We take ourselves to be individuals separate from one
another and the world. Is this true or is it a false belief? If it is true then
I am always an affected being – affected by the world around –sometimes
favourably and many times unfavourably. I become whatever my conditioning allows me to be – nothing more
– nothing less.
As an individual, I take myself to be limited in every which
way and so I become a person with endless set of needs which beg to be
fulfilled as a means to seeing myself as complete. Of course there are many
unfulfilled needs and these make me live life with the endless pursuit of needs
fulfilment. When needs are fulfilled legitimately there are consequent feelings
of satisfaction and when they cannot be fulfilled for any reason whatsoever, or they are fulfilled without heed to the
universal code of values, there is
conflict, anger, hurt, anxiety, frustration, guilt etc.
This is my lot as an individual. Then I am like a fish
imprisoned in a submarine!!! There is no freedom – there is only living being
controlled helplessly by my conditioning and believing that to be my truth.
Vedanta asks us to make an inquiry into whether I am an
individual and gives us a simple logical method that helps us question our
belief that I am this personality that I believe myself to be. Thus it helps us
to first see even the possibility that we could be wrong in our estimate of
ourselves.
It points out a rule which is - that whatever you can
objectify, whatever you can know or experience is not you for the simple reason that you are the subject who knows – you are never an object that is known.
For example you know the building you are staying in – and
you also know that you are not the building that you objectify. Similarly, you
know the clothes you are wearing and you also know that you are not the clothes
that you objectify. When it come to physical things external to the body, we
have no problem in understanding this. But the minute we come to our body – to
the skin of the body – we look upon it as ‘I’ – even though it is clearly
something we objectify and know. So too, even though we know our feelings and
our thoughts – even though they are clearly objects of our knowledge, our
experience –still we take them to be ‘me’.
This is THE error that causes all the sorrow in our lives.
Vedanta says strip away from your belief of yourself all
that you have added through ignorance of your real self – so for the time being
strip away in your understanding – the body, its physiological functions, the
mind with all of its ways of thinking, beliefs, feelings, needs, memories and
ignorance from your sense of ‘I’. Strip them all away from your sense of ‘I’,
which is direct and immediate and see what is there. Stay with that ... stay
with that ... stay with that ... again and again stay with that – ... you may
say I feel sacred ... hey fear is an object of your knowledge – you are not
fear – remove fear also from your understanding of yourself ... You may say I
feel a void, a great discomfort ... hey void is also something you are
objectifying .... you are not what you objectify ... use that assimilated rule
again and again ... and stay with what remains without identifying with
anything – be it thought, feeling, memory, sensation - that comes up as an
object of your knowledge and experience.
As you stay through understanding, with the sense of I, from
which all ideas of objects has been taken away, you begin to recognize that you
are irrefutably a basic conscious being, a conscious presence – basic self-existent self-revealing
consciousness that is present at all times, illumining every experience of
objectification, in reality untouched by the experience. Just as sunlight is
untouched by all that is illumined in its presence.
Vedanta examines the nature of reality. Whatever you experience is a changing reality - and it depends on YOU, the unchanging reality. You are the unchanging truth, the unchanging reality of the personality that you experience, independent of the personality that you experience yourself as.
Not identifying with anything that may come up you
experience yourself as vast spaciousness -you recognize that the words of Vedanta,
which reveal the truth of yourself as limitless, timeless consciousness is
true. You are That. You are the limitless timeless consciousness that Vedanta, the
means of knowledge in the form of words,
is revealing. This understanding is
sometimes experienced as a sense of vast
spaciousness in which every experience seemingly takes place, inseparate from
you.
It is only when there is identification due to ignorance with
the object of experience, be it the body-mind or anything external to the body,
that one assumes that one is a personality limited by the conditioning of the
body-mind or the experiences in the external world.
So to dispute your belief that you are a personality, a
limited individual, first you need to see the possibility of your being
something else. For that use the rule given by Vedanta – again and again and
again and again see what you are not – and stay with what remains – which is
the sense of ‘I’. Stay with that I-sense which has been divested of the sense
of reality in all that is added on to it in ignorance. If you can do that, stay
with the sense of I, which has nothing added to it – which is just ‘I am’ –
just Being – that very staying will help stabilize your understanding of I to
be independent of the personality. You also assimilate that the personality is
not independent of you, the consciousness in whose presence it manifests and is
enlivened and empowered.
And once you assimilate that you are independent of the
personality whereas the personality is not independent of you, the words used
by Vedanta that reveal your true nature, reveal their meaning to you and you
recognize that YOU are the meaning – limitless timeless absolute consciousness
from whom nothing is separate.
Om Tat Sat