Question: Some
teachers say that the rational mind cannot comprehend the truth of the Self
because the mind is stuck in its patterns of thinking; they say that only
intense experiences will shake these patterns loose. Would Swamiji please
comment?
Swamiji: How can experience shake a thinking pattern? A
logical pattern cannot be shaken by anything. From being taught you know that
the sun stands still and that the earth goes round. Does your everyday
experience of a rising sun sake that thinking ?
How can wrong thinking – firmly entrenched notions – be shaken
by mere experience? It cannot be shaken. You think you are the physical body.
Yet every night in a dream experience while that body is stretched out on a mattress with a pillow under its head, a ‘you
’unconnected to the body works and eats and plays, is happy and sad. That dream
experience does not shake your conclusion that you are the body. A teacher may
use your dream experience as an aid to help you discover through knowledge,
that you are not the body, but experience itself does not do the job of shaking
off the wrong thinking.
Wrong thinking can
be shaken only by right thinking, which comes from knowing, from seeing, not
experiencing. Techniques which
incapacitate thinking do not really work for recognizing yourself. You can
arrest thinking for a while, but you cannot shake off wrong thinking. When
thinking returns, the wrong thinking will repeat itself.
Question: Why
then do we hear so much about techniques?
Swamiji: There is some benefits in working for
quietude; a quiet mind is a useful mind, ready to learn, ready to see. To work
for such a mind is understandable. There are techniques and practices which are
helpful. Pranayama, physical
exercise, certain diets are all fine if their purpose is understood. A
relatively contemplative lifestyle and assimilated ethical values are also
important. All these constitute preparation of the mind for knowledge. It is
the same in any branch of knowledge. The mind must have proper preparation for
learning. It must be ready to be taught the particular subject. Learning to
read comes before the study of literature.
Question: But we
keep hearing that thereare teachers who, through touch or through some induced
experience, can cause all things to fall in place so that you realise the
Truth. Could it be that through experiences you can get sufficient glimpses of
the vision of the Truth, so that you then do not have to go through a heavy intellectual
resistance of accepting that vision?
Swamiji:
No. The truth of
oneself is not an intellectual conclusion, nor is it something to be ‘reached’
by experience. The student is not an
‘elevator’ to go ‘up to Brahman’ at the touch of a guru. Brahman is you – not a place to be reached. It is not through an
experience that you become Truth.
There is nothing to
become. There is nothing to transform. You are the truth you are seeking. The
teaching of Vedanta is simple a pramana,
a means of knowledge, an instrument that shows you what you are.
What you are is not an intellectual conclusion. Intellectual
means inferential. An intellectual conclusion is an inferential
conclusion about something not available for immediate perception but about
which there are data available from which some logical conclusion can be
reached.
Your existence
requires no inference. You are not available for inference because you are
right here as yourself; you are immediately present. You are available
to be known, not to be inferred. You fail to know yourself only due to
ignorance, not due to lack of availability of yourself. Knowledge, not
inference, nor experience, destroys that ignorance.
Vedanta directly teaches you what you are. The use of logic
is for removal of doubts, to give clarity to your vision. We use yukti, certain reasoning methods to
remove the blocks you may have which interfere with your clear vision; these
blocks are always rational and can be removed by reason. We use your
experiences also. We help you assimilate
your experiences in terms of knowledge. In fact we help you see that you
have always had an experience of yourself. You do not require a new experience
to see yourself. There is no source of ananda, the vision of fullness that you
call happiness, except yourself.
Whenever you pick up a resolving moment of happiness, you
experience your essential self. Vishayananda,
means happiness gained through a desirable object – something in which there is
a ‘kick’ for you and for a moment that ‘kick’ swallows up all other wants of
the wanting mind.
That ananda, fullness, that sukha, happiness is but you, yourself
really. Through some gain, through some sensation, through a profound
appreciation of beauty, whatever, a certain mental condition occurs in which
for a moment you are just with yourself, you want no change whatsoever in
anything. In the quiet clarity of a mind
that wants no change whatsoever, you pick up yourself as a moment of ananda , a moment of happiness. You
do not recognize that ananda as yourself but instead attribute it to an
object or a situation experienced.
Desiring ananda
all the time, you continually see it through all your actions. You know that
you want ananda again. The very fact that you want ananda shows that you know it. Nobody
desires something that is unknown. You know what ananda is and that is why
you want it. What you do not know is that you are ananda;
you cannot but help seek it because it is your very nature and you cannot
settle for anything else, for anything less.
But do you know there is such a thing as ananda; you know that there are moments of fullness which are moments
of happiness. You do not require some strange, new experience to know that
there are such moments of fullness.
Even if you gain some new experience which reveals ananda to you, it makes no
difference. Whether the experiences you have are usual or unusual, they still have
to be assimilated in terms of knowledge. Experience by itself does not give
knowledge. It is only an experience. It comes and goes. Shruti, the
scriptures, provide the basis for the knowledge that the moment of happiness I
experience reflect my real nature, ananda, limitlessness, fullness.
Experience does not give me knowledge of the nature of
fullness nor does it give me the vision of the whole. Slipping into myself does not give me knowledge of the whole –
knowledge of the truth of myself, the world and of the Creator.
It is the knowledge
of the whole that frees me just as I am.
For that knowledge, I need to know,
very well, what is mithya, apparently real, and what is satyam, non-negatable Reality. It is not
enough just to be myself. I have to account for this world or else things will
not fall into place. Just slipping into myself does not make things fall into
place. If I do not discover the nature of the world as well as that of myself ,
the world will overwhelm me and I will have to escape from the world.
If experience is all that is needed to know the Truth of
everything, all one has to do is take drugs. No Vedanta, no yoga, no touch on the forehead, nothing
is necessary – simply take drugs. When experience is seen as Truth, it comes to
that. The whole drug culture has grown because of this false idea.
Vedanta has been presented as an experience. This is a wrong
presentation. Aldous Huxley and some others introduced Vedanta this way.
Vedanta is knowledge,
not a happening. A teacher unfolds
the knowledge of oneself until it is clear .Doubts and vagueness are eliminated
by logic, bringing clarity of vision. Vedanta
is the immediacy of knowledge.
When that immediacy of knowledge is presented as experience,
confusion follows. This confusion has arisen, at least in part because there is
a word in Sanskrit, ‘anubhava’ which
has been translated in English simply as ‘experience’. Such a translation cause
the expectation of a ‘happening’, not a ‘seeing’.
I would rather translate ‘anubhava’ as immediate knowledge. Gurupadesham anusrtya bhavati iti anubhavah. That which is in keeping with the teaching is
called anubhava. For the qualified student,
that which comes after the teaching is knowledge in keeping with the teaching.
But instead, ‘anubhava’ is translated
everywhere as ‘experience’ which does not bring about the correct understanding
that what is indicated is immediate knowledge.
Question: Could
you call this ‘realization’ rather than ‘experience’?
Swamiji: It is
recognition in terms of knowledge. You recognize the Truth of yourself in terms
of knowledge – a knowledge that embraces you, your world, and God. Unless you see the whole, your problem is not
solved. In knowledge you see the identity of God, world and you. You see the nondual vision as a whole. You
cannot duck from duality.
Neither experience nor knowledge destroys the perception of
duality. Experience is only an escape from the perception of duality; knowledge
accounts for duality. In knowledge I face duality and see there is no
duality. I appreciate and enjoy the world I perceive but at the same time I
know there is no duality.
It is like the sunrise. I know that the sun does not rise in
the eastern sky, but nonetheless I am enchanted by the beuty of the rising sun.
The sky is not blue nor does the rainbow have substance, but I rejoice in the
blueness of the sky and welcome the rainbow. Just because duality does not have absolute reality does not mean it is
not perceived nor does it mean it should not be enjoyed for what it is.
This is not the point. The point is
truth must be known as a whole.
The whole should
account for the world, God and myself – my mind, my body, my struggles, my
liberation – everything should be accounted for and in that accounting, the
fact that ‘I am that whole’, should be seen. Mere experience does not
account for the whole. The whole is
accounted for in terms of knowledge.
Knowledge requires a pramana, an instrument of knowledge and
someone to wield that instrument. Shruti, scripture, is the pramana and the teacher wields the pramana, unfolding the words of Shruti until the student
sees the fact of the whole and knows, “That whole I am”.
Om Tat Sat
