Oneness | Q&A | Swami Sarvapriyananda

[Music] [Music] oh [Music] om lead us from the unreal to the real lead us from darkness unto light lead us from death to immortality om peace peace peace so in the first session we saw divinity within when swami vivekananda says the goal of human life is to manifest the divinity already present within us that is religion the goal of religion goal of human life is that but what is meant by the divine by divinity within and we saw the two aspects of enlightenment that's where we stopped the paradigm shift that i am not what i thought earlier what i was this body mind this little person this is this body mind this little person is there but my depth reality is much vaster than that i am not the body i'm not the mind there is the mind and the body but i am the witness consciousness which enlivens illumines this mind and body and that witness consciousness is not subject to birth or death it's not subject to the vagaries of the mind the ups and downs of the mind all problems are out there in the in the world in the body um or even in the mind but i am this refreshingly cool and ever peaceful inner witness serenely detached from everything in the universe in one place hari maharaja in his old age he suffered a lot from many many ailments in benares in our home of service there so one day somebody asked him maharaj kukasho suffering a lot is a lot of pain and then marath said no um srirama krishna by the grace of sri ramakrishna everything is like is ice cold within it's it doesn't work quite well unless you know the heat of banaras you know like a mass of icings that are absolutely cool and peaceful that's very nice but if that's what it means that you are this ever peaceful like a himalayan peak shining forth on a troubled world but you are you are perfectly at peace all very nice but it doesn't exist such a thing isn't there we'll see why not what is the problem with all of this and what is the deeper implication we also saw that it leads to duality earlier the duality was i am there and here is the world separate world i am separate world is separate god is separate this is dualism and now i see that oh even the body is not i the mind is not i i am the witness consciousness everything else is separate this is duality it's not advaita it's not not non-duality so what is the problem with all of this and why should we look for anything different something deeper well the problem started about 2500 hundred years ago with one gentleman called the buddha he said that my dear hindus didn't use the word so many just so many philosophers who were teaching at that so many teachers anatma atma does not exist there is no such thing as a separate independent soul atma with you hindus we are now using the term hindus it was a general term at that time you all seem to be teaching propounding there's no such thing and he demonstrated logically the untenability of a separate atman not only that but that not only such a thing is not there it would not even help if it was there and it showed the whole of samsara transmigration memory everything becomes possible even without the atman in fact the presence of the atman does not make much of a difference and there were many reasons given to for this the buddhists who came after the masters who came after the buddha they investigated this and they came up with extraordinary very tight logical arguments to demonstrate to prove that there is no such thing as the a separate independent eternal soul you know sort of floating over everything else like a driver within the car um body and mind is the instrument like you're talking like that swami vivekananda also points that out in his practical vedanta lectures there ensued a huge debate between the buddhists and the non-buddhist schools on one side the buddhist schools and the hindu schools nayakas vaisheshikas sankhya yoga purvam imamsa the kashmiri shivas the jainas all of whom talked about some kind of independent separate reality higher the self within and the buddhist said no the buddhist denied the immortal soul atma so beloved to the other other teachers they denied and as a consequence of that they denied the existence of god also because for example in philosophy god is just another variety of atma atma is of two kinds self is of two kinds all of us each of us we have an independent self and body mind atma and there is one atma who is separate from all of this and the controller of everything paramatma ishwara god and the buddhists denied this in total there is no such thing as a separate atma there is no such thing as a separate god of the universe now what happened was it led to a thousand-year fight one thousand years of intensive debate the buddhists trying to disprove and the hindus and various other schools trying to prove the existence of atma the benefit of that was the development the flowering of indian philosophy i would say indian philosophy has had had two golden ages two wonderful periods of burst of creativity and development one was nearly a thousand years of debate with the buddhists from around um i would say 200 or 300 years after the buddha the flowering of this philosophy took place to about 800 980 where it began to taper off nearly a thousand years and the second the the second time when it developed indian philosophy developed was few hundred years after the disappearance of buddhism advaita vedanta sort of reigned supreme and then other vedanta schools rose dwayta vishishta they were already there but philosophically they became more sophisticated and mounted several attacks on advaita vedanta leading to an internal fight between different schools of vedanta again a burst of creativity and tremendous development in indian philosophy in metaphysics in epistemology in language it it concluded with the development of the most sophisticated kind of logical language swami vivekananda says the most sophisticated intricate precise form of logic the world has ever known until i would say the beginning of mathematical logic in the 19th century until that time beginning of symbolic logic until that time the most sophisticated form of logic logic was naviene logic of you know methila and then nadia navadweep so all that happened one of the courses that i was privileged to do at in the philosophy department at harvard was taught by professor parimal patil there is classical indian buddhism thousand years of buddhist philosophy in sanskrit so in a few months you compress it that's why harvard is harvard you expected to read all these ancient obscure texts translated written maybe 1500 2000 years ago translated into almost incomprehensible english and all of that a thousand years of work very subtle work in a matter of a few weeks supposed to read it all and understand it but it gave a [Music] very good bird's-eye view a good grasp of the entire what they commit you might call a literature study of the period of this tremendous clash and the hindu side trying to prove it prove that that atma existed led to the uh great nayakas like udayanacharya who whose masterful works atma trying to prove the existence of atma against the buddhist attacks even now it is taught in in graduate level courses in india in sanskrit and in philosophy and then nayakusumanjali nine proofs nine or ten proofs of the existence of god again directed against the buddhist critic that god exists trying to prove the existence of god so whether they manage to prove the existence of god or manage to prove existence of separate atma or not is still it's open the jury is still out if you ask the hindus yes atma and god exists if you ask the buddhist no we won the debate there's no atma no god another name which must be mentioned is kumari bhatta to his masterworks sloka vartik and tantra vartika which contained reputations of various schools of buddhists who tried to who tried to criticize or critique the concept of atma the problem is how can you demonstrate that there is a separate atma where is this atma all that we experience is a stream of changes called the body and if you look within you'll see a stream of changes called the mind so the buddhist based critic on the great logician who lived some 500 600 years before shankaracharya nagarjuna his book its entire book of criticism of concepts like this emotion causality self even buddhist concepts of the four four noble truths of the buddha of nirvana all of them are critiqued with razor sharp logic even till today philosophers and logicians and they find it fascinating nagarjuna's logic and there was further developed by a great master called chandra kitty who lived in the great nalanda university who lived around 1500 years ago one of his famous works is the seven fold reasoning he gives the example of a chariot same example chadiate used by yama to teach nachiketa about self you know atmanam rathinam atma is the passenger the body is the chariot the senses are the horses the mind is the bridle which you hold the horses with and the charioteer the the driver is the intellect and the goal is enlightenment so you are like the optimized like the passenger sitting on the chariot going to the goal of self-realization but a beautiful idea and the same chariot was taken up by chandragiri interestingly chandrakiriti's chariot does not have a passenger so there is no atma there to show that this concept of an atma separate existence of other than body mind its null and void is empty shunya so i i had the opportunity of doing another course by a wonderful professor professor garfield jay garfield he taught indo-tibetan madhyamaka the philosophy of naga arjuna chandra kitty exported to tibet and further developed by tibetan masters we read we to some extent we read vedanta which some extent we read nyaya even some of the buddhist masters but we as uh hindus as to students of indian philosophy often we are ignorant of the further developments which took place in tibet for a period of more than a thousand years the llamas sitting on their icy vastness and mountainous plateau of tibet they developed it to a very intricate and subtle level so we are not even familiar with terms like um songkhapa meepham and others so so this professor taught that to us i remember the first day in the class when i went in there the professor said swami keep your vedanta outside the door [Music] he knew i was going to mix it up with tibetan buddhism and make a mess of it so he was right you should learn something separately on its own merits and then compare but interesting outside the campus one day i was going back into the from the harvard yard and i saw this llama coming on the other side and he smiled at me i smiled at him and he said what are you doing here i said i am studying your philosophy and i told him about the professor he didn't quite approve of the syllabus it would be some other books to read and and then then he said but you are a you're a vedanta monk i said yes oh your big broad smile i still remember oh it is all the same how is it all the same he said look there is those five verses on wisdom written by your shankaracharya i said manisha panchakam yes he said i teach tibetan buddhism with the help of those five verses and later i found out he was a very eminent teacher he was the tibetan buddhist chaplain for harvard university lamar migmar all right so what i did was there's a point to the story what i did was at the end of the course i decided that i am going to counter-attack buddhism from an advaithic perspective and show how actually advaita offers a solution for this thousand year debate and i named the the the essay chandra kitty's chariot and i wrote it refuting it point by point the chandra kitty's attack and submitted it and the professor professor garfield immediately returned it and said what do you think this is is it a vedanta temple talk this is a harvard university philosophy paper you have to substantiate every statement with rigorous logic this won't do so you put lots of corrections suggestions i rewrote the whole thing in a frenzy and send it back to him and he sent it back to me again with he said again rejected and the third time i did it and he he accepted and he said it's a solid defense of advaita vedanta and he said it's you know of that level which can be published in peer-reviewed journal and that's what he expected from all the submissions in his course okay so that's the background um this thousand-year debate they're saying where is this other thing called the self which which has to be proved notice where we were the consciousness and separate from the entirety of the mind body world and the rupa hashivoham now the question arises what is the relationship between consciousness and the objects you are awareness good fine you have come to that and you are separate from body mind object universe but you the consciousness and all of these things you are separate from what is the relationship between them relationship means are they one and the same are they different actually is one coming from the other the other coming from this one what is the relationship between them in indian philosophy there are many answers to this question i will quickly take you through five answers consciousness and object you are awareness and what you are aware of what is the relationship at this point someone might ask swami didn't in the morning didn't we make it clear i am not the body i am not the mind body is changing i am unchanging body is an object i am the subject body is not conscious i am conscious of the body so on so the body i cannot be the body the body must be so i must be something separate from the body so we made it clear they are separate one sadhu in the himalayas very nicely when he's teaching this he put it so nicely i'll tell you in hindi and then explain the point he said it is true that you the witness you the seer you are the experiencer you must be separate i must be separate from the scene the seer must be separated from the scene correct but have you ever thought of this that which is seen drishya object is it separate from the seer is it separate from the subject you might say that doesn't make much sense if one thing is separate from the other the other must be separate from the first one if the paper is separate from the desk then the desk must be separate from the paper you should be able to see them separately they are separate but then that's not always the case look at this lectern there is wood and there's the lectern the wood is not not literally the lectern the wood is separate from the electron in the sense before the electron was made there was the what it was a log before that it was a tree after the after the electron is broken or something it will still be wood so the wood continues the wood was there before the lectern during the election now it's there it's wood and then afterwards also it'll be there but the lectern doesn't this podium this lecture it does not exist apart from the wood would exist apart from the lecture the water and wave so the water and the wave the water is definitely not the wave is separate from the wave in the sense that it can be water in a glass of water it can be water and water in the water vapor in the sky it can be water in a river it doesn't have to be water in the ocean and the wave but the wave is never separate from the water you see whenever the wave exists it exists as the water waters nothing else than the water take a more subtle example in our dreams in our dreams we see everything in the in the dream the mind itself imagines everything in the dream so everything in the dream is mind the contents the mind itself can exist without the dream when you wake up you still have a mind but the dream is not there but the dream cannot exist without the dreamer's mind it is you who are imagining it if you stop imagining it the dream will disappear you continue to exist the dreamer continues to exist just no longer dreaming of it is like to see them separate it's like somebody has showed you a ray array of ornaments and has told you look here are necklaces here are bracelets here are tiaras and there is something called gold which is the reality now if i say okay so necklaces bracelets tiaras and gold let me look for gold and you look at throw away the ornaments i'm going to where are you going in search of reality gold you'll never find it somebody shows you an array of pottery and says here is pottery but the reality is clay and said okay throw the pots away i'm going to look for the reality called clay you'll never find it because it's right there it that that which you see the reality is separate from that but those things are not separate from the reality you can find the reality there and there itself swami vivekananda says powerfully he who runs away to meditate and die in a himalayan cave has missed the way he who plunges into the vanities of life has missed the way but then what is the way you either run away from everything in life become a monk stay and meditate in the mountains and attain enlightenment if that is missing the way or then you plunge into life do whatever everybody else is doing which is that's also missing the way these are the only two options he said no the way is to demonize life itself is to deify life itself it's to see god in everything in around you in the people around you and the actions around you in life itself everywhere there is god that is the way and the divinity within everything so this one divinity pervading everything that is what advaita wants to say not that there is a separate divinity and a separate universe this relationship between consciousness and the object let me give you five quick approaches which we find in indian philosophy five just very big i know there are masters of indian philosophy here some of the leading teachers in the world so this is very crude this is a very bird size sweeping view one is consciousness and matter one is that consciousness originates from matter the subject originates from the object who says this it is the at the materialist from matter from a living body from a living brain somehow consciousness is born so reality is matter reality is time space energy matter and then organic matter then living bodies then the nervous systems and brains and then only consciousness comes it's a by-product so that is reductionist science that is the ancient charvakas they will say consciousness is produced they give an example pan now only those who have from india and have eaten pan in the traditional way they will understand what i mean paan and all the ingredients there's nothing you know stark red in them but when you chew it your tongue and your lips become red so he says there is nothing called consciousness in matter the charvakas say but when it's mixed in the unique way in the living body matter consciousness originates somehow like the color red and although our science has advanced enormously in principle from a philosophical perspective not one inch more i've had exactly this statement told to me by a philosopher and scientist in sydney university new york he said swami and there was a debate about consciousness swami i am convinced that consciousness is a product of a living brain how he says look how we don't know yet but give us 30 40 years this is called promissory materialism i promise to give you the solution in 30 40 years and it's a serious answer because his example he gave was look hundred years back people said we will never understand the mystery of life what is life we don't know it is something spiritual but now we understand what is life down to the molecular level similarly right now we can't actually explain how little electrical activity in the brain is producing consciousness how but i'm sure it is clearly there is a correlation there is also he says there is a product cause and effect relationship which i want to show but we can't show it so just like life we can demonstrate it is made of molecular processes similarly consciousness is also made of processes in the neurons but we will show it will take forty fifty hundred years promissory materialism so that's one why that is wrong i will tell you later when we get into vedanta itself that in principle it's wrong so there's david chalmers who is a professor of philosophy mind and philosophy mind brain and consciousness in nyu and he calls it the hard problem of consciousness that you cannot generate a subjective experience from purely objective processes that's the hard problem but why exactly and vedanta gives us a very clear reason why anyway so that's one consciousness is a product of matter the opposite the second view matter is a product of consciousness who says this all the theistic religions of the world if you think of it what is the common idea of god in all the theistic religions of the world the god-believing religions in the world what what do christians and jews and muslims and vaishnavas and shaktas and what do they believe about god the god is a conscious being do you if you ask is your god conscious or unconscious of course god is conscious god is an intelligent conscious being and so conscious being is the creator of the universe yes so matter object is created by consciousness how again that's the whole question but that is the second view we're talking about the views of consciousness and matter subject and object third view neither is created by the other they are fundamental eternal realities they exist parallelly and interact with each other who says this five thousand years ago the oldest philosopher known to humanity kapila the founder of the sankhya system he said this ultimately you can resolve everything into consciousness and nature prakriti purusa purusha means consciousness and prakriti means the rest of it nature basically that's the conclusion we arrived at in the morning consciousness and everything else and they interact five thousand years ago and here 21st century in uh in new york same david thomas he is propounding a theory called pan psychism it's not a news theory it's been there for a long time but now a fresh new life has come into it which is saying that we cannot reduce consciousness to matter we cannot reduce consciousness to the brain so consciousness must be a fundamental reality there's a fundamental reality called consciousness and there are other fundamental realities called time space matter energy and they they interact and they exist and consciousness is everywhere ubiquitous consciousness thinking exactly the same thing that sankey philosophers have been saying for 5000 years literally i remember i had this conversation with deepak chopra i've heard of deepak chopra yeah so he said in the green room before the conversation before the dialogue he said uh swamiji they are taking our theories and not giving credit to us this hard problem of consciousness the consciousness is everywhere i said deepak it's good if they do that because if you say today that oh i learned this from vedanta or buddhism and i'm saying this it will be discredited but if you say i am an atheist i am a materialist and i cannot explain consciousness that way that's why i must say i am saying that consciousness must be a fundamental reality it cannot be explained in material terms that's much more powerful and we should be happy what you came at thousands of years ago that is now being validated and coming at it from a different perspective independently and that's good that's really good so consciousness is produced matter is produced by consciousness then consciousness and matter are parallel realities whether it is the ancient sankhya or the more modern pan psychist today is saying that the fourth view is the view of nagarjuna chandra kitty emptiness view they say neither matter produced consciousness nor consciousness produced matter in fact nobody produced each other nothing has been produced at all what do you mean it's all empty servam shunyam uses a very interesting example two bales or sheaves of hay leaning against each other consciousness matter consciousness subject and object it's only when you're conscious you're conscious of the world there's something out there but only when you're conscious of the world are you aware that you are aware the subject arises with the help of the object all the time which shows one depends on the other which shows neither is independently real when there is no object there is no subject swami didn't you talk about light in the blackness of space consciousness in in deep sleep object has gone only consciousness exists so the emptiness people chandra kitty and all will say all that's back calculation you know the calculation is you made up your mind that consciousness exists eternally and now when you are in trouble in deep sleep for example no consciousness in coma it seems no consciousness you're somehow introducing it this is like accountant you know this funny story about different people who applied for a job and when they they were being interviewed there was the uh engineer who was asked what is two plus two so engineer calculated and calculate and calculate he said something between 3.9 and 4.1 and i don't remember it's very funny each each person giving an answer from their their their academic discipline finally the academy the accountant comes what is two plus two he gets up and he closes the door and comes and whispers how much do you want it to be sir [Music] this guy can get a job in wall street you know how much do you want it to be so you advising non-violence are doing exactly the same thing you have made up your mind that you want it to be consciousness you know when clearly there is no consciousness you are bringing in smuggling in consciousness that is it is like light and darkness of space what proof is there there is no consciousness there or at least what we normally call consciousness right now that kind of consciousness is not there you must admit that so emptiness consciousness also empty object also empty subject and object both are empty then what is real won't say and and there is a point to that why the tibetan buddhist won't say there's a very logical point to that and that's why the lama said it is ultimately the same thing but there's something coming at it from a negative side something coming at it from positive side and both ultimately pointing to the same thing then the fifth approach what are the four approaches in case you have forgotten the matter produces consciousness eight materialists consciousness produces matter religious people then consciousness matters parallel sanctions and patanjali yoga and the modern pan cyclist then both are empty the point i'm coming to advaita vedanta which says consciousness only what we call matter what we call object is an appearance in consciousness much like a wave appears in water much like um objects in the dream appear in your dreaming mind it's not produced isn't it like god producing the word it's not produced nothing has actually happened we have not actually produced a world when it seems to be a world it continues to be consciousness it was god and brahman and now it is a miserable world and one day it will be all right god apartheid condemns this view prague [Music] he says before the origination of the universe everything was perfect not on the one existence absolute now it is not there now it has universes become we have come and we have to find our way back to brahman and it will happen some day or the other he says fools he will never attain to realization in this way that same brahman continues to exist right now without any change at all and you are that that brahman so consciousness is the reality in which matter appears so everything that appears right now whatever you are experiencing as a world is nothing other than consciousness it is not that everything is consciousness it is nothing other than consciousness consciousness alone is and here i am using consciousness in the sense of pure consciousness satchit that alone is brahman alone is the world and it appears as the world brahma this is the conclusion of advaita vedanta not what it seemed in the morning world and i the consciousness world body mind and i am consciousness not like that consciousness in which mind appears body appears world appears waking dreaming deep sleep appear and disappear one consciousness alone how do you do this again we'll dive into a quick survey of various schools of indian philosophy coming to this conclusion see i found this this you can find in many ways it can be done in many ways let me just give you one thing which i found quite impressive the present shankaracharya of puri nishalanda saraswati in one of his talks in one sentence he said something how from the world you go to pure consciousness just by analysis and that happens in seven stages just a sentence a fragment of a sentence now to explain the fragment of a sentence you need a full talk which is what this is today's talk this one what did he say i'm going to we're going to walk through it what are we going to achieve we start with this world as you see it in common sense here i am here is this world and right here we will end up with consciousness only with this world with eyes open only consciousness is the reality we will come to understand this and this happens in seven stages what are the seven stages very quickly let me just go through what he said first you start with jagat world what world as you explain as you see it right now people and you know space and buildings and chairs and tables and body mind all of this is world next stage two you analyze this into the five elements he says jagat second stage is deeper you go into it you will see pancha bhuta vilasa the play of five elements the old cosmology space air fire water earth you might think oh that's all that was very old and outdated although it was at one time prevalent across the world in the east and in the west everywhere four elements sometimes five elements sometimes three elements sometimes but basically that and there is a very interesting psychology behind all of that but anyway whether you consider that or the 100 plus elements of the periodic table it is basically the world is made of matter energy time space and at this point no scientist will dispute it basically this is what it is all of this is matter energy time space and all pancha bhuta vilasa the play of five elements our bodies are that and if you read vedanta sankhya you will see even our minds are made of the subtle forms of these five elements here is where i would say ancient indian philosophy is a step ahead of modern science and what i'm by that what i mean is forget consciousness what is mind there is no explanation no place for something like mind in modern physics people don't know it's it's like a standing scandal of of our modern understanding of the world we so why science psychology is a science yes but what does psychology study he says study the mind they are very uneasy about studying the mind because where is the mind you know i am feeling the mind yes you are feeling it but for a scientist the last thing that a scientist can see is tiny electrical activity in your brain revealed by fmri scans and all that's it your thoughts your emotions your ideas their memories where what is it nobody knows nobody knows how to fit it into a modern reductionist you know matter energy scheme paradigm of the world so mind even according to indian cosmology mind is also matter actually where india in indian thought has no problem at all it is the subtle forms of the five elements which comprises the mind mind is also matter the old ridiculous joke you know in philosophy classes they'll always tell you the first joke you hear um what is matter no matter in mind what is matter never mind what is mind no matter [Music] the play of five elements then third stage it is nothing but all of it is nothing but maya maya vilasa it is the play of maya at this point somebody will say oh how do you know that you have now introduced some old theology that is some you know in india everybody knows jagat the world the world is the play of five elements or matter time energy with the time space matter energy well all of it is maya how do you know but actually i was thinking if you contemplate the the cutting edge discoveries of modern science in the 20th century till today you notice that the the all pervasive presence of paradox everywhere rebecca goldstein who wrote a book on godel in her introduction to that book she says that notice the greatest discoveries of 20th century in science einstein's relativity theory of relativity heisenberg's the uncertainty principle and godel's incompleteness theorems of incomplete incompleteness theorems but just look at the names relativity uncertainty incompleteness what's so strange about that if you're in 19th century if you asked scientists or mathematicians what do you expect knowledge to be in 50 years 100 years they would not have said relativity they would have said absolute truth we are looking for absolute truth they would not have said uncertainty they would have said certainty they would not have said incompleteness in fact there was one mathematician david hilbert i think he had a whole program completeness of mathematics how to complete the system of mathematics and godel came and ruined that by showing incompleteness but in principle they did not expect knowledge to be relative and uncertain and incomplete and so that's what she has written i the first thing that struck me is incompleteness relativity uncertainty this is maya this is how maya is described if you if you push any system of knowledge far enough you're going to end up with inconsistencies you're going to end up with paradoxes in the new school in manhattan i remember three or four years ago there was a very nice conference and the conference was on the unknown unknowability on what is unknowable in every discipline so there it was there was there were physicists leading physicists leading mathematicians and they were historians and people from literature coming and talking about unknowability in their own fields and i remember quite we we know what mathematician or the physicist will say historian the historians still remember the british gentleman who said in history we know that the future is fixed the past is always changing as you know more of and more about history you keep changing your theories about what might have happened in the past unknowability so maya bilasa it is the appearance of maya it maya itself see it's not so strange the philosopher galin strawson who his father was a very noted philosopher in oxford university peter strauss and he gallons dawson teaches or used to teach in texas ut austin he had written this half humorous half serious article in new york times called the hard problem of matter consciousness is not a problem he said we are all conscious we are aware of consciousness directly but after consciousness comes matter we are aware of matter now what is matter is the real question we are all directly conscious we are aware of ourselves we are conscious then what comes in consciousness is the object what is that object what is matter that is the question and as we investigate matter more and more it is disappearing before our very eyes is the matter is a paradox so the um maya will ask that the play of matter it's a paradox actually at its root so maya vilasa but in vedanta maya is the power of brahman the power of consciousness so maya vilasa reduces to the play of consciousness it's consciousness by its unique power which is manifesting as the elements and which is manifesting as this universe the play of consciousness now at this level there is a vast vast philosophy this is called kashmir shaivism kashmir shaivism says this universe is a play of consciousness it's the play of shiva so shiva's consciousness the play of consciousness so your consciousness it's your play and i love that story by alan watts where he talks about what is going on here and this beautiful story it's sorry for little children but it's actually very profound for i think for grown-up people alan watts i of course is long before my time but some of you might have heard about him he was in the bay area and an article about him described him as a as a strange combination of philosopher and pirate so he taught a mixture of buddhism and vedanta but the story it perfectly matches kashmir shaivism so the story goes god existed for from eternity to eternity but then existing like that for eternity nobody else was there god got bored and thought i want to play but whom will god play with there's nobody to play with only god exists so he thought about it for a very long time how can i play i don't have a friend then he hit upon idea because he is extraordinarily clever he is god so he hit upon an idea and he pretended to be not god so god pretending to be not god now god can play this is god and god pretending to be not god now there are two god can play but the problem is god is very good at what he does so when he pretended to be not god he pretended so so well he forgot that he was god and that is what is going on now god who is pretending to be not god forgotten that he is god is searching for god this is samsara that is a beautiful description of kashmiri shaivism shiva and jiva are the same shiva manifests plays as this universe and enters into this universe as jiva and contracts his own powers and glories into a smaller form and a contracted form it's jiva srirama krishna used to say this idea of pasha of tying oneself you become jiva freed from that you are shiva kashmiri shivas have an extraordinary idea of bondage and liberation said you are not bound this is advaitans vedantins are wrong you are not bound you are free you are shiva how can shiva be bound you are playing you want to play at being a miserable human being so you're playing the day you want to be liberated who can stop you your shiva that day that instant you'll be liberated you might say but i want to be liberated that's why i'm practicing all spiritual disciplines it's not happening it's taking such a long time then the kashmir shivers will say now you are shiva you want to play at trying to be liberated you're trying to be a sadhaka now you're playing at the day you decided i'm liberated you'll be liberated anyway so that's their review it's the play of consciousness very beautiful view leela the play of consciousness somebody asked sri ramakrishna why is there so much suffering you find in the gospel of sri lanka if god exists so much suffering in our lives and in the world today whether you see the shooting of little children war kovaid some are natural causes some are man-made causes why is there so much suffering if god is the controller of human being and of nature why is there suffering anywhere at all so srirama krishna gave three levels of answers the first answer was it's a mystery it's a paradox tari cham raki mustapari can we understand the will of god it is beyond our understanding what is that maya willa this is the maya of the lord it's paradoxical we cannot understand the gentleman who asked the question was not satisfied by this again he asked no no this is not not an answer why why is there suffering the second answer sudama krishna gave was this is the leela of god the play of god what can we do it is the play of god chidvillasa the play of consciousness second answer same question why is there suffering that also the gentleman became furious he said in bengali he said tarta lila ramra mori it's a play of god but it's killing us it's veritably death for us we suffer terribly what kind of play is this would you tolerate this answer from anyone in the world say for example the neighboring kid he plays ball and he hits a ball and smashes your light you know outside your door and you catch hold of the little kid and said why did you do it and he says it is my leelah will you be impressed or you will not be impressed so why would you be impressed with god this whole universe is my leelah play of consciousness and then sriram krishna gave the third answer to which there is no come back which is actually the advaithic answer so the it is the godzilla what kind of answer is that it's death for us it's death for us just for me and sriram krishna says and who are you do you know who you are you don't know actually i am suffering but who am i that i don't know and that is that way the point is pointing towards the advaitha cancer there is no answer to that so that we will come but now we are at chidvillas or the play of consciousness this whole universe is a play of consciousness but then advaithin is being strict logicians they will ask can consciousness play playing means change playing also implies a kind of desire you know that i want to play in so is change desire it might be a good um metaphor but literally does consciousness play does it change there are deep philosophical problems also something that is subject to change will be subject to death also subject to destruction also income consciousness can end not only that consciousness is that which reveals everything as an object if consciousness is playing then it is play consciousness is that which reveals the play in that case consciousness must be separate from that play so there are problems with this and kashmiri shaivism an extraordinary system especially in spiritual practice those are spiritual practitioners there's so many things to learn from kashmiriships it's a very sophisticated very intricate philosophy but i must say from an advertising perspective and from the perspective of the other older philosophies of india whether buddhistic advaithic you notice they really haven't engaged with kashmiri shaivism where is the vast literature great abhinava gupta and others they engage with every system of philosophy but those systems of philosophy they mention it in passing and they refute it and go ahead because there are i will not go into it but there are deep fundamental flaws at the very conception at the very root it is maybe more poetry than philosophy at some level i know there are those who would be aghast i'm thinking of certain philosophers anyway uh but can consciousness play no consciousness does not change to actually literally if you mean physically actually play i mean physically the word doesn't apply to consciousness anyway so play is not possible what happens is what exactly happens in consciousness things appear in consciousness consciousness experiences the very nature of consciousness is to experience appearances so the universe appears in consciousness that appearance theory is called vivarta it's not velasta not the play of consciousness but an appearance of consciousness so everything appears because of consciousness the very nature of consciousness what do you mean appearance of consciousness one swami explained it very nicely he said the nature of the eye is to see and the nature of space is to remain unseen and that's the niyah theory that space is not seen so the eye sees and the space remains unseen but the nature i will see and space cannot be seen so when you look up at the space it looks like an inverted bowl looks like a surface children might think that it's a blue inverted bowl they don't get the feeling that it's endless space there why because i has a way of imagining a surface which has to be seen and space cannot be seen it's like that old question of irresistible force meets immovable object what will happen um there's a story you know one of the my favorite authors science fiction authors was isaac asimov though some of you must have read and he tells a story about his life he said he would ask this question to any girl who is a prospect of marrying that if you answer this question then i will marry you what will happen if an immovable force meets an irresistible object what is an immovable force that uh immovable object that which cannot be moved irresistible force that which can move everything it can't be resisted so if the two move to two meet what will happen nobody could answer i think nobody wanted to marry him also then the girl whom he finally married she answered correctly so what was the answer it will never happen because if there is an immovable object there cannot be an irresistible force by definition impermeable object means there cannot be any force which can be uh cannot be resisted and if there is an irresistible force there can be no object which cannot be moved so the two can never meet so then he had to marry her then sir but here the result is paradox consciousness will experience and there is nothing else other than consciousness to experience so consciousness appears as its own object consciousness appears as its own object a very much like a dream in a dream the mind appears as the dream world it is called chidvivarta not an actual transformation of consciousness not that consciousness becomes the universe not that consciousness produces matter energy time space but it appears as matter energy time space like a virtual world now um this might not be as crazy as it sounds there are crazier ideas out there in modern physics uh brian greene who's a very well-known cosmologist at colombia he's written this book an elegant universe and the pbs documentary also was there on string theory and everything his latest book until the end of time it is more philosophy than physics so he has written this book he launched it at harvard and there a beautiful presentation one of the things he mentioned was the universe might be product of a brain they called it a boltzmann brain and like a quantum state existing for endless amounts of time it can come together into an intelligence suddenly of immeasurable capacity and produce a universe i mentioned it to an eminent philosopher he was so furious he said yes once you are an eminent physicist and scientist you can say anything you like and that will be taken seriously but as philosophers we say some of the most logical things but because we are a philosopher nobody cares for us anyway it appears as conscious the consciousness appears as the universe but that which appears as the universe in that case every bit of it must be consciousness if consciousness is appearing as the universe then the next stage is called chinmaya pervaded by consciousness so every if consciousness itself if the word itself is coming as the table then every bit of this must be would inside outside top bottom which means we would if consciousness itself is appearing as the universe then every bit of that appearance must be consciousness so if you examine everything everything is consciousness chinmaya pervaded by consciousness you might think this must be the last stage no one more stage chinmaya pervaded by consciousness is there a pervader and pervaded relationship is it something like here is a room switch on the light the light will pervade the room is it like that there is a universe and switch on consciousness consciousness pervades there is a room light the incense the fragrance of the incense will pervade the room is it like that or is it like wood and the lectern like wave and water like gold and ornament here light and the room are distinct one pervades the other room and the incense fragrance are distinct one pervades the other is consciousness like that it pervades the universe many people think like that that there is a universe solid here and god is pervading the universe consciousness is pervading the universe something is there like light or something like that all everywhere and here vivekananda said that i have never taught such strange doctrine that god is everything mary hell said i understood what you have taught that god is everything vivekananda said i've never taught such a thing i've never taught you said it no what i meant was that god alone is the universe is not the world is not everything is not god alone is and god alone is everything is not the last stage is it's not that consciousness pervades the universe consciousness alone is universe is an appearance consciousness alone is chin matra consciousness alone not pervading consciousness shankaracharya also says in one place there is no pervader-pervaded relationship here also it is no pervader pervaded relationship it is good through and through it has a form of a lectern name of a lectern and the use of electrode nama rupa vivahara name form and use name form and transaction but the reality is that it is made of wood only there's only one consciousness only chin matra now seven stages let me run you through the seven stages and bring this to a conclusion seven stages start with a physical world start with a physical world jagat stage one resolve that in your understanding into matter space time energy into the five elements um resolve that further they are all produced from maya maya vilasa air fire water but so maya vilasa it is all the play of maya but maya is the power of consciousness maya does not exist by itself ma is the power of consciousness so next stage four chidvillasa the play of consciousness whole of kashmiri shaivism will enter here extraordinary philosophy but we have objection does consciousness actually play with kashmir shaives and they will say that there is a dynamic aspect to consciousness consciousness vibrates spun them consciousness does it actually change does it vibrate does it play no things appear in consciousness as our own experience of consciousness so um appearance theory then the sixth stage is whatever is an appearance in consciousness must be pervaded by consciousness every bit of it must be consciousness it's an appearance so chin maya pervaded by consciousness and the last one is jin matra it's not pervader and pervaded it is consciousness and consciousness alone shankaracharya in upper okay he says in the effect notice the cause in the lectern notice the wood in the clay part notice the clay the clay is the cause the pot is the effect oh where is the clay in the pot well you're what you're touching that's the clay inside it's the clay the top is the clay the bottom is the clay in fact through and through you find clay alone so you next notice that the cause the material cause the substance pervades the effect through and through what we just did in matra consciousness alone so it is clay through and through in that case there is no separate reality called pot so there is no separate reality called pot which has been produced so if the effect has not been produced then how will you call clay the cause the cause loses its causality karnataka he says then the cause loses its causality clay cannot be called the cause of pot because clay alone exists in a clay pot a pot is an appearance is a farm is a name and then use you can it looks like this you call it a pot and you can put water in it it will everything will work but it is clay and clay alone what remains when you do this analysis and so clearly means yes but the clay remains in the example we are not interested in pots and clay he says the muni alone remains you the sage you remain alone you consciousness you remain alone in you this entire universe is an appearance not one bit different from you you pervade this entire universe as awareness as consciousness this oneness of all existence that right now just as all ornaments are gold all waves and foam and surf are water and all pottery clay pots are nothing but clay similarly this entire universe is nothing but brahman atman consciousness appearing as this universe this is the answer to chandrakriti and nagarjuna the buddha you're right there is no separate atma body mind atma no it is the atma alone appearing as body mind and universe it's brahman alone appearing as body mind and universe swami vivekananda says advaita alone gives a solution to this problem it is that not that there is a separate rope and a snake it is the rope alone which appears as the snake that in which our present experience we see as world body mind when we get an insight by inquiry by samadhi by the grace of god remember the paths i talked about path of devotion path of meditation path of inquiry in whichever way once we get that insight we see uh it is consciousness alone which appears as everything only will say its consciousness alone i alone brahmay vedam sarvam ahmed sarvam brahman alone is all this i alone am all this i means consciousness the gyani will say that the devotee will say god alone is everything everything god has is appearing as this entire universe so this is the oneness of all existence which just as a side note if you go to the buddhist approach especially the tibetan buddhist approach and of course there's a chinese buddhist approach i've been told that's even closer to vedanta but i am not aware of i have not read much about not at all in fact but the tibetan buddhist approach it seems to be entirely negative but it leaves you pointed at something and there are schools apart from the most well-known school of tibetan buddhism which is the galux school most powerful influential but there are schools like the jonang school the shentong school which openly speak about buddha nature as the basic space of awareness basic space of awareness you translate consciousness itself they will not directly say because there's a reason if you positively state something you will attract the the anger of chandra kitty and nagarjuna and they will prove that it is empty but and it's true it's not a positively stated entity it is the reality of all so-called positive and negative entities so this basic space of awareness of the buddhists the mahayana buddhists and the pure consciousness of the advaitans and if you make it a little more liberal sri ramakrishna's approach was liberal in the sense that all these are logical niceties the fact is everybody has got it right i met one swami in american swami in our order asked him how did you become a monk he said i grew up in in caroline and north carolina i think and it was staunchly christian and then i noticed that every church was saying that every other church people will go to hell we are right and the church across the street they're all going to go to hell so i as a teenager i thought they were all wrong then but then later i came across a book vedanta for the western world and there i immediately i saw i connected with it it said everybody is right not that every little detail is right but in principle everybody is right the whole idea of the perennial philosophy that underlying all the varied approaches in religion in philosophy and spirituality there's one grand underlying truth perennial truth which can be accessed by spiritual practices and which will give you what we are all looking for ultimate fulfillment and transcendence of suffering today i pray to takur ma and swamiji this auspicious day the silver jubilee here the 125th anniversary of the ramakrishna mission to bless all of us that that great consummation may come in this life for all of us maybe by the grace of god may we realize the ultimate reality our real nature the real nature of this universe [Music] [Music] m this is a question about enlightenment you know i was just looking why don't we ever see examples of people who got enlightenment through sadhana in this life that would be more encouraging for those on this path so how do we know that you have not seen our people such people are not seen there are you can see here and throughout especially in india there's an interesting story about swami vivekananda he's giving talks in this country and this lady who was a young girl at that time that vivekananda had come to our city to give a talk and he came into our church to give a talk um so as he walked in one of my friends another young girl she said excitedly he's like a prophet of the old testament and i said but i thought the age of the prophets is passed and then she said oh don't you know in india it's always the age of the prophets so there have been enlightened people i firmly believe i have seen a few maybe um and there have been are they going to be so this i'm reminded me of a question that my philosophy professor at harvard asked that swami so few again we were discussing buddhism it applies to vedanta also how many attain nirvana how many attain enlightenment very very few so why should anybody go into a path where there is very little chance of success tell me so i gave him two answers and he gave me a third answer all those three answers i'll give you very beautiful third answer specially the two answers which i gave him was first of all it's not that there's a very small chance of success is a hundred percent chance of success uh in this path because you are brahmana you are that absolute reality what can keep you away from it kashmiri shaivism you are shiva what can keep you away from your real nature this one thing that is guaranteed whether you'll be a billionaire or not in this life or in some life whether you'll win the nobel prize or not in this life or some life who knows but will you be enlightened in this life or some life guaranteed 100 percent the highest goal in life we will get and this is i'm not making it up arjuna asked this question to krishna the sixth chapter suppose i don't attain enlightenment in this life then is everything lost i practice spirituality i did not commit fully to you know just pursue a worldly life so both ways am i a loser then shri krishna says no on this path nobody ever loses nobody comes to a bad end question never comes to a bad end on this path every other path you will lose what you have got not in this path once you start on the path of devotion of knowledge of yoga of enlightenment spirituality whatever your path you will attain no and whatever progress you have made will not be lost not only you will attain ultimately not it will not be lost you will pick up from whatever you have attained in this life not that you will remember everything oh i attained a few i memorized 100 slokas so will i start with the hundred first shloka of gita next life no particular memories may be lost but the tendencies gathered the samskaras gathered in this life will power you and we see that we see that the power of samskaras that is first answer the second answer is first answer to why should one enter this path yes success is guaranteed but we just don't know when sri ramakrishna says in the city of banaras it's the city of mother annapurna so everybody will be fed everybody gets food there but he says some will get it in the morning some will be fed in the afternoon some in the left late afternoon some at sunset you know when evening comes but nobody will go hungry that sounds encouraging but remember morning afternoon and sunset of god are very different from the sunset of god means the end of the universe of this cycle billions and billions of years thousands of lifetime sense for us that i read this joke in readers judges long ago one man you know he prayed and prayed and god appeared before him and god said what do you want and the man said i don't want anything i know just seeing you is good enough just little thing and and you are vast and powerful you own everything um you know one of your dollars is worth the billion of my dollars so just give me one dollar of yours god said all right wait one second then so we will get enlightenment but there's no guarantee that we will get it in this life if you try hard enough this life yoga sutra says that is one the second answer i gave was once when one gets the taste of spiritual life then there is nothing that compares to it if you tell people that we're complaining i'm not getting peace of mind my mind goes here and then meditation and stop give it up go back to what you were doing like everybody else you know no no i can't stop this is the most precious thing yes let's see the most precious we cannot stop i remember when i joined the order as a brahmacari as a new novice monk within a few weeks foolishness you know at that age i thought nothing is happening in the few few weeks not even a month and i asked another brahmacharya senior i was too scared to go to the same monks but brahmacharya asked i said you know i don't think that i'm making any progress nothing is happening then he immediately gave us such a nice answer i still remember he said good go back i said no no i can't do that you said the life which you have led for the last 23 years within three weeks that has become impossible for you is that not enough progress so once we get the taste of spiritual life nothing compares to it you will go on practicing this then the professor told me those two are good answers swami but they are little theoretical i will give you a practical answer why people come to this path and stick to this path because quiet apart from nirvana moksha jivan mukti brahmagyana enlightenment all of that the day-to-day benefits we all get from spiritual life the meaningfulness of life the purposefulness the peace of mind this strength to live life and to meet the huge challenges of life the shocks of life all of this we get from spiritual life that's why we stick to spiritual life which is a very good answer so this was one question okay let me instead of trying to organize at this point let me quickly see some of these and then answer where can one learn kashmiri shaivism in india there are these study groups but first i will tell you there are very good books nowadays many of the books have been translated especially shiva sutras that is the source book and there are multiple translations of shiva sutras available i know of two two or three good ones one uniformly good source is jaidev singh jaydev singh's books published by motilal banarsidas the shiva sutras if nothing else if you read the it's an extensive introduction you get a good view of all of kashmirishivism what are the main teachings the texts teachers then there are books like vigna bhairava oh by the way let me just mention this we have a very interesting program coming up at the vedanta society of new york on 7th june 7th june evening at 7 30 eastern time it will be live streamed on youtube so you can see it professor arundham chakravarti from the university of hawaii so he's passing through new york and he's going to give a talk on a meditation technique in vikyana bhairava so in vigana bharara is a kashmiri shiva text which contains 112 meditation techniques each independently guaranteed to take not guaranteed claiming to take you to enlightenment so 112 meditation techniques i have taught one of those meditation techniques which i personally practiced a little bit with some benefit so i taught that if you look uh meditation in kashmir shaivism i have given a talk but he is going to talk about another one of those techniques and the whole talk will be taught by him and a response from me that's 7th june uh evening 7 30 on you can see it live on youtube so you can learn there are there are groups i myself studied in one such group online group it became online after the kobit started so i was able to participate in it i studied for about a year in that group so there are groups which study the thing is the lineage of practitioners has sort of disappeared the last one in kashmir itself was swami lakshman jew so some lineages here and there they practice the teachings are based on kashmir shaivism but if you want to learn about it there are a number of good books available now the doctrine of vibration published by state university of new york what is free will versus destiny what is the role of karma in the framework of vedantic oneness okay first let me take up karma everybody is interested in karma i was surprised karma is not spirituality spirituality is coming out of karma breaking free of karma spirituality karma is causality cause and consequence you do something there are results actions have consequences causes have effects that is karma swami vivekananda put it simply good good bad bad and none escape the law whosoever wears a form wears the chain too for means body mind and there's a chain attached to it which has produced this body mind past karma which will manifest in this life as pleasant and unpleasant things in your life now there is not spirituality coming out of it breaking free of it that is spirituality swami vivekananda says none escape the law but far beyond name and form is atman ever free no zawad that sannyasi bold say om that's this is poem so going beyond the law of karma breaking free of causality that is spirituality notice every path karma yoga karma is action when we do action to get something that is karma when i do action to be free of karma that is karma yoga and what kind of action is that unconditional action selfless action i am doing giving that this time and energy and this body i am letting it go for the service of others not expecting anything back in return this is breaking free from the law of karma love karma is give and take cause and effect i don't i will do good i don't want the result of good so that it breaks free of karma bhakti see love there is a kind of love which only wants to take and does not give selfish tama sick there's a kind of love which is rajasik give and take but there is a satwik love the spiritual love which gives and does not want anything back in return that is again giving without wanting anything back in return unconditional love this karma you see unconditional that is breaking free of karma condition is karma and then gyana knowledge it shows you that which what we talked about consciousness itself beyond the law of karma there's no cause and effect there cause and effect is an appearance the universe is an appearance cause and effect is part of maya it's an appearance in consciousness that's what we talked about now so it's beyond gyana yoga takes you beyond karma raja yoga bhakti yoga karma yoga all of it takes you beyond karma people are fascinated by karma i think one reason we get scared of karma is i have done lots of bad things i'm going to suffer and here is the law of karma telling me i'm going to pay all the bills i can't escape um the way out there is twofold karma yoga itself suggests keep on doing good the more you build up your stock of karma good karma punya the it pushes the bad karma to the back and that will not be activated you just need a lot of good karma to attain spiritual life and get free of karma so good karma doing consistently doing good without any selfish motive it's very good idea and the other is catching hold of that which is beyond karma god in in the bhakti traditions one name given to god is karmadyksha gita dhataram the one who is the support of everything support of the law of karma the lord of karma who gives the results of karma now if you catch hold of the the ceo of the banking system or the bank he can extend your line of credit when you don't deserve it he will not call you on your loans even when it should be called in that power is there with the ceo similarly catch hold of god by the grace of god we may be given some for what not for any worldly purpose so that i can make a mess of things again not for that only for god realization only for spiritual progress god helps the holy mother has said that by bhakti by devotion where once leg might have been cut off you will feel a pinprick you will get something but much much less than what it could have been much less terrible so karma we have to go beyond karma spirituality is going beyond causality at the level of the world karma keeps us in line if you are aware that good good and bad bad if that kind of thing we hold on to we will try to be moral we will try to avoid the immoral in our actions in our thought and speech we'll try because we are aware of the consequences so morality karma is one of the reasons why persons should be moral i remember one person it was a sadhu he was saying when people in say 100 years ago in in india they believed in the law of karma and now they don't believe what's the difference one person is in the village this is 100 years ago he would have said if somebody offered him a bribe would have said i can't take the bribe i have no wife and children or family to take care of the consequence will be terrible i can't do that and today 100 years later a person will say i have to take a bribe because i have a wife and children so where's the difference the difference is somebody accepts the idea of karma and somebody doesn't one person accepts the idea of karma that i cannot get away with it the ultimate result will not be good and sort of implicitly believes it the other one doesn't believe it if i can escape the tax man if i can escape the police and all that then i can take a bribe no problem so doesn't believe in any moral law what is free will versus destiny big question this big question i remember after just becoming up becoming a monk in this in 2004 i went around in the himalayas in our ashram in near deradun kishanpur just a little further ahead of it is a huge tibetan monastery so tibetans have different schools that the one school is the galukpa which is whose head is the dalai lama and he's the head of the entire tibetan buddhism but there's another school called the sakyapa the sakya school the sakya school its headquarters is in that big monastery near kishanpur if you go in there it's a huge monastery there are hundreds of monks llamas there so i went to meet the head the president of the entire monastery i didn't do it by purpose there was like people are going to offer pranams to him so i stood in the line then people were going there and saw they were going with the problems and prayers and he was blessing them and answering their questions quickly it's a long queue and my foolishness i went and bowed down and i said i'm a monk of the ramakrishna order i have this question madhyamika buddhism that's their philosophy an advaita vedanta what is the difference in similarity so he was a very powerful character he could see it radiating power a huge man so he's sitting there he looked down at me and he smiled and he said big question no time so what is free will versus free will versus destiny big question very little time because the answer to this will take a whole talk the best answer that i have found for in vedanta for example swami vivekananda says that this free will is a misnomer there is freedom but not freedom of the will the will is in the process once you come downstream of maya everything is causality nothing is free and beyond maya is freedom not freedom of the will but atma is free now the best answer i have found is again i mentioned professor indam chakravarti he wrote a beautiful article an essay why pray to a god who can hear the sound of the anklets on an ant's feet this is a statement from the gospel of sriram krishna kathamrita where srama krishna says in bengali i'll translate it anklets you put anklets on the feet of children now imagine anklets put on the feet of an ant how tiny they would be and what a tiny sound they would make but god can hear the sound of that now the question professor chakravarti asks is why would you want to pray to such a god because god knows everything what's the point of praying god knows what we want why would you want to pray so having put that question it's a beautiful work i mean it's like a work of philosophical art then he goes into the question of free will what he does in that essay it's about 15 20 pages long he takes a survey of all the theories of free will available in western philosophy indian philosophy neuroscience so he shows determinism why there cannot be free will the different types of determinism quickly summarizes each one then he shows the arguments for free will that there can be free will and then it shows the arguments for what is called compatibilism that free will and determinism are compatible you know how determinism means no free will everything is cause and effect free will means i have free choice i can do this or i may do that it's up to my will but determinism and free will can be combined for example he says simple thing like raising my hand so i feel i can choose whether to raise my hand or put down my hand but yes this raising your hand and putting it down depends on a causal chain starting with your neurons in the brain to the muscles in the arm all of that has to function perfectly in a causal chain then only the arm can be raised if you don't think so ask a person who's paralyzed there is no will i want to raise the arm but i cannot raise the arm because the causal chain is broken the nerves and the muscles they are not working so there must be a deterministic chain in order to give you the freedom to raise your hand so free will and destiny can be combined comp determinism and free will can be combined is called compatibilism another example he gives is mathematics he says there are certain rules of mathematics so that does not constrain the freedom of the mathematician that in fact enables the freedom of the mathematician there are certain constraints and rules which enables the mathematician to generate theorems and approve certain things if it was chaos anything could mean anything then they couldn't do mathematics so there are different ways of dealing with this free will problem but what does he do the interesting thing is what he does later on after having shown this theory that theory goes to the indian views the niya views he's an ayah an expert in nyaya then he finally comes to a beautiful conclusion he says that stage one if you ask do you feel your free will we all feel we have free will i've got freedom and our civilization is based on the idea of free will unless there is free will law cannot work for example you cannot punish somebody for something that the person has not done out of free will you cannot reward somebody for bravery which the person has not done he is constrained to be brave by his neuroscience a new neurology is constrained to be evil by his neurology there was this cartoon i saw the defendant the prisoner is telling the judge your honor my neurons made me do it then you cannot punish so you have to attribute free will freely out of choice this person could have done something else did something wrong broke the law has to be punished this person could have escaped but fought against the criminals or the enemy and should be rewarded so free will we accept free will in everything that we do consumer choice i don't know how much free will there is but it's supposed to be based on prevail so our first answer is there free will yes our whole civilization personal way of life our psychology all depends on yes there is free will second answer no as you investigate science neuroscience physics on one side neuroscience on the other side philosophy on the other side every investigation throws up at least very serious doubts how can free will exist in a deterministic universe or at least in a universe where causality predominates how can there be free will and there are many many strong arguments against free will so no there is no free will and finally the third level yes there is free will what is that free will uh he professor chakravati points out that we feel we have free will stage one we come to upon investigation we come to doubt that there can be anything like free will and recognizing that the ultimate freedom is only call it god atman brahman call it god we keep on sacrificing this feeling of free will which we know that it is not actually free we keep on acknowledging it's god's will not i not i though my lord that much freedom we have we think at least we feel if i have freedom then i must and also i know that this cannot be real then i keep on sacrificing this illusion of my own free will by namaha namaha means na mama not mine not mine yours i feel i have free will it is everything is your will i keep on recognizing that recognizing that means continuous act of surrender and acceptance to the lord that is the answer to the question of free will very beautiful i really liked it it's a very artistic way then answer to the question why pray to a god who who can hear the anklets on an ant's feet because of this you have the ability to pray you seem to feel that i can do something but actually you cannot it's all god's will and then recognize that continuously that is prayer recognize it moment to moment acknowledge it and the acknowledgement of that that i feel i have free will actually i don't it's all your will is surrender namaha namaha nama i salute you i continuously pour myself out to you my lord that's a very beautiful answer i think i liked it with all the divinity within why does it not manifest in people like putin give rise to carnage in ukraine it's a good question you see this same question of why is there evil in the world why is there suffering in the world why is there evil why but first of all let's see the vedantic even the sankhya answer where is evil where is good and bad it's in the mind it's a tendency in the mind an evil person hitler or somebody when they're in deep sleep are they evil when that person was a baby was it an evil baby no not really it's just strong tendencies in the mind which gives rise to certain thoughts speech and actions it's a conditioned mind and the conditioning is bad it's nasty it can be terribly damaging with the right set of circumstances devastation war and genocide and all that can happen but we are saying that each person is not just the mind not even just the body of the mind it is this witness consciousness which illumines the mind that witness consciousness is always pure and it's one all of us we are that one consciousness that's what we are discussing the oneness of the universe in that oneness pure consciousness there is no evil at all but the evil is at the level of the mind and the mind is continuously changing but the answers as we saw sudama krishna gives three answers ultimately why is there so much suffering mystery we cannot know maya you're not satisfied with that leela play of god you get angry with that what leela what is this then ultimate who are you i am suffering but who am i i don't know how do we realize that we are pure consciousness that's what we did there's a whole day yes um but it's a good question for spiritual practice sadhana the practice of gyana yoga is not only to think to reason that we are pure consciousness but also to notice as i said when you're listening listening now are you not aware you're listening yes but are you not aware you're concentrating on my words hopefully but you are aware if your mind is wandering here and there still awareness is there if you see awareness is there close your eyes you are not seeing any more but awareness is there in all our perceptions awareness is there and if you shut down perceptions awareness will be there your thoughts will be revealed in the mind if you shut down thoughts awareness will still be there logically that is pure consciousness and that consciousness is there that pure consciousness continues to be pure in the midst of all thoughts feelings awareness that is something people don't realize people think when i shut down the mind then it's pure consciousness when the mind is thinking when our thoughts feelings emotions perceptions in pure consciousness no consciousness never becomes impure when you have a movie screen you're playing a movie is it an impure screen and shut off all the movies switch up the movie then it's a pure screen no whatever happens on the screen suppose there's an explosion screen doesn't explode suppose there's a flood screen doesn't get wet so whatever happens in the movie does not actually affect the screen no purity or impurity affects the skin screen it's like sky the vastness of sky no matter how much smoke is there it looks like it appear polluted you pollute the atmosphere surely global warming and all that but you do you cannot pollute space akasha is not polluted by anything that we can do so we are pure consciousness regardless however it's one thing to say that another thing to get the benefit from it so to get the benefit from it preparation is necessary we go back to the four-fold qualification we talked about sadhana and the practices meditation ishta devata mantra meditation devotion selfless service all of these are preparations for the mind and they have to be we have to see that we have to be engaged in that notice if you are not enlightened i need to practice that to get ready for enlightenment if i am already enlightened what kind of life will you have you will notice the life of an enlightened person is basically a manifestation of these yogas it will be a devoted life a selfless life a focused concentrated life not scattered not selfish not you know full of desires for the world so the four yogas in some form they are there before enlightenment and they'll be there after enlightenment also so it's a good idea to do that i read in a buddhist text they call it zogchen which is the closest to advaita vedanta very similar that's why the tibetan lama said oh it's the same it's one type of it's it's sort of the highest teaching of tibetan buddhism so in injection test takes in one place the llama is counseling the student that these are the most advanced teachings there is no doubt that you are you and your guru are the same reality but never fail to do obeisance and show respect to the guru it's no doubt with eyes closed and eyes open it is the same reality but never miss a chance for meditation it's no doubt that in the city and in the forest it's the same reality but never miss a chance for going into a retreat it's no doubt that the true nature the buddha nature is unaffected unsoiled by good and bad but never give up a chance to do a good deed and never perform impure deeds so you notice one is the reality but the other side is always carefully maintained the practices are carefully maintained that's how we realize we are pure consciousness if everything is consciousness why manifestation why the play again big question there's a short answer to this big question which i liked it's either swami ashishanja or one of the earlier swamis who lived on the west coast i forget his name he said that notice on our side of enlightenment we have the question we don't have the answer on their side of enlightenment they have the answer but not the question why does consciousness play why is that manifestation it doesn't seem to have bothered any one of them are all the great enlightened ones you see it's interesting they don't seem to think it's a question worth answering anymore and we seem to think this is the most sophisticated question we can put if it's all one question one consciousness then why is all of this appearing i can give you two answers one is a logical answer the logical answer is this um why is consciousness manifesting as this the answer would be what are the options that poor consciousness has one is that only two logical options either manifest or not manifest and that's what consciousness is doing in your waking and dreams manifest in the world or in the dreams and deep sleep no manifestation in the existence of the universe srishti and city the projection of the universe and the maintenance of the universe just now like we have manifestation and the dissolution of the universe mahaprabhu no manifestation so consciousness is producing this manifestation and no manifestation at the cosmic level at the personal level what more can poor consciousness do there are only two options and both are given somerset mom the noticed noted writer novelist he wrote the razor's edge which prompted many people in that generation to take a backpack and a passport and travel to india in search of spirituality story of larry so he studied vedanta he studied that brahman manifested this universe in his rye and dry british humor he writes one feels that brahman could have left well enough alone why manifest so much trouble then so this is one answer another answer i can give you is a little more in-depth it is that why all this the answer from an advaithic perspective is brahman did not create this universe it is a play it is not even play it is appearance in consciousness it is maya it's an appearance but then one can again ask why maya why not just brahman because of maya brahman is appearing like this but why maya if you are saying brahman alone exists then where is the question of maya also why am i if you ask at that point swami vivekananda says and shankara and all of them they say the question is wrong now it took me a quite a long time to understand why the question is wrong because from vivekananda's perspective it seems very clear the question is wrong i thought about it and like nagging little kids they will ask why maya they will not ask why maya but why they keep on whatever you answered why until you tell them to shut up so if you say why am i i'm told why is the question the question is wrong i'll ask why is it wrong why is the question wrong it seems to be a logical question to ask when the question is wrong because of this it took me quite a long time to understand but it's actually pretty simple when you ask a question you just expect an answer so when you ask a why question what kind of answer will satisfy you because you're asking for why means you're asking for a cause why is the grass wet because it rained or because of the sprinklers why did it rain because of the clouds because why are the clouds because of evaporation why is there evaporation because of the sun because now if you ask maya why maya then the answer cannot be given because see because causality is a part of maya only after accepting causality you can give a because answer why because answer when you accept causality you've already accepted maya then you can't ask why maya it's like i'll tell you and i'll give you another example and make it clear maya is time space causation de shakala nimitta so if you ask time maya is time if you ask what was there before time but before and after a time words you've already accepted time without time there is no before and after if you ask what is outside space it doesn't make sense outside and inside are space words you've already accepted the concept of space then only you can ask what is inside and outside so if you don't accept space there's no question i'm asking inside and outside space if you don't accept time there's no question of accepting in before time if you are not accepting maya itself then you are not accepting causality because then you should not ask why maya do you see it's little intricate but it makes sense it's logical it shows why you cannot ask this question many many answers can be given not all of which not many of which will be satisfying but as i said that on that side of enlightenment there is no question here there is no real answer why the play so why play of course you cannot ask why the play plays play you don't do it for a reason it's like somebody's dancing and you ask where are you going i'm not going anywhere i'm dancing what happens when you reach spiritual realization enlightenment what happens to the jiva is that perfect knowledge peace quiet happiness very easy look at the lives of the enlightened ones what happens beyond the dropping of the body you say brahman alone exists or the one is one with its buddha nature whatever you call it moksha nirvana but as long as we can as far as we can understand when you see the enlightened ones you see their lives that's what this happens a description gita arjuna asks this question to krishna what is it like to be enlightened and krishna gives answers multiple times what is it like to be enlightened well it's a very uh can be a tricky question i remember in the studies of buddhism the two kinds of things which are talked about of buddha when you're fully enlightened when you become a buddha omniscient you know everything and yet you know the truth so everything that is there in this world is false it's empty the buddha cannot know false things so buddha knows nothing because it's all false why should the buddha know false things so is being a buddha is it knowing everything or knowing nothing the professor who taught us this he called it brain stem buddha you're reduced to a brain stem nothing no like a deep coma is that enlightenment doesn't sound very appealing it will become reduced to your brain's brain stem buddha yes but what's the answer and the answer is that you know things as they are that from a vedantic perspective you will know exactly like anybody else knows as you are seeing hearing smelling tasting touching will the enlightened one be able to see hear smell taste touch yes will they see what we are seeing hear and smell and taste what we are hearing yes look at the lives of the enlightened ones don't they recognize people don't they eat food don't can't they distinguish between taste as long as their consciousness is outward directed they are as capable as all of us more than us in fact and yet no if you ask them are you seeing this world and people you see yes really no they'll smile and say no nothing prevents an enlightened one from being fully active in the world and yet denying its existence let me tell you a story from yoga vashishta one of my favorite stories which by the way shows the difference between the first lecture today and the second one there was a queen and a king of course all stories like that queen and a king and the queen was enlightened the king was not now one day the king asked the queen that my dear you are so peaceful in the midst of all your duties and activities you're so calm how do you do it what's your secret and she said i was waiting for you to ask so she teaches him that actually we are not this body we are not even this mind all of that which we discovered in the morning we are the consciousness to which the body mind and the world appears in consciousness in our real nature there is no problem at all remain there remain rooted in that with absolute peace pure consciousness sachida then she taught him the meditation techniques the vedantic meditation how to remain centered in that the king said this is wonderful i wish i had asked you earlier so i'm going to go on a sabbatical you manage the kingdom i'm going to realize this so he goes off to the forest he's a king so in the forest also he has a palace or something like that so there he spends time in meditation study and trying to realize what his wife taught him while the wife is running the kingdom then he realizes he gets the breakthrough brahmagyana i mean this enlightenment i am the witness consciousness and like narendra nad when he got the first nirvikalpa samadhi sriram krishna asked him what do you want he said i want to remain there once in a while i'll come down for a snack and go up there again and remain there sadam krishna scolded him luckily for us he said i thought why on you i thought you will be like a great banyan tree under which people of the world were suffering they will come and find shade and comfort here you are thinking only of your own liberation so luckily that's why we are all able to enjoy all this because of what surround krishna told vivekananda but the king realized and he said what narendra nath had said it first i want to stay there this world is a dream why stay in a dream so he stays meditation stays then after some time he got a doubt so he came back to the capital where the queen was running the kingdom very nicely so he said my dear whatever you said was right and i practiced and i've realized you are my guru and i thank you i'm eternally grateful so the queen said i sense a butt somewhere said you are right but i have a question you have realized this long before me i have also realized it and i i want to enjoy that wonderful piece and there's nothing that compares comes close to it but you have realized it but i see your very ordinary life you're leading you are doing all the work of the queen and the daily busy throughout day and night why don't you want to remain like me absorbed in the peace of samadhi in the peace of pure consciousness the queen said i was waiting for you to ask then she teaches that what you see as a false world and you turn away from it into the reality of samadhi within is also exactly that same consciousness which you have discovered within there is nothing here which is a second reality apart from the reality which you have discovered within pure consciousness atman brahman what you have discovered this is also that sri ramakrishna said with eyes closed god is there with eyes open god is not there what kind of god is this what you see with eyes closed is exactly what you see with eyes open the same brahman formless existence consciousness bliss is the kingdom and the men and the women and the animals and plants and sky and earth exactly same all radiant with divinity it's all action your official actions your personal actions everything is shining with that divinity we chant it every day we think it's chanting for food brahman brahmana brahma karma who sees brahman in action brahma karma samadhi whose samadhi is in the midst of intense action you see the radiance of divinity everywhere that person realizes brahman not withdrawing and sitting in the forest in your palace so this is the second talk which we had the oneness of all existence if truth is one why did science and vedanta arrive at incompatible conclusions science says uncertain incomplete and non-absolute is the truth vedanta says truth is absolute complete which can be arrived through logical analysis should we discard science or vedanta reconcile both reconcile both of course only thing is science is not a finished product science request is going on and notice the direction of science is encouraging i'm not saying science is where vedanta is and it's it's also worthwhile to to follow science as it develops because we live in an age of science we cannot say vedanta is a complete system we don't have no any need of science come to vedanta i know a physicist was very shocked when he went to a well-known medant advaita vedanta teacher and the said the teacher asked him what do you do swami he asked him what do you do and the physicist said i do physics ah all that is maya come here i will teach you the truth this is shocking swami vivekananda's attitude was not like that you see that's why tesla used to come and attend vivekananda's lectures vivekananda was in dialogue with william james with tesla some of them are more convinced than the others but it's important to have that dialogue this is an age of science uh if you think shankara nagarjuna buddha if they'd lived today would have not been interested in science they would have been interested in science certainly but where is it going again i mentioned for example someone straightforward completely in a scientific paradigm like brian greene so i asked him when he launched his book at harvard university i asked him this question the claims of the upanishads and the claims of modern physics and those findings of modern physics how do you see them together and it's good to ask him he's he doesn't many people don't know his elder brother is a monk a hindu monk so he said i have all the i have had this debate with my brother many times his position is what you are saying what you are discovering in physics is what these ancient indian scriptures hindu scriptures have spoken about for a long time now what is his view and he told me his very considered view from a completely scientific perspective he said that what you are talking about in the open issues in vedanta is not science but it is a poetic rendition of the same principles which we are talking about which is fine which is i think correct which is a very good thing to say and as i said whether it's heisenberg or today it's brian greene if you see the their final conclusions about the world universe you know about ourselves very very philosophical i won't say vedantic but definitely very philosophical you can clearly see physics merging into metaphysics there all of them all of the thinkers were thinking about this world in fact there is a book which i liked very much jim holt why does the world exist so this he's a science journalist and he's written this very nice little book why does the world exist what he has done is he has gone to cutting-edge physicists mathematicians philosophers theologians people from literature across the world including physicists like roger penrose and all and he has put this question not why star exists or molecule exists or life exists why does anything exist at all why is there existence at all that's the ultimate question the deepest question so why what is an answer from science from mathematics from philosophy from religion from literature and so that book is a collection of all the answers he has got and in pretty good depth not oversimplified i was looking through it and i was thinking what will he ever come to vedanta what happens is towards the end he is talking to a very well known american philosopher robert nozick robert nozick who passed away i think who passed recently a few years ago and they're discussing the nature of mind consciousness and reality and then at one point robert nozick says who knows you know everything else every every theory is failing who knows maybe the ancient hindus were right atman is brahman that is the solution to everything and he does not pursue that any further but i was yes like you yay so good let's see where it goes the direction is good for the first time in science in since the beginning of modern science for the first time we are living in an age in a time where consciousness has become the square centered focus of scientific study people were not interested in it 20 years ago christophe koch who is a leading consciousness studies expert he was the chief scientist of the paul allen brain institute he says that when i entered this field and i said i'm going to study consciousness in neuroscience i'm going to study consciousness from neuroscience perspective my colleagues told me you are it's career suicide you'll never find anything in this field so but now it is a hot topic if you see in the internet every week there will be an article consciousness explained or the mystery of consciousness two kinds of articles you can't explain others is explained i always say the consciousness explained articles are always consciousness explained within brackets away explained away so science i think the direction of science is is very promising and if you do come to these truths so somebody would say that why did i have science if you're ultimately you think it's going to come to the same truth no it's not exactly the same truth the way science will come to it will ism will be will add great amount of richness depth and practicality to our understanding of the truth this is a reason why his holiness that dalai lama insists on neuroscience and studies of meditation effects of meditation brain science and buddhist ideas of consciousness and meditation and so this meeting of science and spirituality it's a very good idea was all for it it it's all for it okay we're almost out of time all many big questions and no time there's so many good questions my god you mentioned about your lessons in harvard in almost every class or do i i shouldn't stay is it really important to go through material thought there no no why is it important if you're a spiritual seeker and then you don't have to go to harvard or attend a philosophy class all the material taught in the philosophy departments in the university is all easily available and in good books non-textbook material it's written in many nice books which are which gives you an overview of the idea of of the conclusions of these uh philosophers and thinkers you get a good idea if you're interested and see the entire like i mentioned i studied buddhism but it was a particular kind of buddhism a classical indian buddhism for thousand years in india plus tibetan buddhism but there is other buddhism which i did not study like buddhism how it developed in china in japan and people have assured me what you are trying to say actually has been said in not so much intimate in buddhism but rather in chinese buddhism it's much closer to advaita vedanta now that's some material i don't know yet so if you have interest yes but otherwise it's enough if you hold on to take up one path and follow it seriously surama krishna talks approvingly of the monk he saw in dakshineshwar seriously studying a book and then he saw what is it there that book every page is written rama ramra you know throughout only one word i'm seriously studying it as a thriller is going to that is focus study there i read about this monk in haridwar shankarananda long time before our time our swami dhireshan anderjee met him and wrote a hindi description about him so somebody asked this monk who was said to be a radical non-dualist advaitan he would live in a on a cot under a tree not even an ashram or a cave or a cottage but in a court on a cot under a tree and he wore only a line cloth and no positions at all but people thought he was enlightened fully energy is an extraordinary character somebody went and said you are a non-dualist where are your books because vedantins have lots of books they are always studying and arguing where are your books and the swami said oh i have three books and i read them every day and they all tell me the truth the three books are waking dreaming and deep sleep jagrat swapna sushupti and they tell me that i am the witness consciousness the fourth the turian that's enough so ramakrishna told swami today as a young man he stopped coming to sri ramakrishna he was very engaged in reading vedanta arguing meditating on trying to realize brahman then srama krishna called him once and said to him i've heard you are you're too busy to come to come to me you know that you are studying vedanta it's all that is very good but all your vidanta text all of it isn't it that they tell you brahman is real and the world is false if that is so then why not give up the world and try to realize brahman and that sort of revolutionized swami turian in this life i find the gold jewelry that means example incomplete as we can convert one kind of jewelry to another by melting it in a lab we cannot do that for any conscious being then how can we say that there's one common consciousness if we cannot demonstrate we can demonstrate don't try to melt anybody in a lab that's what that's what we've been trying to say all along the form and the name you don't have to melt it's continuously melting and changing day is changing into evening into night is it huh day passes into evening morning into night weeks and months and years roll by time is playing life is flowing by when will you realize god he says what vedanta says there is as all this is changing consciousness is constant notice that that's what we are trying to point out that verse in the pancha panchadashi weeks months years eons ages universes come and go the sun of consciousness is neither rises nor sets it's constant and shining that's like the gold in the ornament you can keep on changing the ornament it's the same gold nothing no changes come there it's exactly the same gold i remember i can't but tell you this funny incident which happened when i gave this example this was in fiji and i was going to give a vedanta talk they knew i was going to give vedanta talk to swami there before i started the vedanta talk he he became anxious about something he came and whispered to me that in your vedanta talk give some examples and then but don't give that jeweler example which ram krishna has given because in the audience there are many jewelers what is the jeweler example that a man about about frauds in spiritual life so a man goes to a jewellery shop and the man outside is chanting from inside somebody chants keshav name of krishna the man who's sitting outside is repeating the name of god and he says gopal or gopala and then inside somebody shouts hurry hurry hurry hurry name of god and the man outside shouts name of shiva and this man thought how the customer thought how religious these people are how devout they must be really honest people but they were cheats because what he was asking is a play on words it works in hindi bengali it works keshava keshava in bengali it means who are they who's coming what kind of customer give me a read on them and this man says gopala gopal name of krishna but gopala means a herd of cows they're foolish then the man inside says hari hari hari is the name of vishnu but also it means should i steal should i drop them blind hurry and the man outside says go ahead go ahead drop them rob the swami whispered to me don't give that example i said i said i have give me some credit of common sense i will not give that example but you warned me there are dwellers in this so then i gave a talk and i gave this gold and jewelry example the gold is melted made into another form it's exactly the same no changes happen it's the same thing after the talk one dweller came stormed up and furiously he said in hindi he said swami to dubai you're going to sink my business why because i know it's the same thing but when we melt it and then we charge it we say it's a new thing which has come you say it's nothing it's the same we say we try to present it as a new it's a you just you just gave me the material but i have given you a new necklace see that's how the business operates and you're going to put us in trouble is it the only way to feel or experience oneness in samadhi again um samadhi is a yogic thing vedanta is the enlightenment the brahmacariti which comes through vichaara that also gives you oneness or devotion also the clear uh the clarity that god is everything that's also oneness advaita vedanta would insist that you go through the path of inquiry and realize that it's one it's an existing oneness it should become clear to you but samadhi is also important sudama krishna says in the gospel in one place the exact words are shamadhi na holy tikti khaina unless one is absorbed at least once in samadhi it will not how do you put heat taken and it will not sit right you will have doubts you will have a tinge of the complete clarity which comes from seeing it in a world shutdown and the oneness and nothing but that oneness after that you cannot doubt anymore so samadhi has its own place and it in advaita vedanta they say samadhi is useful for clearing up negating past samskaras so they also recommend stay with it once you realize oneness stay with that oneness in samadhi again and again plunge the mind into it so that past samskaras are that the deconditioning takes place this is called nidhyasana okay one more we'll do lot of good questions once we have a guru we have submitted our will to him should we discontinue the array of questions and no we should start the array of questions but you are right in one sense i remember when i joined the order the swami who was in charge of the ashram every day i would ask questions it would give us opportunities new brahmacaris to ask questions and i had so many questions then one day i felt i was bugging him i thought he's a swami for the last 40 50 years how many times he must have been asked this question so he must be getting irritated with me so i said i'm sorry for asking all these questions and does it irritate you do you get tired of it he said two things um first of all no why should i get tired we beautiful answer he gave we are both walking on the same path it's very nice to discuss these things why should i get tired second many questions he said ask all the questions don't worry very soon you won't have anything more to ask you'll know things for sure and then you know what is to be done another swami um whom from whom i was learning upanishads after the class it was a new brahmacari and i still remember in front of balurmat gate i hesitantly said swami i have a question i thought maybe can i ask and swami said ask away fire away whatever questions you have better brains than yours for more last 1500 to 5000 years have been asking questions and all the questions have been answered satisfactorily so you need not be afraid that by a couple of your questions vedanta will come crashing down ask away whatever is better brains than yours have thought about this for millennia so yes please ask questions [Music] namaste [Music]

Channel: Vedanta Washington D.C.

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Id: -Y8623O8ZuM

Length: 132min 16sec (7936 seconds)

Published: Mon May 30 2022