The Greatest Discovery About the Self & Reality | Swami Sarvapriyananda

If I'm not the mind, if I'm just bare light, what am I thinking? Nothing. What do I need? Nothing. Who are my enemies? Nobody. Fear comes when the mind kicks in. As long as I'm a mind, a person, everybody's a person to me. The moment I stepped back from physicality, I realized everybody is that light. The day I finished my last assignment in college and went straight to the monastery [music] and joined. That's how I became a monk. We have been born many times and we have died many times. And that's not good news. But the really important promise is here and now in this life. >> You can have possessions but not be possessed by the possessions. [music] >> Well put. >> You can have things just the things don't have you. >> Yes. Comfortable life right here and now means no progress. It must be pushing the envelope somewhere. It's a human limitation that we think if this is right everything else has to be wrong. In meditation when we calm down that's what the ego hates. This is how you thin out the ego. So we sit still closing the eyes when we are ready. This is actually the first No Thyself podcast with our new uh background set. >> Oh, I see. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> We're making some changes. [laughter] So, it's it's good to have you in the studio. Um Swami G, thank you so much for being here. >> Thank you for having me, Andre. I have been loving watching your talks and reading some of your books over the past few years and the conversation today is one I'm very passionate about and it's been very much so your life study >> for people that don't know what is adveta vanta >> well advanta is um a very ancient school of Indian non-dual um spiritual philosophy um if you back up a little bit the big picture kind If you see the study of spirituality and philosophy in India, it's like a big project you can discern from all the way back long before the Buddha. This quest to know um reality, reality about the world, reality about ourselves. It was not like our modern scientific quest. Rather it was a quest that there is something if we uncover that if we realize that or find that out then our life becomes fulfilled. So that was the quest. This quest there it went by many names. Moka freedom, MTI which means freedom, Nirvana, Kalia. There are multiple names and multiple traditions. Many of them were based on the Vedas which are the root texts of Hinduism. Even those which are not directly based on the Vedas were often reactions to the Vedas like the Jinism or Buddhism. And in the Vedas you have these texts called the upanishads. Um which are the sort of the final the highest spiritual teachings of the Vedas. And based on these upanishads came multiple schools of what are now called Vanta. Vedanta just means the end of the Vedas and not in a literal sense as the end of the book but also uh in the sense of uh the end teachings the final teachings or the highest teachings but these upanishads themselves were interpreted in a variety of ways one of the ways and one of the most well-known ways is the way of adita vanta adwita just means non-dual so non-dual vanta it's a non-dual interpretation of the upanishads. Based on the upanishads, there is a text called the Brahma Sutras and the most well-known text of Vanta. I guess that's the one book everybody would have heard of in the world, the Gita, the Bhagavad Gita. So that is the textual basis and background of Adita Vanta and it has continued down from that time onwards till today. It's a living tradition. There are millions who follow it, who study it, who practice it. There are thousands and thousands of of monks also uh like myself, I'm one of them who have made it their lifelong pursuit to study, practice, live by and manifest this philosophy. So it's a living tradition. It has been for millennia. It's central teaching is radical. Um you are that in Sanskrit. You know one beautiful thing about vanta although there's a ocean of literature but it can be expressed the central teaching of vanta can be expressed very elegantly in half a verse. Um so there's a Sanskrit saying brahma jagata ja which means brahman alone is real. The world is an appearance and you are that ultimate reality. The sentient being is that ultimate reality. You can compress it further into a short sentence. You are that means you are that ultimate reality. That means if we were to really inquire and find out who or what we are, if we knew ourselves, we would discover something amazing. That's the promise. Something the greatest secret of all the in fact the point of it all rather um other sentences are there in the opishads. Aam brahasmi I am Brahman. I am the ultimate reality. Brahma consciousness is the ultimate reality. I am atma Brahma. This very self is the ultimate reality of the universe. You can um compress it further into single words. Just the word Brahman, not the Brahman which is a cast in Hinduism. Brahman literally means the vast, the limitless. Sometimes in the opanishads it's just called t that um the word pam which means complete or whole or limitless. Anandam which means limitless you can make it even shorter you can just say and if you unpack that the mono syllable om you would get all of vanta. You can make it even shorter just silence. They say the vanta can be expressed as silence. So what is the promise that this way of knowing this end of knowledge or culmination of of knowledge is providing? In essence, what is Jivvan Mukti and uh what can by virtue of listening to this podcast can our audience community listeners uh hopefully get a bit of a glimpse into uh of that same goal or or promise there? That's a good question and the promise is really really big. Doesn't get any bigger than this. Um I can put it in two ways. One is the traditional way it is put in India. Not just for Ada Vanta but for all these paths, all these ancient paths. Um it's freedom from the cycle of birth and death. That's how life is understood in India and that's not peculiar to one school. All it's sort of exumeatic across all schools except the materialists who say everything ends at death. Uh but other than that all other schools ada vanta the other schools of vanta um you know the sha schools the shakta schools the Buddhists the giants the seikhs uh every shade of religion and philosophy in India they have sort of exiomatically said the description of life uh is this cycle of birth and death we are not this is not our first time here and won't be our last. We have been here many times. We have been born many times and we have died many times. And that's not good news because we have been repeating this cycle of birth and death. And it's a limited existence. It's full of suffering and limitation and sorrow and struggle and a freedom from this cycle is possible. So that's seen as the ultimate goal. So now that's the way it is traditionally put in advant the the result is moka freedom from uh the cycle of birth and death. But if you want to put it in less theological terms if you will um something much more universally acceptable when when I came here to the west they warned me that this talk about the cycle of birth and death doesn't go down so easily in the west in America especially as it does in India because it's sort of exumeatic in India. But suppose one doesn't have those presuppositions. What can be put something you know in a form that is universally acceptable to everybody is um um the attainment of deep lasting happiness or bliss if you will and overcoming of suffering um a deep solution to the problem of suffering the existential problem of human life. So basically it amounts to the same thing overcoming the cycle of um you know um transcending the cycle of birth and death and overcoming suffering. basically the same thing. This is also the language in which the other schools are also put. You know Buddhism also the Buddha said life is suffering and there is a possibility of freedom from this suffering and that's what he called nirvana. Exactly in the same way says deep lasting fulfillment is possible in Sanskrit word ananda bliss is possible and uh freedom from suffering is possible and that's what it aims to deliver. This is the promise and this is sort of universally acceptable. This is the the principle on which the United States was founded. The declaration of independence, the pursuit of happiness and of liberty and the right to life. So life, liberty and happiness, if you put it in vantic terms, the pursuit of happiness is anund, the bliss. The pursuit of life would be eternal existence. That means freedom from death literally. and um uh freedom, liberty, there was um I don't know if the founding fathers made me meant it in a vantic sense, but they hit upon something very profound, very deep. Now, Vanta also says that this realization is possible. It's not a postmortem spirituality that you have to wait after death. You know, after death you go to see get to see God or after death you get to go to heaven. Quite possible and I do believe that's possible. But the really important promise is here and now in this life. So that's the word you refer to. Jan MTI the Sanskrit word jvan mti means free while living in this body. So that's what the adantin uh aims at. That is not common to all the schools because some of the schools would say that you really cannot be perfect in this life. You have to die and be uh go go to a higher state of existence. All that might be fine but Vant you know it is that way it is very very practical. It says that uh what is uh there must be here too. There's a saying if you have it here you have it there. If you don't have it here you won't have it there. So the enlightenment which you get here will serve you there. There means maybe after death or in heaven or wherever it is that that so realization of this and living it in this life. Swami Viveanandanda he put it beautifully. He said basically spirituality is the manifestation of the divinity already within us. So the divinity already within us our real nature to know it and not just to know it but to live it to manifest it. He put it in other words he said my mission in life can be put in a few words. Viveand this Vandanda he says it is to teach unto humanity their inner divinity and how to make it manifest in every movement of life. in our thought, in our emotion, in our speech, in our actions. >> So that is the promise. >> And adva vanta as a path within what you might say is the umbrella of yana yoga as a vehicle towards self-realization. We all have our own individual constitution and maybe resonate towards specific paths which I'm sure we could you know uh elaborate on but there's something that has resonated so deeply within me the path of yan yoga to be able to experientially verify claims and uh in our real time experience and especially as an intellectually and analytically dominant society and culture um I think is a really beautiful pathway and in and opening of the door for people to start to examine the nature of self and reality and uh and you do that and you help guide people and in in that as well um so beautifully and so when you think about the epistemic orientation of Jana Yoga of the way in which we come to know could you expand about that >> yes so I'll just touch upon this you know you just mentioned u the our constit constitutions Erh you hit upon something very deep there. One reason why a variety of paths is desirable. Well, there are two two aspects to this. One is the nature of that ultimate reality. It could be in fact we hold that the nature of that ultimate reality which we are seeking um our ultimate reality and the reality of this universe. This is what vanta's inquiring and vidanta's teaching is that they are the two the two are are the same. Our ultimate reality what we truly are and what this universe truly is is one and the same thing. In vant it's in vantic language it's atman is equal to brahman. Atman means our inner self. Brahman is the reality of this universe. It's the same reality. So one thing is that the ultimate reality is so capacious that you can approach it in different ways. You can have different theologies. and different philosophies and all would be right. Uh it's a human limitation that we think if this is right everything else has to be wrong. This is something really beautiful about ancient India until today it's part of Indian culture that there can be multiplicity of viewpoints and it doesn't mean that one is right and every everything else is wrong. They could all be right. In fact, we hold that they are all right also. That's from the perspective of the ultimate reality. But from our perspective, as you said, we are diverse. Human beings are of many kinds. Uh the internal constitution. So it makes sense to have multiple pathways. Some more emotion related, heart related, some more intellect related, some more actionoriented. Vand in fact was the opinion that he was of the opinion that you should have all of them in your spiritual life. A balanced spiritual life should be intellectual, should be devotional, should be meditative and should be actionoriented also. All of them can be and should be part of a wholesome spiritual life. All right. But now to your question about the epistemology of Ghana yoga. Yes, you're right. It's extreme. I find it extremely attractive and I see large numbers of people are drawn to that side of Ghana yoga. Let's put it this way. All these paths work. But let's put it under three broad paradigms to I'm just trying to bring out the uniqueness of Ghana Yoga. What makes it so special? One path of spirituality is something that is very common immediately understood. You might call it the devotional path. There's a Sanskrit word for it bi love of God or love devotion. So if you see temples, churches, mosques, they're all devotional paths. Here we are told that there is an ultimate reality. Call it God or Vishnu or Shiva or father in heaven or Jehovah or Allah. And how do we know that? If you ask an epistemic epistemic question, the answer would be you know it by tradition, by faith. and uh because your masters have told you so, because your religion tells you so, your holy book tells you so, uh the testimony of the saints and so on. So you know it that way. It's primarily a path of faith and the way it is practiced is also if you look closely it is love, devotion, prayer, music, uh surrender, uh adoration. It's a worship of the other the divine as the other god. The problem with it's a beautiful path and it's a genuine path. It has produced mistakes and genuinely enlightened people across the centuries and it's the most common path which you which is what you get when you come to religion first of all. But if you want to play the devil's advocate especially in this day and age we have never had so many atheists or agnostics ever in the history of humanity as we have today. Um because in this path because it's based on faith it's possible to believe it's possible to disbelieve. It's possible to believe otherwise. So yes I believe in God just not in the way as you do. Uh yes I I have my own holy book. You have your own holy book. The problem with faith is one may believe one may not believe. One may believe differently. One may believe strongly or less strongly and one may disbelieve. And because it's not immediately experiential, it's based for a long time on faith. Although ultimately it does culminate in experience, it can be doubted. And that's why you have all these this day and age. If you talk too much about God and faith and devotion and love, you're going to run up against, you know, Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or his his uh past uh or Sam Harris or and the militant atheists. Um you'll run up against your own sense of reason. This path it does not tolerate questioning immediately. It act it is based on you have to start on faith. So this is the problem with this path the path of belief again genuine path if you have belief go for it but this is the weakness of that and if one is on a purely on a belief path in the long run also there are there are problems one can one's belief can be shaken life has a way of shaking you up um one's belief can be weakened one can go very far in this path and still have doubts I read a diary, Mother Theresa's diary, quite advanced in life, and she says very touching. She says, "I pray and pray and pray into the darkness and there's no reply." So that can happen. In contrast to this, you have a second path that is the path of direct experience. Let's call it the path of the mystics. uh in Sanskrit we can use the Sanskrit term the yogic path where we are told no no not a question of belief it's a question of experience as Vandanda said religion is realization and this experience is open to everybody we can all have that experience and not only can we have that experience we must that's the whole point of human life that's why we are here um and how do you get this experience this is there is there are practices you sit in this way you breathe in this way You focus in this way, you visualize, meditate in this way and eventually you will see for yourself. The claims of spirituality can be verified in our personal experience. So an experiential way. A classic example here would be the Patanjali yoga sutras. So they don't start with any demand for belief in anything. You just have to have a working belief that there's something in this. Let me investigate it. And the point would be actually to experience it for yourself. But notice even even here also if one were um to be a little bit of a devil's advocate you know try to find fault here also notice the weakness is these mystical experiences these are not public experiences these are not shared experiences these are not easily available experiences and that's exactly why we it takes so long and so hard and so rare they're when they're genuine they're powerful they're transform formative and they're conclusive. For those who have had genuine mystical experiences, they don't need any other proof. And that's the testimony of mystics in every religion. They are people who saw men and women across the centuries, across civilizations, across religions, the testimony of the mystics. But if you were to look at the lives of the mystics, how were they received? When they say, "I'm hearing the voice of God or Sri Ramak Krishna would have a vision of divine mother Kali." The first reaction of people around them is you're crazy. Why? Because it's outlandish and we don't see it. You say you're seeing it. As the philosopher Hume said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You're saying God, where is the extraord There's not even ordinary proof, let alone extraordinary proof. >> There's that saying, the psychotic drowns in the same oceans that the mystic swim with delight in. >> Beautifully put. Yes, I've read that somewhere. And there's the other side of it that um yeah, there can be a psychopathology of it. There is. You can't deny that if there are genuine mystic experiences, there are also minds which are profoundly disturbed. There are ways of distinguishing between the two. But the ways can be subtle. They cannot be they may need not be entirely obvious and we have one of the superpowers which we all have is fooling ourselves deluding ourselves minds can do that they're very powerful that way in this day and age maybe in more political times politically correct times nobody's going to accuse of you of being crazy but the neuroscientist will come and say I'm sure you're seeing the light you're seeing God or if you're feeling one with the universe sure you're doing that I'm not denying it But it's just because you have a stroke on the this hemisphere or the brain or the you know some neuroscience will come up with a physical explanation. You're not one with the universe. Certainly not. Will you just feel like that because there's a stroke in your brain or there's some bleeding going on. Some a tumor pressing against such and such neuron. Or they will just say what are you smoking? Especially here in California or even now in New York. What are you smoking? Are you high on something? So the mystical experience in principle is not conclusive and there can be many explanations of that. >> Meaning it's not externally verifiable because it's a subjective transpersonal experience that is within your >> experience. It's still a very good strong claim because it it says like science do this and you'll see for yourself. But then there's a whole question of distinguishing it from uh um neurological problems, from uh mental illness, from wishful thinking or from drug induced experiences. How is that any different from this? Um as against that there is a third paradigm of spirituality. So we have the belief based paradigm, the bacti traditions, we have the direct experience paradigms, the mystical, the yogic traditions which are all very powerful and the bacti traditions themselves would culminate eventually in a um exper mystical experiences. That's what how it is understood in India. You would eventually Mira would see her beloved Krishna. But it starts with belief whereas the yogic path start with practice. Whereas um the third paradigm now I'm narrowing down to the question about epistemology of advita vanta. This path of knowledge ghana yoga simply means the yoga of knowledge. It is not based on faith. If you believe it well and good we told that you are that ultimate reality your limitless consciousness existence place. If you believe that well and good for you but that's not the point. One has to um come to grasp this and to realize it for oneself. It's like going to college and if the professor is teaching math or physics or something and you say well I really like you. I believe what you are saying. The professor would just be exasperated. He says you don't have to believe what I say. I I hope you come to see it for yourself. It's important that you learn this. So vanta is first of all it's not belief based. Second uh it's not even based on special experiences. See in vanta it is experiential but in a much broader much more acceptable universal sense. What do I mean by that? We wake we have a waking state. We dream we have dreams. We sleep we have deep sleep. All of us these three states are common to everybody. You don't have to be a mystic. Just about everybody is awake and we sleep and dream. Even animals do that. And vanta says that common universally acceptable experience is enough to begin our inquiry. Uh what vanta does is it takes that and then step by step shows us clearly demarcated methods methodologies which will point to us what vanta wants us to realize. They're saying that what the reality we're trying to point out you know yourself well you are right here and what we are trying to point out about yourself is also right here it's just that we don't see it and vanta aims to help us to see it so [snorts] it is not faith belief based it is also not based on special mystical experiences it's based on experience that's a great you know claim to our attention that It's based on uh already available experience. Waking, dreaming, sleeping or the five layers of the human personality, the physical, the vital, the mental. All of us have it. And all that vanta does is it looks inside. It's also entirely rational. Every question we must ask questions and every question does have an answer. It's been worked out. It's not freethinking in the sense of doing philosophy because it's more like pointing out. The masters they already know what they're talking about and they want us to see it. So the goal would be to listen carefully to them try to grasp what they are saying and then look for ourselves. In fact, that's the method of vanta. The three-fold method of vanta to listen and to uh reason and to meditate in Sanskrit shraana. Shravana means hearing, listening. Uh you listen from a teacher or you study it. But the core thing is actually listening from a living teacher and then uh reasoning about it. Question it, analyze it, threadbear. One needs to have um conviction. This is the path of knowledge. The intellect must be thoroughly convinced. The intellect by itself cannot help us to become enlightened. You can't argue your way to God. But the intellect can block us. It can throw up. It can tell you that this is crazy or this is not real. So intellect must be convinced. It must see for itself. Yeah, I get it now. And then it must come to see for itself also. So there is a gap between understanding and then the realization of it. So there is the hearing, there is the reasoning and then the real the realization. But that's how knowledge works. You go to a classroom and you want to learn something. That's how it works. You ask questions, read, listen, argue, and then you have the ureka moment. Oh, I get it. So this I think is a special appeal of ada vanta. It's also the way of the I'm joking here tongue and cheek the way of the lazy one because it's the uh uh the claim seems to be you want it instantaneously or you want to work for lifetimes. I want it instantaneously. All right, you'll get it. Do you want it it effortlessly or do you want to work really really hard for decades before you get a glimpse of it? I want it effortlessly. Of course, there's a fine print to that instantaneous effortless. True. But that is um very at the end of a long road of seeking and investigation. >> Yeah. >> Now, how important do you feel it is to acknowledge one's own ignorance to be to to then begin the the acquisition of true knowledge? How important is the awareness of our own ignorance? >> Oh, very important. That's where it begins. If I, you know, invest that we do not know who we are. The problem is we think we know. In fact, that's the last place we would like we would look. We're looking over for the ultimate reality of all things for God, for um enlightenment. We think we know who we are and we are quite convinced the answer lies out there. Adita wants to show us the answer lies within you. In fact, you are the key to it. But for that, it has to show us that we don't really know ourselves through the discovery of our own ignorance. that there are great depths to myself. Um that is the first step in advant you know person I'll show you why it is so important Deart um Kjarum I think therefore I am you know he started his project of skepticism doubting whatever could be doubted to find the ground of all knowledge the one piece of knowledge which can never be doubted nobody ever doubts that and he says it's our own existence just the fact that I'm doubting Just the fact that I'm thinking shows that I exist and that fact cannot be doubted. Nobody ever doubts do I exist or not. Even in the act of doubting you are proving your own existence. The doubter exists. Um so that part of it is famous I think therefore exist. But a little further down in the in the meditations, Decart says very touchingly, you know, he says that we know so little about ourselves. He says, "It is passing strange that which I am um utterly convinced about. That which I can never doubt. I know so little about it. And that which I know so much about is always open to doubt." We know so much about the world. And now 300 years of after decad we know much much more about the universe but it's always open to doubt and correction and we one thing we know that can never be changed that I exist but this I which exists surely inubitably Deart says I know so little about it I don't know anything about it but then he stopped this is the difference between vant and he stopped because his quest was outward how can I justify all this knowledge He wanted a firm basis for all the knowledge of science or religion or whatever it is and he found it in the initable existence of the self that he did not investigate further. I exist absolutely sure of that. Now let's get on with the business of justifying knowledge. Whereas vanta says wait a minute I exist. The self exists there's no doubt about it. But what is the nature of that self which exists? Let's investigate. Tikart sort of had the intuition you can't find out anything more about it. Even Kant had that kind of an intuition that it is but then we can't know anything more about it. Vanta says oh we can we can know a lot about it and in that discovery lies our salvation. So that intuition knowing yourself it is entirely possible but possibly in a special way. They can't can't they were right. It's not in a sensory way. We can't see ourselves, hear or smell or taste or touch that reality which we are pure consciousness. We can't even express it adequately in language. Not even express it except indirectly in thought. Still, we can know it. A quick share. If you've been following me for a while, you know I care a lot about starting the day well, as we all should. And hydration is one of those simple important levers that makes a world of difference on your energy, focus, and mood. Many are chronically dehydrated. And a good support for that is Element. 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It's all linked down in the description as always. Thanks Element for supporting this show. Back to the episode. So I would love to have you walk us through from the belief of a separate egoic individualistic self to the experience of I am that the experience of the consciousness um which is the more fundamental a aspect the fundamental aspect of of self. Um, and so when you take somebody just walking living their conventional life on the randomly pick them off up off the street and you say, "Who are you or what are you?" >> There are all these presumptions about our name, our ethnicity, our religion, our cast, our creed, um, who we are as a mind and a body. and what you're proposing here, which is not foreign to people who have listened to the show before, from the various different mystics and sages to the consciousness researchers and physicists. We've explored this um but I'd love for you to walk us back into examining the our who who we are in our most fundamental essence um and consciousness as it's often referred to as light. I would love for you to draw on that metaphor as well if you could. Yes, as you said, it's not new and it's not in particularly unique to Adita Vanta. Though I believe in all my explorations of literature um in the field in the east and the west, modern and ancient, uh nothing is developed as deeply or in such a sophisticated way as Ada Vanta. In many traditions, it's there uh but it's been either marginalized or even actively persecuted. This non-dual teaching that you are that ultimate reality. Sometimes it can seem extremely blasphemous. In vantic schools also there are dualistic vidantic schools which consider us the non-dualists just outside the pale because you guys are crazy. You're megalomaniacs. You think you're god or something. Um [snorts] so yes the path of advant is analytic and it starts with experience and analysis of our experience. um experience here the path is what philosophers might today call phenomenological looking into how it feels [snorts] uh as I said it is not unique you as you you know have you have talked to people who would have said more or less the same thing but it's good to cover that ground again and again listen carefully and see where it takes us so it starts with the misconception that we know who we are and first that must be dissolved to know who I am. Adita Vanta starts with deconstructing who I am. Um so if you as you said ask the person just off the street who are you and I like the question what are you who are you is more catchy but who can be misleading especially in our day and age who means oh am I a musician or am I a scholar or am I a good person or what kind of person am I or what what's my profession what's my destiny in life what's god's plan for me that's what how I define who I am that's not what advant is talking about it's much more literal sense what exactly are you and then if you push the person in fact it's helpful to ask point to yourself then we generally would say here I am this so ada would say um so you are the body so I guess I am well notice something I the self I say I'm the body but notice that the body is an object object like this glass, like this table. It's an object. It's something that I experience. I the experience of the subject and the object are not literally the same. It's in fact even not allowed either by grammar or philosophy is self-referencing. So you the object must be distinct from the subject. And then in that case the body is an object. Clearly it's an object. Uh the another way of looking at this is that um I I am the experiencer and the body is the experienced. Um I see I can see the body. I can smell I can taste. I can touch. I can even hear my tummy rumbling. So like all my senses operate on the body as an object as they do on other things in the world. So that which is uh an object of experience and that which is the subject of experience in vantic terms the seer and the scene they are never literally the same. So that is an intuition which we apply. These arguments are not geometrical proofs you know they're not mathematical proofs but they are more like legal arguments like a lawyer would argue in front of a jury trying to persuade you with a battery of arguments. So one is the intuition that I am the knower the experiencer um the subject of this body which is the known the experienced the seen the heard the smelt the tasted how is this different from anything else that I see or hear and I don't say I am that thing I see it that doesn't make me a glass I see the table doesn't make me a table that's ridiculous why does it suddenly change when it comes to this object which is also a thing it's a biological machine of enormous complex lexity. But why do I think I am this? Um then another argument even more subtle argument would be notice you are conscious and you're conscious of the body. What vidant is trying to do here is argue we all accept that we are conscious. Nobody denies it. We are conscious but we think we are a body with consciousness or we are a bundle of body mind consciousness and all of that. But Vante is saying no you are consciousness with a body. In fact, more precisely, you're conscious. We are conscious of a body. If we ask the question, you and the body, on which side would you put consciousness? You and that object, on which side would you put consciousness? Where does it what does it feel like? Does it feel like consciousness is there and I'm here? No, it means like I am here. I am conscious of that thing. I have no feeling of whether that thing is conscious. In fact, the only place where we find consciousness is in ourselves. Immediately I must clarify. People will say, "Well, you're surrounded by people. Andre is conscious." But I'm not conscious of Andre's consciousness. I'm conscious of Andre's body, language, behavior, um, you know, the visual evidence, body language, all of that. If I were a telepath, I would look into Andre's mind. But at no point, it's just uh technically impossible. It's impossible in principle to make consciousness an object. That's very interesting. Everything else can be objectified. So you find consciousness is always on the side of the self and the body is an object. Consciousness is not on the side of the body. This thing is an object and I am aware of it. So that which I'm aware of and I the awareness these two must be distinct. Another argument could be the body is a stream of changes. This matter continuously changing here. I'm eating and uh the body is persspiring or evacuating eliminating waste. Matter is continuously flowing through this machine. And I had the intuition of being the same person. The baby's body and the child and the young person and the middle-aged person. So different has changed so much. But a common sense tells me, memory tells me, law tells me you are the same person. That baby and the child, the young person and this middle-aged person, you are the same person. Then the same person and the everchanging body, the neverchanging person self, the everchanging body. How can never changing and everchanging be the same thing? They can't be the same thing. Literally not the same thing. And like this so vidanta will do is point to something in our experience subject object seeer in the scene conscious not conscious changing not changing and begin to convince us I whatever I am not literally the body I the unchanging cannot be the everchanging body. I the consciousness cannot be the object uh which is the body. I the seer cannot be seen or heard or smelled or tasted which is the body. So psychologically, intellectually at least a gap opens up between myself and the body and then I'm trained. Take your time, settle down and regard, see the body as an object, feel it as changing, as not literally me, not literally I. And then our attention is drawn further inwards um to the breath which is part of the prana, the the forces which keep this body alive. And the same arguments apply to it. Changing unchanging in breath, out breath, short breath, long breath. Um the prana which is healthy or sick uh or hungry or fulfilled you know satiated. So it changes like the tides in the ocean the the prana flows in and out of the body. But I notice if you look at it from the perspective of the self I am the same self which breathed in which experience breathing in and I'm the same self which breathed out. You say what's the point? The inb breath and the out breath are not the same. They're two different breaths. But I'm the same self which experience both. So the self is unchanging. The breath is changing. The self is the observer. The breath is the observed. And that's the basis of all mindfulness meditation that you observe the breath. What vanta takes away from that is consciousness is the observer is the experiencer is the subject. The breath is the object the experienced. um conscious and um consciousness is on your side. The breath doesn't feel conscious. I feel conscious. I am conscious of the breath. I am aware of the breath. Uh the breath is not aware of itself. The breath is not aware of anything else. The breath is not aware of me. I am aware of myself. I'm aware of the breath and I'm aware of lots of other things also. So awareness or consciousness is on my side. In this way we argue the same arguments will hold for the breath. And then vanta interiorizes it further. You know, we've gone from the body to something subtler. Interior means not physically inside the body. Because if you go physical inside the body, you'll just find more body. But in in our own experience of ourselves, breath in interiorize further, make it more subtle. What do we find? The mind. If immediately when we look inside, we find the mind. thoughts, feelings, pleasant, unpleasant, happy, sad, miserable, depressed, energetic, uh whatever it is, our feelings, our emotional states, our vital states, um perceptual states, that's the mind, memories, desires and impulses arising and floating away. So, uh that also same arguments will apply. Vant will point out, does it change? And we say, oh boy, does it change all the time. And yet I am the same one. The one who experienced depression, now I experience joy. The one who experienced restlessness, now I experience peace. I am the same one. Restlessness and peace are just not the same. They're de diametrically opposite. So the mind changed dramatically from restlessness to peace, from depression to joy. But I am the same one. Then I can't literally be the mind changing and unchanging subject and object. Even the mind. See here it becomes interesting. Until now we regarded the mind as the subject. I am the mind and I am the subject of this world. I'm I'm basically what I call a person. But now even the mind becomes an object because we can examine our own mind. We can objectify our own thoughts and feelings. Just requires us to introspect a little bit. We notice these feelings appear and disappear. Thoughts and memories appear and disappear. So the mind is also object and I'm the subject. And most dramatic of all, I am conscious of the mind. The mind by itself is not conscious. It's it's not something that I'm stipulating. It's very important to come to realize this. It's extremely important for advant to realize the difference between mind and consciousness. Um I'm aware of the thought. If I just think a thought, it's very easy to do this experiment. Let's just think ABCD. I'm thinking ABC D. Now I notice I am aware of ABCD. Um, ABCD is not aware of me. I'm aware of myself. ABCD is not aware of itself. ABCD is not aware of the next thought. 1 2 3 4. I am aware of both these thoughts. So consciousness is on my side, not on the side of the mind. Even the mind is by itself non-concious. When I say ABCD, it's just like mental talk. So I am conscious of the mind. Consciousness and mind are not literally the same thing. Just a little segue, a little you know footnote here. This whole issue of AI now I think it just goes to prove this point. People are uh scared of AI because AI seems to be doing more or less the stuff which we thought only we could do. Be creative, write stories, make compose poems or songs, make a movie. AI is doing all of that. Um, we thought, you know, the robots will come and take over the hard work, the laundry and the cleaning. Now it's we have to do still have to do the laundry and the dishwashing and the cleaning, but the machines are taking over the higher order human functions, creativity, decision making. So where are we? Vanta has the answer. Vanta says it's no surprise that these machines are able to do that because you are not even the mind. The as the body is a biological machine um the mind is a psychological machinery. It's a machinery. It's extremely subtle and powerful still machinery and it's no no wonder that you have come up with another kind of machinery a silicon based machinery which can duplicate the activity of the mind. But notice guess what there's one thing that these AIs are unable to do. They are not conscious. Ask any of the experts in Silicon Valley. uh is your AI conscious? They will say even some of the most optimistic ones would say rather defiantly why not? But do you really believe they're already conscious or they could be conscious and they would say no. Most people would say they're not conscious in that sense. They don't they don't have feelings. They are machines extremely clever machines and they are intelligent. There's nobody who doubts they're intelligent. There's very few who would claim that they're conscious. That means you can be intelligent without being conscious. going to prove what Vanta is trying to show you that the mind and consciousness are different. Um, and it could go further. Suppose you dismiss the perception of the world, dismiss perception of the body, dismiss perception of the mind, just utter stillness and silence, something like deep sleep. If you can simulate it there also that silence, the absence of everything, that too is being revealed to consciousness. That's also an experience. The silence of deep sleep or coma um or general anesthesia is not an absence of experience. It's an experience of absence. Whenever you have experience, consciousness must be there. So there is a very you can debate about this because this is seems very radical but there's consciousness even in deep sleep even in general anesthesia even in consciousness doesn't go away. In fact in principle it's impossible to Imagine the absence of consciousness. If you could visualize the absence of consciousness, there is consciousness. That's what's experiencing the absence of consciousness. So now you do this and dissolve the sense of self in the body mind. So what we have what have we achieved so far? We deconstructed ourselves. I'm sure I know what I am. I have this intuitive feeling. I know what I am. That's the first thing I know. But now whatever candidate I put forward to the question show yourself body now I have to admit I'm not literally the body I'm not literally bones or flesh or blood the breath prana I'm not literally prana the mind thoughts my own story my memory my narrative about myself I'm not literally that either those are also objects the intellectual understanding of who I am that also is the part of the intellect it's part of the mind dismiss everything that also is an object. So whatever I put forth as I know myself but yet I can't point to myself. Whatever I point to I have forced to admit no not quite I'm not quite that. So what we have achieved now is a deconstruction of our sense of self. If I stopped here I would be a good Buddhist. That's where the Buddhists stop. They say this is enough the no self but we still left with decart and his intuition that I still do exist. I can't deny my own existence. So vant asks us this point now that you on one side you are sure that you do exist and yet you can't point whatever you pointed to as yourself now you yourself admit that I can't be that. So we are left with the question this absolutely sure sense of uh existence in indubitable sense of your own existence but now I can't point to what am I then what is this absolutely sure existence what's it mean as long as I'm the body I can point to what I am is this this is what I am as long as I'm a mind I I can point to myself that I am this bundle of body and mind at least I can know what I am this person but if I'm not the body not the mind and yet I do exist What am I? And there vanta says what is the one thing that you cannot dismiss? Consciousness. Existence. I can't dismiss existence. And I can't dismiss that I'm conscious. Not conscious in the sense that I'm thinking. Even if I drop all thinking, here is where we leave theart behind. Even if I drop all thinking, I'm still aware of not thinking. I asked a philosophy professor that I think, therefore I am. Every time Decart falls asleep, he stops thinking. So does he not exist? Does he pop into existence every time he wakes up? In fact, there are gaps between thoughts even when we are awake. So does he pop in and out of existence? There's a school of of Buddhism, the mind only school which actually says this that our existence is actually a series of flashes of consciousness. But Vanta says even the gap between the flashes is also illumined by consciousness. So consciousness is also existence. Existence is consciousness phenomenologically speaking. There we have the bare nature of the self. But that consciousness is not an object. It can never be an object. Everything is an object to it. It can never be denied. And yet it's not an object. It's something utterly different. For the first time we're confronted with something utterly different from anything that we have ever known. All that we have known were objects. The objects to consciousness. In fact, even the so-called subject, even the so-called self was an object to consciousness. Now we are left with the pure subject. This is what it means by pure consciousness. Doesn't mean a consciousness which is very clean or uh um you know pure in a moral sense. It's just pure because it is bare consciousness or bare awareness. This is who who we are at our uh at the ground level. Okay. So this is only the beginning of Vanta Adita Vanta. This is where a school like Sanka a very ancient school it stops here. It says that so we have two ultimate kinds of reality consciousness and objects. We are consciousness and the universe is objects. This collection of objects which call the universe they give it a name nature procriti. So they have a thoroughly dualistic system purush and procriti consciousness and object and that's intuitive kind of because that's how we experience the world subject and object. It just goes pushes it to its limit and says everything objective is includes your body, includes your mind, your thoughts, our it's not yours. They're all they all belong to the object. They all belong to nature and you are bare awareness itself. The utterly non-objective pure subject awareness. But Vanta goes further. Um it says that what is the relationship between subject and object? The next question it asks is that uh all right I am awareness but here is this objective universe. It contains everything I knew so far entire universe but also what I thought I I was the body is part of this universe. Physics says the body is part of the universe and we go beyond physics. we go to vanta saying even my thoughts my mind um the personality I consider myself to be that's also part of the universe that's also part of the of uh objective nature um then what's the relationship between me the consciousness and all these objects what's the relationship between purusha and procriti sananka says they're different they interact and the problem there would be if we go by first principles by argument is How would two utterly different things interact in two things which are as Shankara says like light and darkness they can't interact and yet they seem to interact why why can't they interact where would they touch the point at which they interact would that be consciousness or object it's everything is either object or consciousness and they're interacting you use the light metaphor in Vanta we often use the met but you know there it has it limitation too because light is also material light and this is also a material table or a glass and it's reasonable that material light can interact with this material objects but if consciousness is not not a material light then how can it interact with a material universe which is utterly different from it and so adanta comes to this conclusion that they are not utterly different. They are in fact one and the same thing. And here it might be confusing. Didn't you expend so much energy trying to separate the two? Yes, we did. But notice the fine print. We said that you pure consciousness, you are distinct from everything that you experience. The entire universe, including your body, what seemed to be most intimate to you in your personality. You're distinct from all of that. You are this impersonal consciousness. And we hold on to that. But now what we are saying is we never said you are distinct from all of this. But what about all of this? Is all of this universe distinct from you? The vanta says no. What does it mean? In our dreams, the dreamer experiences a dream world and dream people and actions. In fact, a dream body also. We are ourselves there in our own dreams like an avatar in a virtual reality. So we are there. But when I wake up, the whole thing disappears. I the dreamer I am distinct from whatever I dream about the contents of my dream because I can exist I exist before the dream I exist during the dream I exist after the dream but the contents of the dream they don't exist apart from me they are all projections of the dreamer's mind similarly what adavant is saying the final conclusion it comes to is yes you are this impersonal consciousness pure consciousness um bare consciousness the ultimate subject. It is true. But whatever you experience this entire universe, physical and mental, all of this is also you. You are appearing to yourself as your own object. [snorts] So just like a dreamer experiences himself as everything in the dream, you are distinct from the entire universe. But the universe is not distinct from you. This is the meaning of nonduality. There is no second reality apart from you, the bare consciousness, the pure consciousness. This is what's called Maya. That pure consciousness can appear to itself as a physical vast physical universe, as time as space, as objects in time and space, as bodies, as personalities, as lifetimes, birth and death, all of that. And yet it continues to be nothing other than pure consciousness. So this is the meaning that Brahman is all. This is the meaning of you are that tutwa. This is the meaning of nonduality. Non-duality in what sense? Non-duality of the universe with consciousness. It's like if you look out at the Pacific Ocean, you have thousands and thousands of waves. But the nonduality of the all the waves with regard to water. If you if we count water then there's only one thing in the in the Pacific Ocean. You can't say there's water and a thousand waves because then you're double counting. The waves are also water. So the waves are nondual with respect to even though there are thousand or 10,000 in number and always changing they are nondual with respect to the waves with the water. If you see the water there's only one thing there that's water. The 10,000 waves are also that same water. They may be continuously changing but what does not change is that they are water. Um they may be big and small. There may be tsunami waves or little bubbles but what does not change is that they are water. And of course this water wave analogy has its limitations. But here consciousness itself is appearing as its own object and experiencing itself. This makes you one with the universe. That's why it's non-dual. Nothing in the universe is separate from you. This makes you the ground of this entire universe. I mean I like the Buddhist language that uh that primordial ground of being if you do not know it it appears as samsara. If you know it it appears as nirvana. This thing itself it appears as samsara as long as we do not know who or what we are. And when we know realize who or what we are this itself will appear as nirvana as freedom. So this is the basic theory of advant philosophy and teaching of ada vidant. A quick share if you've been watching for a while you know that one tool I've really enjoyed and gotten a lot of benefit from over the past few years is red light therapy. I usually start my mornings with meditation a few days per week. Combine it with red light therapy and yeah, there's so much studies, over 4,000 peer-reviewed studies showing cellular healing, boosting collagen, supporting testosterone, and more. If you're curious about trying it, Bon Charge is a solid choice. Their red light devices like this one, the Demi, have the lowest EMF levels on the market. There's no flicker, and they combine near infrared and red light into one lightweight device. They ship worldwide and have an easy return policy. They also offer an array of other sciencebacked wellness products that are worth checking out. You can head to bondcharge.com/nolithself and use coupon code know to save 15%. That's b h a r ge.com/nolithself and use coupon code to save 15%. Buy charge products are all HSA fsa eligible giving you taxfree savings of up to 40%. I hope you enjoy. Links in description as always. See you on the next one. So this distinction of falsity uh that the world and its many different appearances and essence are is non-dual. It is not distinct actually in the way that we were describing as subject and object but that water is the one pervasive uh thing that everything is made up of like the many different waves in the ocean. Now can you help us kind of close this gap to be able to understand and experience for ourselves and maybe you have a guided practice maybe it's just more through the reasoning um how cuz for many I think it that's the big jump is to say that okay I can see that I am from a fundamental place my conscious awareness is observing my body my breath my sensations even my thought and subtle fluctuations of my mind um even absence itself And yet to make the claim that like ontologically speaking that the that the universe is is not separate from that field. How would you how would you walk us to that understanding? >> Yeah. So that's a big jump. Um the first the first part of it is not all that difficult to come to that I am awareness. The first part of it is going from I'm yeah I admit I'm aware who doesn't we're all aware we're all conscious. So I think of myself as a body with consciousness and from going from there to consciousness with a body I think of myself as this bundle of body mind consciousness going from there to consciousness with a mind and a body that's the first step and vanta says it's already a fact it is trying to get us to see that it's not get us trying to get us to change anything at all except our perspective of it getting us to flip that and there's actually a moment of an actual breakthrough, you know, where it suddenly falls into place. Oh, I see. But then there's the further inquiry into this universe of experience um are they they seem to be things out there where says it's only because we are body based. If I'm this body, clearly all the other bodies and all the living and non-living things are outside me. This is quite clear. If I'm mind then my mind refers to objects which might be outside the mind or at least even the thoughts they they come and go. But as consciousness in which all of this appears is all of this ontologically separate from consciousness or not. Is it a separate independently existing reality? Vanta would claim not. That's the doctrine of the falsity of the world. Uh it's like saying there are 10,000 things ever changing things in this ocean called waves. Uh as long as I don't know what water is and then somebody would be right in pointing out what you are thinking of is not real. What you are thinking of are the reality there is water. You're thinking there are things called waves independently existing out there without an appreciation of what water is. The moment you understand what water is, then the waves are also explained what they are in reality. So that's the doctrine of the the the falsity of the world. What the Mahayana Buddhist would call the emptiness of existence. Uh in itself they are not independent separately existing entities. Before we go into the practice, we take a little philosophical step back and say what alternatives could there be to this? Take the most common alternative materialism. Materialism is also a kind of monism just says that the one reality of the universe the one nondual reality of the univer materialist can also say I'm a non-dualist but I'm the non-dual reality which I'm talking about is matter and everything else is nothing but matter whereas the adin says the nondual reality is consciousness. Even matter is nothing but consciousness. So what is this relationship between matter and consciousness? Today it's this is the hot subject. It's called the hard problem of consciousness. Going back to the question about AI and consciousness. Notice that um it should have been easy to replicate consciousness. Why? Let me tell you why. AI is doing some really complex stuff. Creativity is difficult. AI is doing it. Decision making is difficult. AI is doing it. Driving a Google car waybo taxi is difficult. AI is doing it. These are very complex tasks. It requires billions of dollars and thousands of hours of training to get the AI to do that. Such difficult complex, high order tasks which human beings no other animal even is capable of doing it. But AI can do it. Whereas consciousness is very simple. It does only one and one thing only. All that consciousness does is give you the feeling of it feels like something. It gives us experience. The complexity of experience is entirely the complexity of the object being experienced. It is not the complexity of the experiencing consciousness. The complexity of exper conscious the experiencing consciousness is simple. It's just bare consciousness. It's like like bare light. It there's no complexity there. Whereas uh what we find as a very complex experience of life entire complexity is the objective universe. So this very simple consciousness why is it so difficult to replicate? If it was nothing more than the mind or the body should have been easy to replicate or take a look at the heart problem of consciousness. Um if the brain is just another organ of the body which it is the kidney is an organ, the lung is an organ, the brain. So why should it be so difficult to you know pin down what it does exactly? If if we if we assume that it produces consciousness should have been pretty simple to pin it down. These processes are the ones which are producing consciousness and here we demonstrate it. But we run up against that hard problem of consciousness. the wall that objective processes you can break down complex objective processes into simple objective processes. The last thing that you can observe in the brain, the subtlest thing with our fMRI machines and all are minute electrical activity, neurochemical activity, electrical activity in the brains, but just neurochemicals and electrical activity. It's not music, it's not a glorious sunset, it's not the feeling of pain or sorrow. There is no feels like about that electrical activity. Where does that come from? You just have to say somehow. No, nobody knows that. Therefore, this movement, now we're back to ontology again. This movement to reduce consciousness to matter, consciousness to brain is running up against huge obstacles. We have we have no way we have we don't even understand it. That's a very interesting thing. You get a traction on a problem when you have one or two explanations of contending theories. Take a guess how many contending explanations of consciousness there are. Robert in his closer to truth podcast, he talks about a landscape of 325 theories, distinguishable theories, 325 competing explanations of what consciousness is. The latest issue of Scientific American has an article which talks about 29 major theories of consciousness and they are very different from each other. And what does it mean? It just means we don't know. In science when you come narrow down on a particular theory and we the peer reviewed process says okay we agree this is the explanation of this phenomenon that's when science says we know now it can become a published paper or part of your textbooks that's called knowledge in science. When you have one theory, you can revise it later. But if you have 29 competing theories or worse 325 competing theories, it just means we have utterly no idea of what's going on. We are grasping at various possibilities. Therefore, the movement to reduce consciousness to matter, brain, neurological processes, they were um or a broader attempt to reduce the subject to the object. There was a movement for example in 1950s and60s the common language philosophy in Oxford University. So uh Gilbert Ri um this uh the concept of mind you can reduce consciousness or mind to a way of talking. There's no such thing. It's just an illusion created by the way we talk about it. None of that works. The question still remains on the other hand if we entertain the possibility that matter can be reduced to consciousness. The first immediate thing we see is that tallies with our experience. If that's your ontology that consciousness is primary, notice then ontology and epistemology agree happily. Epistemically, knowledge and experience-wise consciousness is prior. Nobody denies that. Nobody. Even the materialist does not deny that consciousness has to be prior. It's consciousness which experiences. So everybody agrees epistemically consciousness epistemologically it's first. Ontologically what is primary or prior? Materialist says matter is prior. Our experience says that it is to consciousness that matter appears. The philosopher Gallen Strawson says that uh you know he wrote a tongue-in-cheek article in the New York Times. Uh the hard problem of matter. He says there is no hard problem of consciousness. We are conscious. That's the first fact. It's before every fact. And then matter appears to us in consciousness. So the question is what is matter? Not what is consciousness? And when we investigate matter uh we find it is disappearing before our very eyes you know into subatomic particles into quarks now they're talking about super strings and whatn not it's becoming more and more mysterious um in this context I remember um the physicist cosm cosmologist Penrose I heard a quote about he says I'm uncomfortable being called a materialist Because you see I do not understand what matter is. It's becoming more mysterious and curiously enough somebody pointed out that in the last 20 years in physics conferences there's a curious new entrant consciousness which is the last thing you would expect. You'd think consciousness is a biological thing product of the brain. Why is it back into the fundamental nature of of the universe again? This points to the adic thing that uh maybe the two are not different. On one side time, space matter, energy, on the other side, consciousness. If you can't reduce consciousness to matter, then it stands to reason how about treating consciousness as something fundamental. Leave them apart consciousness and matter. But then you have the interaction problem of Sanka. So if you do the other way around in principle consciousness is something that is that which is experienced in um matter is that which is experienced in consciousness. Notice it preserves all our scientific findings and it solves the hard problem of consciousness also in the sense that consciousness becomes fundamental. What does consciousness do? It gives you experience. It feels like something to experience. If it then the implications of it if consciousness cannot be reduced to brain in that case it opens up the possibility that when the brain dies consciousness need not die if it's not being produced by the brain if the brain is something like the door everybody who is here has walked through the door but we don't say that door is amazing how did it produce all these amazing human beings no you can learn something about the stuff in this room by looking at the door certain dimensions and limitations don't so you can learn something a lot about mind and consciousness by studying the brain as we are but it doesn't explain conscious doesn't even explain mind so um here is the onlogical justification you can Indian philos by the way these are not final answers because Indian philosophy thousands of years did deliberated upon this and came up with every possible um alternative which is there in the world today all those 325 theories were also prefigured in many of the Indian thinkers centuries or millennia ago. There are materialists, there are idealists, there are subjective idealists, there are absolutists, there are um positions which has still not got any corresponding modern equivalent. But I find adic answer very satisfying philosophy reason but also your personal preference. It locates um the ultimate reality in yourself. It locates the ground of all knowledge in yourself and it also locates all value in yourself. Sat chit ananda if you look at philosophy um there's a study of reality ontology. There is there's study of knowledge epistemology and there is also something called axiology where you club together all questions of value of beauty of value of goodness of morality and look at what vdanta does it says that there is the ground of all ontology is this being or existence sat what makes all knowledge possible is chit or consciousness what makes all value possible is this anand or bliss and then goes further and says these three are not separate They're in fact the same entity. That which is ontologically primary is also epistemologically primary is also exologically primary. And then it makes the most stunning claim of all. It is you. It is the real nature of the self. It's not that the self is part of that ultimate reality. No. Uh the self is that ultimate reality and that ultimate reality is the self. I always like to start with a really profound story uh well-known story of the 10th man. So these um it's old Indian story of how 10 people were friends were on a journey and they crossed a river and then they had a doubt whether everybody's crossed or did somebody drown and let's count. So one person starts counting and he counts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 that can't be right. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. And he says, "Oh, the 10th person's drowned. He's not here. He must have drowned." And somebody says, "No, you're you're not doing it right." And that guy counts. Everyone who counts finds only nine. And then they sit down and start wailing and weeping. Oh, our poor friend, he drowned. And a wise passer by comes by and he says, "Why are you crying my friends?" Well, we were 10 and our poor friend drowned. Now we are. Uh, how do you know that person's drowned? Well, we counted. There are only nine of us left now. And so the clearly the 10th man is not here. He must have drowned. We just crossed the river. And this guy, this person must have counted that them and found they were 10. And he understood what's going on. Then he says, "The 10th person is there. Don't worry. Don't stop crying. Really is there. Will you show us?" Yes, I'll show show him to you. It's perfectly all right. How? Uh and he says, "You count. We've already counted. Just humor me. Count again. So one of them got up and started counting. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I told you nine. And this passer by catches hold of the counter's hand and turns it around and says 10. You are the 10th. In Sanskrit dashamasi, thou art the 10th. And this man goes, "Oh, I see. I'm the 10th." 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. Wow. Others say, "Let me try. Let me try." And they try and everybody finds the 10th one. and they're very happy. Now, Adita Vanta uses this story. In fact, in more than one text, it's been used in one text specially called the panchadashi. So, it illustrates the uh seven stages of the spiritual journey in the adita path. So, there's the first the um ignorance about the existence of the 10th person. Then the error that um the 10th person is drowned. It's like samsara we do not know who we are or what we are. Then the error comes sorrow, struggle, suffering, life and death samsara. That's the second stage. They're like they are weeping for the 10th person. Then the third stage is the um wise person comes along and tells them the 10th person is there that they still don't know what the problem. They don't know what the solution is. Where is the 10th person? But they believe the um wise person they take it that it's true. This is called indirect knowledge in vanta. When we read about vanta and we are told about Brahman, existence, consciousness, bliss and all the stuff, we begin to form a general idea of what is which way we are going. So such a thing is there and somehow I am that and therefore everything is fine. Um so this is indirect knowledge. It still is not. Then um then comes the um the direct realization the the stage where da the 10th and you suddenly realize a brahasmi I am Brahman. My ignorance is removed. next stage and then the sixth and seventh last stages is um that um you know my sorrow goes away the result of it and bliss is found so the stages of uh this story when you realize oh the 10th person is there I am the 10th person 10th person is there and I am the 10th there's a world of difference between the two there is Brahman there is an onlogical ground of being an ultimate reality great but what about me I am that reality. If that becomes clear, suddenly it flashes. It's it makes all the difference. And then there's a further stage of the sixth and seventh stages of where progressively in our lives we see the disappearance of sorrow and the pervasion of bliss. All right. So this is the story and then we go into the practice. So there are multiple modes of inquiry in advant. We shall sample one of them. Um so when we are ready we can sit comfortably. Vanta by the way can be done in meditation posture with eyes closed or with eyes open. But you are Brahman regardless of whether you are in meditation or you're working or playing or relaxing all the time. You're exactly the same reality and it's equally available everywhere. But initially it's easier if we are quiet. So we sit still and [snorts] keeping the back straight. Closing the eyes when we are ready. Breathing in and breathing out. Relaxed. Let us bring our attention to the body. Opening the eyes, we look and down at the body, at our hands, at our lap. Closing the eyes we feel the sensation of the body from internally the little aches and pains are the sensation of warmth different parts of the body. This is the body and question is am I literally the body? When we are invited to notice that the body has changed dramatically. Look at what it is now. And what it was when it was a baby. So very different in size and shape. And as a child, as a young person, even what it was 5 years ago, it has changed dramatically. It's changing further. The body under goes the so-called sixfold changes. Traditional vanta talk about the sixfold changes. Birth and then coming into existence. then childhood, then youth and maturity, then aging and death. So the six changes and yet I feel I am the same one. I was the one who was in that baby's body. I was the one identified with a child's body. And the same one at one time claimed to be a young person. Now I claim to be a middle-aged person. I am the same one. The same and the not the same. The changing and the unchanging cannot literally be the same. Cannot be one and the same thing. So I the unchanging and the body the everchanging. I can't literally be the body relaxed. Stay with that idea. Now another thing I see that the body is an object to all my senses. I can see the body. I can touch the body. I can smell the body, taste the body, even hear the sounds in the body. The body is objectified by all the senses. It is that which is seen, known. And I am the subject, the seer, the knower. The seer, the knower is never known. Never become. I never become an object to myself. The body is an object to myself. Therefore, I the seer and the body the scene cannot be the same thing. I the subject and the body the object cannot literally be the same thing. Relaxed. Take a breath. I'm aware of the body. I'm conscious. I notice I conscious I notice myself. I am conscious and I notice the body also. And as far as I can notice in my experience, there's nothing to suggest that the body knows me. The body is aware of me or the body is conscious of itself. It's an object in my consciousness. I am conscious. The body is not conscious. And if I stay with that I see I the conscious and the body the non-concious cannot literally be the same thing. Hence I conclude even as I am experiencing the body I feel the body now that this body the changing body and I the unchanging I cannot be the body. The body which is seen an object of knowledge and I the subject the knower. I cannot be the body. The body which is not aware. I am aware of the body. I the consciousness the awareness and the body that which is not conscious or aware in itself cannot be the same thing. I am not the body. We take a breath. Relax. gently draw our attention to something more subtle in our experience of ourselves phenomenologically. The breath itself. Breathe in and out. Notice how it is ever changing. In breath, out breath, short breath, long breath, shallow breaths, deep breaths. And I am the same one who experienced the inb breath, out breath, long breath, short breath etc. I do not change with the varieties of breath. I the unchanging, the breath, the everchanging, everflowing. And I know the breath. I am the knower, the seer. I'm mindful of the breath in mind mindfulness meditation. The knower and the known cannot be the same. So I the knower of this knowledge the subject and the breath the object of this knowledge of the breath are not the same thing. Third I'm clearly conscious and I'm conscious of the breath. I'm also conscious of myself, my own existence and I'm conscious of other things. But as far as I can experience, the breath is not conscious of itself, nor is it conscious of me, nor is it conscious of anything else, including the next breath. Therefore, I the conscious and the breath and non-concious cannot literally be the same thing. relaxed. I look inwards further. Not body, not breath. Subtler inwards. Thoughts are there. Memories are there. Sensations are there. Impulses and desires are there. Likes and dislikes come and go. This is the mind. And similarly same arguments apply. I notice let us notice the everchanging nature of the mind. That is something we can notice immediately. How much the mind changes in the course of a single day. We look further and we notice the mind can be known. I can introspect and know my own thoughts, my own desires, can register them, my perceptions, my feelings, my memories. The mind, the known and I, whatever I am, the knower of the mind, I cannot literally be the same thing. I the knower, the mind is the known. Moving on, a very subtle observation. I'm clearly aware and the mind most startlingly the mind is not aware by itself. Think a thought. ABCD or 1 2 3 4. Just think it right now. And notice the ABCD is something that I am aware of. ABCD is not aware of me. I'm aware of myself. ABCD is not aware of itself. ABCD is not aware of the next thought or the preceding one. I am aware of all the thoughts. If I choose to direct my attention, I will objectify the thoughts. So I the unchanging, I the knower, I the consciousness, I cannot literally be the thoughts of the mind, the feelings in the mind which are ever changing, which are known, which are not conscious. Breathing normally relaxed. Let us bring our attention to the higher mind. The intellect knowledge. The very instrument which is doing all this analysis right now. Whatever we are doing now is being done by the intellect. That which knows. That which has a firm sense of ego. I am so and so which is clear to itself even that changes whenever I learn something new intellect has changed and I was the one who did not know now I know I'm the same one I the same the changing intellect cannot be the same cannot be identical I know the intellect I'm aware of when I don't know something I I can see that I don't understand when I understood it. I could see that I did understand it and therefore I am the knower of the intellect. The various stages of the intellect and the intellect is the known and finally I am conscious of the intellect. The intellect just like artificial intelligence is not conscious of me. It's not conscious in itself nor is it conscious of me. So I the unchanging the intellect ever changing I the knoworth intellect the known I the consciousness intellect non-concious I cannot be the intellect also relaxed breathing normally let us look back the physical body let us feel the physical body which I am not it's there but But I am not it. And breathe in and out. This breath here it is this breath but I am not it. And the mind thoughts memories it's there subtle. I can look at it but I am not it. And the intellect which is doing this kind of an analysis that also I am not because I'm aware of it. It is changing. All of this I drop the physical, the vital, the mental, the intellect. I drop. They disappear into nothing. They simulate a complete blank. What is it like to be in deep sleep? What is it like to be in general anesthesia? That utter absence, even the absence of an eye, the experienced self, that also goes, there's nothing there to experience. That nothingness itself is the object of experience. Consciousness is still there, but not obvious because there's nothing to experience. So I am not that blankness that nothingness also that darkness of deep sleep or general anesthesia that two comes and goes that too is known that too is a non-concious object or absence of objects relaxed. Next. Now I bring to mind the 10th man's story. How they counted the 10th man counted all the other nine and did not count himself. But why did he not count himself? That's because all the other nine are objects. All along he's used to counting objects, noticing objects, dealing with objects, speaking about objects, thinking and feeling about objects. Never about the true self. And thus when he counted the nine, he couldn't find the 10th because there was no object to count as the 10th. Where would he look for the 10th? exactly where he found the other nine outside as objects to be counted. But the 10th is not an object to be counted. It does not mean that the 10th doesn't exist. It's drowned. No, he's himself the 10th. And so the turn comes from the ninth. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. Then turning towards oneself and noticing oneself as the witness of the nine as the counter of the nine that completes the 10. Similarly, let us do it now. Relaxed breathing normally. This we will just notice here is the body. I notice the body. Feel the body. Here is the breath. [sighs] I notice it. I feel it. Here are thoughts, memories, sensations. That's the mind. And then there is the intellect which is doing all this thinking. Then visualize the absence of all of them. Nothing. Now quick to whom or to what are these five? The physical, the vital, the mental, the intellectual, the absence. What are they appearing to? Don't try to answer it. Be it. breathing normally relaxed as the attention goes to the mind breath and finally the body and we become aware of where we are sitting. Notice that light that bare light that bare consciousness to which the physical the mental the vital the intellectual by appearing and changing and disappearing that one will still be there when we open our eyes and interact with the world. It wouldn't have changed. Gently open our eyes. Look around. It is by that that light which experience the mind, the intellect, the breath, the body. It's by that light I'm experiencing the world. That light I am. And now let's use the intellect to appreciate what we have found. If that light is not the body, then the properties of the body belong to the body and not to that light. The aging is aging of the body. The sickness or hunger and thirst is of the prana, not of that light. That light neither ages. It can't. The body ages. The light reveals the aged body. That light does not sicken. The prana sickens. That light reveals the health and sickness of the prana. That light cannot be depressed. It notices the depression in the mind. It illumines and reveals the depression in the mind. The arisal of depression like a dark cloud in a blue sky and the disappearance of that cloud. The vast blue sky is unaffected. The light that which shines upon the depressed mind that light in itself is not depressed. Confusion, incomprehension, understanding, a dull intellect or a sharp intellect, brilliant or just plain dumb. Those are attributes of the intellect, not of the light. So I am the witness unaffected of the five layers of the human personality. The physical, the vital, the mental includes the emotional also the intellectual and the absence of all of these all appear and disappear to that one light which I am. And that one light shining through these bodies and minds is what we truly are. This is the result of this first discovery in adv not mind. Shankarachara sings I'm not the intellect. I'm not the memory. I'm not the ego. I'm not the mind. I am bliss. I am consciousness. I am Shiva. I am Shiva. He says this is exactly what it means. It's something available to us all the time. We can notice it. All right. That's one of the kind of inquiries that we do. Notice here it's a meditation but not quite a meditation in the yogic sense, not quite a meditation in the mindfulness sense. >> Yeah. >> Thank you for that guided practice. I found it very beautiful. And also to picture however many thousands or hundreds of thousands of people may have joined in on that collectively and just to feel the energy uh and the image of all those people sitting touches my heart. Um and uh and the potency of that reminder. To me, this is where the intellectual understanding by tasting it experientially becomes an embodied way of being. When you took us from the Ten Man story where you go from the state of ignorance of self to awareness of ignorance to awareness of self to then you could say the end of suffering, the rejoicing in bliss of your true nature, of your true self. To me, it fundamentally completely changes your life and how you perceive pleasure, pain, what freedom and liberation is, and how possible it is for us all individually. Because right now we are living in a paradigm that is baked into po postmodern culture that says happiness comes by virtue of externally arranging your out external circumstances in a certain way. The acquisition of more and the more money the more followers uh the more power you have the happier and you know the more increase in well-being. And what this experience coupled with the reasoning allows us to to really see in our life is that we have all of those uh sensations all that that experience of freedom and liberation within us irrespective of what's happening externally. And so to me, this is where I would like to ask and inquire with you around this energy of what renunciation truly is. Not as a mere turning away to go into the seclusion of forests and a sort of resignation and retirement from the world, which is I think conventionally thought of, but as an inner orientation towards how I believe Socrates was quoted going to Athens and saying, "Who knew there were so many things in this world in which I do not need?" Wow. Yes. >> And by then having this experience where we just went through a guided practice and you carry that and and it resonates and you build that experience into more of your daily life, it fundamentally changes how you orient towards your work, your relationships. There's not a single area in which it doesn't transform. And so I would love to get your perspective on that that quality of renunciation as it changes fundamentally how we relate towards all life. I'm glad you asked this question about renunciation. Um, Vanta gives a tremendous emphasis on this renunciation. Swami Viveant has said renunciation is the turning point in all the yogas. What he means by that is spirituality starts with renunciation. This is not stressed enough. Not just in California or in America or but even in India. It's not something that we want to hear. First of all, it seems rather dark and bitter. Oh, this is a nice world. I have to give up all this. The answer is that genuine spirituality is not possible without renunciation. What consider what is the the counter the the opposite of renunciation? It's going around in this world of objects. If I am consciousness itself, then I'm going around in this world of objects with a begging bowl with a hat in hand looking for handouts. Make me happy. Make me happy. Make me happy. Give me this. Behave this way with me. Say nice things about me. My fulfillment, my happiness depends on the object. Whereas it does not. My real nature is this everfilled consciousness. If I'm not the mind, if I'm not even the intellect, if I'm not the memory, if I'm just bare light as bare light, what am I thinking? Nothing. What do I need? Nothing. The need comes when the mind starts acting. But if I've shut down the mind and just bear light, illumining the shut down mind, what do I need? Nothing. What am I afraid of? Nothing. Fear comes when the mind kicks in. Um then what who who am I against? Who who are my enemies? Nobody. The moment I realize I am awareness, I am this light. Then I immediately realize everybody is this light. Why? As long as I am a body, everybody's a body to me. As long as I'm a mind, a person, everybody's a person to me. The moment I step back from physicality and personhood into that light, then I realize everybody is that light and bodies are different. Even persons are clearly different. Vanta gives another dramatic insight. Vant is full of these um what our senior swami used to call thought bombs. Uh it an explosion which says oh how many consciousnesses are there? I think Shreddinger said consciousness is that singular which has no plural. Is it possible that we are all one light, one consciousness? Then we are all one being literally not just the brotherhood or sisterhood of human beings. No, that's just rhetoric. Literally one being we just one. And then shining through multiple bodies and minds, we become all these beings, all these sentient creatures. So Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita one undivided appear as if divided into many one undivided light which I am not part of it the whole of it there's no part and whole there actually it's undivided so indivisible I am that as everybody else is now from that perspective if I forget that and I engage with the world is basically I'm going dependent on the world I'm incomplete and I need the world to complete me and it'll never because I'm operating on a wrong premise. I am fundamentally complete. So to turn away from that to step back from that is what's called renunciation. Without that even spiritual practice with practices will be again part of my project of trying to find completion in the world. It will become part of my repertoire and you know I learn languages. I also learn meditation. uh I learn um um philosophies I also learn adita it's all part of the same project it won't work I mean to some extent it'll give its results it's pleasant it's very nice but the enlightenment which I'm seeking crucial to that is this renunciation what is the renunciation that this world for the first time you realize what is it really to be I am not dependent on the world there is nothing really and deeply that I the world can give I can demand a million and one things from the world and the world will give me everything. Vander says do not desire anything because you will get it. We think desiring is will lead to frustration. No, if you desire something you will get it in this life or the next and you will realize you it didn't do anything for you. Nothing will do anything for us because it cannot. It's not meant to you are already complete. So when so to discover the treasure within to discover that I am complete I must give up this illusion that I'm ever dependent on the world for stuff initially we try to rearrange the world to our liking a little wiser thing is to rearrange my life to to make myself happy that's a wiser way of doing things even wiser than that is to rearrange my inner life my thoughts emotions meditation does that devotion inner not change that that's where most of positive psychology stops. Vanta says go further not changing stuff in the world. You can change stuff in the world. You can't help it. You will keep changing stuff in the world in our own lives in our minds. All very good. But stepping back from all of them with the query who am I apart from the world. Who am I other than the body? Other than my thoughts and when I discovered that to discover that renunciation is necessary. Now that renunciation doesn't mean you have to be a monk. You have to live on top of a mountain in Tapanga. Uh do you have to do that or can you be in a city? Can you be in the midst of life? I saw that book Maharaj. >> Yeah, I am that. >> I am that. So one story I like about him is when he became enlightened, he had this enlightenment moment. Um he thought that's it. I'm done with this. He used to live in a very poor area of Mumbai and he would sell these hand rolled cigarettes the cheapest kind and it was a difficult life. So he thought I'm going to give I don't need any of this. I'm off to the Himalayas. I'm going to spend the rest of this this physical existence in immersed in bliss. And then he thought what am I doing? That which I have found what is there in the Himalayas is equally here. What is here will just be the same in the Himalayas. Why am I making a change externally? And he came back and he lived in that in those circumstances very difficult circumstances for the rest of his life in great bliss and joy. So this is renunciation. Often renunciation is put in such a way that you must give up your family, you must be a monk, you must give up sensual pleasures, you must give up uh all artistic intellectual pursuits, uh property and all of that. then only it seems like a dry and suicidal advice you know that you're asking me to give up everything I know I know you're promising me infinite existence Brahman but all those are words those are concepts but this is physical life so Vant said it's like a man who was troubled by a mosquito and his friend came and said that look I'll help you just sit still and he gave such a blow he killed the mosquito but he killed his friend So renunciation seems to be like that. The advice is you give up everything. Maybe it'll help me but it's at the same time it's destroying everything that I know. That's my life you're talking about. What renation really means Viveand says is to see the divinity in everything. Wherever you are whomever you are with that ultimate reality which you're seeking is already here. You are that and all of this is also that reality. To see that is renunciation. One of the opanishads ishopishad there's a very famous first line which Mahatma Gandhi said that if all of Hinduism were to disappear and just that first line of the ishopishad remain all of Hinduism would remain and the oponyish first line goes all this in this universe which moves and moves not is to be covered with God. Now covered with God means what? The commentator Shankarachara says covered with God means to uncover God. It's already there. Not by imposing, not by positive talk, affirmation. It's gone. It's God. No, not like that. Uncover God is already there. And what how do you uncover? He says discover. How do you discover? Now it's pretty easy. Easy means you know the path. Now dis any discovery requires inquiry, inquiry into ourselves. So um this is real renunciation. It can be entirely in the midst of life uh with people with property and all except that one has to be monklike inside. Externally monk or not that depends on one's karma. Really we believe that someone asked Raman Maharshi a lady do I have to be a monk living in a mountain like like Ramanarshi to be enlightened and he said no you can continue to be a housewife and can be in the kitchen and be enlighten enlightened then she asked him why are you like this and he said that is my karma to be here your karma is you're a housewife in in the kitchen but equal in both of us can be enlightened that's the thing that's the thing that is her renunciation but it's an internal switch. It's equally dramatic but it's internal to become monklike internally. >> Yeah. >> It means I affirm firm conviction what I'm looking for this world cannot give me. Turning away from the project this this world is going to I'm going to squeeze out like toothpaste my fulfillment from this world. it will not give me. Giving up all hope that will give me there. And then turning inwards in our spiritual practice through meditation, through philosophical inquiry, through devotion, through service. Service to the word, not for getting something rather for giving. Instead of getting, giving and then realizing the truth within. Uh this is renunciation. Having a project about the world, the world will give me stuff and then I'll be fulfilled. That is non renunciation. that sabotages all the spiritual paths then we'll spirituality also will become a part of that project of getting stuff from the world um even after realizing even after enunciation and I am this witness consciousness already realizing the perfection within the project of the world can continue you can and should look after the health of the body we can and should look after people in our lives we can and should develop our potential of the body of the mind of of the our creative powers of the intellect to the maximum possible and one day they will fail 30 40 years down the line the body will fail the mind will weaken that's also perfectly all right because I am perfectly all right anyway so the project of improving our lives can continue but without any com without any investment that that will that is the way my life will be fulfilled no uh instead of asking life to fulfill me. I will use life to manifest the divinity already existing. I will realize what I am and then live it. >> Yeah. I really love the Dowist maxim. The master does nothing yet leaves nothing undone. >> Yes. And to me it speaks directly to this what you're referring to and how the Gita and many different texts have referred to as you can have possessions but not be possessed by the possessions. >> You can have things just the things don't have you. >> Yes. >> Um and I think that's really important because for many of us especially that are listening to this podcast right now likely aren't going to live a monastic life in that sense. and that if we are going to have a family, build a business, the more involved we are in the world, like you referred to, and I'm glad you gave the reminder of, it will increasingly require us to have this embodiment of this realization to be able to not be swayed by the whims and the cravings and aversions that life inevitably is going to bring towards us. There's a story about the emperor Janaka who was enlightened and the monk uh Shukadeva who's also enlightened but he was a monk that the emperor was an emperor he had an empire and the monk Shukadeva was a monk he had only u a change of loin cloth and nothing else and once and he would come and they would discuss philosophy non-duality once they were talking about it and news came that you know some part of the capital city has caught there and the monk ran out like a shot and disappeared. After some time he came back panting and the emperor asked him what happened my friend. He said the place which caught fire I remember I took a bath in the pond there and I washed my loin clo and and I put it out there to dry. I was worried it might be consumed by the flames cuz that's my only change change of loin cloth. So he went and I went there to make sure and I was fine. It's fine. And then the emperor smiled and said it's a famous saying in Sanskrit if my capital city were to burn down nothing of mine would be burnt. Not that he played the fiddle while Rome burned like Nero. He did whatever had to be done. The emperor and yet uh with enormous positions he was not attached. The point of the story being I have no possessions at all. The only little thing that I have I have tremendously attached to it. I'm quite anxious about it. A loin class. So this is not being possessed by the possessions. It's a it's a beautiful analogy into what also I feel like Jesus was hinting at or in the New Testament was referring to when they said that the foxes have holes, the birds have nests, the son of man has no place to rest his head. Um, we also heard another teacher refer to the bad news being you're falling through the void with no parachute. The good news is there's no ground. waking up to our true nature. In many ways, we stop relying on the external world to fulfill us like we thought it once would, which to some initially, prematurely in a juvenile sense makes it seems like we're throwing away the world or where there's a there's this big negation of the world and that you no longer can be involved in the world. And yet you're a perfect example of somebody who's yes taken up the monastic life, but you're also very much so in the world and you're giving these talks and building these relationships and all of these things. And so uh I think that's just an important reminder because it it helps bring in to our day-to-day life this possibility and not oh one day some other lifetime when I go be a monk. But this realization is available to us in in every given moment. Um, now I'm curious because as somebody who is deeply passionate about my my devotion to seeing life as it is, to be able to see clearly, one cannot but help see the various different ways in which we color perception in life, the vasas and this uh personality structure that we are so often perceiving the world through. And as you gave us a glimpse into that meditative experience where you kind of go back and be be experienced the witness that's beyond all these uh arisings phenomenologically uh is is is really potent. Um but when you think about the individual and how often our psychological makeup and constitution is coloring, shaping, distorting whatever we're perceiving. I'm curious your thoughts there because it's uh it's quite wild to just perceive how often we are self-deceiving. >> You're absolutely right. That's the framework of samsara. Our cravings and our dislikes, preferences and dislikes. Um that's what constitutes our worldview. And spirituality is stepping back from that and discovering that one sameness underlying everything. One characteristic of a truly spiritual person is the evenness or sameness. Nothing truly will upset such a person. Nothing truly uh can will tempt such a person. We are always driven by temptation or terror. >> The stability of mind equinimity would you say >> equinity will come. Where does this equinimity come? Where does this serenity come? Because they have this is psychological equinimity of serenity but is grounded in the spiritual ontology of this um the ultimate nature of things which is the thing which you can utterly trust and because it is you you can never lose it also. Once we realize it a great um relief comes because we found the ground of ultimate security. This is one thing we're searching for. We are afraid so we search for security. We want fulfillment. So we search for pleasure. But the ground of all fulfillment and all security is is there within us is us. Actually all you have to do is discover it and remain and relax into it. Life will continue. Now do you throw away life? No you don't. In fact now you now you remodel life. It becomes a an enlightened project and let's call it an enlightenment project in one sense. Uh what do you do now? You manifest what you have already found. Instead of continuously trying to fill an unfillable hole within ourselves by grabbing stuff from the world, now I feel I feel I'm full. Now life still continues. Here is the body. Here is the mind. Here are people and opportunities all around me. You radiate what you have found and that's a beautiful way of living. >> There's something really potent about that phrase uh only what I do not give can ever be lacking. >> Uh when you look at it from the physics lens of how color works, right? We know that light is comprised of you know you could say seven main colors and that whatever we are perceiving as a color is what the object is actually giving away. >> Yes. And that a black object is actually absorbing all seven colors. A white object is actually giving away all seven. And so in a similar way I think about the the nature of these these uh these qualities of being uh these joy, love, peace, happiness, equinimity just the orientation of how once we give it we essentially are it and we have it in a sense not in the way we possess it uh permanently but in a sense where uh yeah we we are that. So I'm just curious your thoughts on that how when we give we are in the act of being that thing. Yes, this is true. Um, very beautifully put. The I never thought of that metaphor of the black body and the white body. White body is that which is continuously radiating out. Um, that's true. It is the childish, instinctive, almost anim animalistic, insecure psychology which always seeks to take to extract uh without any thought of giving back anything physically, emotionally, materially, um intellectually all for me, I me myself. For a little child that might be fine. The children need they need to take in order to grow. But once we grow out of childhood even for a certain stage in childhood desire to share and socialize with others that's the giving that must come otherwise one is has not grown up has not matured. Um so this uh radiating outwards from this limitless source we find that we are full being full now I interact with others in between is most people the the the crudest the child the insecure one seeks to extract most ordinary people have a transactional view of giving. I give you stuff and you give me stuff. I give you love and you give me love. I give you appreciation, you appreciate me. Um, I like your posts, you like my posts, things like that. This is shopkeeping, buying and selling. But higher than this is that fullness which comes through a genuine inward spiritual real. It's a reality. It's a fact. And then one can be entirely uh giving There's nothing that you want really from anybody. Uh there's no question of taking. There's also no question of giving in return for take getting something. Rather, it's your nature. It's your very um joy, a bliss in radiating like that white body to radiate outwards continuously. It becomes very natural to you. You're not doing an act of philanthropy or being kind or charitable to somebody. No. Um, it can also be an act of worship since you find that light everywhere. You're overwhelmed by it. And as Viveand said, let the give, let the receiver stand up and receive. Let the giver kneel down and offer. You feel like you're offering to that that awesome divinity all around you. Yes. So the transformation from satisfying my own likes and hungers and appetites and uh um assuring my own fears and insecurities that's the one in between is the transactional and the spiritual perspective is to give because you're full you really don't need anything from anybody. Yes. It makes me think about how when we're under the presumption we are an individual uh individualistic conventional relative self between subject and object. We don't understand or have the experience of self as other. Then we're going to continually record things on a personal basis, right? We're keeping the scoreboard of giving and taking. It's a transactional relationship uh within all life. And when we come to experience our mind, our body, our thoughts, our emotions, not as us, but as something as objects in consciousness essentially. Um, it makes me think of this analogy when, let's say, you just bought a brand new Porsche and you go and drive it on a really rocky, rugged road and you're terrified cuz you just got this car and you really want to take care of it and so it's frightening. Um, and you're being very careful and you're taking care of it in a sense. If you now imagine that car, that Porsche was a rental. You know, there's a certain liberation with uh being able to it's it's becomes a joy ride all of a sudden. >> Yeah. Not an egoic position, >> right? Um, and there's and there's something that is very analogous to understanding about these human relationships, our mind, body, um, constitution. And I'm curious how you think that relates to to love because a lot of people are under the presumption of love really enacting from our preferential uh stamp standpoint of of somebody's uh orientation towards us and what our values and likes and dislikes are as opposed to recognizing the self as other where true intimacy is born. And so I'm curious what our uh misguided perception of love typically is and what love in essence actually is from your perspective. >> The advita view of love is it's very interesting. There's one of the major upanishads the briadicishad there is a dialogue between husband and wife. The um husband is teaching nonduality to the wife who becomes his student now. And he talks about love. He says, "My dear, the husband is loved not for the sake of the husband but for one's own self, for one's own sake. The wife is loved not for the sake of the wife but for one's own sake. Children are loved not for the sake of children but for one's own sake." And so on he goes on. Wealth, people in the world, living beings, God, everything is loved for one's own self. Now that might sound like a very selfish way of looking at things. Then he says but this self is the self of all. There is only one true self. So what we are loving in others is this one underlying reality. That is the source of all joy and fulfillment. That's the connection between love and nonduality. The nonduality of the self uh is manifested as love between everybody. When it when it manifests as duality in this world, as multiplicity in this world, what happens? What happens to that non-dual existence, the s the pure being, it appears as existing things which no longer seem non-dual. They seem very dualistic. What happens to that non-dual consciousness? It appears as subject and object, as the knower and the known, as somebody experiencing a variety of experiences. What happens to that non-dual bliss? It appears as love. It can appear as desire. It can appear as love. But because we do not know ourselves as that underlying non-dual self, then that love becomes transactional. It becomes limited. Adwita says if you fall in love with one, you're trapped. If you love all, then that's the manifestation of your uh of your non-dual self. Because the what you are loving is present equally in all beings. It radiates out unconditionally. Conditional love, there's some ignorance involved, some distortion about who I am and who the other person is. Unconditional love, it's not for I am already full. I don't need anything from then I can only give in love. I don't demand anything. And this loving itself is a manifestation of the non-dual self. So, uh that's what it is. And it can't be done all of a sudden. It might be difficult to swallow all this immediately. But the more one brings this nonduality into love, the more one brings unconditionality into love, you'll see that love will become much better, much healthier, deeper, more fulfilling, more independent, no longer dependent on the moods and the whims of the other person or the conditions of the other person. Yeah. It makes me wonder when you first reason your way to the experience of having a non-dual experience essentially you realize the absolute completeness fulfillment of consciousness. Why would we go on this game of forgetting taking on this individual notion of a self to then go on through all this effort of realizing that in which we fundamentally are curious if there is any meaning to that outside of a person who's obscribing the meaning um and why this game is is unfolding the way it is. If you have some insight into that. Yeah, this is a question one comes to at one some point or the other when you're talking about non-duality and the answer to that also is very interesting. The if the practical answer is if you ask a monk and this the answer they give you don't try to prove ignorance cut down ignorance they will say oh monk do not try to establish ignorance cut down ignorance if you ask why is there ignorance why don't we know ourselves from the very beginning why all this drama um and that to life after life they will say if you think it's you're ignorant of of your real nature then realize your real nature and be free don't try to find not why this happened. If you push further, no, I want to know why this happened. They will say there's no why. Ignorance is not causally linked to uh reality. The rope appears in ignorance as a snake. Now, if you ask the rope, why are we appearing as a snake? The roof said I didn't what looks like a snake to you is your problem. The reality has what I mean is the reality has no causal link with appearance. The reality is entirely free of the appearance. The desert which is dry of water, it appears as a mirage full of water. And if you ask the desert, how is it possible? Why are you doing this? The the first answer is I am that nothing has happened. I'm still this desert. Now it looks like that there is some you know there is some mechanism because of which the mirage appears there. It looks like this. There's a mechanism. The mechanism is ignorance and then there's an error and then the error is followed by suffering all of that. But if you want to link the ignorance to the underlying reality, want to link all this to Brahman, there's no link. If there were, we would be in serious trouble. Then it would be causally linked. Then we would say Brahman wants this to happen. No, it doesn't. And luckily first we are Brahman regardless of whatever trouble we are going through. That's one. Second the door is always open. Knowledge is always open. The day we come to it we can realize it. And third then we see the meaning in all this. Once you realize you're this non-dual Brahman then all of this becomes very fulfilling because it's like a mo movie screen. If you realize the movies are unreal. The screen is reality. But then if you say that it just has to be a screen, it would be a very boring screen indeed. Uh if it now displays the movie one after another, then you enjoy the whole thing. Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy or a science fiction or a horror show, all of those you can enjoy. And that's the potential of the screen that it can appear in all these ways. It would be absolute being would be very boring if it could not be existing things. You know, existence itself. It sounds nice. But if there are no existing things, it would be a very povertystricken existence. Pure consciousness sounds very nice. But if there were no conscious experiences, it would be a very boring kind of pure consciousness. Pure bliss. But if there were no blissful experiences, then it would be it wouldn't amount to much. So the potential of being consciousness bliss is realized in these ways. If you know yourself as that, if we don't know ourselves as that, we suffer. We struggle through this. So do you think then that the suffering is an inevitability and almost a cost of admission for the illusion of separation which allows us the joy of then realizing our true nature. >> Suffering means there's something wrong. Um and then we investigate it and we find the doctor investigates the symptoms and goes back to the cause. Root cause and the root cause here suffering in samsara we find the root cause is ignorance of our real nature. By the way ignorance of our real nature is replaced by knowledge of our real nature. We realize the truth and then the external world still continues. One can still get sick. One can there can be suffering at the you know so somebody said u pain is unavoidable but suffering is optional. So what enlightenment does is it um it takes it helps you to transcend that suffering although at a physical level suffering might go on um that story about the Buddha the two arrows story where uh uh you know a monk goes to the Buddha and this is actually from the original sources not something invented later on. The monk asks the Buddha that I have a question. You said the goal is to overcome suffering. And you said suffering is old age, disease and death. Yes. What is your question? The question is that we are following your teachings and we're still getting older and we still get sick. Some of us have died and you are clearly enlightened but you're still getting older and you are getting sick and I suppose one day tragically you will die. So how have you overcome suffering? How has enlightenment helped? The goal was to overcome suffering. It's still it's there. Old age, disease, and death. And then the Buddha says the nature of suffering is like a man hit by an arrow and then hit by a second arrow. The first arrow is what the world throws at you. The second arrow is your reaction to it. What I teach you will remove the suffering from the second arrow. Of the first, I cannot do anything. So the world will continue. What knowledge does is it does not change the setup. The setup will be like this but it makes sure you will no longer be upset with the setup. You have found something so deep that it uh nothing in this world matters anymore. You are deeply fulfilled. It's not that you somehow make do and you sort of resign yourself to it. Well, it can't be changed and so it's not defeist. It's rather maximalist. Krishna says in the Gita, having found that after which nothing greater remains to be found being established in that um after which even the heaviest of sorrows cannot shake you. So you have found that and then this world becomes bliss. Even the so-called previously what was called suffering, old age, disease, death, none of it is any problem for you. So for each of us that are going about our life maybe sit in the meditation practice they listen to this conversation they have a deep resonance they see the intellectual rigor uh rigorousness of of the understanding and we still fall back into ignorance in our day-today life. Uh can you share some thoughts on the evolution of the stages of this realization and how we can come to have it not be a uh so often recurring insight or experience but a pervasive experience in our day-to-day life >> in the Gita u Krishna teaches all this to Arjun in the second chapter at the end of the second chapter Arjun asked this question so what are the characteristics of the sage of stabilized wisdom it's very interesting instead of saying enlightened sage He says of stabilized wisdom. So we have this wisdom now. I've heard it from you. I've got this wisdom. Maybe I I've got an inkling of it, an intuition of it also. But it's not stabilized. It doesn't help me to live life. It should nourish me and transform me into a real sage. How do we do that? And the answer is practice. The four yoga. And what practice is there? Also the four yogas. Very beautiful classification by Swami Viveananda is first this inquiry this inquiry should go on now that we have got the hang of this inquiry um do it often especially in trouble so here is the pain um but isn't the pain an object and I'm the one aware of the pain that which is aware of the pain is the pain in that awareness or is the pain in the body when you think like this it may not be that the pain will go away. But a psychological space opens up between you and the pain. A logical space opens up between you. Intellect wants the logic. The mind wants the psychology of it. Emotionally you become um insulated from the the anxiety caused by the pain. The pain may be there. The suffering is optional. You begin to suffer less. So the inquiry must go on. What we did all now till now. It is all adita. It is inquiry. But it's also understood in the tradition that this is the last word. This must be preceded by careful preparation. So preparation at the level of the mind inquiry is there of course preparation at the level of the mind. Meditation some technique of meditation must be a daily. We must not always be engaged with the world. We must be able to step back from the world. We must not be afraid of boredom. We must not be afraid of disengagement. So at one time every day we must step back from the world. into just ourselves. Not the world, not people, not activities, not the phone, not even the body, not even the thoughts, not even the memories, not even plans and projects, not even regrets and memories or desires and impulses, none of that. And see if I'm fine without all of that. When we try to do this, the first thing we'll realize is how how disturbed our minds are. No wonder none of this inquiry stuff really works. Our minds are so um like jelly they don't take form. Shopopenhor said a weak mind the characteristic of a weak mind it's like a soft pillow which retains the impression of the last bottom which sat on it. The weak mind retains the last book which it read [snorts] impression of the last book which it read. You know the mind must be strengthened through meditation. focused steady we must have a very high boiling point monk said don't boil over so easily the liquids with low boiling point it's just when the temperature rises boils over some problem one swami put it this way if the setup is not to my liking I get upset no the setup may not be to my liking I don't get upset I deal with it another swami put it so beautifully what vdanta does for you ish you move from what to so what you're dealing with it. It's not that you're escaping. You're doing dealing with everything but internally you're serene and that's everybody must admit that's a much better way of living life. So meditation helps us there. Another practice is uh devotion a deep faith in God. These are helpful for that self inquiry. Often people play them off against each other. Oh you people are you know believing in God. That's kindergarten. I am non-dualistic. I'm self in no the two go along well very well together if you see the lives of the saints the non-dual masters in India especially here also you'll find they are all devoted in their own way maybe very privately so they have a devotion um an acceptance of a great power you call it Ishwara or god or the god of religion which guides and controls the world it's a great thing to have on your side none greater so a heart full of devotion surrender faith love then uh karma yoga spiritualization of one's life activities how can I be of service to what can I do for you so these broad preparations altruistic life a life of selflessness and service that is karma yoga devotional life a life of love worship adoration internally to the supreme then a meditative life this is plenty to be doing every day and the self inquire. The self inquiry cocooned by these practices germinates into stabilized wisdom. Without that it flickers in a flickering light the results of self inquiry will also come and disappear. Uh in a mind filled with a 100 desires self inquiry might come up and we'll be disregarded the next moment. The mind suddenly gets distracted like a little child and runs after something in the world. In a selfish mind, it's all about I, me, myself. Self inquiry might reveal to me a 100 times that you are limitless consciousness, but my feelings are all about this limited person. Yeah, I might be limitless conscious. Right now I have to take care of this guy. Viveand says, notice this is renunciation. The turning point in the yogas in karma yoga, renunciation is the renunciation of selfishness. very difficult but one must try and to the extent that one tries one gets benefits immediately. In bi yoga, the the yoga of love and devotion, it says to channelize a hundred a thousand desires flowing towards the world to channelize them into one almighty love of God. That is renunciation. And in in the meditation, the raja yoga the dhana yoga of meditation the renunciation of every outward movement of the mind and the senses. I want to see no. I want to hear no. I want to talk. No. I want to touch. No. I want to taste. No. Okay. Sit quietly. Now the mind kicks in. I'm going to think. I'm going to remember. I'm going to plan. I'm going to grumble and you know dwell over my hurts and insecurities. No. Not. You're not permitted a single thought. You're not permitted a single feeling. Stop. That's a great renunciation. It's a renunciation of every discrete experience so that you can fall back into that one white light before it breaks up into this, you know, the seven colors of the wine. All of these uh this is what makes that inquiry sustainable, stabilized >> for your own personal path of the embodiment of that realization. I'm curious as somebody who is way more than anybody probably who's listening right now is going to have spent your life absorbed in the studying of this material, the understanding and synthesizing of this material. >> Also rigorously studying various different contemplative practices, seeing how they compare, how they differ like Majamaka Buddhism and uh it's really it's amazing to see the level of devotion you've carried throughout your life to this point. How has it worked for you? >> I think I'm very ordinary. That's where I bring in the miracle of uh formal monastic life. >> So all that you said uh it falls into place because I'm a monk and a very ordinary um I I really find myself pretty mediocre when I look at the other monks, my brother monks, the way I've been a monk for more than 30 years. I see how they have developed over the decades and I'm filled with amazement and reverence really. I remember when I became a monk I was so reverent to the senior monks. I found them to be these amazing beings full of grace and holiness. Now I'm seeing it's working. I'm seeing it in my friends who 30 years ago were young boys coming to be monks and we grew together and now when I look at them I am filled with reverence. I would bow down to them because I see the same holiness beginning to blossom forth in them and it's just staying with it. The structure has been given monastic life there is this line because you are a monk there's this line drawn a lot of nonsense is already you know thrown out of your life what do I have to wear it's not a decision that you have to take every morning because you wear the same thing so there's no decision to be taken there at all what do I eat exactly what's given to you so I don't decide I have to go to this hotel or order out food no so what do what is my entertainment exactly what the asham pro provides um what do I do today? The four yogas you serve, you worship, you meditate, and you inquire, you study. So because this monastic paradigm, the formal monastic paradigm, it's a good vessel. It I can see how it helps. It answers those questions automatically. Um it's no guarantee that one is going to develop spiritually. As I've seen people develop in holiness, I've seen people fall by the wayside also. One can ruin it. The mind is good at ruining even the best of things. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I'm curious how people would I think maybe have this false presumption and I'm curious to hear your thoughts. just speculating here, but like as a monk, uh the the acts of ego and identification see just go away or maybe get easier in some sense. Uh I could see how it would could very much bring it up to the surface and you're really have more material to work with there. But when you reflect on Aamar and this act of identifying and the ego's way of uh very cleverly clinging on to whatever it can even the identity of being a monk or being spiritual or being uh a podcaster who's bringing virtuous conversations or it it will find anything it can grab on and I'm curious uh what what you've learned in that process um about the ego the nature of identifying because I think a lot of people would think that as a monk you have uh it's easier and maybe to some degree there's easier aspects of that but it doesn't remove suddenly magically this act of e this egoic uh notion of identifying >> I say first how you thin down the ego you transcend it and how you don't so first is the yoga help you there karma yoga as a monk all your day is spent in service activities could be schools it could be you um you know giving medicine to the sick if you are in a hospital or teaching uh kids or um you know giving food to the hungry and all the time you're doing stuff without taking anything in return. You're not waiting for your paycheck. Yeah. You get your food and you get your clothes and a room to stay in. That's it. Now you're forced into it and you watch your ego. Does it say at some point I'm not getting anything out of this? Why am I doing all this? I'm pouring out my life day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and I'm not getting one thing back. Good. Do you have any objections to that? And the wise ego will say, "What a relief. Thank God. I don't have to worry about what I'm accumulating. I don't accumulate anything." That's how the the selfishness gets rubbed out of the ego. Otherwise, the ego is always in this project of what am I what did I get at the end of all this? Second that the fact that selfishness is going away is the only thing that I'm I'm getting and that's great. That's a huge relief then uh in devotion when I bring the ego in front of God. This is this is so tiny in front of the cosmic it's the smashed they have no you're in front of the emperor of the universe. So the only response could be reverence and worship and that way the ego gets thinned out. Then in meditation the ego thrives on a restless mind. In meditation when we calm down that's what the ego hates. [snorts] A quiet mind is what the ego hates. A restless mind ego is happy. Excited, restless, thrilled, scared, anxious, uh busy with the phone or busy with the people. Ego is happy because the mind is restless. Let go of that. Quiten down the mind. Ego gets thinned out. And finally the vdantic way of I am not the ego. I'm the witness of the ego. This is how you thin out the ego throughout the day every day. And the what you do not do the ego by itself will not go away. As long as the mind is there, there will be a sense of ego. Sri Ramach Krishna says distinguish between the ripe ego and the unripe ego. The unripe ego is body based, is relationship based. My, he says, my nephew, my child, my house, my property, that's the unripe ego. Spirituality tends to cut that down. But then you replace it with the ripe ego because until the ego goes away, it will still be there. The ripe ego is I am pure consciousness. I am the witness of body, mind, and everything that's taking place here. And that's clearly a fact. Not that I'm trying to be. I notice it has to be that that's what it is. Or if you're devotionally inclined, I am the child of God. Set up a relationship with God. If you're dualistically inclined, that's also a ripe ego. I'm the child of God. I am the servant of God. This is God's universe. I'm here to serve. So these are the ways in which you deal with the ego. Cut it down, thin it down, and develop the right ego. >> Do you can you pinpoint the moment when you decided to go down this path? Oh, that's in one sense easy and difficult. I have asked other monks this. So, in some cases, it's a precise moment. Something happened. They met somebody or they read a book or something happened. They decided they want to be a monk and they did it. And there were others in the second group. I'm in the second group also where I can't point to anything specific. Ever since I was a kid, I had this inclination. I never thought I'd be anything else. I loved airplanes and but I never really tried to be a pilot or anything like that. So finding God was my project from childhood onwards. It's not that I was completely clear about my destiny because I was a kid. I didn't know much about what it would be like to be a monk. But I always felt there's only one thing that I want. I want to search for God. So as a teenager I learned more about being a monk. The monastery was close to our house and I decided this is what I'm going to do after I finish my education. >> That's how I became a monk >> and for about 30 years now. >> Yeah. And I became a monk in 1994. The day I finished uh my last assignment in college, I submitted the last assignment and made a and went straight to the monastery and joined. >> I just waiting for it to be over. >> Yeah. Um, I have like just maybe one or two more questions. I know we've been going for a while. I really appreciate this kind of conversation is my sweet spot on this podcast. It's what really is not the only thing, but it's something that largely makes me feel like I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing. Um, and I'm curious your thoughts on that feeling. That feeling is fadharm where you're like aligned with your nature. Uh, and you're you're doing a sense what you ought to do in any given moment. Um, and it sounds like you've followed that intrinsic calling to follow your path. Yes. >> To whatever degree, I'm successfully, >> you know, attempting to do that in my own life. For people that are listening, they very much so strive to discover that sense of wholeness, of completeness, and alignment for uh who they are, what they value, and what they're doing in the world. And so what advice would you have for people to be able to really discover what is that dharma of theirs? >> You use the words intrinsic alignment and value. These are the criteria. It must be something within yourself. Vive Gandhi said follow your own highest ideal. That's the shortest path. Swadharma. The word suadharma means your own dharma. Dharma means religion, morality, spirituality. It's a very wide term. Literally it comes from the Sanskrit word dri that which holds you together. What's the defining theme of your life or of any object that's the dharma of that of an object of a person of a society and all of that. Um sadharma there is a technical way of defining it because in traditional Hindu society was defined by casts and ashamas. Are you a student? Are you a householder? Are you a forest dweller? Or are you a monk? These are the four stations of life. Or the four casts. Are you a priestly cast member? Are you a warrior, administrator? Are you a trader, businessman? Are you a laborer? Four casts. So which station of life and which cast you belong to that matrix would determine your sadharma. But that's fixed in society and it's no longer very relevant. Indian society like every society is fluid in. But really what what's the point of swadharma? The point of swadharma is it's meant to take us as quickly as possible to enlightenment. So that's the inner secret of swadharma. How do I do that? Uh Vive Kand said it's not what you might think that oh all right if the enlightenment is the goal let me read a book on enlightenment and try to do exactly what the book says. No it might not work. You have a certain grain of your being. You have to cut with the grain to flow with the grain of your personality. Something that we have developed over many lifetimes. Just because a book or a TED talk says something new which my intellect intellect by the way can jump ahead far ahead of my the rest of my being and can it likes ideas and plans and projects but when I try to implement it in my life I find it's impossible to do in my life because I have built myself up over many lifetimes in a particular way. So what will determine my swadharma? How do I know? Vive Gandhi said follow your own highest ideal. That's the shortest path for you. So it must be your own. So it is intrinsic. It must feel like something coming which appeals to me right now. Not something that should appeal to me or it's the greatest thing possible. Everybody says it you should do it. It still doesn't pull me. Does it pull me? That's intrinsic. It's a good sign. It's intrinsic. Second highest ideal. Um it must be something high and noble. Many things pull me. I have many desires, many preferences, many cravings. So are those my swarm? No, no, no, no, no. It must be in the sense of ideal because it's taking me to the ideal towards enlightenment. So it is something high noble that which adds value to others, does good to others or it is something highly creative you know in science, religion, philosophy, art somewhere something higher. It cannot be a comfortable life because comfortable life right here and now means no progress. It must be pushing the envelope somewhere. So your own highest idea that's the shortest path um intrinsic even if initially there is lack of success no path no matter how you like it is going to be easy and that at that point you might doubt is it my swadhma or not so as long as you know it is taking me higher towards the goal of self-realization that it is intrinsic I really like this and u it is I feel aligned mind my life is in flow when it goes well sometimes doesn't go well then it is your soda it can change after sometime your ideal you might go from this to something else 20 years later that's also perfectly all right um vive gives some checks to examine yourself if it unites it's likely to be the truth if it divides if it's something that's divisive and divides it's likely to be untrue if it is selfish it's likely to be untrue if it selfless to the extent it's selfless, it's likely to be true. If it weakens, he says reject it as poison. If it strengthens, you can embrace that. And these are broad statements. For example, strength. It could be physical strength, it could be moral strength, it could be emotional strength, it could be intellectual strength, it could be spiritual strength. And ideally all of them. So these are the ways in which you decide your swadharma. Is it bringing me closer to the ultimate goal of enlightenment? Does it feel in it feel right internally intrinsically? Is my are my days and my months and years in alignment? Am I flowing towards something and uh uh is it adding value to me and to society to people around me? Wonderful. Yeah, that I think that's super helpful and maps to my own personal life. Um, one could speculate, which maybe we save for another time, why it is we have these intrinsic core values and pulls towards different directions. Uh, you mentioned a couple times karma, uh, the potentiality of different lives or future ones or past ones. And to me, something I love about Adva Vanta is how rigorous the analytical reasoning can be. And for people that don't have the experience of previous lives, reincarnation uh within their subjective experience and not that you you or anyone is saying to take it on blind faith, but I I think that the natural conclusion for the for the doubting mind is how could consciousness and its infinite nature take on this body mind and then once it's done have some sort of continuity of memory in an individual in another form of life and it's something I've thought quite a lot about and I'm just curious how how do you make that distinction and how do you wrestle between the belief of something like reincarnation versus the reality of it >> it's a little difficult for me because from an Indian perspective Indian thought generally accept this as exumeatic you think about it Hinduism so tremendously diverse within itself there is adita there is qualified monism there is dualism multiple schools Vishnavites, shaktas, shyites, enormous diversity within but they all believe in karma and reincarnation. Buddhists they don't believe in a permanent soul. They don't believe in god but they believe in karma and reincarnation. James seeks so it's a sort of exomatic and Indian thought. So that's why difficult for me to step a little out of it. Um the reasoning I would give is causality. Basically what is karma? It's causality. Causes have effects. Actions have consequences. So what we are seeing now are a bunch of effects. They must have had causes and we push back further. We don't see enough of it in this life. So they projected back to earlier lives. And the things that we have set in motion in this life, we don't see the effect of it all in the usual question of such an evil person. Did he didn't suffer enough before they died? Well, we are not seeing the results of the actions in this life. So we push it forward to future lives. So reincarnation follows from karma. They feed on it's a loop. Um yes. How does it continue? The answer is the subtle body. What dies at death is the physical body. >> One of the five sheets. >> One of one of the five sheets. But the middle three sheets um do not die. And that's pretty logical also because what you see dying is nobody doubts it is the physical body but notice in our own experience everybody right now we have two kinds of experience one is ourselves to the physical body which is third person public your doctor can examine it and another one is first person what I feel inside pleasure pain memories of my sensations my my first person experiences my thoughts my personality this which is also unique to each of us. We have our own personalities but it is distinctly different from the physical body. It's not public. It's available only internally to us. And the relationship between that mind, this mental inner subtle body and the physical body is not it's clearly related but it's not very clear either. It's it cannot be explained fully. That's also the hard problem of consciousness. So um all these Indian systems they say look death is death of the physical body. Nobody can doubt that. But you have no logical rigorous reason to say that the subtle body also dies with the death of the physical body. If you hold that to be true then you have subscribed already subscribed to materialism that the brain produces this mind. You the person you are a product of the brain. Until one can prove that to my satisfaction, I'm not willing to buy that because of the principle. This there's a problem in principle. The hard problem of of consciousness. You can't reduce something first person to pure object. So this subtle body continues after the death of the physical body. But it carries the samscaras of previous lives. meaning for for people that don't know >> the samscaras are the traces the conditionings the even some memories some [snorts] habits some tendencies that's the character which is continued and a part of that is activated when we are born into a new physical body it's like a vast amount of data uploaded to the cloud now your iPhone or your iPad may be damaged you throw it away you recycle it and you get a new one and then you download the same data so what continued it's not that it's the same uh iPad. It's a new body. It can be a different can may not be an iPad also. It might be a phone. It may not be a physical human body also. It could be an animal body. Now, a part of the data in that cloud is now downloaded into that and that becomes the character of that uh personality for the time being that body lasts. So, what continues from lifetime to lifetime is the subtle body. What dies at the end of each lifetime is a physical body which is born and it dies. And what is behind all of this? Call it atman, pure consciousness, spirit. That which lights up and give makes the whole show possible. >> Fascinating. We could talk we could probably talk for a couple hours just on that. Um and and my my last thought is because you just you mentioned a couple times in the traditions and culture in which you come from. I and we all have our own, you know, version of that. what are the presuppositions and the axioms which are embedded in the paradigm which we kind of came into. Um I think the path of the sincere seeker needs to be willing of course to throw away all of that and and to to examine what is right fundamentally uh which I see you do and what sincerity essentially is on the spiritual path. There is one aspect which I see Eastern wisdom traditions fundamentally inherently seem to be lacking quite possibly because it is a relatively recent 100 to 130 years as a system of thought um which is the characterological development side of things. the young Freud, Adler, James, the understanding of the psyche and the shadow. Uh, and of course there is it it being such a recent sort of understanding of uh examining the conventional self >> there historically has not been as much talk about this from the eastern traditions from Hinduism, Buddhism, Dowoism. Uh and to me the negation of the falsity of the Maya can quickly slip into this overemphasis on falsity and uh a turning away of the the growing up. You know, I appreciate how you're an integral thinker and the understanding of waking up versus growing up. the waking up to this non-dual experience, the growing up, we have this process of individuation which Young beautifully laid out and many great thinkers have continued to add to. And uh the former without the latter leads to crazy cults that abuse people sometimes. Uh the uh latter without the former puts you on this rat rat race and this neverending wheel of self-improvement, >> right? And uh I'm curious your thoughts about how they complement each other are are a necessity to be able to come into wholeness. >> Yes. Well, I think you've put it beautifully. The core should be spirituality in whichever form >> um adic form or the madhyama Tibetan Buddhist kind kind of thing or any other particular form of genuine spirituality which you find in the world traditions could be a devotional form or dualistic also that should be the core. But you're right the development of the psychological self u viveand gave great emphasis on what he called character building. Um that's the vessel which will hold the the the spiritual core. So without that there's a long process of character building which goes up up to spiritual awakening and then the spiritual awakening is further manifested through a further process of growth which is jan mukt and freedom manifestation of the divinity within that's where all these therapeutic way know this everything from yung and freud up to modern positive psychology especially we're living in a very golden age of psychology which can go very well with spirituality the um Freudian kind of psychologist did not go well with spirituality they would path think of it as a pathology spirituality so that's why psychiatrists till now they don't have a they have a jaist view of spirituality whereas modern positive psychology I think it uh it works very well with with spiritual practices my feeling is take advantage of modern positive psychology to whatever extent necessary If you're taking advantage of modern medical technology, I'm sick. I take the help of a doctor and hospitals for my inner development. I can take the help of the latest developments of positive psychology. Why not? And I'll find that it helps me in my spiritual growth. Um but keep the spiritual growth central because otherwise the mind can be it's like an never ending loop. You fix one thing, two things come undone. There you you need Viveandi said all we can do is polish the mirror. So the development character development is part of polishing the mirror. Psychological development is also part of polishing the mirror. But the ultimately it must lead to the four yogas which also polish the mirror uh until the reality is reflected there. I really appreciate the thoroughess in which you provide to the understanding of the the the various different paths that we all individually like we spoke to relate to uh differently. And I think that this podcast for example, this conversation that we just shared gets to be one entry point of many uh in which people can find the past that they resonate most to. And it uh it's no small feat. I think that it it has profound implications. on the way that we treat each other, the way that we view ethics and build family and and business and relationships and uh so just a sincere thank you from my heart to yours. >> Thank you, Andre. Thank you to your team. >> Yeah, of course. >> Thank you for having me. >> And uh is there anything that you want to just leave with people where they can stay connected with your work or anything that you have going on or is there nothing there? >> Um I will leave you with Sriama Krishna's parable of the ones and the zeros. He says you line up a lot of zeros it's still zero but if you have a one after that every zero has a value you know one zero is 10 two zeros is 100 so zeros are the stuff which we're doing in the world whatever we're trying to grab in the world and you know decorate our life with the one is spirituality and I mean it in the broadest sense be a non-dualist be a devotey of god be a Christian mystic an Islamic mystic or a emptiness practitioner in whichever form Let the core be spiritual and then add as many zeros as you like or don't. >> Well, I did there. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Till next time. >> Yes, absolutely. [music]

Swami Sarvapriyananda unpacks the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta and its central claim: you are not the body, not the mind, not even your thoughts — you are pure consciousness itself. Through rigorous reasoning rather than blind belief, he guides us step by step into a direct inquiry of who we truly are. We explore the limits of faith-based religion, the pitfalls of mystical experience, the distinction between intelligence and consciousness in the age of AI, and the profound implications of non-duality. This conversation is not about adopting a belief system — it is about dismantling false identities until only the undeniable remains. Try LMNT & get a free sample pack https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself Try Boncharge & 15% off their red light devices https://www.boncharge.com/knowthyself André's Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list ___________ 00:00 Intro 0:01:03 What is Advaita Vedanta? 0:06:18 The Promise of Jivan Mukta 0:12:03 The Epistemic Orientation of Jnana Yoga 0:28:45 Being Aware of Your Own Ignorance 0:32:35 Ad: LMNT 0:34:08 Separating the Individual From Who You Are 1:01:15 Ad: BON CHARGE 1:02:27 How The Universe and The Self are One 1:17:06 Guided Meditative Practice 1:40:27 Orienting Your Life Towards Renunciation 1:59:21 The Trap of Self-Deceit 2:02:31 Giving as an Act of Being 2:06:34 The Essence of What Love Is 2:11:37 Coming Back From Individual Ignorance to Non-Duality 2:26:31 Swami's Dedication to Devotion 2:35:09 Svadharma: Aligning With Your Nature 2:41:04 The Belief and Reality of Reincarnation 2:46:45 Closing Thoughts ___________ https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com Listen to the show: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX