Rod: The only thing I don’t understand is how the location of objects teaching relate to other people? Am I seeing my own mithya?
Sundari: Yes, everyone sees objects in accordance with their personal uphadi – subjective reality. Duality dupes everyone into seeing a world of seemingly separate objects according to our personal filters. It keeps the obvious fact hidden from us that there is one common factor for everyone: Who is the one that sees? You cannot be what you see, but why?
Uphadis – the Limiting Adjunct
There is only one Awareness that enlivens every sentient being. Although there is only one eternal jiva or individual, Maya (the hypnosis of duality) makes it look like there are many individual jivas by giving sentient beings an uphadi. This is their vasana load, Subtle body, or personal ignorance (avidya). An uphadi is a limiting adjunct—that which makes something appear to be something other than it is. For instance, if I have a red rose behind a clear crystal, the clear crystal will appear to be red even though it is clear. Put it this way: the uphadi for the Self/Awareness (or what we can also call perception) is the person—the individual or Self under the spell of ignorance. It makes the Self look like it is a person – a jiva.
However, what belongs to the person does not belong to the Self because the person and Awareness do not exist in the same order of reality. The Self is that which is always present and unchanging – satya. The jiva or person and their experiences is that which is always changing and not always present – mithya. The two orders of reality are not opposed to each other (nothing opposes the Self) but they never meet, either. Freedom is the ability to discriminate between the two orders of reality 24/7.
The perceiver only looks different in accordance with the uphadi in association to it; the difference belongs to the uphadi and not to the subject (the Self). It is just an appearance in Awareness causing a sense of difference where there is no difference. Maya is a very clever trickster—ignorance is very intelligent. Maya is Isvara’s (apparent) uphadi.
The confusion is in what belongs to the person and what belongs to the Self: you think that what applies to the person, also applies to the Self. The person and the Self are not the same because of the different uphadi’s. What belongs to the person cannot belong to the Self because the Self is a partless whole. So, the Self cannot be a jiva, but the jiva is the Self. Understand? Like the wave is the ocean but the ocean is not the wave, the pot is clay but the clay is not the pot, the ring is gold but gold is not a ring. These are only apparent contradictions which resolve when the logic of Vedanta is applied to them.
The Self is not an experiencing entity. It is the witness (sakshi) of the experiencing entity, the person or jiva. The experience of the ‘experiencing you’ is limited by the upadhi through which you experience objects. Therefore, you only know the objects you have contact with. You cannot know what another mind is thinking or feeling, except by inference. You are the only one with a Rodney upadhi. As long as you are identified with Rodney, you are limited and bound by ‘his’ ignorance. I have a ‘Sundari’ upadhi so I can’t know what you are experiencing, but when our personal ignorance has been removed by Self-knowledge, we know we are non-different because we are the nondual Self, which is all there is.
Because the mind is conditioned by Maya, duality, most people tend to impose satya (nonduality) onto mithya (duality), which can never work. As long as the so-called individual mind is under the spell of ignorance, it thinks it is separate and has to chase objects to complete itself. When ignorance is removed, you are still limited by your uphadi and cannot know anyone else’s thoughts because moksa does not confer omniscience. This only belongs to Isvara, the creator of the field of existence. So, you no longer see others as separate from you because you know that the essence of all life is the Self, you. The wave dissolves into the ocean, the pot into the clay, the ring into the gold. And you no longer chase objects to complete you.
Much love
Sundari
