Nondual Consciousness: A Dialogue between Rupert Spira and Swami Sarvapriyananda

sometime in summer of 2019 i happen to have discussion with swamiji at our home and express my interest bringing together eastern and western teachers on the same platform at our archivia ashram located in pocono mountains pennsylvania but due to many many reasons that did not materialize but instead under the present circumstances it shaped up in today's virtual event i would like to thank both of them for making this a reality hopefully once we are over this pandemic sometime in future i'll be able to arrange a weekend retreat with similar format at our ashram with couple of traditional teachers like francis lucille and swami tatwa vidhananda now i would like to introduce rick archer of bed gap well acclaimed author of buddha at the gas pump after establishing that gap in 2009 rick has interviewed more than 250 spiritually awakening people many of you may have watched number of his interviews with many advaita vedanta non-duality teachers rick will be a moderator for q a session for the rest of the event we would like to thank rick very much for taking an initiative to lead today's session with that now i would like to turn it over to both teachers starting with swami sarvapriyananda namaste everybody yeah swamiji just uh in brief from your perspective if you can please give a summary of what is non-duality mean to you we'll start with that and then rupert will follow thank you again thank you so much uh prabhuji and namaste to everybody it's a pleasure to be here with this worldwide audience especially with rupert spyra so what is non-duality well literally this word non-duality means not to and this is the equivalent english equivalent of the sanskrit advaita dweta means to and advaitha means not to the crucial insight here is that even when we experience the many uh there could be an underlying oneness so we could be looking at a multiplicity and we we could also know that underneath all of that appearance it is one reality for example look out into the waves of the atlantic ocean and you see thousands of waves there and um we know all of those thousands of waves are actually one water when you count waves you can count thousands uh all appearing and disappearing but when you count water you have to say that there is nothing but water there there is no second reality apart from water there though you see thousands of waves another example could be gold and ornaments you see a whole array of gold jewelry maybe but of all different they look different they have different names bracelets necklaces and so on but when you know that there's gold you know that there is only one reality there one substance there apart from gold there is no second thing none of those ornaments are a second reality apart from gold in fact the best example would be our dreams so when we fall asleep and we dream there are people and there are places and there are activities going on um there is the sky and the earth and so many things so many activities so much action and we yet we know when we wake up there was nothing there except the dreamer's mind the dreamer's mind in itself appeared as a multiplicity so that's what that's the crucial insight of non-duality in the experience of the diversity of our lives there is an underlying oneness now it's all very well to talk about water and waves or gold and the ornaments or even the dreamers mind and the multiplicity of a dream but in this universe our exam our experience of our life this tremendous diversity what is the underlying oneness what is the underlying non-duality this is the remarkable thing about non-dual philosophy of advaita is that it says stunningly it's you it's you the real you you are that non-dual reality that absolute reality which appears as a multiplicity how is that possible so we are invited to take a look at our experience this is another great thing about advaith our non-dual philosophy is that it talks about our present experience all the time available we investigate that and we at once notice that we are aware we exist i am and i'm aware and we are invited to see that it is in this awareness existence that everything appears it's not that i am separate and there is a multiplicity of a world outside but rather when i take a stand in awareness i notice everything appears to awareness this awareness is also existence so in this unlimited awareness existence here i'm translating a term from advaita which is called which is satyam gyanam anantam satyam means is-ness or being means awareness and ananta means unlimited so this unlimited business awareness is our real nature why i say real nature is because we normally think of ourselves as this bundle of flesh and blood and mind thoughts and feelings as a person embodied person and non-dualism claims that this couldn't be further from the truth uh deeper investigation into our experience of life shows that we are this unlimited being awareness is-ness awareness and this is-ness awareness is the fundamental if you will the stuff of this universe there is no second thing really apart from this is-ness awareness i mean if you if there is anything that appears different from this business awareness it is also ultimately that same business awareness just appearing to be different so this is the non-dual reality you the real you we the real us uh we are the non-dual reality of this universe which appears as a world of diversity and the and uh non-duality says that once we realize this it takes us beyond suffering it it gives us the ultimate fulfillment this non-dual reality is itself isness awareness and also all value meaning purpose happiness fulfillment in life the sanskrit ananda or bliss so this is the claim of of non-duality that we are the ultimate reality of this universe and there is no second reality apart from this is-ness awareness i guess um i mean in in sanskrit there's one sentence which sums it all up it says tatwa masi that thou art you are that um this is i guess uh how you would sum up not develop non-dualism advisor version of it at least yes rupert thank you swami and hello everyone and welcome what is non-duality i would suggest that the non-dual teaching has evolved to has has appeared to answer or respond to three existential questions that have troubled people from all times in all places and and all circumstances the first question refers to our in life how may we find lasting peace and happiness the second question refers to our outlife the experience of the world and others what is the nature of reality and the third question addresses the relationship between our self the world namely how should we live so in response to the first question the non-dual the first question how may we find lasting peace and happiness the non-dual teaching suggests very simply that happiness is our nature happiness is what we are happiness is the nature of being we might respond to this suggestion by saying well if happiness is the nature of myself and i am always myself why do i not experience happiness all the time and the nondual teaching response that whilst everybody has a sense of being their self everybody has a sense i am myself not everybody knows their self clearly and it is as a result of this lack of clear self knowledge that the peace and happiness that our very nature are not fully felt or experienced so this is why so much emphasis is uh both in the eastern and western traditions is placed on self-knowledge it's why the the word know thyself are carved above the temple of apollo at delphi this this understanding that in order to find peace and happiness the ultimate fulfillment in life one must first know oneself as it as we essentially are why do we not know ourselves as we essentially are because most people's sense of their self is mixed up with or identified with the content of experience and this amalgam of our essential self plus the limitations of experience produces an illusory self a separate self or ego and this illusory self veils or obscures the peace and happiness that are our nature in response to the second question what is the nature of the world we see what is the nature of the universe what is the nature of reality as suggested the non-dual teaching suggests that behind the multiplicity and diversity of objects and people there lies a single infinite and indivisible whole reality from which everyone and everything borrows their apparently independent existence just like all the characters in a movie borrow their apparent reality from the single indivisible screen why does this single indivisible and infinite reality appear in as a multiplicity and diversity why does it appear in this dualistic subject object relationship where otherness and separation seem to be so very real it is and i'm going to elaborate on the dream analogy that swami suggested it is one of the best if not the best analogy that i know of for explaining this as swami suggested when we fall asleep at night our own mind overlooks or forgets that it is dreaming in order to perceive the dreamed world it must enter into our mind enters into its own imagination and seems to become a separate person a separate subject of experience within its own dream from whose perspective its own activity appears as the dreamed world and of course when we wake up we realized there was no we were not a separate subject of experience and there were not numerous objects in themselves it was all the activity of our own mind well the non-dual teaching suggests that the ultimate reality spirit consciousness the godhead brahman is so to be dreaming or imagining the universe within itself but in order to perceive that university must temporarily overlook itself it must localize itself as a separate subject of experience and that's each of us we are the separate subjects of experience the eyes of a god through which infinite consciousness views its own activity as an apparently outside world the price it pays for this forgetting or overlooking of its true nature is suffering and suffering is the call that we all feel to return from this apparently separate self to our true nature of infinite awareness this unity behind the apparent multiplicity and diversity of experience is not something extraordinary or exotic it is known by everybody as the experiences of love and beauty when we love someone we feel that we are one with them that our being is their being the beauty is exactly the same experience in relation to an object rather than a person when we feel that a landscape is beautiful or a piece of music is beautiful we have at that moment ceased to be a separate subject of experience we have merged with the apparent object we haven't recognized our prior unity and in response to the third question how should we live i cannot improve on saint augustine's response to this question about the ethical moral obligation of one in whom and one who has this understanding he simply replied love and do whatever you want which is almost exactly is the same responses jesus gave that is recorded in the gospel of matthew love thy neighbor as thyself treat everyone and everything as your own being if love that is the recognition of our shared being if we understand and feel that we share our being with everyone and everything any action that proceeds from that understanding will be in line with and an expression of that understanding and one is free to to do whatever one wants as long as it is informed by this felt understanding of our shared being so that's a very brief summary or one way that one could summarize the non-dual understanding so it's only unless unless you and i want to have anything we you wanted to say or ask we could ask uh rake to um to to to respond or to to bring a question from participants is there anything you'd like to to say we share um a lot of analogies the the ocean the dream the screen it's true um if i may there's one question that uh that came to my mind was listening to and i've listened to this earlier also you talk about the universe and our experiences as the activity of consciousness now purely from an advaita philosophy philosophical perspective they would not ascribe activity to consciousness they would just say it's a manifestation of consciousness because the activity uh would they would put it at a relative level a relatively true activity just says there is really no activity going on in the screen although there's a lot of action happening in the movie so it's not really an activity of the screen it's just the very natural uh you know it's just what the screen is it shines forth in that way yes yes i i would agree with you the the term the activity of consciousness is a concession as indeed any expression of truth is a concession to the mind it's a concession to the mind that sees movement change multiplicity diversity just as to use your first analogy when we look out at the ocean we don't see a static motionless actionless ocean we see a an ocean that is moving and flowing so from that point of view we could say that the waves are the activity of the ocean that the the dreamed world is the activity of the dreamers mind that the movie we watch is the activity of the screen of course you're you're absolutely right if we if we touch the screen we're watching a movie there's a there's a tremendous amount of activity going on appears to be going on but when we touch the screen the screen is not moving it it is motionless so i mean it's yes it's from an ultimate point of view that the screen is not it is it is motionless but it appears as movement change multiplicity and diversity yes um in fact in ancient india there were different flavors of non-dual philosophy so one of them the kashmiri shiva version does in fact attribute activity as a as a kind of activity to to the ultimate consciousness it is a power of consciousness and they take it to be real but advaita vedanta does not for i think more for logical reasons because they went through a nearly a thousand year period of dialectics with opposite of philosophical schools you know the moment you attribute activity to consciousness there's a whole host of dualistic philosophers and realistic philosophers who are waiting to say gotcha so if there is activity there is change and therefore back into a real dualistic world but yes uh from a spiritual point of view one one can see that you can regard this entire universe as just the manifestation of that one consciousness right should we ask rick rick you and tim hi rick nice to see you thank you for joining us there i'm unmuted thank you um all right so first of all i think i'll pick up on the point you guys just made which is that and i'm glad swamiji mentioned kashmir shaivism because as i understand it that discipline and also modern physics regards the sort of most fundamental level of of nature's of reality as being both kind of silent and dynamic it's said that at the level of the vacuum state there's more energy latent energy in a cubic centimeter of empty space than there is in the whole manifest universe so it's understood that there's this tremendous dynamism or latent potentiality within the unmanifest field and that that that all the dynamism we see in the more manifest realms is a reflection of that or a manifestation of that probably a very partial manifestation so i had another question i was going to ask but i better bounce this back to you having said what i just said um you want me to respond either one okay now i know the tremendous temptation especially in our modern world to find some correlate in in physics or in neuroscience to what advaita or non the ancient non-dual philosophies are saying i'd just be careful about that not that i'm against it swami vivekananda for example who who bought this vedanta to the west uh all the way back he was talking with nikola tesla about the possibility of finding correlates in the understanding of physics at that time with vedanta and sankhya philosophies and so on so in principle i'm not against it and i think it's a really good thing and we must come to it someday some kind of understanding i just think we are not there yet recently brian greene well-known cosmologist here at colombia he was launching his new book until the end of time so it's i think if you look at the book it's more philosophy than it is cosmology and there he takes up the question about advaita and modern cosmology and he said and he repeated it in the talk at harvard university he said that what you talk about in vedanta is like a poetic echo it's not science it's like a poetic echo it is seems to be saying the same thing it's like a poetic echo of what we find in modern cosmology in modern physics so yeah a very senior monk once told me don't be in a hurry to identify the discover latest discoveries of modern physics with advaita vedanta or any of these philosophies because physics is continuously changing and you say that the corridors of science are littered with the skeletons of past theories so the moment you tie your understanding to one of these theories and once that is disproved and science marches on you are likely to be left behind in the dust also but yes you can clearly see parallels these are very sophisticated maybe it's a different paradigm of understanding i don't know what would rupert say about this i would say simply that i'm not a physicist and i'm not qualified to speak on [Music] physics quantum physics view of even most of the physicists as i know i don't know too many but i've met quite a few over the years at the san conference and most physics businesses don't understand um quantum mechanics so um i i cannot comment on a physics current perspective i'm not qualified to do so i think all i would say is that the phrase that you used rick that the quantum field i think you said it it acts without acting i i like this this is very in line with the kashmiri shaivite approach that as i said before that the screen appears as 10 000 people in motion but is it is itself not moving it in other words we could say within the limits of the metaphor the screen moves without moving it acts without acting in that sense uh shakti is the activity of shiva experience is a modulation of infinite consciousness he who in action sees in action and in inaction sees action right swami you're just talking about that the other night um rupert um this question is from baldeep singh in dubai but i've embellished it quite a bit um please click correct me if i'm misquoting you but in your recent interview with tim freak you said that you relate more to the the word god these days than to the term non-duality but that you hesitate to speak that way because you would so easily be misunderstood and swami speaks of god in most of his talks uh ramana shankara ramakrishna and many others in the vedantic tradition have done so and were very devotional um yet some students at vedanta regard talk of god and devotion as dualistic now there's a second part to this question i i want to get in and that is that in in swami's introduction he alluded to the mahabharatas you know i am that thou art thou all this is that but when you actually look at what that appears to be it is such an incredible display of intelligence and creativity look at a single cell and it's more complex than tokyo and it's able to repair and replicate itself and we have trillions of them in in our one body so the creation is just this marvelous thing awe-inspiring and um it seems a little almost disrespectful to just brush it off as an illusion if it's an illusion it's a marvelous illusion and you know and it actually inspires devotion even to contemplate how sublime it is how miraculous it is so how would let me just throw in one more thing and then i'll finish um saint teresa of avila said that it appears as though god himself is on the journey so would you agree that the relative creation is not just a quagmire of delusion and suffering that we should try to escape from as soon as possible but that it has an evolutionary purpose both for all forms of life and perhaps even for god and you could go on and elaborate on what you think god is and why the great vedantic sages spoke so much and so highly of god and this this question is for either so many people want to comment on this there's so many questions in there i don't know about that um so you started by mentioning my reluctance to my preference for using the word god but my reluctance also it's true i have a preference for god simply because i'm a i'm a closet sufi really but time to come out of the closet rupert when um when ellen first met me or after a short time we known each other she said you're you're a sufi on the inside and the banana on the outside and it it that's it's true why am i um as a reluctant to speak of god for obvious reasons the the the word god has assumed so many associations of course within the confines of a meeting such as this where i think probably most people attending are either familiar with swami's approach or my approach or both it's quite safe to use the word god i would have no reservation for for doing so but but wanting to speak about these matters in a way that makes it available makes this understanding available to a broader audience i think the word god provokes more resistance than is necessary so at least to begin with i would not use the word right but we know that we're not referring to the big old guy in the sky with the beard here we're we're talking about all pervading intelligence which is evident in every particle of creation if we look closely enough yes we're talking about infinite being infinite aware being which is the very nature of our our self or our being uh is is this being devolving i would suggest not uh any more than uh in the same way that a a screen doesn't evolve during a movie but is is there an evolution or a purpose for for an individual a so-called individual which i as i suggested is a is a temporary localization of infinite consciousness yes that there is a purpose i would suggest a twofold purpose one relating to an individual's inner life and one relating to their outer life their inner life uh is to find happiness that's what all individuals are engaged in more or less constantly the search for fulfillment for peace for happiness sometimes referred to as enlightenment so this is the the highest desire that anybody ever has is the desire for happiness and this so this i would suggest was an individual's purpose to recognize their true nature of peace and happiness what is their outer purpose it would be to communicate that understanding in some way through their activities and relationships but first to recognize the nature of our being the fact that its nature is peace and happiness and that it is shared by all people and all things and then to use one's life one's faculties one's inclinations one's intelligence one's body to communicate express share celebrate this understanding in whatever way is appropriate for each individual swami well the question of god is a very interesting question when you come to non-duality um one one way of understanding non-dualism would be this that the triangle of god universe and us sentient beings in sanskrit jiva jagat ishwara so that's the triangle of dualistic religion we have this universe we are sentient beings and there is a god which we accept on faith or at the most on the proof of mystical experience you may have visions and so on so forth or voices um now and and your relation to this being who is supposed to be omnipresent omniscient omnipotent is one of devotion faith devotion surrender worship love now from a from an advaithic perspective there is a way in fact a highly recommended way in which one can relate to god the absolute brahman or this infinite is-ness awareness which is our real nature appears as us obviously as this universe and as the god of the universe so what nondualism says is that this triangle which you find in dualistic religions universe god and individual there is a deeper reality to this triangle there is this one uniting non-dual truth which appears as this triangle so on one hand when you look at it this way there's the danger of dismissing god as you said so all right so this is an appearance the reality is that non-dual business awareness and i am that and that's it that's an immature way of looking at non-dualism all the great uh you know teachers monks and you know spiritual masters have met non-dualists they have always said that that you after the non-dual understanding you look back upon this universe you see this entire universe pervaded by that one infinite being and god is that infinite being once you look back upon this universe and you find yourself again back in this this form and you look at you you're looking at the universe god is in fact more real to you earlier it was a god of faith now it's a god you know that it exists it is a reality so there is a non-dual bhakti devotion it's not that devotion is contrary to knowledge it's not that devotion is contrary to non-dualism there is a devotion based on faith which is at the initial level after enlightenment or after this non-dual understanding the same devotion remains as a direct appreciation of of this god uh which is no longer a distant card the problem the problem with now let me tell you what what the problem is is with uh bringing guard into the non-dual conversation um the beauty of the non-dual approach i'm sure rupert will agree with me here is i mean the what is most directly attractive for the non-dual approach is it's right here it's you it's absolutely evident if you know if you but know what is meant by non-duality you would see it's an obvious fact the moment you import the god of dualism into it with the dualistic presumption of a distant god a god who is an other a god who is omniscient omnipotent omnipresent um then it seems to be something different from you so that is the only problem but but with the mature understanding of non-dualism there is absolutely no no problem in appreciating loving worshiping god in fact as you said shankara and ramana and ramakrishna and all the saints and sages of different religions who had clearly had a non-dual non-dual realization they were also in most cases openly devotional so they never saw any contradiction at all i think it's a sign of a mature non-dualist to have to be full of love and and devotion yeah if if god is on on the present then he can't be distant from you and as one teacher said um god may be omnipotent but the one thing he can't do is remove himself from your heart and you tell the story of someone coming to ramakrishna and saying you know can you show me god can i know god and he said yes and he said do you see god and he said yes you can clean up the story if i've garbled it a little bit but um obviously he was asserting that god can be an experiential lived reality whatever god may be we can we don't want to take up the entire time talking about that but um go ahead rupert um just what you said if god is on this end then god cannot be separate from you separately if he's on the present yeah if i'm omnipresent if god is on the present that there is no room for a you or a me or an us alongside god from god or one with god so if god is omnipresent and if god is not only present then god is obviously not god there is no question of us either being separate from him if i'm allowed to use the word him or or united with him there simply is no other self or being than god's being and god's being the only being there is the only self if we can call it itself there is is the self of ourselves that the self of each person and the being of each thing and this god's presence shines in each of us as the feeling of being or the knowledge i am before it is qualified by experience so this sense that everybody not just those relatively few of us relative few of us who are interested in these matters but all seven billion of us have a sense of their own being what not everybody realizes is that the being that they sense as themselves is god's presence the only presence or being there is why don't we realize it as god's being because we allow ourselves to become mixed with or identified with the content of experience but once our being is divested of all the limitations that it acquires from experience it shines as the only being there is the god's presence or god god's being and this is the same being that shines as the is the is as the is-ness of all seeming things yeah swami muktananda's slogan was god dwells within you as you any more any more comments on this topic can i introduce a question here which normally rick does not speak about but i would like to know his views on this which is yes which is uh dualistic religion who i mean notice how rick took it one step uh i'm so sorry rick and uh rupert of course rupa does not normally speak about this rupert yes sorry so but notice how rupert took the dualistic conception of god mediated by the omnipresence of god to the non-dualistic realization god's being must be my being which is perfect non-dualism but there is and i'm one with rupert there absolutely i mean i don't disagree one bit but we must admit there's a vast number of people in this world not maybe in this audience but a lot of people who would not want to go so far who would want to hold on to their individuality and have god as an other and find some theological way of finding a distinction between god's being and our being and set up a dualistic maybe a loving relationship based on faith and surrender and worship to god so where would um rupert stand on this because in classical advaita vedanta there are two ways of dealing with this one would be that this kind of dualistic devotional practice is helpful ultimately to non-dual realization which is the real thing a classical advaitan would say ultimately you have to come to the realization that i am brahman i am the infinite for enlightenment and liberation and dualistic worship is a good stepping stone towards that that's one way of looking at it there's a more liberal way of looking at it that sri ramakrishna would say instead of privileging non-dualism above dualism so these are different approaches and all of them ultimately set you free from samsara so what would i mean rupert what would you say to that i tend to agree with the first approach you you just suggested namely that this dualistic devotion towards god is is valuable in that it attenuates the ego but it does not uproot the ego in fact for the ego to be truly uprooted or it cannot be uprooted because it doesn't really exist as such for it to be dissolved this dualistic relationship between self and other whoever that other is whether it's a person or or a god must must come to an end so can you see even even if we take the dualistic idea of devotion of god how has it how has it arisen let's use the analogy swami that both you and i have used the analogy of a dream when we when we dream we localize ourselves as a separate subject of experience within our own dream and we look out at the dreamed world and the dreamed character feels itself to be small finite limited and indeed a product of the world that it perceives and because the world it perceives is immense and magnificent it is quite natural for the the so-called individual the dream character to ask what did all this emerge from this whatever this emerged from must have been prior to and larger than itself so whatever and and therefore they conceptualize a god that is beyond the universe prior to but beyond it and and greater than it so hence this this trinity that you suggested god the world and the self so from this point of view we enter into a devotional relationship with this marvelous magnificent infinite god that is the creator of all of this but even from that point of view if the world is created by or emerges out of this magnificent infinite god at a distance from our self if the world is a creation of that and we as separate individuals are a creation of the world then whatever the essence of the world is god must be the essence of what we are so even if one follows the dualistic the the the the the common dualistic idea of self and god if one follows that all the way one must inevitably at the end come to the realization that the being that i am is a localization of the only being there is in other words in either of these two perspectives that what you and i would consider to be the the true non-dual view of god or the more dualistic view of god if if you go deeply into the dualistic idea of god that there is only room for one being there is only room for god's being so that the dualistic sooner or later even if one pursues the dualistic approach one must come to the realization that there is no other self in me other than god's being that to me is true devotion to god right good next question okay um this is a question about awareness a block of text on rupert's site reads everything we know is known through awareness therefore our knowledge of anything is only as good as our knowledge of awareness this question came in from an anonymous questioner who asks does this quote say anything more than the obvious fact that we can perceive and act because we are conscious there are experts in every field of human endeavor who know little of awareness but accomplish amazing things so and there are a couple more questions so i want to dwell on awareness for the next few minutes but pick it up from that particular question to start with would you follow me would you like to respond first all right i'll i'll start with the the tail end of the question that there are experts in every field who uh accomplish amazing things that's true i mean from a classical advaita perspective in this world of maya this world of appearance you can do amazing things without knowing things without knowing the ultimate reality of this appearance you can have technology you can have science you can have you know medicine all of that can be done right and art and everything is possible without knowing the the root of things but notice there is a limit we do not know the answer to the ultimate questions of what is all this what am i really and also there is always this nagging problem of suffering even with all the marvelous things that we can do in science and technology and art and even religion so in all of this there still remains uh lack of fulfillment the lack of answers to ultimate questions so those are answered only when you probe deeply into it notice even in science our deepest question we live in a world of modern science so we have to take a look at that and i even i'm not trained in physics or i'm not a scientist but i can't help but noticing that even in this determined quest for a solution to the riddle of the universe in material terms only we've just ended up with paradoxes scientists could explain this better but this doesn't seem to be any solution coming up at all so we are ultimately thrown back upon the one which is experiencing all this as rupert says upon awareness let me give you an example we have here the senior most member in our ashram is bill conrad who is 96 years old and still going strong he is a veteran of the second world war and a physicist by training and he has a question he says you see that everything appears to awareness and there's no proof of anything apart from awareness so i can suggest a physics a scientific experiment to prove you wrong swami let's put up a sorry let's put up a camera in this room and let leave the room let the camera video camera keep recording then we come back into the room and we play the recording and we see we were not no but nobody was in the room at least no conscious being and this room existed the the camera the film shows that the room existed even when we were not in the room so doesn't it prove that things can exist um so my answer to him was bill notice that you see the room in in your awareness you propose the experiment in your awareness and you are aware of the camera being set up and you are aware of us leaving the room in your awareness we come back into the room in your awareness we look into the film of the camera and and we in your awareness we come to the conclusion that there must be something other than awareness it's still in your awareness at no point did we step outside your awareness and to make the point even more clear i said to him is it entirely impossible that this could all be in a dream could you dream that you're setting up an experiment and leaving the room and recording an empty room coming back and deciding that the room exists by itself and the next moment wake up and say the whole thing was in my uh in the dreamer's mind he had to say on principle it is possible so ultimately everything that is going on is is absolutely is only in awareness and once one begin begins to understand this one sees it's an obvious fact why did i never see this earlier and the implications of this are tremendous even for science even for science even for technology even for art what is it that is doing science technology and art uh we do not know when we it is it is only awareness which is doing it and it does meaning it is possible it has existence only because awareness is it is appreciated we are aware of science and technology and art only because of awareness and we are we appreciate the beauty in science and art again because of awareness so i would totally agree with um with rupert when he says that it all comes back to awareness and just to elaborate on that i'm going to respond to the the first part of the the question rick because that's why we addressed the latter part of it i think you started with um the question started with a quote from my website saying uh our knowledge of of reality is only as good as the mind through which it is known only as good as our knowledge of awareness it's only as good as our knowledge of awareness is it's on you yes but let me change that slightly our knowledge of reality or the universe is only as good as our knowledge of the mind through which it is known why because everything that the mind knows and all that is known as the universe is known by our mind is filtered through the limitations of that mind so in the same way that if one looks at snow through orange tinted glasses the snow will appear in accordance with the limitations of the medium the glasses through which one looks and the white snow will appear orange of course the one wearing glasses has been wearing them all day so no longer realizes that they are wearing glasses and they believe that the snow is orange no the snow has no color of its own it appears orange because of the medium through which it is being perceived now the medium through which we perceive the universe is called the mind which cause which which consists of perception and thought so how do we know that the universe that we perceive this multiplicity and diversity of objects appearing in time and space are not sim is not simply a uh a raiification an objectivization of the limitations of our own mind in other words that our own mind superimposes its own limitations on reality which divested of those limitations is infinite or unlimited we don't know that how could we ever does this mean that it is not possible to know the nature of reality does this mean that our knowledge of reality will always be tainted with the limitations of the mind no because if we in if the mind investigates itself and discovers what its own essential nature is prior to its limitations that is the one knowledge that the mind is that is possible that is not subject to the limitations of the mind in other words when the mind is divested of all its limitations its unlimited essence or reality shines and so in other words our knowledge the mind's knowledge of its own essence awareness is the is the only knowledge there is that is not tainted by and has such an expression of the the minds and limitations and therefore it is reasonable to conclude from this that the the the only knowledge there is that is not inherently limited by the mind is the knowledge of awareness awareness is knowledge of itself and that that is that is the only absolute knowledge there is by absolute in this context i mean the only knowledge there is that is not relative to the limitations of the mind through which it is perceived and there is no need to posit as swami said very very nicely in his introduction that there is there is no other reality in the ocean other than water there is a single reality where we know even if from the point of view where we consider ourselves to be a product of the universe if we are a product of the universe and the essence of ourselves must be the essence of that which we are a product of so all we need to do in order to know the ultimate reality of the universe is to know the ultimate reality of ourselves and if we do that if we trace back our experience through all the layers of relative knowledge and experience we arrive at this the knowledge of our essential being that awareness is knowledge of itself which must therefore be the absolute reality of the universe swami didn't want to comment on that um can i just make a comment on that yeah yeah yeah yes um and i totally agree with what rupert just said uh i was just hearing in my head voices of different scientists have come across physicists mathematicians and neuroscientists especially so and they have a chorus of protest because of a misunderstanding they seem to feel that we are invalidating science so no what rupert just says does not invalidate science within a relative sphere in in the sphere of appearance even without knowing the ultimate reality science works so at no point does advaita or non-dualism ever contradict science so you can do science without being a non-dualist you can do science by being a realist um and a materialist too and it will work only thing is there are two there will be two problems one is you will not answer the ultimate questions what really ultimately all this is never get to an answer to that you will end up with paradoxes whatever your discipline mathematics ends with godel's paradoxes now i'm entering into dangerous territory which i'm not an expert on physics i understand is at the heart of physics lies some terrible paradoxes today and neuroscience ends up with the heart problem of consciousness so uh you will not come to a final deep understanding of what's going on here that'll be one problem the second problem is you will not solve the problem of suffering and ultimate meaning of life that can only be answered by knowing the nature of awareness that we are this unlimited being awareness i just add something to that um just follow on from that swami that that that this objection that you raise on behalf of the chorus of scientists and neurologists that we are invalidating science uh on the contrary what we are speaking of is the ultimate science uh unless we understand the nature of the mind through which all knowledge takes place we cannot possibly expect to know anything about the objects of knowledge so unless we know the nature of the mind or all science is is the activity of mind it is a series of perceptions and a series of thoughts it is the activity of a human mind so unless a scientist knows the nature of the mind through which all knowledge of the universe is known we cannot be sure that our knowledge of the universe is any more than a rarefication of the limitations of our own mind therefore if we want to know anything about the nature of the universe it is we first must know the nature of that through which the universe is known so we are not invalidating science we are upgrading science we are making the very obvious point that if we want to know the nature of the universe it is necessary to first know the nature of the mind through which it is known our knowledge of the universe appears in accordance with our knowledge of the mind through which it is known so i would suggest that what we are speaking of is is the ultimate science it is not a a a an invalidation of science it is the science upon which all other sciences must be based yeah i would say we're kind of rescuing science since uh the materialist paradigm is the predominant one in the in the world and it would seem that that paradigm the predominance of it has had disastrous consequences yes in so many ways then this leads into a question from a neil mature in canada who asks um how do we know that the awareness we feel is a reflection of our true self existence consciousness bliss and not just a product of the brain since someone you or swami just alluded to neuroscience and the hard problem it was the swami and i would say you know we can expand this question a bit you know can materialism and its subtler form pen psychism be empirically disproven and then there are all these other sort of isms idealism and panentheism and and so on that people debate over um how do you kind of and someone else in a different question asks where do you see nonduality going in the next 50 or 100 years and that might weave into this one which is that you feel that nonduality if it's coming into its heyday will help to reshuffle these perspectives and paradigms until eventually we'll no longer live in an age where an erroneous perspective such as materialism can have such dominance both of you can address this do you want me to go first uh either way no okay um yeah this is something that is i find interesting because i've met uh david chalmers here who is here at the nyu he's the head of the mind brain consciousness unit here and he's the one who coined the very popular term now the hard problem of consciousness um he advocates pan psychism so now there are two ways of going about it one way is uh to show that um in the heart problem of consciousness and pan psychism as david chalmers is putting it is not the ultimate solution it's not at all what advaita vedanta is saying it's advaita goes much deeper another way which i prefer is to take what we are given by say neuroscientists right now or by philosophers of the mind like david chalmers right now and then see what further steps we can take to reach the advaithic or non-dualistic understanding of consciousness so that second approach is i'll just outline what i feel about it recently christoph cook who is the chief scientist of the paul bel um allen brain institute he launched his new book the feeling of life itself so now it's an online even nowadays like everything else it was the harvard bookstore and i was very interested to see that here is this person who's studying consciousness entirely from the perspective of the brain of course neuroscience but now there are these uh this i noted a few things he said first very encouraging um he said that consciousness is most important there's nothing as important in consciousness and i was thinking well we have come a long way there was 20 25 years ago there was nobody who was seriously interested at all in consciousness in the sciences even in even in brain science also they were dismissive of the whole thing and now here is the leading neuroscientist in the world one of them saying that consciousness is the most valuable thing in the entire universe because he says that suppose you give me a billion dollars and tell me that kristoff you have to give up your consciousness and you can live as a zombie your body will be fine your brain will be fine everything goes on but you just are not conscious at all and we'll give you a billion dollars and say no it has no meaning for me if um you know i'm not conscious so consciousness is the most important thing in all of the universe that is a big takeaway and we would agree non-dualism would agree with him there second he is working with tanoni developing this theory called the integrated information theory um where one takeaway is that consciousness is everywhere so that's a huge huge step forward it's still something materialistic from their perspective but it's everywhere now uh especially in all living beings again a huge step forward from the time just 20-25 years ago where people said consciousness whatever it is scientists would say it's only in you know human beings or higher primates like us not even lower animals now all animals all living cells and he was even saying even non-living beings might have a base level of consciousness so that's another encouraging takeaway um the third encouraging takeaway from him was this very study of consciousness because he says i am a conscious being and the study of consciousness showing that it is everywhere has transformed my personal life which was a very interesting thing that i noted it has to transform your personal life if it's a genuine quest into person consciousness uh he says i have over time become a non a vegetarian i have i can't kill an insect now because uh as he said this insect represents a tiny flash of consciousness you know the two bookends of eternal darkness before eternal darkness afterwards this little flash of consciousness within little insects life so how can i kill it i would not agree there but advaita would say good you're on the right track what more needs to be done so from this the next step would be to ask this question about the hard problem of consciousness so how can a material objective entity like the brain produce consciousness that's the basic thing of the heart problem of consciousness and it is interesting i posed this question to him to christoph and he immediately rejected it he said we can't do that the same thing which i was saying earlier the chorus of protest if we accept the hard problem of consciousness and take it as a genuine question then we can't do brain science and our answer i'm sure rupert would agree is that you can do brain science but you have to accept the heart problem consciousness otherwise the brain science won't get you anywhere ultimately so hard problem of consciousness shows you that the brain itself is not producing not that is consciousness is produced then the next step would be to see that consciousness is not an object it's not part of the material universe so this is where pan psychism you know where someone like um david chalmers says that consciousness is everywhere but what he basically means is that everywhere exists there's a material universe and somehow consciousness is in and through everything there big step forward again but still that's not quite right uh consciousness is not an object out there you are consciousness it is the pure subject in which the entire universe appears and we will say ultimately the entire universe is not different from consciousness so this ultimate subjective nature of consciousness quite different from a thing out there there are many things out there and now we are talking about this wonderful thing called consciousness out there no from there you have to take one more step so we have left christophe kochfar far behind we have now leaving david chalmers also bi behind but uh this is the next step where scientists and philosophers of mine must confront this recently i got the privilege of spending a year as a fellow at harvard university so one thing i took up was a course in the philosophy of mind and i noted that the philosophy of mind as it stands now i think descartes was the last person who said anything impressive in the philosophy of mind 300 more than 300 years ago and the last 100 years if you look at all the papers we did a survey of all the papers important papers it's one group of philosophers is saying that consciousness and mind they don't distinguish consciousness and mind are nothing but either the brain or language it's just an illusion created by language you might say it's that's ridiculous but that's this seriousness very smart people are seriously trying to say that or it's an illusion created by behavior so somehow really trying to reduce dismiss mind and consciousness bring it down to some physical basis and another group of philosophers like thomas nagel or jackson or uh john cerl giving various thought experiments to show guys this doesn't work you can't reduce mind and consciousness to this so the philosophy of mind i'm saying is stalled as rupert was saying you without that ultimate science of consciousness you will not get an answer so they're from a pure subjective nature of consciousness and then ultimately the entire physical objective universe what is its relation to this pure subjective consciousness that it is nothing other than that pure subjective consciousness appearing as an other so that's the pathway i see before us going from present neuroscience um to to the non-dual understanding of consciousness yeah rupert do you want to comment on that uh yes just a couple of things this um the prevailing understanding of consciousness in philosophy of mind circles that you mentioned swami the these many of these ideas that you mentioned go back to thomas nagel's definition in the i think it was sometime in the 70s when he suggested that an entity is can be considered to be conscious if there was something it was like to be that entity in other words in that if that entity had the experience of being myself well a table obviously doesn't have the experience of being myself and therefore a table is not conscious a tree does not have the experience of being myself and therefore that object is not conscious however a bat or a dog or a cat has the experience of being myself although it of course doesn't conceptualize that experience and therefore the fact that the doctor can't can be considered to be conscious this this is the the fundamental misunderstanding upon which all these other ideas that you referred to swami are based and it is based on a on a misunderstanding about ourselves namely that i as a human being and conscious or have consciousness this is the fundamental presumption that informs this definition of consciousness and all the ideas the heart problem of conscience and everything that comes from it that consciousness is a property of a human being it is something we have and this is the this is the fundamental misunderstanding it is not obviously tables chairs trees are not conscious but i would suggest that dogs and cats and bats are not conscious i would suggest that human beings are not conscious or aware only awareness is aware our knowledge that we are aware is not the knowledge that a person has about awareness it is awareness is knowledge of itself because awareness is the only one that is aware therefore a ones is the only one that can know anything about itself or indeed about anything else so the the knowledge of being myself the knowledge of being is consciousness is knowledge of itself it is not the knowledge that a human being has about themselves humans are not aware only awareness is aware and that must be uh to go right the way back to the first statement you made i think rick at the beginning of this last question you said how do we know that our awareness is not uh a reflection of the or the of the i think that's what you say not a reflection of the infinite awareness our awareness is not it's not a reflection of infinite awareness the awareness with which each of us is currently aware of our experience is infinite consciousness that the space that exists there are however many of us how many are we 650 or so there are 650 people gathered together we're all sitting in in different rooms the space in each of our rooms is not a reflection of or a byproduct of or a part of the space of the universe there are no parts to the space in the universe it's a single unmodified undivided home so the space in each of our rooms is the in the infinite alternatively speaking the infinite space of the universe the awareness that the very awareness with which each of us is now aware of this conversation is infinite awareness the only awareness there is albeit channel through the localized perspective of a finite mind well that's one thing i would just like to add to what you said swami and just very briefly about where non-duality is going you said you spoke to me about where it might go in scientific and philosophy of mind circles so i'd like to say something about the the other end of the spectrum to regular people like us i'm sure there are plenty of philosophers and scientists here but the the people most people who are interested in these matters not from a philosophy or scientific point of view but simply that they're interested in in peace in happiness in love in how to live these are not just the relatively few philosophers and scientists this is all seven billion of us all seven billion of us are interested above all else in happiness not everybody is interested in enlightenment but everybody is interested in happiness and it's basically the same interest and i feel that the the future of of non-duality is that uh through through numerous different channels such as this the the non-dual understanding which was once um encoded in esoteric language and enshrined in ashrams and monasteries is now being made available really for the first time to everybody i feel that this is the age of the direct path that everybody simply by virtue of the fact that they love happiness is ready for this understanding and is quite capable of of of understanding it and so i feel that this is the time when this understanding should be tailored and made available in simple clear ordinary language and that these very simple experiential direct pathways be made available so that everyone can experience for themselves that the nature of their own being is happiness and they share their being with everyone and everything i'm glad you brought up direct path oh swami did you want to ask i know where you're leading with that but before that a couple of just a couple of observation observations uh yes i totally agree with uh rupert i just wanted to say a couple of things which i was reminded of when you said it was esoteric knowledge limited only to a few people so i was reminded of vivekananda swami he said his mission was to bring vedanta from the forest from the forests to the cities um and the other thing that we can all do it as he says uh ramana maharshi it seems that somebody asked him am i qualified for non-dualism and you know ramana maharshi's famous approach was you find out who i am so that he would throw the question back to the question and say find out who is asking who i am so ramana maharishi said did you say i did you use the word i then you are qualified if you can if you say i then you're qualified to ask who i am and you're qualified for non-dualism absolutely good there's quite a lot of interest in the chat um about the direct versus progressive paths and um first i'll make a statement i'll quote a statement from harish punjabi who basically said that in his opinion direct and progressive paths are not opposed to one another but are applicable to seekers at different levels of their development and he said i hope rupert and swami will connect their discussion to kashmir shaivism which we've already sort of done but because he appreciates that path but then there's a longer question which will flesh this out a bit from dean slider in santa monica he's a friend of mine some advocates of the progressive path say that those on the direct path indulge in wishful thinking they may attain some fragile intellectual insight but it lacks the experiential substantiality that can only come from years of culturing the vehicle you know the body-mind spirit meanwhile advocates of the direct path say that advocates of the gradual path needlessly perpetuate the illusion of duality by supposing that the goal lies on the far side of elaborate practice chasing the dangling carrot as the phrase goes they prevent themselves from seeing that it's the inescapable nature of their own present awareness right now in fact they they charge that spiritual practices on the progressive path actually reinforce the separate self or ego and so remember harish's comment was you know this is actually not an argument perhaps these two paths each have their their role to play so both of you please comment on that rupert would you like to go first can you ever imagine a a presidential debate where one of the one of the candidates says to the other after would you like to go first don't worry he's going to start shouting at you as you speak yes i don't see any reason to pick the direct path against the progressive path or to say which one is is better or superior on one is by definition direct one is by definition indirect or progressive that's not a qualitative statement it's just a fact i would suggest to anyone who was considering some kind of pathway to happiness or enlightenment that they choose the path which seems to then to be the easiest the most enjoyable and the most efficient whatever that whatever that is for each person if for some people as a result of that those criteria they choose to embark on a progressive or in direct but i would never dissuade them from doing so on the country i would encourage them to do so if someone had been on a progressive path for for many years um as indeed i was before coming across the direct path and felt some frustration with it that they had got somehow to them to the limit of their practice and their understanding as indeed i did then i would i would recommend exploring this approach but i would never suggest that one one's better or senior to the other um and just to be i think most people here are familiar with these terms but they're very very briefly i just want to give an analogy to make it very clear about the distinction between these two parts and i'm going to use my one of my favorite analogies the actor john smith who plays the role of of kingly john smith needs a peaceful happy life at home he assumes the character of king year and becomes miserable because of his troubles with his daughter and his kingdom etc so the actor john smith loses himself completely in the character that he's playing kingly and as a result he becomes miserable now as the character king lear he can do all sorts of things to regain his happiness he can try to improve his relationship with his daughters he can try to improve his relationship with his with his government with he with the war with the french that's one way he can manipulate his activities and relationships he can adopt various activities in order to find peace and happiness or that's the indirect path you go via some kind of objective experience you give your attention to an activity a relationship an object a substance that you're you direct your attention towards something objective for the purpose of finding happiness the direct path using the analogy of king lear and john smith would be for kingly and not to attend to his relationship with his daughters his kingdom the french etc but rather to explore who he is remember who he really is is john smith and john smith is perfectly peaceful and happy so this would be the direct path where king there doesn't give his attention to his thoughts his feelings his activities his relationships he gives his attention to himself he travels back through the layers of his experience until this recognition i am john smith takes place and the moment the recognition i am john smith takes place his innate peace and happiness is restored that is the uh that's the direct approach it is said to be direct because we go directly from wherever we are in experience to the source of peace and happiness that is our being we don't go via an object mantra the flame the breath the guru etc yes i'm glad this subject has come up and let me just say this whole thing about science and consciousness studies and all i regard it as a diversion because the path of non-dual vedanta or advaita it is far more ancient than our modern scientific endeavors and it it worked at that time without any any kind of modern science and it still works by itself without any reference to modern science just that we live in an age of modern science so it's good to deal with those questions but here now we are talking about the very heart of non-dualism the terms direct path and progressive paths do not come up in classical uh literature of advaita vedanta but that does not mean that they are not valid there is something to to these categories the path of the progressive password includes as the questionnaire said culture of the vehicle they consist in repetition and discipline the actual practice so for example it could be a practice of meditation where you try to still the mind with the with the help of any number of meditation techniques uh or it could be the culture of of regular worship of a deity cultivating an attitude of love and devotion and service and it could be an activity of moral and ethical training basically the whole very important business of becoming a better human being all of these are part of what is called the progressive path and notice all of them they demand consistent effort they demand repetition they demand discipline and they talk about progress better and better you're doing better than you were doing earlier your mind is calmer than it used to be earlier you actually genuinely feel more and more attachment to god than you used to earlier so there is a progress and at the end of it is set up a goal it could be a mystical vision or it could be a feeling of union it could be an overcoming of of smallness expanding out different kinds of achievement are put up at the end of this long and arduous path so that's how a lot of spiritual journey is understood and a lot of the literature in different religions talks about that now i would give some special emphasis on the direct path um the path of knowledge or non-dualism is basically a direct path uh it's important to emphasize that because it's so little known and a little understood it's so different from what we are normally used to um it talks about the the goal as not being something distant from us it's not a heaven we have to go to it's not something far away in time you know you have to wait until death and then you see god um or you have to wait until the coming of the messiah or something and then you get salvation not something distant from you in time so not something distant from you in space or time not something distant from you in an object that means it's not a separate thing apart from you rather the direct path says that uh what we are seeking for is everywhere and especially it's here is all the time and especially now and is nothing else other than you so it directs our attention back into our immediate experience here now and ourselves and then begins to take us through an experience of to notice our body and then the mind and the deeper and deeper levels of our awareness did we see that the whole thing is an appearance in awareness and that we are awareness itself and notice that this awareness is free of all the troubles all the problems that you are trying to overcome and it's constantly available another thing is the direct path does not depend on either faith or mystical experience this i'm telling you the unique features of the direct path religion or spirituality has been taught in these different ways one is the commonly known approach of faith there is something which is revealed to you in the holy books or the spiritual master reveals to you the existence of god and you have to believe in it and you have to worship and this this is the way this is one path a path of faith and belief in fact in america religion is called faith that's the word and faith is one thing that really does not apply to something like the direct path or non-dualism the other path is the path of mystical experience i hope rupert will comment on that too a lot of spirituality is about having extraordinary mystical experiences so they may have their own value but again the direct path says not a question of belief not a question of having extraordinary experiences but what we have right here and right now what everybody has all the time for example the experience of being awake of dreaming of sleeping that's enough if you have experience being awake and dream and sleep that's enough to begin with an investigation of that will reveal to you the ultimate reality about yourself and experience of our physical being do you experience being a body the vital being of the breath or the mental being of the mind or the intellect or the blankness beyond that subtler and subtler more inward and inward and then we come to the the consciousness itself uh not as an object but as the one to which all of this appears so my point is there are unique features of the direct path not faith not mystical experience but an inquiry into the always available ordinary experience of life um so i think we need to stress as rupert of course has been doing all through the the unique features of the direct fact having said that again are they in conflict no they are not in conflict often many teachers who in the modern west talk about the direct path have themselves as indeed has rupert gone through a long and arduous process a process of training in the so-called progressive path uh discipline and repetition and deepening there is a text and i'll stop with this there is an ancient text about 700 years old in sanskrit jivan mukti viveka an inquiry into the enlightened while living and they they talk about something analogous to the direct and the progressive paths they say there's a progressive path you purify the internal purification devotional worship of god and concentrated meditation finally a cultivation of the path of advaita vedanta leading to enlightenment and that's the what they call the um the standard approach there's a sanskrit term for that uh literally critical past literally means one who has done completed the course of worship and they come to enlightenment and that's it's done but they also admit that there are many cases in which by for some reason even without completing a deep purification of the mind even without completing perfect meditation one can actually come into enlightenment the realization that i am being awareness limitless being awareness so they call them akritopasti not having completed the course of worship and then they say very interesting observation so this thing was known in this form it was known to ancient india and they say that what happens such people they may face trouble they are enlightened and they are guaranteed freedom they know that they are free or anyway but in the day-to-day living the manifestation of the excellences of the ethical excellence the unfettered love the ability to live life uh in accordance with the realization that depends upon a certain uh discipline and preparation of the vessel as it were that if that has not been done they recommend right after that intuition a further intense effort at the progressive path but now in a very different way earlier it was like an effort to come to enlightenment now you have got enlightenment now you are awakened but now you need to clear out the blockages so that if there's a fuller manifestation nothing more needs to be done for your awakening nothing more needs to be done for your enlightenment but for the manifestation of that enlightenment in the ordinary business of living the same old practices of the progressive path are very helpful yeah i'm glad you mentioned that for me i was just about to to add exactly what you've just said so i don't need to say very much about it except just to to endorse what you've said but there's a often a common misunderstanding i mean contemporary non-dual circles that the direct that one who is engaged in the direct path can dispense with the need to um as uh dean said in his question cultivate the vehicle attend to one's thoughts once feelings one acts one's activities one's behavior one's relationships that all of that is is dispensed with one can just go directly to one's being and one can anybody in any state of mind can go directly to their being for the reason that you quoted ramana maharshi saying anybody that says i has a knowledge of themselves all they need to do is go to that eye so that is the direct part and uh but uh for one who has not a nice traditional phrase that he moves from he completed the the preparatory process uh the purification of the mind and the body which was traditionally considered to be a necessary prelude to um entering into the the final stage of the practice which is then the return to the source in the direct path what is often not made clear nowadays if one takes the direct path and neglects the the vehicle it needs to be attended to afterwards it's what francis once referred to as post-enlightenment sadner it's a rather exotic term it's exactly as you described this one it's just that the practice for want of a better word the exploration the investigation the practice that we engage in after the nature of our being has become clear to us in which we make a conscious effort to realign not just the way we think but the way we feel the body the way we perceive the world and the way we act and relate in the world with this new enlightened understanding whether one um attends to the vehicle for one of the better term uh before during and off or after or before or after this recognition it doesn't really matter for the full what is really referred to in the traditions of self-realization not just the the glimpse of our true nature but the establishment in the piece of our true nature and the realignment of all aspects of our life with that understanding then either before or after one has to attend to the vehicle the body the mind activities relationships etc ken wilbur speaks of waking up cleaning up and growing up he speaks of lines of development and how you know we have all these different lines of development and how they can get really out of correlation with each other and you really need to sort of bring them all along which is essentially what you're saying yes um at a sand conference i think you were probably there rick maybe also you saw me uh somebody quoted and it was once the journey to god comes from them the journey in god begins and the journey to god has an ending but the journey in god doesn't have an ending it goes on forever that's a great quote i remember swami brahman and one of the disciples of sri ramakrishna made this enigmatic statement he said spiritual life really begins after nirvikalpa samadhi that's puzzled so many people they thought that nirvikalpa samadhi the highest state of mystic absorption is the final thing what else could be there after that no he said that after that it becomes real i mean he didn't explain he just said it really begins after the record yeah yes i i i like that i had never heard that i sometimes um uh suggest that if the spiritual journey for want of a better phrase was a book written in 12 chapters that the recognition of our true nature takes place at the end of chapter one or possibly the end of chapter two there are still many chapters left this realignment process yeah um okay go ahead one interesting anecdote i heard this from a very old vedanta teacher he was this monk who passed a couple of years ago at the age of 105. so he told me that when he was a novice he used to go to this great scholar of vedanta in calcutta from the monastery he would journey to attend classes and come back and one day he saw the scholar studying a new book this ancient scholar very old scholar and this swami this at that time a novice he asked him sir you are so learned are you still reading new books and the scholar told him that if i don't learn something new every day there's no purpose of me living and this novice the swami said i was so impressed i came back to the monastery and there was this old monk who would sit there was blind and he would i would enter the monastery and he would ask me what did the scholar teach you today what did the pundits say what did the pundits say and i would have to narrate the day's lessons to him so that day he asked what did the pundit say and i said well i saw that he was reading something new and i asked him he said if i don't learn something new every day there is no purpose to my living and this old blind monk said ah that's a good idea for a scholar but remember in enlightenment it's once forever once you make the breakthrough that stays forever so so this is what i want to take away there is an aspect to it and rupert would entirely agree that there is this breakthrough which is effortlessly there once you see it on top of that you play uh various uh you know the melodies of spiritual development and insight which keep on coming after that rupert used to be a ceramic artist and uh if we could if we could for the sake of this metaphor if we could say that clay never improves clay is clay i'm sure that his pottery the the works of art that he created continued to evolve throughout his career as a ceramic artist and that that rema and actually i wanted to ask you to comment swami on vyabahara satyam you know transactional reality and clay and potts is one of the analogies used to re you know illuminate that point so maybe you could just bring that in yes um so this is a reference to the the theory of the two levels of truth um paramarthika absolute truth and transactional relative truth this you find in mahayana buddhism and advaita vedanta nagarjuna the great buddhist philosopher he said that the buddha had taught two truths absolute truth and relative truth um the question might be if there is an absolute truth let's go to it what's the point of relative truth or lower truth and nagarjuna says nobody goes to the absolute truth except through the lower truth that the relative truth so the relative truth is very important he used the term samaritan advaita we used bevaharika simply means transactional empirical which you deal with in day-to-day life so all of this including our discussion of direct path and non-dualism all of this would be regarded as this the transactional world we live in this is the world of the jewels the necklace and the bracelet and so and so forth the pottery the various kinds of pots and jars and so and so forth but underlying right here underlying all of this is the very substance or the reality of this which is the absolute truth which is pure being pure the unlimited is-ness awareness the clay of the potteries if you will the gold of the jewellery or the dreamer's mind in in and through the dream um the importance the transactional realm has its own importance both for our secular life especially for our spiritual life so all practices common sense uh our daily work day-to-day dealings all of them they can continue and they must continue after all even an enlightened being from a from an external point of view and even an enlightened being eats and walks and talks and appears to be embodied from the enlightened beings perspective there's only infinite is-ness awareness see it's not all that difficult once you are aware that gold is the reality or clay is the reality it doesn't prevent you from seeing the necklace as a necklace or the bracelet of the bracelet or a beautiful pot as a pot you can see it as a part you can use the name part and you can use it as a part too but you know it's clay so in the same way there is this um relative realm which you realize is nothing other than that ultimate reality appearing in all of these ways and then your behavior behavior always in the relative realm but it is informed by illumined by lit up by your realization that all of this is nothing but that unlimited uh is-ness awareness is that what you are asking pretty much um yeah robert you want to i i i'm sorry i'll just add here one of the courses that i was privileged to attend was professor garfield's course at harvard university on indo-tibetan madhya buddhism and we were introduced to a debate which lasted nearly 500 years in tibet between the relative positions the positions of the ultimate truth and the relative truth 500 years very intricate text one group of llamas giving excessive importance to the ultimate truth the other group of lamas giving more importance to the relative truth and this push and pull between them it's apparently you cannot resolve it it's very subtle and the debate goes to very subtle realms if you get too much importance to the absolute the what they found was there is a laxity and relaxation at the level moral laxity at the level relative level laxity of discipline and ultimately the the ultimate church is not attained that's the problem if you give too much emphasis to the relative truth what happens is the ultimate truth becomes a distant unattainable future reality abstract and we become materialist almost yeah that'll stop there i think the the reason why this debate went on for 500 years and was still not resolved after all that time was because it it it's a it's not possible to resolve this debate the absolute truth sometimes we hear phrases and and i use phrases this phrase sometimes from the perspective of the absolute truth from the relative truth this is a misnomer really it is not possible to speak of the absolute truth if we wanted to speak the absolute truth we should remain silent and in other words all expressions however however absolute they may seem to be however top of the mountain they may seem to be make some concession to the relative point of view to so and this is unavoidable if we wanted to speak if we want to speak of the absolute truth we should remain silent and many people don't realize that in fact ramana maharishi's ultimate teaching was not self-inquiry his ultimate teaching was to sit in silence with the people who came to him that was his preferred method of teaching which is not really a method of course he rather reluctantly after many years started formulating his understanding for those that were not sufficiently mature to simply sit with him in silence and recognize their being so to help them he elaborated first of all the path of self-inquiry which was the path that he spontaneously engaged in when when as a 16 year old he became overcome by the fear of death and then if they were not able to if if self-inquiry seemed to be too difficult or too abstract he would elaborate other methods for them but his his preferred way that the most accurate way he felt to transmit his understanding was to sit just to sit in silence so i think it's very important to to acknowledge and of course i know you you do swami that that any conversation we have about these matters is by definition tainted with the limitations of the mind and that and cannot be accurate as long as we realize that there's nothing wrong with talking about these matters we either agree to talk about them in these these rather using these rather clumsy symbols of words or as indeed some people do we decide not to speak about them and remain silent i i'd just like to add to that that yes there's this ancient hymn the dakshina murthy stothram where it's which says that the teaching is in silence and the doubts of their disciples are dissolved one step below the peak of silence is the language of the upanishads for example upanishads are language that's the dilemma of the these texts that they have to express in language what cannot be expressed in language so that's why they use language paradoxical language they use the language of negation if you cannot say what it is we can at least say what it is not um or they use a paradoxical language like farther than the farthest and nearer than the nearest greater than the greatest smaller than the smallest things like that yeah here are two questions on the same topic the first is from desmond the guru whom i think rupert referred to as his first teacher stated that there are some people who sincerely believe they have fully realized their true self but in due course they realize their error and continue letting go of impediments and then the second question on the same topic from manfred kirschszarten in freeburg germany does the non-dual teaching address the need of receiving a confirmation from a teacher that an authentic realization of one's true nature has taken place even though it should be self-evident to itself i'm referring to the tenth person in swamiji's story of the monks crossing a river and to rupert's metaphor of john smith and king lear both john smith and the tenth person will undoubtedly know that they know but in the case of awakening can one delude oneself into believing one is awakened when one isn't um all right let me just go ahead and i'll just make a couple of comments here uh one is that uh it is self-evident that's the most important thing it is unmistakable there is a breakthrough which is unmistakable self-evident some of the characteristics are it becomes effortless it's not that you are continuously thinking of it that i am the limitless or i am brahmana or atman something like that you're not thinking of it all the time no more than i'm thinking of i am server priyanka all the time but it's always available to me if you ask me who you are i would say i'm sorry priyananda in the same way an enlightened person would readily know effortlessly it would be available to him or her that's that's one thing but is there a possibility of being deluded into um thinking that one is enlightened there is that's why it's it's very it's good to take a conservative approach to enlightenment it's there's no harm if an enlightened person does not think he or she is enlightened there is harm if a non-enlightened person an enlightened person thinks that he or she is enlightened so let's take a conservative approach and say that no i don't think i'm really enlightened i'm i'm a seeker i'm i'm trying just like everybody else and and it's not such a big problem because non-dualism says you are that ultimate reality regardless of whether you're enlightened or not enlightenment is just the key which reveals it to you you are already that you are already safe it is already for all time all right so i think that's more important than that's i'm a source of great solace rather than whether i am enlightened or not enlightened you want to comment on that rupert you don't have to but if you want to happiness doesn't need outside confirmation if we have to ask the question am i happy then you can be sure you're not happy if you're happy the question am i happy never arises so the question [Music] am i enlightened it simply doesn't arise and if it does arise i would suggest there was more investigation to do what would that investigation be it would be to investigate the eye who is not sure whether or not it is enlightened okay on that note i like the way the segways are working here um here's a kind of a dual question from anubhav khanna in new zealand and pratap singh bhatt i'm not sure where he's from but he says that they both say swami says in many of his videos that deep sleep is an experience of nothing and not no experience and i'm adding a bit here myself i would add that the experience of nothing implies the usual subject object structure of experience whereas numerous sages and scriptures say that for the enlightened pure awareness is awake to itself during sleep as just as it is in waking and dreaming for instance ramana maharshi said it is the gnani that sleeps but he sleeps without sleeping or is awake while sleeping and i actually have i met a number of people one friend in particular who says he hasn't slept for 60 years of course he goes to bed at night and snores but inner awareness is in fact he said when this first began he felt like when he was going to sleep at night that he was actually waking up because awareness became more bright and clear and then when he woke up in the morning and started his day he felt like it was diminished somewhat by the impact of century experience so could could maintaining awareness that clearly during sleep be a kind of a litmus test of a really genuine level of realization that you can't just psych yourself into sure i respond to that i don't think that the fact that one so-called maintains awareness during deep sleep is it the litmus test or the recognition of our true nature is unshakable peace as regards remaining aware during deep sleep this it's um again it's a concept that is is based on the misunderstanding uh awareness is not something that a a person has during the waking and dreaming states and may or may not maintain during deep sleep but we are awareness and awareness is like the sun it is always on there's no no question of awareness um modulating its brightness or going through three states awareness is just always on always fully aware in the waking state it seems to be veiled by thoughts feelings sensations and perceptions in the dream state it seems to be veiled by thoughts and images and in the deep sleep state it just remains as it always or rather as it eternally is unveiled knowing itself as it is so deep slump is not as is commonly supposed the absence of awareness it is the awareness of absence but not the awareness of absence as an object even the phrase the awareness of absence is a concession to the to the person who believes that deep sleep is the absence of awareness it is just awareness all alone by itself and and that is why all of us look forward to deep sleep because we know that in deep sleep if if deep sleep was the annihilation of ourselves or the non-existence of ourself we would all fear deep sleep because we would feel that we were going to come to an end no we all look forward to deep sleep why because all our troubles come to an end our thoughts feelings activities relationships sensations all of these come to an end and they leave us all alone enjoying our own being which is the experience of peace awareness doesn't suddenly light up in deeply it just remains exactly as it always is just as the each of our screens will not change its nature when this meeting comes to an end the screen will simply be divested of a couple of faces and the screen will actually remain the same so awareness is deep sleep is like that and it's why we we all look forward to to sleep in fact just tell a brief story about my son matthew when he was very young he would sometimes get um inconsolably upset about whatever and his mother and i could not uh console him and sometimes he would just lie down and just say i want to go to sleep and it was this beautiful innocent but very um understanding he had as indeed we all have he had tasted of course he didn't formulated by this but he had tasted the piece of his true nature in deep sleep he instinctively knew that the way to access that piece in the middle of his unhappiness was simply to go to sleep in other words what he was saying i'm going to go go to sleep because i know all my troubles will leave me all alone in my true nature so that's how she said that sorry to him as ramana maharshi said um meditating is simply like falling asleep whilst remaining awake and i would extend that and not just refine it confine it to meditation but to suggest that everyday life is simply the art of everyday life is to remain in contact with the peace that is a central nature not just in the absence of experience as in deep sleep but in the midst of experience before swami responds to that um and hopefully we have a little wiggle room on the time here um would you say in your understanding and from various scriptural authorities that um sleep for an enlightened being is a different experience than it is for an ordinary person isn't isn't there some verse in the gita about that which is night for all beings is day for the sage who sees or something like that um should i go ahead yes please um yes um first of all this waking and dreaming and sleep um are are activities of the mind they are related to the mind and also secondarily to the body not to consciousness not to awareness so awareness is ever awake as rupert just said it's always shining it is it is not at all affected by waking it's not at all affected by dreams and not at all affected by deep sleep it shines upon the waking world it shines equally let's just say you shine upon your waking world you shine upon your dreams and you shine upon the darkness which you call deep sleep after waking up so the presence of objects is illumined in waking state and in dream state that's when the mind is functioning it's the mind which glows goes to sleep and so there is it's like a deep sleep is like when there is light but nothing to reflect that light you see most of the thing light that we see is reflected light unless we look directly at the sun or the source of light mostly it's light reflected from objects but imagine if there's a beam of light and there's nothing to reflect that light then you wouldn't even see the beam of light it would just look like darkness but the moment you introduce something into that beam of light so for example there's light right here and we don't see it it seems like space but the moment i see you see my hand shines brilliantly in this light the moment i remove it there seems to be empty space right there similarly waking and dream throw up objects physical or subtle mental and they shine in the light of consciousness of course a higher level of understanding would be that these objects are also nothing other than consciousness itself in dream those that throwing up of objects stops uh in deep sleep after the dream goes into deep sleep there are no more objects unless you regard that blankness itself as an object so consciousness is always there a monk rotum poem uh called the midnight sun now imagine that sounds contradictory how can it be midnight if the sun is blazing forth but he says that is the state in deep sleep or in samadhi in in nirvikalpa samadhi it is the sun blazing forth in all its glory and yet it's somehow midnight it's darkness all around so that's what deep sleep is now um advaita does not recommend that you go into deep sleep what it recommends is consider the experience of deep sleep it's very important it is helpful for enlightenment how often when we try to think of awareness we're still thinking of the mind some activity of the mind one monk said that we tend to smuggle the mind into awareness now a case which we all have is of deep sleep where the mind has seized when we wake up and reflect back upon what happened in deep sleep the mind had totally seized there was no thinking no external world no dreams no thoughts perceptions not even the ego stopped and yet if we can appreciate how is awareness also there in deep sleep or how is deep sleep also illumined by awareness we will get it because uh yeah rupert wanted to well no no if it's finished please yeah that's what you know as rupert was saying it is awareness seems to be veiled in the waking state it seems to be veiled in the in dreams but when you reflect upon deep sleep if one does not understand what awareness is in itself you'll say there's no awareness of deep sleep that's that's what most people would say that's that's where the difficulty in accepting that there is awareness and deep sleep that's where the difficulty lies because you're still smuggling in the mind and thinking that is awareness if one could appreciate how is their awareness in deep sleep one would get it yes i love your image swami of the midnight sun and it's a beautiful image to take with us the the son of awareness that shines brightly behind and in the midst of all experience so we should leave it there i'm sure that we could carry on talking not maybe not for 500 years swami but certainly for for quite a few hours and um so thank you and thank you rick for your masterful moderation you haven't had to use the mute button once so thank you thank you swami um thank you rick thank you um diane who i believe did a lot of work for you and swami behind the scenes um likewise from francesca and ruthie for for me and prabod for not only i'm having this uh initial idea to bring us together so thank you for that beautiful idea and and for joining us yeah today and thank you everyone for for joining us this beautiful beautiful sharing of mind and hearts thank you so much thank you thank you robert thank you rick and everyone thank you everyone and sorry we didn't get to all the questions but um you know we we would have been here for almost 500 years if we'd gone through all questions there were so many of them but um thank you all for your for your beautiful searching questions take care keep well take care thank you thank you so much thank you bye [Music] you

Channel: Vedanta New York

Views: 281,153

Rating: 4.8525238 out of 5

Keywords: vedantany, vedanta society of new york, sarvapriyananda, swami sarvapriyananda, sarvapriyananda lectures, swami vivekananda, vivekananda, vivekananda teachings, vedanta ny, vedanta, vedanta lectures, belur math, jnana yoga, hinduism, spirituality, enlightenment, higher consciousness, meditation, mindfulness, realization, consciousness, moksha, nirvana

Id: YhYKqblybXs

Length: 124min 13sec (7453 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Krishna_1111]

Swami Sarvapriyananda is so amazing :) Spreading the dharma in the west, his lectures got me into hinduism!