Swami Tadatamananda Saraswati of Arsha Bodha Center (https://arshabodha.org/), a senior disciple of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, is taking an online intensive Vedanta course. Every week he answers questions of students who are listening to the course videos. Some of the questions are really interesting and Swamiji's answers clarify a lot of misconceptions. I will post some of the interesting questions and answers here on this blog every week.
Q. I understand that atma is the observer of mental
activities correct the observer of your thoughts your emotions your sensations
all of the activities of your mind. Then she says isn't this understanding
itself a cognition.
A. (Swami Tadatmananda) Let's put it two different ways to say that atma is the observer of mental activities. That's a conceptual idea. And that would be an example of a cognition. But atma is you. It's not something other than you. Suppose we rephrase it. Instead of saying atma, is the observer of mental activities. Why not I? As pure consciousness, I am the observer of mental activities. That is not a cognition. That's what you're experiencing right now. right now. What do you experience right now? You experience that you are aware of what's happening in your mind. And that's because you are a conscious being. You are atma. You are that consciousness, that observes or reveals the activities of your mind. So this is I mentioned before people who study vedanta for decades and go on suffering due to studying with the wrong orientation. That would this would be an example of the wrong orientation to turn atma into an idea or a concept.
Atma is not an idea or a concept. Atma is you. In the same way, Consciousness,
pure consciousness is not something. Pure consciousness is you. Pure
consciousness is your essential nature which is present here and now in this
ordinary experience. This is the experiential orientation that will keep
you on the right track as you study Vedanta.
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Q. If everything I experience takes place in my mind,
then how can I experience atma which is satcidanada?
A. (Swami Tadatmananda) Everything I experience takes place
in my mind as thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. Before going further into the
question, tell me in addition to thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, is there
anything else that you experience? Anything else that you imagine, you can
put into one of those three categories. If you talk about intuition or
mystical experiences or whatever it is, you can categorize it as a thought,
as an emotion or as a perception. Just for the sake of convenience, we use
these three categories to include any and all experiences. Which means
atma is not a fourth category of something else that you can experience or
simply put atma cannot be experienced. Full stop. And let's be very very
clear about this. This is a real issue for many students. So let's make this uh very clear.
Atma cannot be
experienced because atma is the experience. Watch this. Atma cannot be
experienced because atma is the consciousness of the one having the experience,
the experiencer. Atma is you the experiencer and therefore not something
you can experience. Atma is you.
In Sanskrit the word atma can be used as a a reflexive
pronoun myself - atma oneself. So you wouldn't say this paper myself. So the
moment you use a reflexive pronoun like oneself or myself, you're not talking
about an object. You're not talking about something else. You're
talking about you, yourself. So you are not an object to be experienced.
You are the subject and not an object. You are the
experiencer, not the experienced. You are an observer and not the
observed.
For all these reasons, atma is never experienced as an
object. On the other hand, atma is present in your experience right now.
Not that you experience atma. Watch my language. Atma is present in your
experience right now.
How are you conscious right now? Yeah. That consciousness, the
consciousness that is present in your experience right this moment, that consciousness is atma. That
consciousness is your true self. Okay.
Q. If consciousness is not an object of perception,
thought or feeling (as we just discussed), then in what sense is it
known? How should I understand this properly according to Advaita
Vedanta?
Q (related one ) When we cannot see or experience the
limitless ever pervading unobservable atma, then isn't it the same as saying
that no such thing exists
A. It's a good
question. Atma, consciousness is not an
object of perception, feeling or thought. Then how is it known?
Exactly in that manner.
To say that what consciousness is not, is a kind of
knowledge. You know what consciousness is not. Conscious is not an
object you can know with your thoughts, feelings or sensations or emotions, which
is not to say, that consciousness is unknown.
Consciousness is not observable because it belongs to the
observer. If you can't see it, perceive it, feel it, taste it, smell it,
touch it, then it doesn't exist. And do the Buddhists share the same view?
There's a school of Buddhism called Shunya vada. A school of Buddhism that
denies the existence of consciousness altogether. Shunya Buddhism denies the
existence of atma. They deny the existence of atma for the reason that the
student is giving here. Can you see it, hear it, taste, smell or touch it? No.
Can you n can you conceive of it in your mind? No. Can you feel it as an
emotion? No. Then it doesn't exist. This is the logical analysis used by the
Buddhists.
And the logic is faulty because this whole logical
discussion presumes the presence of consciousness and that consciousness is
atma. You are a conscious being engaged in a debate about whether
or not consciousness exists!!! Seems kind of odd, but that's what it ends
up being. The discussion about does atma exist or not, ends up being an
empty argument, because if atma didn't exist, you wouldn't be here to ask
the question or engage in the argument.
You are a conscious being. That is a fact of your
experience that cannot be refuted by logic and cannot be refuted by the
Buddhists either. So just to make sure we've answered, in what sense is
atma known? Atma is known as yourself.
How can atma be known?
Do you know that you exist? Yes. How do you know that you
exist? Because you are conscious. That conscious existence is atma. You are
a conscious being, that conscious existence and you know atma as such as yourself.
Then I'll add my own question right now. If atma is already
known as conscious existence as your own self then why bother with all this Vedanta
and the answer and the reason is it's not fully known. You know that you are a conscious being. That
we in fact call that self-evident - that you are a conscious being atma is
self-evident. If you like Sanskrit, the word is svatah-siddha, means self-evident. You don't
need proof. It is self-evident that you are a conscious being.
What is not self-evident is that as a conscious being you
are unborn, uncreated, unchanging, boundaryless, limitless, vast, infinite, and
utterly unaffected by worldly troubles. That's not self-evident. And that's
why we come to these teachings of Advaita Vedanta. You we could say then that
atma is partially known. You know that you are a conscious being. That part
is self-evident. The remainder, the nature of your consciousness being
unborn, uncreated, vast, boundaryless and utterly unaffected by suffering, that part remains to be discovered and that's
what we are in the process of doing here. Okay.
this blog is getting very long - so the rest later.
