as is awareness. You can’t grab a bucketful, take it into a dark room and expect the room to light up. You can’t burn it, wet it, or dry it.
Illumined objects are legion, but light itself is one. The light of consciousness is one all-pervading principle. The body is diametrically different. The Self is partless and the body is nothing but parts. We can even survive without sense organs, memory, emotions and an intellect. I am full whether objects are present or absent. This is how wise people think. If you can’t think like this, you need to work on your qualifications. Think like this all the time and you will be happy.
If you say, “I am fat or lean” you are ignorant. The body is fat or lean. What greater ignorance than saying, “Yes, but it doesn’t feel right to think like this. It is inauthentic.” You need to fix that thought and say,” I am a complete being. It is fraudulent to say I am the body/mind/sense complex because I observe it. I am not what I observe. This is the truth.”
You can’t fall, but you fall all the time. When you say you are angry or depressed you have fallen into the mind. When you say you are fat or slim you have fallen into the body. When you say I am rich or poor you have fallen into materialism. Shankara says, “What greater ignorance is there than thinking like this!” Be appreciative. The Self is like gravity, keeping your body on the earth all the time so you don’t fly off into space and die, but you never think about it!
Shankar starts an inquiry into duality from verse 18 and continues to verse 33. The discrimination between consciousness and matter begins by differentiating the true Self from the reflected self in two stages, first separating the Self from the gross body and then from the subtle body.
Spirit of Renunciation
18. The Self is internal and rules the body which is external.
With reference the body the Self is internal and can’t be seen in the world; it can only be recognized as it reflects in the mind. It is the controller; the body and mind are controlled by it. If you think you are in control, tell me what you will think tomorrow afternoon at 3:17:12. Consciousness gives life; the body receives it. How can the giver and receiver be identical? The rich give to the poor. They are not identical.
What is easy to drop you will drop. What is inside, subtler than the subtlest thing, can’t be dropped and what is outside can be dropped. To get to sleep, you have to drop the subtle body which contains the thought “I want to sleep.” When the Subtle body falls, the gross body falls, but when both are dropped, I, the undroppable Self, remains. To prove presence and absence consciousness is required. But experience tells you that there are not two or more yous.
19. The Self is pure awareness and the body is impure matter.
The mind is a subtle body which is insentient matter. It is made of parts and subject to disintegration. Awareness is pristine and not subject to decay but as the mind decays it generates stinky impure thoughts. Ignorant people equate them when they say, “I think. I feel.” Thoughts and feelings aren’t conscious. Thoughts don’t think and feelings don’t feel.
The word “I” always refers to a conscious being because the word ‘I’ is not used by inert things. The world will end the day a thought starts thinking and, assuming It wants a new world, existence shining as consciousness will have to create a new world which will be different from this one. Inquiry is thinking, “I am existence shining as consciousness and the body is inert.” What is inert is replaced by another human, animal or inert entity when the present body merges back into the primordial matter blob from whence it came.
20. Pure Awareness illumines the insentient body.
Not directly, but indirectly with the help of the mind. Awareness illumines the thoughts of objects in the mind and the mind illumines the sense organs, which “light up” the world. Is there a difference between one ray of reflected sunlight and the light of the whole sun? The ray is the sun.
Self-shining.
The Self, a conscious entity, is the illuminating, knowing and experiencing principle and the body/mind borrows and absorbs light because it is inert. For instance, a lamp in a room can’t illumine another lamp because they don’t have an illuminator-illumined relationship. For that one needs to be luminous and the other non-luminous. What greater ignorance than mixing up two opposite things? Reality is non-dual.
21. The Self is eternal because it is existence itself. The body is impermanent.
Thinking of oneself as the body generates anxiety because it is subject to disintegration. I don’t want to disintegrate because the gift of life is my most precious asset, because of which I always want to live one more day. The thought I am eternal unborn immortal awareness is direct access to myself and produces immortal bliss because death is unknown to the Self.
Non-transaction Does Not Produce Non-Existence
I know the body is impermanent but how do I know I am permanent? After the body disintegrates, I will not be there as an individual transacting with the world. If I don’t transact, how will I know I am there? Non-transaction does not prove non-existence. When transactions cease, existence continues. I exist when I am transacting and I exist when I am not transacting.
When butter is in milk it is unavailable for eating. It is only edible when it is removed from milk. Butter in milk is non-transactional existence. Waterfalls have electricity but electricity needs to be extracted before it lights up my room, otherwise it is non-transactional. When I go to deep sleep, I can no longer transact, but I certainly exist. If I didn’t exist, how could I wake up? After death I get life…non-existence is impossible because there is only existence shining as immortal consciousness…in a new body and so on ad infinitum but not ad naseum because myself is bliss. Therefore, I am always free, even after the Big Bang unbangs. I am eternal and matter is impermanent. For your own good, think like this and see if you worry any more.
22. Unlike light produced by fire, which is limited in its ability to illumine objects, the Self illumines all objects.
The manifest universe is composed of subtle and gross matter. The Self illumines subtle matter and subtle matter illumines gross matter.
People who take the word light literally in a spiritual context vainly try to experience a “light” in meditation. If the light is inside the body it is an imagination and if you see it outside it is an hallucination. Think like this instead, “Light is an object in the presence of which things are known.” I know you because light is present. If we are both in pitch darkness, we will not experience each other.
The sense organs are lights. The ear organ is a light, but you will not see shining ears. Sounds are known…lit up…in the presence of ears because the organ of hearing is listening through the ears. The tongue lights up tastes. Words are also lights in whose presence things are known. All things sentient and insentient, gross and subtle, are known because consciousness is present directly or indirectly. Consciousness has the capacity to make things known but it is not a physical light like the sun. Sunlight cannot make light or darkness known, yet we know darkness and light because consciousness lights them up.
Negation of the Physical Body (23-33) with Simple Logic.
23. If a person knows that a tree is not his or her self, how strange that he or she identifies the self as the body…which is only an object like a tree.
It is impossible that you are what you see, yet since the beginning of time people have taken themselves to be their bodies. The feeling I am mortal is not evidence of mortality. It is only evidence of itself, an ill-considered opinion. Once people started thinking, it became clear that the earth is not the center of the solar system.
Truth is not determined by the majority’s view, nor is what is right and wrong determined by the majority. Here are some facts from which we can reason successfully and confirm Shankara’s statements.
I experience the body as an object during the waking state but not during the dream state. This points out the fact that I, the experiencing entity, am different from these two states and the experiencer in each because the experiencer of both permeates both, like space permeates all objects sitting in it. If I am related to someone it means that I am different from that person.. I refer to myself as “I” and any related to the I as mine. My book, my wife, etc. What a wonder that I call my body I! If an animal does it, OK, but if a human animal does it, call the men in white coats.
Verses 24-28 instruct the mind how to think about the Self. It needs instruction…the opposite thought…because it is firmly convinced that it is limited, inadequate, and incomplete. Unless this belief is destroyed by the truth it will never realize the Self.
24. I am limitless, always the same, and peaceful. My nature is what is…ever-free Awareness. I am not the apparently existent body. This is called true knowledge by the wise.
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. You can lock up my body, but you can’t imprison me. If there is a prison it is in me.
All actions are motivated by ignorance of the Self. If this is too difficult to understand, let’s remove the body. In the sleep state the perceived world is gone because the perceiver is dormant. The body is seemingly real which means that it is as good as non-existent. That is why I slept like a log of wood and I did not experience one single thing. When I go to sleep, I cease to be a transacting entity, which is fine because my transactional self gets a much needed rest, but I continue as a blissful existing entity free of thoughts. It’s a win win.
I Never Accept Death
We do not accept death. We reject mortality fully because we have an instinctive attachment to life. We are philosophical with regard to the mortality of others but not with reference to our own mortality because we are immortal. We instinctively seek what we are and we accept everything that proves we are immortal.
Suppose the temperature drops and water becomes ice. If water is liquid, we call it water. When it freezes it is unnatural and we call it ice. So, let it sit in a warm room until it returns to its natural state. We naturally reject mortality because mortality is unnatural. If mortality is unnatural, immortality is natural. You only get rid of what is natural, never what it unnatural. You are not a part, property or a product of a substance but you are a substantial independent entity which pervades and enlivens everything. You transcend all names and forms and survive when all objects die. When the body perishes you exist in an unmanifest condition for want of a body and then sprout into manifestation according to the law of karma.
An object of illumination may move, but not the light in which it moves. The light of consciousness is free of want, suffering and inadequacy. The problem boils down to emotion. Ignorance is disowning fullness even though you can’t find anything missing apart from the thought that something is missing. Identify with existence shining as unborn consciousness and experience fullness! Feelings of rejection and rejecting others means you don’t love yourself. Discovering this fact is called wisdom by the wise. It is emotional maturity.
25. I am without change, without form, free of blemish and decay. I cannot be objectified.
Because of ignorance I appear as a remote object, something to seek, although I am not remote. Everything, including my personality, is away from me. So-called non-dual teachers who exhort practices designed to produce experience of a remote Self are actually dualists, deluded by Maya, unwittingly bound and determined to cement ignorant concepts in others.
A Small Important Meditation
The body has joints; it is assembled by the creator and will come apart one fine day. You can’t see your hand unless light is present. I, consciousness, have no joints. I shine and my light reveals everything. Everything lives in me but nothing contains me. I live without breathing.
26. I am not subject to disease, beyond comprehension and connected to nothing. I pervade everything. I cannot be objectified.
Consciousness doesn’t suffer disease, but the body of a Self realized person is subject to disease. The body, which is a mixture of the indweller’s good and bad karma, appears so the karma of the indweller can exhaust. The fact that a wise person is alive tells us that there is still karma to play out.
The subject cannot become object and object cannot become the subject. You can see everything except your own eyes. Consciousness objectifies everything except itself.
The Self can’t be known because it is not an object. But it need not be known because it is self-evident. With a flashlight in a dark room all objects can be known and now I want to know if I need another flashlight to see the light of my flashlight?
In a photo the photographer is not present, but the photographer is present because photos don’t take themselves. I, consciousness, am a photographer that takes the picture of everything. The body, mind and the whole cosmos are in my photo.
27. I am without attributes and perform no activities. I am eternal, ever free, and imperishable. I cannot be objectified.
28. I am free from impurity, immovable, unlimited, holy, undecaying, and immortal. I cannot be objectified.
29. Only the ignorant believe that the blissful ever-existent Self, which resides in the body yet is other than it, is non-existent, even though its existence is established by the teachings of Vedanta.
The reason for doubting the fundamental contention of Vedanta…that reality is non-dual awareness and not the multiplicity that it appears to be…is rooted in the universal conviction that the body is real and that reality is limited to sense objects. This conviction is understandable because existence shining as consciousness pervades every atom of the material world.
The senses do not know what they are experiencing. They only receive and transmit data. The mind does not know what it is thinking. I, consciousness, am the only knower. The means of knowledge for the senses is the mind. The mind interprets sense data.
The study of the mind is generally referred to as the study of consciousness, although in Vedic literature the word consciousness does not refer to the mind. But if the investigation of the mind is thorough, an interesting fact emerges, one that the texts of Vedanta are quick to point out: the mind is not conscious. It is a stream of inert thoughts.
What is the mind, then? Like the senses and the elements, it is actually a very subtle inert material instrument of experience. It is like a mirror, capable of bouncing light on objects, but it does not know itself, although to the untrained observer it seems to be conscious.
What, then, knows the mind? Awareness knows the mind. It is the conscious principle. The bulk of the teachings of Vedanta are not related to the cosmos nor to the mind but to the study of Awareness. Hundreds of thousands of subjective scientists who investigated the reaches beyond the mind gifted us with a comprehensive shining body of irrefutable knowledge about the nature of existence shining as awareness, the non-dual reality behind the mind and body.
30. The Self ignorant should…with the help of the teachings of Vedanta and reasoning…try to know Existence, their own Self which not a void and is different from the body.
Inquiry is using the logic of one’s experience as revealed by Vedanta to dismiss erroneous notions about the nature of the Self. In fact, the Self is not completely unknown to anyone because it is the nature of everyone. If you think deeply about what you experience you will realize that because your attention is generally focused on the desire or fear that is playing in the mind at any moment, you don’t notice that you are aware of the essence of thought itself, which is to say you become “aware of awareness” as a presence in the mind.
Verses 31-38 are meant to dismiss the most entrenched and obvious example of Self ignorance…I am the body. These excellent meditations are meant to train the mind how to think about the body.
31. The limitless Self, the ‘I’, is one but the bodies are many. How can the body be the Self?
The same Awareness looks out from behind the sense organs of every conscious entity.
32. The fact that the body is referred to as ‘mine’ establishes it as an object to the “I”. Therefore, the body isn’t the Self.
33. It is the immediate experience of everyone that the ‘I’ doesn’t change and that the body does. How can the body be the Self?
If the I was to change with every passing experience/thought, there would be no way to remember who you are. Without a history, you cannot contextualize your life and move toward your goal(s). The “now” is the past of the ever-changing experiencing self. When you can no longer move toward your goals, you might as well be dead.
Negation of the Physical Body (23-33) by scripture.
34. From the teachings of Vedanta the wise understand that there is nothing other than the Self. So how can the body be the Self?
35. The Purusha Sukta declares that everything is the Self. So how can the body be the Self?
36. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says that the Self is partless. So how can the body…which is only composed of parts…be the Self?
37. It also states that the Self is self-luminous. So how can the insentient body…which requires illumination from some other source…be the Self?
38. Even the karmic portion of the Vedas says that the Self is other than the body, remains after the body dies and goes on to reap the fruits of the actions done in life.
Negation of the Subtle Body
39. The Subtle Body also consists of parts and is unstable. It is an object of perception, changeable, limited and only apparently exists. So how can it be the Self?
The Subtle Body is a linga, a sign, a mirror that implies “light”, existence shining as consciousness.
The Subtle Body is the mind, intellect, ego, memory, active and passive sense organs and the autonomic nervous system. It is the source of one’s feelings, thoughts and actions. By including the Subtle Body as ‘not Self’ the text has negated everything…material and psychological reality…that an ordinary person thinks he or she is.
The subtle body is limited by the physical body. A man asked for water and someone brought him a glassfull. “Why did you bring the glass when I asked for water,” he said. Because you can’t carry water without a glass,” the person replied. The Subtle Body is limited by the physical body. There are as many subtle bodies as there are physical bodies.
40. The immutable Self, the substratum of the Subtle Body, is different from Gross and Subtle Bodies. It is the ruler of everything and the essence of everything. It is present in every object but transcends all objects.
The Subtle Body does not stand alone but is sourced in its cause, Awareness, and different from it, although it too is an illuminator. The ‘ruler of everything’ means that without Consciousness or Awareness nothing exists. The sun, “rules” the earth because without its heat and light life on earth would not exist. Similarly, without the ‘light’ of Awareness we are nothing but inert matter vestures.
The Subtle Body is like liquid and the physical body is like ice. The three bodies are just three different material energy/states generated by Maya. Shankara does not discuss the Causal Body because we only have access to it when it appears as thoughts in the Subtle Body. Because the doer is in the Subtle Body direct access to the Causal Body is impossible. So, eliminating Causal Body tendencies happens indirectly as the doer/inquirer practices karma yoga, meditation and knowledge yoga i.e. Vedanta.
The religious concept of the afterlife shows that the self is not the body, although it doesn’t produce liberation because the self doesn’t move.
Now the study of unreality of matter. Without inquiry into matter, we accept the material portion of ourselves as the essential portion and downgrade the primary spiritual (consciousness) portion.
41-42. Thus, the difference between the Self and the body has been asserted and negated by common sense and reason.
“Negated” means it is not a viable choice as oneself, not that it is non-existent. Thinking of oneself as a body, gross or subtle, consigns us to an uncomfortable dependence on a fickle material object. Negation depends on an inquirer’s trust in inference based on direct perception. Inference is a valid means of knowledge that we use every day, all day long. However, with regard to our mistaken identity, the ego resists “common sense and reason.”
43-44. Awareness is always non-dual and never changes. Thinking I am a person is a mistake, like taking a rope to be a snake in twilight, a mixture of darkness and light, ignorance, and knowledge. When ignorance is operating, pure blissful awareness appears as a material entity.
The Self “becomes” the world, without surrendering its nature. It does not surrender its nature as milk does when it becomes cheese. As if by magic, it appears as the world just as clay assumes the shape of pot, gold assumes the appearance of ring or the ocean manifests as waves.
Non-Duality
45. The Self is the material cause of the phenomenal universe. Therefore, the universe is only the Self.
The world can’t be counted as a second thing because in so far as it exists, it is the Self through and through. In the absence of otherness fear and desire disappear. The Self still looks like it did when the logic of the teaching removes sSlf ignorance, but the body loses its power to delude. It is “negated” as myself.
46. Vedanta says that everything is the Self. Therefore, the idea that the Self pervades everything is untrue. If this is true, how can one distinguish between cause and effect?
If the world is not a second entity, then how can the Self pervade it? These nididyasana verses are intended to eliminate the idea of pervasiveness, which implies duality.
47. Vedanta says the Self is non-dual and that it is the cause of the universe, so how can the universe be different from it?
Another nididyasana verse meant to remove the preliminary cause and effect teaching. Rather than dismiss the world at the outset as Neo-Advaita does, Vedanta provisionally accepts it and leads the inquirer patiently out of it. If you can’t get the logic, you can just trust Vedanta on this topic. However, trusting Vedanta without understanding the reasons for distrust is little more than blind faith. Even then, if faith is strong enough, it works, assuming the believer ignores the blandishments of the senses.
We don’t say there are many gods, my god or your god. We say there is only God. One needn’t seek to experience God if one’s senses are working. What you worship “there” is what you see here.
48. The Upanishad says that the one who is deceived by Maya sees plurality and goes from death to death.
If reality is non-dual, plurality is impossible because plurality implies duality.
‘Death to death’ is not death. Death is a dramatic metaphor for change. When you see the world as separate from yourself, you identify with your equipment, suffer many changes, seemingly die and are reborn again. Whatever you gain by birth you lose by death.
If I see a rope and you see a snake in twilight, it is pointless to tell me it is a snake and that I must negate it because the rope doesn’t exist for you. Maya is seemingly real, like a rumor that needs debunking.
49-50. Inasmuch as all beings are sourced in the Self, they can only be the Self.
Nothing absent in a cause appears in an effect, even though an effect does not necessarily resemble its cause. We borrow our sentiency from consciousness, which is free of qualities. It is not sentient, although it appears to be sentient when Maya supplies a body. It is the knower of the sentient and insentient. Vedanta clearly states that the Self alone is the formless substrate in which all names, forms and actions appear.
51. Just as a golden item like a ring has no existence apart from gold, any being that comes from the Self is also only the Self.
52. Anyone who makes the slightest distinction between the individual Self and the universal self will suffer fear.
Fear, the primary human emotion, results in dualistic thinking which is reinforced by the actions motivated by it. There is nothing to fear because you are not separate from anything. If there is no fear, there is no desire. It is well-known that desire is suffering. Fear is a negative desire and desire is a positive fear. Self knowledge negates both. Ignorance causes otherness. Identify with the Self as the Self and no otherness appears.
Differences exist, but they are merely empirical and can only be resolved by transactions, the law courts, for instance. They are not actual because reality is non-dual.
54. Identify with the Self as the Self and free yourself of delusion and sorrow.
Transactions viewed from the non-dual platform are entertaining.
55. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad states that the Self, the essence of everything, is limitless.
The world exists, assuming sense organs and a mind, but what is seemingly existent (mithya) is as good as non-existent.
It is true that everything in the world is limited but this does not mean that the Self is limited because there is no actual connection between the world and the Self. If there were, freedom would be impossible since the two principles would modify each other.
That ‘I’ feel love limited, time limited, knowledge limited, power limited, wellness limited, etc. is due to a failure to discrimination between the Self and the objects appearing in it.
Limitless isn’t the best word to illustrate a feature of the Self because it is a spatial metaphor that implies vastness or bigness, ideas that are catnip for an insecure ego. Unmodified is better. Although the Self and the body are so intimate that they are indistinguishable, none of the actions of the body or the thoughts and feelings of the mind modify the Self in any way. There is no connection because there is no difference.
These verses are snippets of the complete teaching of the three states of consciousness found in the Mandukya Upanishad.
56. The world serves practical purposes, but it is like a dream because it is no longer useful (negated) the moment one sleeps or dreams.
Studying Vedanta without a teacher not only defeats its purpose, which is to set the Self under the spell of ignorance free of the notion that it is a limited entity, it is dangerous because the ego is not above using these teachings to fix personal problems, which misses the point and denies the ego access to the steady stream of bliss/love flowing in the background. The personality is transformed when Vedanta is practiced in the traditional way, but the transformation should be left to a firm conviction in the power of knowledge itself, not the whims of the doer/enjoyer ego.
Verses like this can be used to justify the belief enlightenment is an ego is enlightened when it is awake while sleeping! Because gullibility is common human characteristic people sometimes waste much energy trying to master this practice (yoga nidra) which is not the kiss of death, but is at best a distraction from the intended goal, freedom from the limited conceptual self.
A teacher who has been properly taught will make it clear that the Self is always “awake,” meaning aware in all three states of consciousness. It is “awake” when the ego is present and absent. It is fine if it is not known to be aware when the ego is not present in deep sleep because deep sleep blesses the reflected self by removing egohood during sleep, allowing ego and its equipment to rest and heal.
Growth comes from the awareness of dysfunctional thinking in the waking state. The waking state is effortless ordinary awareness, meaning awareness reflected in the mind. The reflector is absent in deep sleep so the reflected self is not aware there. Sleep and waking are used liberally in spiritual literature as metaphors for ignorance and knowledge and should be appreciated in that way when applicable, not taken literally.
Perhaps a better reason to dismiss experience as unreal is the fact that it is never the same from moment to moment. Reality never changes.
If there is a fire station next to my house, it is useless when my dream house catches fire.
57. Dream experience doesn’t exist in the waking state, the waking experience doesn’t exist in the dream state and neither exist in the deep sleep state.
58. Thus all three states are unreal, because they are created by the three Gunas. But Awareness, the reality behind them, is non-dual and eternal.
Waking state is predominant sattva, the dream state predominant rajas and the sleep state predominant tamas. The “gunas” are the three features of Maya, the beautiful intelligent ignorance that control the cosmos.
59. One no longer sees names and forms when the individual is realized to be existence shining as consciousness, just as a ring disappears into the gold from which it is fashioned.
Forms still appear but they are known to be nothing but consciousness. Remember, inference is a valid means of knowledge.
60. An earthen pot is usually called a pot even though it is just earth. Similarly, the Self is thought of as an individual even though it is nothing but limitless Awareness.
In the world a word never refers to a non-existent substance. A substance can have many names. An individual…person…is only a name for the Self when a body is present.
61-62. Just as blueness is projected on the sky or a ghost is projected on a post in twilight, the universe is projected on the Self.
63. Just as an ocean takes the form of waves the Self, limitless Awareness, takes the form of the whole universe.
When you lift a rock, you lift consciousness alone. When your body moves, consciousness apparently moves.
64. Just as clay is called a pot or thread cloth, the Self appears as the universe. The Self is known by negating names and forms.
If you are starving it does not solve your problem to understand that the ring on your finger is just a ring. It would be helpful, however, to know that it is gold. If you are starving for happiness, it does very little good to cling to the belief that you are just a name representing a long series of transitory experiences. If, however, you negate your name and everything associated with it, you will discover that you are golden which is to say, happiness itself.
65. Just as a person may not realize that a pot is only clay, most people think they are doers, even though no actions are possible without the Self.
There are many factors involved in action apart from the meager efforts of the doer: the Self, the gunas, the senses, vital forces, mind and intellect ego, memory and the five elements.
66. Reasoning and the teachings of Vedanta show that there is a causal relationship between the Self and the universe just as common sense establishes the relationship between clay and a pot.
67. Just as it is possible to realize that a pot is nothing but clay when one thinks about a pot, so the realization that the phenomenal world is nothing but awareness can flash in the mind when one deeply inquires into the nature of the world with the help of a teacher and an impersonal means of knowledge.
68. The Self is imagined to be an assemblage of parts by those ignorant of its nature, but is known to be a partless whole by the wise.
69. Just as a pot is only clay, the body is only Awareness. For no good reason the ignorant divide the Self into a self and a not-Self.
Self-not Self, real and apparent, are only teaching tools. If they persist after Self knowledge, remove them. Removing them removes the doer, which can easily survive liberation. Liberation is non-discriminating wisdom.
70-72. Just as a rope is taken to be a snake or thread to be cloth or clay to be a pot, the Self is taken to be the body.
Verses 73 to 86 give an additional number of similes to illustrate the way that ignorance projects the ‘I am the body idea’ on the Self. Many of these are repetitions and it serves no purpose to list them all. Dwelling on one or two is enough.
87. Thus the delusion ‘I am the body’ appears. It disappears with the realization of the Self.
88. When one realizes that what moves and what doesn’t move is nothing but the Self, it is not possible to say that the body isn’t the Self.
If I am the Self, there is no karma for me. If I am doer/enjoyer entity there is karma for me. I can’t be both because I experience myself as a single conscious entity. In so far as karma is just an idea and ideas are generated by Maya, karma is as good as non-existent.
89. The enlightened are not distressed when they receive the results of their actions because they know they are the Self.
Knowing you are the Self means that you know that you are not the doer. If you are not the doer, the results of action do not accrue to your karmic account because you have no karmic account.
90. We now refute the notion that the results of one’s actions still affect the individual once the Self is realized.
91. When the Self is realized the body is known to be a dream. Just as a dream no longer exists when one wakes up, the body no longer exists as a body for the Self realized.
Where is the world when you aren’t thinking the word world?
92. Karma done previously and fructifying now is called prarabdha but there is no prarabdha for the Self realized because he or she is the Self and the Self is not a doer that produces karma.
Action is generated by all the factors in the karma/dharma field, not by the body, the doer or the Self. Is there such a thing as karma?
93. The physical body is a projection just as a dream body is a projection. How can a projection be born, do action and reap the fruits of action?
The physical body is projected by God. In waking or dream you are only experiencing something when God puts the thought of that thing in your mind.
94. Vedanta texts say that Self ignorance is the cause of the belief that the material world is real, just as an unthinking person does not realize that a pot is only clay. When Self ignorance is destroyed, how can the belief in the reality of the material world be sustained?
95. Just as a confused person can mistake a rope for a snake, a Self ignorant person takes the phenomenal world to be the reality.
96. When the rope is known, the snake no longer appears. When the Self is known, the phenomenal world is no longer taken to be real.
Self realization does not mean that the physical world disappears. What disappears is the notion that it is anything other than one’s own Self. Only the status of the world/body changes from real to unreal when the Self is known to be existence shining as Awareness.
97. Because the body is part of the phenomenal world and the phenomenal world is only a dream, how can there be karma? It is only to educate the Self ignorant that Vedanta speaks of action and its results.
As long as you take yourself to be the author of ‘your’ actions, you need instructions in how to act. The karmic section of the Vedas is the user manual for doers. The first six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita address action and doership.
98. The use of the plural “actions” in the Upanishadic statement “And all the actions of a person perish when the Self…which is both the higher and the lower knowledge…is realized” is meant to negate all karmas including prarabdha, the momentum of past actions that keeps the body alive.
99. If a person ignores the knowledge contained in this statement and continues to believe in doership and the results of action he or she will not realize the Self. Therefore, the truth of this statement should be embraced.
The doer can’t realize the Self. Self realization is the hard and fast knowledge that there is no doer apart from all the constituents required to produce action. The Self under the spell of ignorance realizes it is not a doer but the light in which action happens.
Meditation – Nididhyasana
101. The Self that is absolute existence/knowledge cannot be realized without constant practice. So, one seeking Self knowledge should meditate long and hard on the Self.
This Vedanta text also addresses a doer and prescribes a subtle action…inquiry, the result of which is Self knowledge. But like any ritual, whether it bears fruit depends on whether the five stages of inquiry are well known.
Verse 101 is meant to refute the perennial, persistent pig-headed belief that enlightenment is some kind of mystic happening or the result of ‘transmission’ from a guru. Self inquiry is not an easy glamorous path. You will not just walk into a Neo-Advaita satsang and “get it.’ If you do, you can be sure that you will lose it before long.
It is hard work because mystic experiences do not remove Self ignorance. When the experience wears off and ignorance returns, the mind again begins to think from a dualistic platform and all the old problems return. Self inquiry is a reorientation of the thought process around the idea of non-duality until all the beliefs supporting Self ignorance are no longer in play. When this happens, ignorance collapses for want of support.
