Friday, February 5, 2016

The Self Is Not An Experience To Be Gained – Satsang with Pujya Shri Swami Dayananda


Question:  Is there not another experience?
Swamiji: It is not an experience to be gained; you have enough experience of yourself. I am saying you are never away from yourself; you are not something to be gained as a new experience. You are already there, seeing me, hearing me. You never go out of the experience of yourself. You are there experiencing yourself in every experience. You are never outside yourself. You never get lost. Everything else, any object, may get lost, but you, the subject, never gets lost. Therefore, there is no question of lack of experience. In fact, you are the essence of every experience. I analyse your experiences about yourself and point out that this is what you are. Therefore there is no question about gaining an experience of atma, I, because atma is the invariable in all experiences. It is not that I must experience myself; it is that I recognize myself in all experiences. I see what I am – in seeing, hearing, walking, talking, thinking, doubting. In all of them what is there is only myself. There is only One and that One is I. To see that One is recognition. There is no experience. Experience is only with reference to an object other than yourself.
Questioner: Perhaps I was confusing the issue because I was not clear.
Swamiji:  We are confused and therefore we use wrong words. Weuse wrong words and therefore we are confused. When we use right words there is no problem. If I use the word ‘experience’ for knowing myself, I will be confused. Let us stop using that word; knowing myself is a question of self recognition. So what you are asking is, “Is there such a thing as clear knowledge?”. Yes. In fact knowledge must be clear. Knowledge is not gradual, but clarity is gradual. Clarity is gradual because I keep creating doubts.
In preparing the mind for self recognition there are things that can be done to have a quiet mind. That quiet mind is experiential. So you may say that experientially you first obtain a quiet mind. That is useful, because without a quiet mind, the teaching does not work.
Question: So breathing exercises ....
Swamiji: Everything like that is experiential.
Questioner:  But they are useful?
Swamiji:  Everything including asana, pranayama, pratyahara is useful. It all depends upon what you want. They are useful to gain a quiet mind. But if you think these practices are going to solve the problem of knowing yourself, that is not true.

Om Tat Sat

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Vedanta is not intellectual- Satsang with Pujya Shri Swami Dayananda



Question: I am somewhat amazed that Vedanta is not intellectual ...
Swamiji: How can it be? You are seeing me now. Tell me, are you ‘theorizing ‘ about me or “practising “ me when you are seeing me? I am not an object of any theory or practice. You open your eyes and if I am here, you see me. Similarly, when I say that you are the subject, that you are Brahman and I am able to help you to see the fact of what you are when I negate what you are not, my words are like your eyes. So is it theory or practice? It is neither theory or practice.
Question: Are you saying that it is showing me what I am? Now I already have the experience of what I am.
Swamiji:  You do not know the dimension of yourself. You are dimensionless. You do not know that. That means you do not know the truth of yourself. You know that you exist, that you are a conscious being, but it is all put together in this concept of “I”. I have to strip what you are not from the concept of “I” and make you see the content of “I” being Brahman.
Unlike other means of knowledge where you can figure out by yourself what is to be known through perception, inference and so forth. Vedanta is a means of knowledge which requires a teacher to wield the words properly.
Question: And that is why the Guru is praised?
Swamiji:  Yes. The Guru and the teaching are the means of knowledge. If you fix up your misconceptions, have studentship and listen, it works very well. Then there is teaching. And once you know, that knowledge is not going to change; you will not be shaken.

Om Tat Sat