K: I have now read the book by James The Essence of Enlightenment.
In the Dutch translation, on page 76 the following sentence is under the headline How does Vedanta work?
And you can’t deny the existence of something unless it exists.
I think this should be: And you can’t deny the existence of something if it exists.
Do you agree with me?
Sundari: I know it sounds like it doesn’t make sense, but the statement “you can’t deny something exists unless it exists’ is correct. You need to take the statement in the context in which it was used – which you do not supply here. In Vedanta, the right question always is: from which perspective am I looking at this? Satya, Consciousness, (that which is always present and never changes), or mithya, the person identified with the body/mind, (that which is always changing and not always present)?
If we are talking about an object (an object is anything you know, whether subtle like a thought or solid like a chair), from the body/mind or person perspective, where objects seem real (but we know they are not), if something never existed, how could you deny it or even know about it to deny it? It never existed. You would not even have a word for something that never existed.
Therefore, to deny the existence of something, something has to exist. What that is may be debatable, perhaps. For instance, you could deny the existence of God, but clearly, there is an intelligent force behind creation. So what is that? Or you could deny that an object exists because you have never seen it or heard about it, like the Lochness monster for instance. But you cannot be certain it doesn’t exist. Or you could say something is an illusion, but something still exists.
From the point of view of Consciousness – which is not an object of knowledge, but the one who knows all objects and makes knowing anything possible, which this statement is referring to, you cannot deny the existence of Consciousness because you would have to be conscious to deny Consciousness.
This raises the question – “Is the world an illusion? “ This causes a lot of confusion among those trying to teach or understand nonduality without following the whole methodology of Vedanta. Meaning mostly, Neo-Advaita, who claim that you as a person and the world you live in do not exist. But you know you and the world exist because you experience your existence. A non-existent person born in non-existent world would not experience anything.
While we cannot say something doesn’t exist unless it exists, illusions definitely exist because we have words for them. We don’t have words for things that don’t exist, except the word non-existence. The world too definitely exists or we couldn’t use the word ‘world’ and write it with the expectation that someone would know what you mean.
Om
Sundari
