E182 - Swami Sarvapriyananda: The Advaita Vedanta Explanation of Reality, the Self & Suffering

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 in the mind kicks in. As long as I'm a mind, a person, everybody's a person to me. The moment I step back from physicality and I realize everybody is that light. The day I finished my last assignment in college, I went straight to the monastery 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. Well put you. 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 hits. This is how you sin out the ego. So we sit still, closing dies when we are ready. This is actually the first NOLA self podcast with our new background set. Oh I see. Yeah. Making some changes. So it's good to have you in the studio. Swamiji, 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 what I'm very passionate about and it's been very much so your life study. For people that don't know, what is it Vaita Vedanta? Adveitav Vedanta is a very ancient school of Indian non-dual spiritual philosophy. If you back up a little bit, the big picture kind of, 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 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, it went by many names, Moksha, Freedom, Mukti, which means Freedom, Nirvana, Kaivalya, 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 Jainism or Buddhism. And in the Vedas, you have these texts called the Upanishads, which are sort of the final, the highest spiritual teachings of the Vedas. And based on these Upanishads came multiple schools of what are now called Vedanta. Vedanta just means the end of the Vedas and not in a literal sense as the end of the book, but also in the sense of 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 among the most well-known ways is the way of Advaitha Vedanta. Advaitha just means non-dual. So non-dual Vedanta, it's a non-dual interpretation of the Upanishads. Based on the Upanishads, there is a text called the Brahmasutras, and the most well-known text of Vedanta, 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 Advaitha Vedanta. And it has continued down from that time onwards still today. It's a living tradition. A million who follow it, who study it, who practice it, there are thousands and thousands of monks also, like myself, I'm one of them, who have made their lifelong pursuit to study, practice, live by and manifest this philosophy. So it's a living tradition, it has been for millennia. Its central teaching is radical. You are that, Tatvamasi in Sanskrit. You know, one beautiful thing about Vedanta also is of ocean of literature, but it can be expressed, the central teaching of Vedanta can be expressed very elegantly in half-averse. So there is a Sanskrit saying, Brahma Satyam Jagatmitthya, Jiva Brahmaiva Napara, which means Brahma Nalon 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, Tatvamasi. 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, in fact the point of it all, rather. Other sentences are there in the Upanishads, Aham Brahma asks me, I am Brahma, and I am the ultimate reality. Prajyanam Brahma consciousness is the ultimate reality. I am Atma Brahma. This very self is the ultimate reality of the universe. You can compress it further into single words, just the word Brahma, not the Brahmins, which is a caste in Hinduism. Brahma literally means the vast, the limitless. Sometimes in the Upanishads it's just called Tatv. That, the word Purna, which means complete our whole, our limitless Anantam, which means limitless. You can make it even shorter, you can just say Om, and if you unpack that the monocelible Om, you would get all of Vedanta. You can make it even shorter, just silence. The Vedanta can be expressed as silence. So what is the promise that this way of knowing this end of knowledge or culmination of knowledge is providing, in essence, what is Jivan Mukti and what can, by virtue of listening to this podcast, can our audience, community, listeners hopefully get a bit of a glimpse into of that same goal or promise there. That's a good question and the promise is really, really big. It doesn't get any bigger than this. I can put it in two ways. One is the traditional way to put in India, not just for Advaita Vedanta, but for all these paths, all these ancient paths. 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. It's sort of axiomatic across all schools, except the materialists who say everything ends at death. But other than that, all other schools, Advaita Vedanta, the other schools of Vedanta, Shava schools, the Shaktas schools, the Buddhists, the Jains, the Sikhs, every shade of religion and philosophy in India, they've sort of axiomatically said that the description of life is the 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 as a limited existence. It's full of suffering and limitation and sorrow and struggle. And a freedom from this cycle is possible. And so that's seen as the ultimate goal. Now that's the way it is traditionally put in Advaita Vedanta, the result is mocksha, freedom from the cycle of birth and death. But if you want to put it in less theological terms if you will, something much more universally acceptable. 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 axiomatic in India. But suppose one doesn't have those pre-suppositions. What can we put something in a form that is universally acceptable to everybody? Is the attainment of deep lasting happiness or bliss if you will and overcoming of suffering, 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, you know, transcending the cycle of birth and death and overcoming suffering, basically it's 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, Advaita Vedanta says, deep lasting fulfillment is possible, it's as great word Ananda, bliss is possible and 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 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 Vedantic terms, the pursuit of happiness is Ananda, bliss. The pursuit of life would be [BLANK_AUDIO] nonexistent, that means freedom from death literally and freedom, liberty. I don't know if the founding fathers meant it in a Vedantic sense, but they hit upon something very profound, very deep. Now, Vedanta also says that this realization is possible. It's not a post-mortem spirituality that you have to wait after death. After death, you go to see you get to see God or after death, you get to go to heaven. Quite possible, and I do believe that's possible. So that's the word you refer to, the Sanskrit word, "jeevan mukti" means free while living in this body. So that's what the Advaita Vedantin, "Aim" said. That is not common to all the schools, because some of the schools would say that you cannot be perfect in this life. You have to die and go to a higher state of existence. All that went to be fine, but Advaita Vedanta, that way is very practical. It says that what is 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 then enlightenment, which you get here, will serve you there. There means maybe after death or in heaven or wherever it is. So realization of this and living it in this life. Swami Vivekananda, he put it beautifully. He said, "Pasically 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, "By mission in life can be put in a few words, Vivekananda, this Vivekananda." He says, "It is to teach unto humanity their inner divinity and how to make it manifest in every movement of life." So in our thought, in our emotion, in our speech, in our actions. So that is the promise. Advaita Vedanta as a path within what you might say is the umbrella of Iyana 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 elaborate on. But there's something that has resonated so deeply within me, the path of Iyana Yoga, to be able to experientially verify claims in our real-time experience, and especially as an intellectually and analytically dominant society and culture. I think it's a really beautiful pathway in opening of the door for people to start to examine the nature of Self-reality. You do that and you help guide people and that as well. So beautifully. So when you think about the epistemic orientation of Iyana Yoga, of the way in which we come to know, could you expand about that? Yes, I'll just touch upon this thing. You just mentioned our constitution is different. You hit upon something very deep there. One reason why a variety of paths is desirable, but there are 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, our ultimate reality and the reality of this universe. This is what Vedanta is inquiring and Vedanta's teaching is that they are the two. The two are the same. Our ultimate reality, what we truly are and what this universe truly is, is one and the same thing. In Vedanta, in Vedanta language, its 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 theology, you can have different philosophies and all would be right. This is something really beautiful about ancient India and till today. It's part of Indian culture that there can be multiplicity of viewpoints and it doesn't mean that one is right and 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, the internal constitution. So it makes sense to have multiple pathways, some more emotion-related, heart-related, some more intellect-related, some more action-oriented. And the second, in fact, was the opinion that, use 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 action-oriented. Also, all of them can be and should be part of a whole sum spiritual life. All right. But now to your question about the epistemology of Ghani Yoga, yes, you're right. It's extremely attractive. And I see large numbers of people drawn to that side of Ghani Yoga. Let's put it this way. All these paths work. But let's put it under three broad paradigms. I'm just trying to bring out the uniqueness of Ghani 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, bhakti, the love of God, a love of 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 question the answer would be, you know it by tradition, by faith. And because your masters have told you so, because your religion tells you so, your holy book tells you so, 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, surrender, 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 is what you get when you come to religion. First of all. But if you want to play the devil's advocate and especially in this day and age, we've never had so many atheists or agnostics ever in the history of humanity as we have today. 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 you do. Yes, 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 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 Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or his past or Sam Harris and the militant atheists. You'll run up against your own sense of reason. This path, it does not tolerate questioning immediately. It acts 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 only purely on a belief path, in the long then also there are there are problems. One can once belief can be shaken. Life as a way of shaking you up. Once belief can be weakened. One can go very far in this path and still have doubts. I read a diary, Mother Teresa'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. In Sanskrit, we can use this Sanskrit term, the yogic path. Where we are told, no, no, no, not a question of belief. There's a question of experience. As we may kind of say, 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. And how do you get this experience? There is that 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 experience shall be. A classic example here would be the pathanjali yogasutras. So they don't start with any demand for belief in anything. We just have to have a working belief that there is something in this. Let me investigate it. And the point would be actually to experience it for yourself. But notice, even here also if one bed to be a little bit of a devil's advocate, you know, try to find fault. Here also notice the weaknesses, these mystical experiences, these are not public experiences, these are not shared experiences, these are not easily available experiences. That's exactly why we are, it takes so long and so hard and so rare. When they are genuine, they are powerful, they are transformative and they are 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? And they say, I'm hearing the voice of God or Sri Ramakrishna would have the vision of divine mother Kali, the first reaction of people around him is, you're crazy. Why? Because it's outlandish and we don't see it, you say you are seeing it as the philosopher Hume said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You're saying God, where is the extraordinary proof? Little alone extraordinary proof. There's that saying, the psychotic drowns in the same oceans that the mystics swim with the light in. Beautiful. Yes, I've read that somewhere. And there's the other side of it that 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 that ways can be settled. 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 this hemisphere of the brain or the, you know, a neuroscience will come up with a physical explanation. You're not one with the universe, certainly not. But you just feel like that because there's a stroke in your brain or there's some bleeding going on, some at humor pressing against such and such neuron. Oh, 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 says, like science, do this and you'll see for yourself. But then there's a whole question of distinguishing it from neurological problems, from mental illness, from wishful thinking or from drug-induced experiences. How is that any difference from this? As against that, there is a third paradigm of spirituality. So we have the belief-based paradigm, the bhakti traditions. We have the direct experience paradigms, the mystical yogic traditions, which are all very powerful and the bhakti traditions themselves would culminate eventually in a mystical experience. That's how it is understood in India. Eventually, Mirabai would see her beloved Krishna but it starts with belief, whereas the yogic packs start with practice. Whereas the third paradigm, now I'm narrowing down to the question about epistemology of Advaita Vedanta. This path of knowledge, Gyanayoga simply means the yoga of knowledge. It is not based on faith. If you believe it well and good, you're told that you are that ultimate reality, you're limitless consciousness existence place. If you believe that well and good for you, but that's not the point. One has to 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 hope you come to see it for yourself. It's important that you learn this." So Vedanta is, first of all, it's not belief based. Second, it's not even based on special experiences. See, in Vedanta, it is experiential but in a much broader, much more acceptable universal sense. 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 Vedanta says that common university acceptable experience is enough to begin our inquiry. And Vedanta does it, it takes that and then step by step shows us clearly demarcated methods, methodologies which will point to us what Vedanta wants us to realize. They're saying that what the reality we're trying to point out, we 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 Vedanta aims to help us to see it. So it is not faith-belief-based. It is also not based on special mystical experiences. It's based on experience that's a great claim to our attention that it's based on 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 Vedanta 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 free thinking 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're saying and then look for ourselves. In fact, that's the method of Vedanta, the threefold method of Vedanta to listen and to reason and to meditate. In Sanskrit, Shravana, Manana, Nidhidhya, Sama. Shravana means hearing, listening. You listen from a teacher or you study it, but the core thing is actually listening from a living teacher. And then reasoning about it. Question it. Analyze it. Threadbare. One needs to have conviction. It's the path of knowledge. The intellect must be thoroughly convinced. 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 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 eureka moment. Oh, I get it. So this I think is a special appeal of Advaitha Vedanta. It's also the way of the, I'm joking here, tongue in cheek, the way of the lazy one. Because it's the, the claim seems to be you want it instantaneously or you want to work for lifetimes. I want it instantaneously. All right, you get it. Do you want 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 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 then begin the acquisition of true knowledge? How important is the awareness of our own ignorance? Oh, very important. That's very begins. If I, you know, in Advaitha Vedanta, the problem is not that we do not know who we are. You know, know that I said, not 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 to look, we're looking about for the ultimate reality of all things, for God, for enlightenment. We think we know who we are and we are quite convinced to answer lies out there. Advaitha Vedanta 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. So the discovery of our own ignorance that they're not great depths to myself, that is the first step in Advaitha Vedanta. You know, person, I'll show you why it is so important. Dekart. Kaji Tor Gosum, 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 it, 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 doubted exists." So that part of it is famous. Cogetorgus, so I think therefore exist. But a little further down in the in the meditations, Dekat says very touching Lihra, he says, "That we know so little about ourselves. He says it is passing strange, that which I am 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, now 300 years after Dekat, 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, interpretably, Dekat says, "I know so little about it. I don't know anything about it." But then he stopped. This is the difference between Vedanta and Dekat. 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 indubitable 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. Because Vedanta 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." Dekat sort of had the intuition, you can't find out anything more about it. Even Kant had that kind of intuition that it is, but then we can't know anything more about it. Vedanta says, "Oh, we can. We can know a lot about it." And in that discovery lies our salvation. That intuition, knowing yourself, it is entirely possible. But possibly in a special way. Dekat can't, they were right. It's not in a sensory way. We can't see ourselves here 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 and 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. Element is a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix that contains a science-backed ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium that helps regulate your appetite, curb your cravings, and improve your brain function. I have been drinking element almost every day now for many years and I do genuinely notice the mental clarity and steady energy that I get with it, whether it's post-workout, sauna, eing, during a long recording day or it is dialing in hydration. It's definitely a staple for me. 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And so when you take somebody just walking, living their conventional life on the randomly picked them 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, 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. But I'd love for you to walk us back into examining our who we are in our most fundamental essence and consciousness as it's often referred to as light. I would love for you to draw that metaphor as well if you could. Yes, as you said, it's not new. And it's not in particularly unique to Advaita Vedanta. Though I believe in all my explorations of literature in the field in the East and the West, modern and ancient, nothing is developed as deeply or in such a sophisticated way as Advaita Vedanta. In many traditions, it's there, but it's been either marginalized or even actively persecuted. There's non-dual teaching that you are that ultimate reality. Sometimes it can seem extremely blasphemy. In Vedantic schools also, there are dualistic Vedantic schools which consider us, the non-dualists just outside the field because you guys are crazy, you're Megalo-Mindyx, you think you're God or something. So, yes, the path of Advaita Vedanta is analytic and it starts with experience and analysis of our experience. Experience here, the path is what philosophers might today call phenomenological, looking into how it feels. As I said, it is not unique. You will, as you have talked to people who would have said, "Moralist is 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, Advaita Vedanta starts with deconstructing who I am. So, as you said, ask the person, "Test of the street, who are you?" And I like the question, "What are you?" Who are you? It's more catchy, but who can be misleading, especially in our DNA? Who means, "Oh, am I a musician or am I a scholar or am I a good person?" What kind of person am I? Or what's my profession? What's my destiny in life? What's God's plan for me? That's how I define who I am. That's not what Advaita Vedanta 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. We generally would say, "Here, I am this." So, Advaita would say, "So, you are the body?" I say, "I guess I am." Well, notice something, "I" the self, I say, "I am the body." But notice that the body is an 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, the self-referencing. So, the object must be distinct from the subject. And then in that case, the body is an object. Clearly, it's an object. Another way of looking at this is that I have the experience and the body is the experienced. I see, I can see the body, I can smell, I can taste, I can touch, I can even hear my tummy rumbling. So, all my senses operate on the body as an object, as they do on other things in the world. So, that which is an object of experience, and that which is the subject of experience, in Vedantic 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. They are not mathematical proofs, but they are more like legal arguments, like a lawyer would argue in front of a jury, trying to pursue you with a battery of arguments. So, one is the intuition that I am the knower, the experiencer, the subject of this body, which is the known, the experienced, the scene, the herd, the smell, the taste, 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. That 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 complexity, but why do I think I am this? Then another argument, even more subtle argument would be notice you are conscious, and you're conscious of the body. What Vedantic 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 that. But without they saying, no, you're consciousness with a body. In fact, more precisely, you're conscious, you're 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? What does it feel like? Does it feel like consciousness is there and I'm here? No, it means like, I'm here, I'm 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 am not conscious of Andre's consciousness. I'm conscious of Andre's body, language, behavior, 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 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 am 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 the body is perspiring or evacuating, eliminating waste. Matter is continuously flowing through this machine. And I have the intuition of being the same person. The baby's body and the child and the young person and the middle age person. So different. I change so much. But a common sense tells me, memory tells me, Lord tells me, you're the same person. The baby and the child, the young person and this middle age person, you are the same person. Then it's same person and the ever changing body. Then never changing person, self, the ever changing body. How can never changing and ever changing be the same thing? They can't be the same thing. Literally not the same thing. And like this, so without the will do is, point to something in our experience. Subject object, see here in the scene. Conscious, not conscious, changing, not changing. And begin to convince us, I, whatever I am, and not literally the body. I, the unchanging, cannot be the ever changing body. I, the consciousness cannot be the object, which is the body. I, the seer cannot be the scene or heard or smell it 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 in regards, 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 to the breath, which is part of the prana, the forces which keep this body alive. And the same argument is applied to it, changing and changing. In breath, our breath, short breath, long breath, the prana, which is healthy or sick, or hungry or fulfilled, you know, situated. So it changes, like the tides notion, the prana flows in and out of the body. But I notice, if you look at it from the perspective of the self, and the same self which breathed in, which experience breathing in, and the same self which breathed out. See what's the point? The in-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. But without the takes away from that is consciousness is the observer, is the experience, is the subject, the breath is the object, the experience. 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. 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 am aware of the breath, and I am aware of lots of other things also. So awareness or consciousness is on my side. In this way we argue, the same arguments we'll hold for the breath, and then without the interior arises it further. We've gone from the body to something subtler. Interior means not physical inside the body, because if you go physical inside the body, you'll just find more body. But in our own experience of ourselves, breath, 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, miserable, depressed, energetic, whatever it is, our feelings, our emotional states, our vital states, perceptual states, that's the mind. Memories, desires and impulses arising and floating away. So that also, same arguments will apply, Vedanta 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 are demit, 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 am 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. It 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 am the subject. And most dramatic of all, I am conscious of the mind. The mind by itself is not conscious. It's not something that I am stipulating. It's very important to come to realize this. It's extremely important for a Vedanta to realize the difference between mind and consciousness. I am aware of the thought. If I just think a thought, it's very easy to do this experiment. Let's just think ABCD. I am thinking ABCD. Now I notice I am aware of ABCD. ABCD is not aware of me. I am 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-conscious. 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 footnote here. This whole issue of AI now, I think it just goes to prove this point. People are 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, compose poems or songs, make a movie. AI is doing all of that. We thought the robots will come and take over the hard work, the laundry and the cleaning. Now we have to do this, we 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? Vedanta has the answer. Vedanta says there's no surprise that these machines are able to do that because you are not even the mind. As the body is a biological machine, the mind is a psychological machinery. It's machinery. It's extremely subtle and powerful, it's still machinery. And it's 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? Because one thing that these AI's are unable to do, they are not conscious. Ask any of the experts in Silicon Valley. 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 are 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 have feelings, they are machines, they're extremely clever machines and they are intelligent. There's nobody who doubts their intelligent. There's very few who would claim that they are conscious. That means you can be intelligent without being conscious. Going to prove what Vedanta is trying to show you that the mind and consciousness are different. And it could go further. Suppose you dismiss a 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, they are also that silence, that absence of everything. That too is being revealed to consciousness. That's also an experience. The silence of deep sleep or coma 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. There's consciousness even in deep sleep, even in general. in his tassier, even consciousness doesn't go away. In fact, in principle, it's impossible to imagine the absence of consciousness. If we 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 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 starts 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. This makes everything. That also is an object. So whatever I put forth as I know myself at 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. You see, this is enough. There's no self. But we still left with the gut and it's intuition that I still do exist. I can't deny my own existence. So without asks us this police 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 beat that. So we are left with the question, this absolutely sure sense of existence, 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. This is what I am. As long as I'm a mind, I can point to myself. 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 with answers is, 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. I could not conscious in the sense that I'm thinking. Even if I drop all thinking, here is where we leave the Descartes behind. Even if I drop all thinking, I'm still aware of not thinking. I ask the philosophy professor that I think therefore I am, every time Descartes 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 Buddhism, the mind only school which actually says this, that our existence is actually a city of flashes of consciousness. But without this even the gap between the flashes is also illumined by consciousness. So consciousness is also existence, existence is consciousness. Phenomenological 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 starts 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 pure subject. This is what it means by pure consciousness. It doesn't mean consciousness which is very clean or pure in a moral sense. It's just pure because it is bare consciousness, of bare awareness. This is who we are at our at the ground level. Okay, so this is only the beginning of Vedanta, Advaita Vedanta. This is where a school like San Kya, 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, 'procretty'. So they have a truly dualistic system, pollution, 'procretty', consciousness and object. And it'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 includes your body, includes your mind, your thoughts, it's not yours, they're all belong to the subject, they all belong to nature. And you are bare awareness itself. The utterly non-objective pure subject awareness. But Vedanta goes further, it says that, what is the relationship between subject and object? The next question it asks is that, all right, I am awareness. Here is this objective universe. It contains everything I knew so far, entire universe, but also what I thought 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 Vedanta saying, even my thoughts, my mind, the personality I consider myself to be. That's also part of the universe, that's also part of the objective nature. Then what's the relationship between me, the consciousness and all these objects? What's the relationship between Purusha and Procretty? Sankis says they are 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 Shankaracharya says, like light and darkness, they can't interact and yet they seem to interact. Why can't they interact? Where would they touch? The point at which they interact, would that be consciousness or object? If everything is either object or consciousness and they're interacting, you use the light metaphor. In Vedanta we often use the light metaphor, but you know, it has its 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 a material light, then how can it interact with a material universe which is utterly different from it? And so a Dwayta Vedanta 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, this is 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? Vedanta 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 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 Advaitha Vedanta is saying, the final conclusion it comes to is, yes, you are this impersonal consciousness, pure consciousness, 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. 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 non-duality. 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 life times, 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 Tattva-Masi, this is the meaning of non-duality, 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, which the non-duality of all the waves with regard to water. If we count water, there's only one thing in the pacific ocean. You can't say there's water and a thousand waves within your double counting. The waves are also water. So the waves are non-dual with respect to, even though there are 1000 or 10,000 in number and all always changing, they are non-dual 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. They may be big and small, they 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 the 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 Advaita Vedanta, the philosophy of teaching of Advaita Vedanta. A quick share. If you've been watching for a while, you know that one tool I 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 are 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, Bancharge is a solid choice. Their red light devices like this one, the Demulite, 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 science-backed wellness products that are worth checking out. You can head to bondcharge.com/nolaiself and use coupon code "nolaiself" to say 15%. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com/nolaiself and use coupon code "nolaiself" to say 15%. Bondcharge products are all HSA, FSA, eligible, giving you tax resavings up to 40%. I hope you enjoy it. Links in description as always. See you on the next one. So this distinction of falsity 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 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 to practice, maybe it's just more through the reasoning. Because for many, I think that's the big jump is to say that, "Okay, I can see that I, and from a fundamental place, my conscious awareness is observing my body, my breath, my sensations, even my thought and subtle fluctuations of my mind, even absence itself, and yet to make the claim that, like, ontologically speaking, that the universe is not separate from that field. How would you walk us to that understanding?" Yeah, so that's a big jump. The first part of it is not all that difficult to come to, that I'm awareness. The first part of it is going from, "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, 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 without this, it's already a fact. Without this, trying to get us to see that. It's not trying to get us to change anything at all except our perspective of it. It gets getting us to flip that. And there's actually a moment of an actual breakthrough, where it suddenly falls into place. "Oh, I see." But then there's the further inquiry into this universe of experience. Are they, they seem to be things out there? Without this, 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. It's quite clear. If I'm mind, then my mind refers to objects which might be outside the mind, or even at least even the thoughts, 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? Without the word "claim not," that's the doctrine of the falseity of the world. It's like saying, "There are 10,000 things ever changing things in this ocean called waves." 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, 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 falseity of the world. What the Mahayana Buddhist would call the emptiness of existence. 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 kind of monism. Just says that the one reality of the universe, the one non-dual reality of the universe, materialist can also say, "I'm a non-dualist, but the non-dual reality which I'm talking about is matter." And everything else is nothing but matter. Whereas the Advaitin says, "The non-dual reality is consciousness. Even matter is nothing but consciousness." So what is this relationship between matter and consciousness? Today, this is the hot subject, it's called the "hard problem of consciousness." Going back to the question about AI and consciousness, notice that it should have been easy to replicate consciousness. Why? Let me tell you why. AI is doing some really complex stuff. Creative, which is difficult. AI is doing it. Decision making is difficult. AI is doing it. Driving a Google car, a Bayboat, actually 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 task, high-order tasks which human beings know other animals even is capable of doing it. Ray, I 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 the experiencing consciousness is simple. It's just bare consciousness. It's like bare light. There's no complexity there. Whereas 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 I be easy to replicate? Or take a look at the hard problem of consciousness. If the brain is just another organ of the body, which it is, kidneys are, the lung is an organ, the brain. So why should it be so difficult to pin down what it does exactly? 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 demonstrated. 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, without FMRI machines, you know, 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 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 a contending theories. Take a guess how many contending explanations of consciousness there are. Robert Kuhn 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 narrowed down on a particular theory and 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. Refit 29 competing theories or worse, 325 competing theories, it just means we have a totally 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 or a broader attempt to reduce the subject to the object. There was a movement, for example, in 1950s and 60s, the common language philosophy in Oxford University. So Gilbert Riles, 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 tallys with our experience. If that's your ontology, consciousness is primary, notice that an 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 is 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 Galen Straussen says that if they wrote a tongue-in-cheek article in New York Times, the hard problem of matter is 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, we find it is disappearing before our very eyes into subatomic particles, into quarks. Now, they're talking about superstrinks and whatnot. It's becoming more and more mysterious. In this context, I remember the physicist, cosmologist, Pendros. 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 the universe again? This points to the adveytic segh that 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 Sangha. So if you do the other way around, in principle, consciousness is something that is that which is experienced in matters 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, and 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. If we don't say the door is amazing, how did you 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, the door. So you can learn something a lot about mind and consciousness by studying the brain as we are, but it doesn't explain consciousness. It doesn't even explain mind. So here is the ontological justification. You can, Indian philosophy, by the way, these are not final answers because Indian philosophy, thousands of years did deliberately it upon this and came up with every possible 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 positions which have still not got any corresponding modern equivalent. But I find Advaitika answer very satisfying. Philosophy, reason, but also your personal preference. It locates, um, ultimate reality in yourself. It locates the ground of all knowledge in yourself and it also locates all value in yourself. Sat, chit, amanda, and if you look at philosophy, there's a study of reality, ontology. There is, you know, there's a 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 Vedanta 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. And what makes all value possible is this anand or bliss. And it goes further and says these 3 are not separate. They're in fact the same entity. That which is ontologically primary is also epistemologically primary is also axiologically 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, the self is that ultimate reality and that ultimate reality is the self. Now, I'd like to start with a really profound story, a well-known story of the 10th man, so these old Indians who have how 10 people were friends, 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 one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. That can't be right. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And he says, oh, the 10th person's drowned. He's not here. He must have drowned. And somebody says, no, 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 passerby comes by and he says, why are you crying, my friends? Well, we have a 10 and our poor friend drowned. Now we are. How do you know that the person's drowned? Well, we counted. They're only nine of us left now. And so the clearly the 10th man is not here. We just crossed the river. And this guy, this person must have counted the damn and found there 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 you show him to it. It's perfectly all right. How? And he says, you count. We've already counted. This human be count again. So one of them got up and started counting. I told you nine. And this passerby catches all of the counters. Handed, turns it around and says, 10, you are the 10th in Sanskrit. Dashamas, tuamasi, dawak, the 10th. And this man goes, oh, I see. I'm the 10th. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Wow. Let me try. Let me try. And they try and everybody finds the 10th one and they're very happy. Now, Advaita Vedanta uses this story. In fact, in the more than one text, it's been used in one text, especially called the Panchadashi. So it illustrates the seven stages of the spiritual journey in the Advaita path. So there's the first, the ignorance about the existence of the 10th person. Then the error that the 10th person is drowned. So 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 creeping for the 10th person. The third stage is the wise person comes along and tells them the 10th person is dead. 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 wise person. They take it that it's true. This is called indirect knowledge in Vedanta. When you read about Vedanta and we are told about Brahmin existence, consciousness, bliss and all the stuff, we begin to form a general idea of which way we are going. So such a thing is there and somehow I am that and therefore everything is fine. So this is indirect knowledge. It still is not then comes the direct realization, the stage where Dawad the 10th and you suddenly realize aham Brahman has me, I am Brahman, my ignorance is removed next stage and then the 6th and 7th last stages is that you know my sorrow goes away, the result of it and bliss is found. So the stages of 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 is a world of difference between the two. There is Brahman, there is an ontological ground of being and ultimate reality, great. But what about me? I am that reality, if that becomes clear suddenly it flashes, it makes all the difference and then there is a further stage of the 6th and 7th stages of it progressively in our lives, we see the disappearance of sorrow and the perversion of bliss. Alright, so this is the story and then we go into the practice. So there are multiple modes of enquiring at the Vedanta, we shall sample one of them. So when we are ready we can sit comfortably, Vedanta 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 are working or playing or relaxing, all the time you are exactly the same reality and it is equally available everywhere. Initially it is easier if we are quiet, so it sits still and 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 at the down at the body, so our hands at our lap, closing the eyes we feel the sensation of the body. Prointernally 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 five years ago, it has changed dramatically and it is changing further. The body undergoes the so-called six-fold changes, traditional Vedanta, talk about the six-fold changes, birth and then coming into existence, then childhood, then youth and maturity, then aging and death, just the six changes. And yet I feel I am the same one. I was the one who was an inded baby, his body, I was the one identified with the 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 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 that ever changing, 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 seeing, known and I am the subject, the seer, the knower, the seer, the knower is never known, never because I never become an object to myself, the body is an object to myself. Therefore I, the seer and the body, the seeing cannot be the same thing, I, the subject and the body, the object cannot literally be the same thing. Relaxed, take a breath, I am aware of the body, I am conscious, I notice, I am 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, 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, non-conscious cannot literally be the same thing. Hence I conclude, even as I am experiencing the body, I feel the body. Now, this body, the changing body and I, the unchanging, I cannot be the body. The body which is seeing 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 breath, deep breaths. And I am the same one who experienced the in-breath, out-breath, long-breath, short breath, etc. I do not change with the varieties of breath. I, the unchanging, breath, the ever-changing, ever-flowing. And I know the breath and the knower, the seer, I am mindful of the breath, 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 am clearly conscious and I am conscious of the breath. I am also conscious of myself, my own existence. And I am 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 in non-conscious 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 argument supply, I notice, let us notice the ever-changing 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. We notice the mind can be known. I can introspect and know my own thoughts, my own desires. I can resisted 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 am clearly aware. And the mind most startlingly, the mind is not aware by itself. Think of thought. A, B, C, D, or 1, 2, 3, 4. Just think it right now. Notice the A, B, C, D is something that I am aware of. A, B, C, D is not aware of me. A, B, C, D is not aware of itself. A, B, C, D 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 aim, objectify the thoughts. So, A, the unchanging, A, the knower, A, 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 is 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, and the same one. I, the same, the changing intellect cannot be the same, cannot be identical. I know the intellect. I am aware of, when I don't know something, 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. 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 knower, the intellect, the known. I, the consciousness, intellect, non-conscious. I cannot be the intellect also. Relaxed, breathing normally. Let us look back, the physical body, it has filled the physical body, which I am not, it's there, 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 am 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 too comes and goes. That too is known. That too is a non-conscious object or absence of objects. Relaxed. Now I bring to mind the 10th Man 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 9th, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, then turning towards oneself and noticing oneself as the witness of the 9, as the counter of the 9, that completes the 10. Similarly, let us do it now. This we will just notice. Here is the body, I notice the body. Feel the body. Here is the breath. 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 visualise the absence of all of them, nothing. Now, quick, to who, what, 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. [silence] Breathing normally, relaxed. As the attention goes to the mind, the breath, and finally the body, and we become aware of where we are sitting. Notice that light, that bear light, that bear consciousness too, which the physical, the mental, the vital, the intellectual, the 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 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. Light reveals the aged body. That light does not sink in, the prana seconds. 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 rise 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 Advaita Vedanta, that we have not body, not mind, chankaracharya sings, and not the intellect, I am not the memory, and not the ego, and not the mind. I am bliss, I am consciousness, I am. Shiva, I am Shiva. Manobuddha-hankar-chitta-ni-rahaam. He says, "Dhidha-na-na-raup-a-shivohaam-shivohaam." 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 and the image of all those people sitting, "Touch my heart 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's story where you go from the state of ignorance of self to awareness of ignorance to awareness of self, then you could say the end of suffering, the rejoicing and 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 post-modern culture that says happiness comes by virtue of externally arranging your external circumstances in a certain way, the acquisition of more and the more money, the more followers, the more power you have, the happier and the more increase in well-being. What this experience coupled with the reasoning allows us to really see in our life is that we have all of those sensations, all of that experience of freedom and liberation within us irrespective of what's happening externally. 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?" And by then having this experience where we just went through a guided practice and you carry that 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 quality of renunciation as it changes fundamentally how we relate towards all life. I'm glad you asked this question about renunciation. Vedanta gives tremendous emphasis on this renunciation. Swami Vivekanth 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 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 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 behavior 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 ever fulfilled consciousness. If I am not the mind, if I am not even the intellect, if I am not the memory, if I am 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 have shut down the mind, I am just bare light, illuminating the shut down mind. What do I need? Nothing. What am I afraid of? Nothing. Fear comes when the mind kicks in. Then, what, who am I against? Who are my enemies? Nobody. The moment I realize I am awareness, I am the light, then I immediately realize everybody is this light. Why? As long as I am a body, everybody is a body to me. As long as I am a mind, a person, everybody is 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. Without the gift, another dramatic insight, without this full of these, what our senior Swami used to call thought bombs, an explosion which says, "Oh, how many consciousnesses are there?" I think Shirdi Guru 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 brother, or sister, or the human beings? No, that's just rhetoric. Literally one being. We are 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 you're indivisible. I am that as everybody else is." Now, from that perspective, if I forget that and I engage with the world, it's basically I'm going dependent on the world. I'm incomplete and I need the world to complete and it'll never happen 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 practices will be again, part of my project of trying to find completion in the world. It will become part of my repertoire. I learn languages, I also learn meditation, I learn philosophies, I also learn Advaita. It's all part of the same project. It won't work. I mean, to some extent, it gives 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 deeply that the world can give me. I can demand a million and one things from the world and the world will give me everything. Vivekanthi says, "Do not desire anything because you will get it." We think desiring is a little frustration. No. If you desire something, you will get it in this life or the next and you will realize it didn't do anything for you. Nothing will do anything for us because it cannot. It's not meant to. We are already complete. 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 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 change. That's where most of positive psychology stops. Vivekanthi says, "Go further. Not changing stuff in the world. You can change stuff in the world. You can't help it. You'll be keeping changing stuff in the world, in our own lives, in our minds, all very good. But stepping back from all of them with the crazy, 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 realization is necessary. Now that renunciation does it mean you have to be a monk, you have to live on top of a mountain. And tapanga. Do you have to do that? Or can you be in a city? Can you be in the mid-stuff life? I saw that book. "Resert Gharathamharaj." I am that. So one story I like about him is when he became enlightened. He had this enlightenment moment. 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, with the cheapest kind." And this is a difficult life. So he thought, "I don't need any of this. I'm off to the Himalayas. I'm going to spend the rest of this physical existence in immersed in bliss." And then he saw, "What am I doing?" That which I have found, what is there in the Himalays is equally here. What is here will just be the same in the Himalays. Why am I making a change externally? And he came back and he lived 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 among, you must give up sensual pleasures, you must give up all artistic intellectual pursuits, property and all of that. Then only it seems like the dry and suicidal advice, you're asking me to give up everything I know. I know you're promising me infinite existence, but those are words, those are concepts, but this is a physical life. So, very kind of 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 too. So, renunciation seems to be like that, the advice is, you give up everything. Maybe it'll help me, but at the same time, it's destroying everything that I know. That's my life you're talking about. What renunciation really means, Vivekanthi 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 Upanishads, is the very famous first line, which Mahatma Gandhi said, that if all of Hinduism were to disappear, and just that first line of the "ish" Upanishad remain, all of Hinduism would remain. And the Upanishad first line goes, all this in this universe which moves and moves not, is to be covered with God. Isha Vasya Medamsarvam Yatkincha Jagatke Am Jagat. Now, covered with God means what? The commentator Shankaracharya says, covered with God means to uncover God. It's already there. Not by imposing, not by positive talk, affirmation, it's God, it's God. No, not like that. It's covered. God is already there. And how do you uncover? He says, "Discover." How do you discover? Now it's pretty easy. Easy means you know the path now. Any discovery requires inquiry, inquiry into ourselves. So, this is real renunciation. It can be entirely in the midst of life, with people, with property, you know. Except that one has to be monk like inside. Externally monk or not, that depends on one's karma. Really, we believe that. Someone asked Ramana Maharishi, a lady, "Do I have to be a monk living in a mountain, like Ramana Maharishi, to be enlightened?" And he said, "No. You can continue to be a housewife and can be in the kitchen and be enlightened." When she asked, "Then why are you like this?" And he said, "That is my karma, to be here. Your karma is your housewife in the kitchen, but equally 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 monk like internally. It means, I affirm conviction what I'm looking for, this world cannot give me. Turning away from the project, 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 world, not for getting something, rather for giving, instead of getting giving. And then, re-reising the truth within. This is renunciation. Having a project about the world, the world will give me stuff, and then I'll be fulfilled, that is non-reonunciation. That sabotage is all the spiritual paths. Spirituality will become part of the project of getting stuff from the world. Even after re-reising, even after renunciation, 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. You can and should look after people in our lives. You can and should develop our potential of the body, of the mind, of the 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 alright. Because I am perfectly alright anyway. So the project of improving our lives can continue. But without any investment that is where my life will be fulfilled. No. Instead of asking life to fulfill me, I will use life to manifest the divinity already existing. I will realise what I am, and then leave it. Yeah, I really love the Taoism maxim. The Master does nothing, yet leaves nothing undone. And to me it speaks directly to this, what you are referring to, and how the Gita and many different texts have referred to is, you can have possessions, but not be possessed by the possessions. You can have things, just the things don't have you. Yes. 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 that you refer to, and I'm glad you gave the reminder of, it will increasingly require us to have this embodiment of this realisation, to be able to not be swayed by the whims and the cravings and a versions that life inevitably is going to bring towards us. There's a story about the Emperor, Janaka, who was enlightened, and the monk, Shukadeva, who's also enlightened, but he was a monk. So the Emperor was an Emperor, he had an empire. And the monk, Shukadeva, was a monk, he had only a change of line cloth, and nothing else. 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 fire. And the monk ran out like a shot and disappeared. After sometime 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 cloth, and I put it out there to dry. I was worried it might be consumed by the flames, because this is my only change of loin cloth. So I went there to make sure, and I finally, it's fine." Then the Emperor smiled and said, "It's a famous saying in Sanskrit." "Mithilaya, Prasikdaya, Name, Dhahatikin, Janaka." "If my capital city were to burn down, nothing of mine would be burnt." Not that he would play the fiddle while near her home burnt like Nero. He did whatever had to be done, but Emperor. And yet with enormous positions, he was not attacked. The point of the story being, "I have no positions at all. The only little thing that I have, I have tremendously attached to it. I'm quite anxious about it, a loin cloth." So this is not being possessed by the positions. 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, that Son of Man has no place to rest his head. I've 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, seems like we're throwing away the world. 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 these things. So I think that's just an important reminder because it helps bring in to our day to day life this possibility and not a one day, some other lifetime when I go be a monk. But this realization is available to us in every given moment. Now, I'm curious because as somebody who is deeply passionate about my devotion to seeing life as it is, to see clearly, one cannot but help see the various different ways in which we color perception in life, the vastanas and this 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 experienced the witness that's beyond all of these arising phenomenologically, is. is really potent. 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 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, references and dislikes. That's what constitutes our world view. 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 will tempt such a person. We are always driven by temptation or terror. It's the ability of mind, equanimity, what do you say? Equanimity will come. Where does this equanimity come? Where does this serenity come? Because there is this psychological, equanimity of serenity, which is grounded in the spiritual ontology of this ultimate nature of things, which is the thing that you can utterly trust. And because it is you, you can never lose it also. Once we realize it, our great relief comes because you found the ground of ultimate security. There's 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 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 remodel life. It becomes an enlightened project, and it is called an enlightened meant project in one sense. 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 am full. Now my life still continues. Here is the body. Here is the mind. Here are people and opportunities all around me. You'll radiate what you have found. And that's a beautiful way of living. There's something really potent about that phrase, only what I do not give can ever be lacking. When you look at it from the physics lens of how color works, right? We know that light is comprised of seven main colors. Whatever we are perceiving as a color is what the object is actually giving away. A black object is actually absorbing all seven colors. A white object is actually giving away all seven. In a similar way, I think about the nature of these qualities of being, these joy, love, peace, happiness, equanimity, 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 permanently, but in a sense where, yeah, 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, just true. Very beautifully put down. I never thought of that metaphor of the black body and the white body, white body that which is continuously radiating out. That's true. It is the childish, instinctive, almost animalistic, insecure psychology which always seeks to take, to extract without any thought of giving back anything, physically, emotionally, materially, intellectually, all for me, I, me, myself. For a little child that might be fine, 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. So this 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 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. I like your post, you like my posts, things like that. This is shopkeeping, buying and selling. What higher than this is that fullness which comes through genuine, inward spiritual, it's a reality, it's a fact. And then one can be entirely giving. There's nothing that you want really from anybody. There's no question of taking, there's also no question of giving in return for taking, getting something. Rather, it's your nature, it's your very 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. It can also be an act of worship. Since you find that light everywhere, you're overwhelmed by it. And as Vivekanth has said, let the give, let the receiver stand up and receive, let the give and kneel down and offer. You feel like you're offering to that awesome divinity all around you. Yes. So the transformation from satisfying my own likes and hungers and appetites and 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 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. We're keeping the scoreboard of giving and taking. It's a transactional relationship within our life. And when we come to experience our mind, our body, our thoughts, our emotions, not as us, but as something as objects and consciousness, essentially, it makes me think of this analogy when. That's a you just bought a brand new Porsche and you go and drive it on a really rocky, rugged road and you're terrified because you just got this car and you really want to take care of it. And so it's frightening. And you're being very careful and you're taking care of it in a sense. If you know, imagine that car that Porsche was a rental, you know, there's a certain liberation with being able to, it becomes a joyride all of a sudden, not an eGweek position. Right. And there's something that is very analogous to understanding about these human relationships are mind-body constitution. And I'm curious how you think that relates to love because a lot of people are under the presumption of love really enacting from our preferential standpoint of somebody's 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. As I'm curious, what our misguided perception of love typically is and what love and essence actually is from your perspective. The advantage of your flow is it's very interesting. There's one of the major Rupani shirts, the Briadarani ko-pani shirt. There is a dialogue between husband and wife. The husband is teaching non-duality 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. That might sound like a very selfish way of looking at things. But then he says, but this self is the self of all. There's 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 non-duality. The non-duality of the self is manifested as love between everybody. When it manifests as duality in this world, as multiplicity in this world, what happens to that non-dual existence, the pure being, it appears as existing things which no longer seem non-dual. This 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. Adveiter says, "If you fall in love with one, you're trapped." If you love all, then that's the manifestation of your non-dual self. Because 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 to. 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 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 non-duality into love, the more one brings unconditionally 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, other conditions of the other person. 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. I'm curious if there is any meaning to that outside of a person who's subscribing the meaning, and why this game is unfolding the way it is if you have some insight into that. This question comes to some point or the other when you're talking about non-duality, and the answer to that also is very interesting. If the practical answer is, if you ask a monk and did this 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? At that to life after life?" They will say, "If you think it's your ignorant of a real nature, then realize your real nature and be free." Don't try to find out why this happened. If you push further, "No, I want to know why this happened." They will say, "There is no why. Ignorance is not causally linked to reality." The rope appears in ignorance as a snake. Now, she asks the rope, "Why are we appearing as a snake?" The rope is in, "I didn't." It's what looks like a snake to you is your problem. The reality is, 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 first answer is, "I am not. Nothing has happened. I am still this desert." Now, it looks like that there is some mechanism because of which the mirage appears there. It looks like this desert mechanism. The mechanism is ignorance and then there is an error and then that 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 is no link. If there were, we would be in serious trouble. Then it would be causally linked because then you 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 fulfilled. It's like a movie screen. 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. 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, it would be very boring if it could not be existing things. Existence itself, it sounds nice. But if there are no existing things, it would be a very poverty-sticking 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 too 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? Then we say something wrong and then we investigate it and we find, a doctor investigates the same terms and goes back to the cause, root cause. And the root cause here, suffering in samsara, we find the root causes, 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 be suffering at the, you know, somebody said pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional. So what enlightenment does is it takes, it helps you to transcend that suffering. All that a physical level suffering might go on. That story about the Buddha, the two arrow story where, you know, monk goes to the Buddha and is actually from the original sources, not something invented later on. The monk asks the Buddha, "Then 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 you? The goal is to overcome suffering. It's still, it's their 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. And 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've found something so deep that it 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 defeatist. It's not a maximalist. Krishna says in the Gita, having found that after which nothing greater remains to be found. Being established in that, 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 then. So for each of us that are going about our life, maybe sit in the meditation practice, maybe listen to this conversation. They have a deep resonance. They see the intellectual rigorousness of the understanding. And we still fall back into ignorance in our day to day life. 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 so often recurring insight or experience, but a pervasive experience in our day to day life. In the Gita, Krishna teaches all this to Arjuna, the second chapter, the end of the second chapter. Arjuna asks this question, so what are the characteristics of the sage of stabilized wisdom? It's very interesting. So, he says, he says, "Of stabilized wisdom." So we have this wisdom. Now I've heard it from you. I've got this wisdom. Maybe I've got an inkling of it and 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 yogas. What practice is there also the four yogas? Very beautiful classification by Swami Vivekananda. is first this enquiry. This enquiry should go on. Now that we have got the hang of this enquiry, do it often, especially in trouble. So here is the pain, but isn't the pain an object, and I am 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. If 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 insulated from the anxiety caused by the pain. The pain may be there, the suffering is optional. You begin to suffer less. So the enquiry must go on. What we did all now, till now, it is all adwaita, it is enquiry. But it is 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, enquiry is there of course, preparation to level up the mind, meditation. Some technique of meditation must be a daily thing. 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. 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 disturbed our mind, sir. No wonder none of this enquiry stuff really works. Our mind's not so like jelly, they don't take fun. Shopinhar said, "A weak mind, the characteristic of a weak mind, is like a soft pillow which retains the impression of the last bottom which sat on it. A weak mind retains the last book which it read, impression of the last book which it read." I know. The mind must be strengthened to meditation. Focused steady. We must have a very high boiling point, amongst said, "Don't boil over so easily, the liquids with low boiling point is just when the temperature rises boils over. Some problem, and once 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 Vedanta does for you is you move from what to so what? You're dealing with it. It's not that you're escaping. You're doing it, dealing with everything internally or serene. That's everybody must admit. That's a much better way of living life. So meditation helps us there. Another practice is 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 believing in God. That's skinned or garden. I'm non-dualistic. I'm self-inquired. 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 will find they are all devoted in their own way, maybe very privately. So they have a devotion. 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. No, no, no, no. Greater. So a heart full of devotion, surrender, faith, love, then karma yoga, spiritualization of one's life activities. How can I be of service? What can I do for you? So these broad preparations, altruistic life, 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-inquired. 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. In a mind filled with a hundred desires, self-inquiry might come up and will 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 hundred times that you are limitless consciousness. But my feelings are all about this limited person. Yeah, I might be limitless, conscious meter right now. I have to take care of this guy. Vivekanthi 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 bhakti yoga, the yoga of love and devotion, it shares 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 the meditation, the rajayoga, the dhyana, 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, then 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 as 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 discreet experience so that you can fall back into that one white light before it breaks up into the seven colors to the line. All of these dishes, 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 magyamaka Buddhism, and 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 formal monastic life. So all that you said, it falls into place because I'm a monk. And a very ordinary, 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, and 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 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, a young boy is 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 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 the order out food. No. So what do what is my entertainment? Exactly what the asham provides. What do I do today? Before yoga, 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. I can see how it helps. It answers those questions automatically. 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 draining even the best up things. I'm curious how people with I think maybe have this false presumption and I'm curious to hear your thoughts, just speculating here. But as a monk, the acts of ego and identification just go away or maybe get easier in some sense, I could see how it could very much bring it up to the surface and you really have more materials to work with there. But when you reflect on a home car and this act of identifying in the ego's way of very cleverly clinging on to whatever it can, even the identity of being a monk or being spiritual or being a podcaster who's bringing virtuous conversations or it'll find anything I can grab on. And I'm curious, what what you've learned in that process about the ego, the nature of identifying, because I think a lot of people would think that as a monk, you have, it's easier, and maybe to some degree, there's easier aspects of that, but it doesn't remove suddenly, magically, this act of this egoic notion of identifying. I see first how you thin down the ego, you transcend it, and how you don't. First is, the yoga has helped you there. Karma yoga, as a monk, all your days spent in service activities could be schools, it could be, you know, giving medicine to the sick if you're in a hospital, or teaching kids, or, 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 in a room to stay, and 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 selfishness gets rubbed out of the ego. Otherwise, the ego is always in this project of, what did I get at the end of all this? Second, that the fact that selfishness is going up is the only thing that I'm getting, and that's great. That's a huge relief. Then in devotion, when I bring the ego in front of God, this is so tiny in front of the cosmic. It's the smash. You're in front of the emperor of the universe. So the only response could be reverence and worship. 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 hits. A quiet mind is what the ego hits. A restless mind, ego is happy. Excited, restless, thrilled, scared, anxious, busy with the phone or busy with the people, ego is happy because the mind is restless. Let go of that. Quietened down the mind, ego gets thinned out. And finally, the Vedantic way of, I am not the ego and the witness of the ego. This is how you thin out the ego. Throughout the day, every day. And 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. So your Ramakrishna says, distinguish between the ripe ego and the unripe ego. The unripe ego is body-based, is relationship-based. 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. That's clearly a fact. Not that I'm trying to be. I notice it has to be, that's what it is. Or if you are devotional inclined, "I am the child of God." Set up a relationship with God. If you are dualisticly 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 ripe ego. You can you pinpoint the moment when you decided to go down this path? 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 aeroplane sin, 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 what I'm going to do after I finished my education. And first about 30 years now. I became a monk in 1994. The day I finished my last assignment in college, I submitted the last assignment and made a and went straight to the monastery and joined. I was waiting for it to be over. Yeah. I have just maybe one or two more questions. I know I've been going for a while. I really appreciate this kind of conversation as 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. And I'm curious, your thoughts on that feeling? That feeling is a fad dharma where you're like a line with your nature and you're doing a sense what you ought to do in any given moment. And it sounds like you've followed that intrinsic calling to follow your path to whatever degree I'm successfully attempted 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 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. Vivekanth is said, follow your own highest ideal. That's the shortest path. Swadharma, the word Swadharma means your own dharma. Dharma means religion, morality, spiritualism, it's a very whiter. 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. Swadharma, there is a technical way of defining it because in traditional Hindu society was defined by casts and ashramas. Are your students? Are your householders? Are your forest dwellers? Are you among? These are the four stations of life. Are 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 metrics would determine your Swadharma. But that's fixed in society and it's no longer very relevant. Injured society like every society is fluid. But really 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? Vivekanth has 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 by the way can jump ahead, far ahead of my rest of my being and 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've built myself over many lifetimes in a particular way. So what will determine my Swadharma? How do I know? Vivekanth has 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. That's a good sign. It's intrinsic. Second, highest ideal. It must be something high and noble. Many things pull me. I have many desires, many preferences, many cravings. So are those my Swadharma? No, no, no, no. It must be in the sense of ideas because it's taking me to the ideal towards enlightenment. So it means 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. So your own highest idea. Intrinsic. Even if initially there is lack of success, no path, no matter how you like it, is going to be easy. And at that point, you might doubt, is it my Swadharma 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 it is, I feel aligned. My life isn't flow when it goes well. Sometimes it doesn't go well. Then it is just Swadharma. It can change. After some time your ideal you might go for from this to something else 20 years later. That's also perfectly all right. We're gonna give some checks to examine yourself. If it unites, it's likely to be the truth. If it divides, if something that's divisive and divides, it's likely to be untrue. If it is selfish, it's likely to be untrue. If it is selfless to the extended selfless, it's likely to be true. If it weakens, it says reject it as poison. If it's trendens, 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 right internally, intrinsically? Is my days and my months and years in alignment and I'm flowing towards something? And is it adding value to me and to society, to people around me? Wonderful, yeah, I think that's super helpful. And maps to my own personal life. One could speculate, which maybe we say for another time, why it is we have these intrinsic core values and pulls towards different directions. You mentioned a couple times karma, the potentiality of different lives or future ones are past ones. And to me, something I love about Advaita Padanta is how rigorous the analytical reasoning can be. And for people that don't have the experience of previous lives, reincarnation within their subjective experience and not that you or anyone is saying to take it on blind faith. But I think that the natural conclusion 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 and an individual in another form of life. And it's something I've thought quite a lot about and I'm just curious 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 accepted it as axiomatic. Think about it, Hinduism. So tremendously diverse within itself. There is Advaita, there is qualified monism, there is dualism, multiple schools, Vaishnavite, Shaqta, Shaivites, 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. Jains, Sikhs, so it's a sort of axiomatic and Indian thought. So that's why it's difficult for me to step out of it. The reason 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, didn't suffer enough before they died. Well, we are not seeing the results of the actions in this life. So you push it forward to future lives. So reincarnation follows from karma. They feed or it's a loop. Yes. How does it continue? The answer is the subtle body. What dies at death is the physical body. One of the five sheets. But the middle three sheets do not die. And that's pretty logical also. Because what you see dying, 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 in 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 first person experiences, my thoughts, my personality. This set, 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 clearly related. But it's not very clear either. It cannot be explained fully. That's also the hard problem of consciousness. So 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 materials 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 is a problem in principle. The hard problem of consciousness. You can't reduce something first person to your object. So this subtle body continues after the death of the physical body. But it carries the samskaras of previous lives. Meaning for people that don't know. The samskaras are the traces, the conditionings, even some memories, some 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 iPad. It's a new body. It can be a different, it cannot, 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 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 makes the whole show possible. Fascinating. We could probably talk for a couple of hours just on that. And my last thought is because you just, you mentioned a couple times in the traditions and culture in which you come from. And we all have our own version of that. What are the presuppositions and the axioms which are embedded in the paradigm which we kind of came into? I think the path of the sincere secret needs to be willing, of course, to throw away all of that and to examine what is right fundamentally, 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, which is the character logical development side of things. The young Freud, Adler James, the understanding of the psyche and the shadow. And of course, there is it being such a recent sort of understanding of examining the conventional self. There historically has not been as much talk about this from the Eastern traditions, from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism. And to me, the negation of the falsity of the Maya can quickly slip into this overemphasis on falsity and a turning away of the growing up. 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 the former without the latter leads to crazy cults that abuse people sometimes. The latter without the former puts you on this rat race in this never ending wheel of self improvement. And I'm curious your thoughts about how they complement each other are in necessity to be able to come into wholeness. Yes, I think you've put it beautifully. The core should be spirituality in whichever form. Advaity form or the Madhyamaka, Tibetan Buddhist kind of thing or any other particular form of genuine spirituality which you find in the word traditions could be a devotional form or dualistic also. That should be the core. But you're right. The development of the psychological self, Vivekaran, the gave great emphasis on what you call character building. That's the vessel which will hold the spiritual core. So without that there's a long process of character building which goes up to spiritual awakening. And then the spiritual awakening is further manifested through a further process of growth, which is Ji-van Muktan freedom, manifestation of the divinity within. That's where all these please tell us. therapeutic way, you know, this everything from Jung 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 Freudian kind of psychoanalysis did not go well with spirituality. They would think of it as a pathological spirituality. So that's where psychiatrist still now they don't have a, they have a jaundiced view of spirituality. Whereas modern positive psychology, I think it, 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. But keep the spiritual growth central. Otherwise, the mind can be like an never-ending loop. You fix one thing, two things come under and down there. You need Vivekanthi said, all we can do is polish the mirror. The development character development is part of polishing the mirror. Psychological development is also part of polishing the mirror. But ultimately, it was lead to the Ford Yoga's which also polished the mirror until the reality is reflected there. I really appreciate the thoroughness in which you provide to the understanding of the, the various different paths that we all individually like we spoke to relate to differently. And I think that this podcast, for example, this conversation that we just shared gets to be one entry point of many in which people can find the past that they resonate most to. And it's no small feat. I think that it has profound implications on the way that we treat each other, the way that we view ethics and build a family and business and relationships. And so just sincere. Thank you for my heart to yours. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you. Yeah. Your team. Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. And 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? I will leave you with Sri Dhamma Krishna's parable of the ones and the zeroes. 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. The one zero is 10, 2, 0 is 100. So the zeroes 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 one spirituality. And I mean it in the broadest sense. Be a non-dualist, be a devotee of God, be a Christian mistake, an Islamic mistake or an 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. Until next time. Yes, absolutely.