In Advaita Vedanta, non-living objects do not possess consciousness; rather, consciousness alone appears to itself as its own object, creating the illusion of material objects. This is explained through the theory of superimposition (adhyasa), where consciousness projects itself as matter, making it appear as if objects exist independently. The apparent lack of sentience in non-living things is an illusion generated by consciousness experiencing itself as its own object, similar to how dreams appear real but are ultimately mind-only projections.
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Ask Swami with Swami Sarvapriyananda | May 10th, 2026追加:
Om.
Lead us from the unreal to the real.
Lead us from darkness to light.
Lead us from death to immortality.
Om. Peace.
Peace.
Peace.
Namaste and good morning everybody.
Namaste.
Happy Mother's Day.
Yes.
The song which you just heard, our Maa Tvam hi Taara, it's a Bengali song to Kali, to the Divine Mother.
And there's a beautiful connection.
It's an old song, but it's a beautiful connection with Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda.
The night when Vivekananda, at that time a young student, Narendranath Dutta, he finally accepted Kali, the motherhood of God.
So he was a member of a reform movement in Hinduism called the Brahmo Samaj, which did not accept image worship and all this.
They were very Upanishadic, very much like a little bit of a facsimile of a monotheistic, kind of a Hindu copy of a Christian organization, something like that.
And Sri Ramakrishna was very different because he was a priest, a Brahmin priest and worshipped not only an image, but what an image, the image of Kali in Dakshineshwar.
And Narendranath Dutta wouldn't go to the temple.
He didn't like all this and he sort of, he loved Sri Ramakrishna.
He was fascinated by Sri Ramakrishna, but he carefully avoided the temple.
It so happened that his father died and the family fell upon difficult times.
And he finally came, he couldn't do anything.
He finally came to Sri Ramakrishna and he said, would you tell the mother to do something for my family so that maybe I can get a job or at least my mother, my brothers and sisters are starving.
And Sri Ramakrishna said, you know, I don't ask for these things to the mother.
Why don't you go and ask?
So that was his clever way of pushing Naren towards Kali.
And Naren was of course adamant.
He said, no, she listens to you.
So go and ask her.
I don't want to do that.
And Sri Ramakrishna said, no, you go.
Today is a very auspicious day.
It's the day of the Divine Mother.
It's an evening.
You go and worship, you go to the temple and ask, she will grant what you ask.
So he goes and we all know the story.
Vivekananda, Narendranath goes to the temple, comes back.
He sees there the living presence in the image, the living presence of the mother.
He's so intoxicated by it, overcome by it.
He comes back reeling and Sri Ramakrishna said, what happened?
Did you ask for money?
He said, I saw this.
He explained what he saw.
And Sri Ramakrishna says, yes, yes, but did you ask for money or didn’t you?
He said, no, I only asked for devotion, for surrender, for knowledge, for renunciation.
And Sri Ramakrishna said, oh, how foolish.
Go, there's still time.
Go and ask for money.
And he sent him back a second time.
Second time also he came back, the same thing happened.
It was a test.
Even under very difficult circumstances, this very promising young man was so spiritual.
But under very difficult circumstances, did he still want God or did he want the world?
And a third time he sent him.
Third time Narendranath Dutta, Vivekananda came back and said, I know it's your play.
You're doing this.
And then Sri Ramakrishna actually, he relented and he said, all right, this much I can say that your family will not, your mother and brothers, your siblings will not want for plain food and clothing.
He didn't say they will become millionaires or billionaires, but they will not need, they will not be in want of plain food and clothing.
This much I can say.
And that's what happened actually.
But that day there was a great transformation in Narendranath Dutta.
It's Sri Ramakrishna narrating afterwards.
Next morning when people came to visit, they saw Narendra Dutta sleeping.
He had been awake the whole night.
That whole night he sang this song, Maa Tvam hi Taara.
Basically it means, my mother, you are everything.
So and Sri Ramakrishna predicted that he would teach the world.
He even wrote it down in charcoal that Naren Shikhe Deve, Naren will teach.
And Narendranath said, I won't.
I won't do all these things.
And Sri Ramakrishna said, your very bones will do it.
Because it is the mother's work.
You have been brought here for the mother's work.
And that's what he did.
That's why we are all here today.
We have the Vedanta Society of New York and all across the world, whatever we are seeing.
That was Naren, behind him Sri Ramakrishna, behind him Kali.
And Naren was convinced that Sri Ramakrishna was Kali.
I'm quoting him directly now, Vivekananda.
He says, he was Sri Ramakrishna.
He was Kali.
I'm convinced of it.
Kali worked up the body of Ramakrishna for her ends.
These are his exact words.
And paraphrasing him, another place Vivekananda says, in this universe there is this great power, God, omniscient, omnipotent power, which thinks of itself as female.
That is Kali, as the mother of all.
And Vivekananda worked all his life, short life, 39 years, on the last day of his life, last day, the very last day, just a couple of days before that, somebody had said that Sri Ramakrishna used to say that you were one of the seven immortal sages come to this world to help him in his work.
And he told us not to tell you ever these things.
I don't know who was the person who said that, had the brilliant idea of telling Naren.
So that person asked Vivekananda, do you know who you are?
And Vivekananda said very seriously, gravely, I know now.
Now I know.
Few days after that, 4th of July.
And that was also deliberately chosen because he loved the United States, loved the idea of freedom and what the United States stood for, which we see here as a secular ideal, the ideal of freedom.
But he saw it as a spiritual idea.
He saw the spiritual heart of America.
He chose the 4th of July, the day of liberation.
And he, that day, you know, he passed in the evening.
But in the morning he went and meditated as he would, but for an unusually long time.
And he closed the doors of the shrine.
He wouldn't allow anybody inside.
He worshipped and meditated for a long, long time.
And they heard from outside, him singing in a plaintive voice again and again and again.
This song on the last day of his life.
And in the evening he was gone.
In the evening vespers.
Mother's Day, we pray to the Divine Mother, Mother of the Universe, to Maha Sarada, the Holy Mother here, to bless us all.
It is said God doesn't have grandchildren.
So we are all the children of God.
Everybody is the child of God.
The Holy Mother, a monk writes about her.
When he first went to meet her, he was really taken up by her love, her affection.
He said, who are you to me?
And she says, I'm your mother.
Are you really my mother?
It's just like a way of saying that you're my mother.
Bengali, patanoma, like I accept somebody as my mother.
Said, no, I'm really your mother.
I'm your real mother.
So we pray to her to bless us all, to protect us, give us the boon of spirituality and spiritual advancement and liberation.
And let us have firm faith in her and hold on to her in life.
The first question is from Raja.
I'm a long time listener and I thank you for all that you do.
My hearty gratitude.
I have learned both vipassana and yogic meditation and I practice them regularly.
My question concerns Buddha's claim about anatma, which seems to challenge the idea of Atman.
I listened to your talk about shunyam and purnam on this topic.
The question is whether Buddha refutes a straw man argument when he says there's no Atman.
Ultimately, Advaita and Buddhist framings agree there is no thing.
Then how does the claim of Atman stand up to scrutiny?
All right, this question is a fundamental question about the difference between Buddhism and Hinduism.
One of the main bones of contention is the self, the soul, the self, the nature of what we are.
If you look at in general, the Hindu schools, the various schools of Hinduism, they all seem to say that there is a self.
We have a self.
We have a soul, an Atma, an immortal self.
We are not the body, not the mind, the Buddhists would agree, but we are the self.
And the goal is to realize that the goal is the liberation of that self.
That self is now in bondage in samsara and we have to liberate that self.
So this is the so-called Atman theory or Atma.
Atma simply means self.
I, yourself.
And the Hindu philosophies, all of them, schools, all of them agree on this.
But the nature of what the self is, they differ widely, very sharply from each other.
The Nyaya school, the Vaisheshika school, the Sankhya school, the Yoga school, the Mimamsa school, the various sub-schools, the schools of Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Tantra, multiple schools are there in the entire spectrum of Hindu thought.
And they all have some form of the Atman theory.
But Buddhism, right at the beginning, starting with the Buddha himself, flatly denies this.
Or seems to.
The Buddha says this, we do feel the sense of a self that nobody denies.
But what is this sense of a self?
Is there a self corresponding to this sense of self?
And he goes on to analyze it and show that there is nothing corresponding to the sense of self.
If we check, if we look into it, he's not denying that we feel that there is.
I feel I exist.
But what this I-self is, according to the Buddha, it is no self, anatma, in the exact Sanskrit opposite of Atma.
Atma means self, anatma, no self.
So this seems to be a big contradiction.
And it has been a point of debate for not just centuries, more than a millennium.
Even the great Nyaya philosopher Udayanacharya, in his masterpiece Nyaya Kusumanjali, there, an Atmatattva Viveka, an inquiry into the nature of the self, he offers a defense of the Nyaya position on the self against Buddhist attacks.
That's the whole book.
That's the point of the book.
Nyaya Kusumanjali is a defense of the Hindu conception of God.
So the Buddhists not only no self theory, but as an extension of the no self theory, no God theory.
After all, God is just a superior kind of self, like an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent kind of self.
So they would say no, none of that.
What is the argument?
And actually, what's the difference or similarity?
Although it seems to be very different, if you look into it, it's not all that different.
If you look at it from the Advaita perspective, the non-dual Vedanta perspective, from the other schools of Hinduism, the difference is stark, the dualistic schools.
But from the Advaita Vedanta school, the difference is not as sharp as one would think.
Let's see how.
Why did the Buddha say something as startling as there is no self?
Because we think there is.
The Buddha said, look into yourself, what you consider to be the self.
What do you find?
Right now, take a look at yourself.
And he said, when you analyze your experience of yourself, you will find five, what he called aggregates, skandhas, pancha skandha.
Five aggregates or heaps.
Each of which is a heap, is a collection.
It's also not a unity.
What do you find?
Rupa skandha, the form aggregate.
What's the form aggregate?
Body.
This one.
The first thing we find is the form aggregate.
In our own experience of what?
Ourselves, right now.
Second, he says, you find sensations.
It feels good or it doesn't feel good, pleasant, unpleasant, mixed.
This he called the vedana skandha, the aggregate of experiences, pleasurable or painful.
Third, if you go a little further, we find a variety of experiences which are sensory.
There is a seeing experience, hearing experience, touch experience, you feel hot or cold.
There is experience of the physical sensation of the body, smell, taste.
So the five sensory experiences, all of them he put under one aggregate called the sanghya skandha.
The aggregate of sensory experiences.
And then if you go a little more deeper, in our own experiences right now, not body, not the sensory experiences, not the pleasure or pain feeling right now, or mixed feelings right now, deeper inside we have thoughts.
We have memories.
We have ideas.
We have knowledge.
All of that he put under what he called the samskara skandha.
The aggregate of mental conditionings.
And finally we have awareness.
We are also aware.
Right now we are aware.
So that awareness, in every experience there is a flash of awareness, continuously.
It increases and decreases.
Have a cup of coffee, you feel more aware.
Feel sleepy, you feel less aware.
You go to sleep, you lose awareness or you take an anesthesia, you lose awareness.
But that flash of awareness which is lighting up our experiences right now, he called it vijnana skandha.
And none of them are the self.
None of them are the self.
They come and go.
Together they generate a sense of a self.
So it's an illusion generated by the combination of these five aggregates.
And each of them is not a unit.
It's not a thing.
It's also a composite of many smaller entities.
The body itself is a composite of so many things.
Buddhists will say the fist.
But the fist is not a thing.
It's a five fingers.
And each finger again you can listen.
So these are heaps, aggregates.
Where is so-called self?
Yes, all of this generates a feeling of self.
Buddha does not deny.
Nobody can deny.
But he says it generates.
It's an illusion generated by it.
You cannot pinpoint anything and say this is the self.
Is the body the self?
Is a feeling a self?
Pleasant feeling, unpleasant feeling.
Is seeing, is it the self?
But that means if I don't see, don't I exist?
I still exist.
Is a thought a self?
Or a bunch of thoughts a self?
Is this changing, flickering awareness the self?
Which one is the self?
And if you examine it that way, none of them.
And you say put them together, Buddha will say, aha.
If you put them together, you have a sense of self.
But that itself is not a thing.
By itself, if it's not a self, you put them together, also it's not a self.
I have so many items here.
I have a piece of paper and the microphone and the gadgets, the clock and the table.
None of them are the self.
If I say put them together, they'll become the self.
No, they won't.
So, anatma, no self doctrine.
If you look at, come to Vedanta now.
What does Vedanta say?
Pancha Kosha Vicharan, enquiry into the five layers of the human personality.
Taittiri Upanishad.
We talk about it often.
What is going on there?
Is this considered the body?
What is the self?
Is the body the self?
Is the prana, the life breath which keeps this body alive, is that the self?
Is the mind the self?
Is the intellect the self?
If you remove all of that in deep sleep, that blankness, is that the self?
None of them are the self.
What is Vedanta doing there?
Exactly what the Buddha is doing.
And a thousand years before the Buddha.
It's deconstructing our sense of self.
It's enquiring into what we... Vedanta is trying to show us that we truly do not know what we are.
Without enquiry, we take it to be this bundle of body-mind.
And that's how we proceed in the world.
But if we investigate it, it's not the self.
It's exactly what the Buddha is doing.
And the Vedanta does it in many different ways.
Here are the five sheets, very much like the five aggregates.
Or the three experiences of waking, dreaming and sleeping.
Jagrat, Swapna, Sushukti.
Three state enquiry.
Avasthatraya vichara.
Or the enquiry into the seer and the seen.
Drg, Drishya, Viveka.
Vedanta does this.
And all of them are meant to do exactly what the Buddha did.
To show us, to dissolve our sense of a concrete self in the body-mind.
It's not here.
But what Vedanta does further, it says that that to which all of these are appearing.
Including the little flashes of consciousness.
That to which all of these are appearing.
That is the self.
But these are being experienced.
And they are not experiencing each other.
The very nature of all of these.
What are these things?
That is the self.
And if you go to Mahayana Buddhism.
They are very clear there.
They talk about a Buddha nature.
A Tathagatagarbha.
The primal Buddha nature.
They will not openly say that pure consciousness is the self.
Or pure being is the self.
Then it becomes very Vedantic.
But they will say that no self.
So that means there is nothing.
Really it's all empty.
There is nothing.
They will say no, not that either.
So Nagarjuna was asked, is there a self?
He says, not that there is a self.
Oh, so there is no self.
Not that there is no self.
So there is and there is not a self.
Not that there is and there is no self.
So there isn't a self and it's not that there isn't a self.
Neither that.
Asti is.
He says no, na asti.
The na asti is not known.
Na na asti.
Asti cha na asti cha.
Both is and is not.
No, that's contradictory.
Flat out it can't be.
Na asti na na asti.
Neither is nor is not.
Neither that also.
This is called chatushkoti vinirmukta tattvam.
And it's not difficult to understand also.
Suppose you have ornaments made of gold.
And somebody comes and tells you the ornaments as such are not gold.
What we mean is that which is made into ornaments is the gold.
Gold is not another ornament.
So if you look at the ornaments themselves, by themselves they are not gold.
A necklace is by itself, necklace is not exactly the same as gold.
Nor is a bracelet, nor is that.
So then there is no such thing as gold.
That's ridiculous.
There is only gold actually.
Gold alone is appearing as all the ornaments.
You see, gold is the reality out of which the ornaments are made.
The ornaments have been fashioned.
The material.
Now if you ask, what is gold?
If you ask this question, what is gold?
Is gold an ornament?
No.
But if all that we know are ornaments only, if you say, oh, so gold is not an ornament.
So in this shop, jewellery shop, Tiffany's, I can't find gold.
No, no, no.
It's not that gold does not exist here.
So gold both is and is not an ornament?
No.
Gold is neither an ornament nor not an ornament?
No.
So it's not difficult to understand also.
We are pointing towards that reality which appears as this world.
You will not find that reality as an item in your inventory of the world.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It's actually more than all the items which exist in the world.
More than all the ornaments.
Gold is more real than all the ornaments.
Because that's what the ornaments are made of.
So, Swami Brahmananda in his book, The Words of the Master, Sri Ramakrishna Upadesha, the first instruction which Swami Brahmananda selected, in the first instruction, Sri Ramakrishna says, if you know yourself, you know God.
Then he says, but what does it mean to know yourself?
And he says, enquire into the sense of self.
Exactly what the Upanishads have said, what the Buddha has said.
Now notice what Sri Ramakrishna does.
He says, enquire into the sense of self.
Aami ke bhalo kare bhavedak. Who am I?
What am I?
And he says, is it the blood, the flesh, the skin, the bones, and by extension, the feelings, the thoughts, the ideas, the breath?
Which one?
And he says, if you enquire, you will see none of them are exactly me.
They are things, they are objects.
And he says, if you enquire in this way, you will find, notice how Buddhist he sounds, if you enquire in this way, you will find nothing corresponding to the sense of I.
And then he says, he gives a unique example, he says, it's like peeling an onion.
He says, I will peel the onion and get to the real onion inside.
You'll never get to it.
There's nothing there except the skins.
Now, if he had stopped here, he would have been exactly what the Buddha said.
No self theory.
But then he goes on to add one more thing.
Ja aache thai.
That which remains after all negation.
What is that?
He says, pure consciousness.
Shuddha chaitanya, chaitanya.
And Advaita, that's the beginning of Advaita Vedanta.
Advaita Vedanta then goes on to say, you know what the Buddhist will say at that point.
Buddhist will say, other than this body, the five skandhas, the five aggregates, other than that, there is no self.
These five, there is no self in any of them.
You put them together also, there's no self.
There's a sense of self, but there's no real self corresponding to it.
And other than them also, there is no self.
So if you say, other than this body and mind, if Sri Ramakrishna is saying, Upanishads are saying, there is a self other than them, the Buddha will deny it.
Where?
But then that's not what Sri Ramakrishna is saying.
That's not what the Upanishads are saying.
The Upanishads are saying, take a look at what those things are really.
It's like saying, the bracelet and the ring and the necklace, they are not literally gold.
Also there is some gold other than them, let's throw away the ornaments and look for gold.
You'll never find gold that way.
But the reality of those ornaments is gold.
What this body and mind and all of these are appearing, they're appearances of an underlying reality right here.
And that is Satchitananda, existence, consciousness, bliss, the Atman.
That is the purpose of the inquiry.
So this much is the difference.
This much is the difference.
The Buddhist will say it negatively, and they refuse to say it positively.
But they will also say, if you say that, oh, so it doesn't exist, they'll deny that also.
But they will not say it positively.
There are very good reasons, philosophical reasons, and logical reasons for not saying it positively.
If you say it positively, you're going to make a mistake.
And the Buddhists are hyper careful there.
But there is a way of misunderstanding both.
The way of misunderstanding the Hindu schools, the Atman schools, is to think the Atman, the self, is a thing.
Like thinking gold is an ornament, a particular kind of ornament is called gold.
That's the mistake.
The mistake about the Buddhist approach could be nihilism.
That after all of this, you're probably saying there is nothing.
It's all zero.
No, that's not what they're saying.
All right, we'll leave it at that.
Can we take one more question?
The question is from Ratesh Chandrasekhar.
Swamiji, I reflect on your teachings, and a specific doubt has arisen regarding the nature of the universe.
You have beautifully explained how witness consciousness is the underlying reality in all living beings.
I can now relate to every living being in this world, seeing the same consciousness present in all.
However, this leaves the category of non-living beings, or inert matter.
Do non-living things also have consciousness?
From the perspective of Advaita Vedanta, how should we understand the existence of inert objects?
If everything is Brahman, how do we explain the apparent lack of sentience in the material world?
I would be deeply honored if you could provide some guidance on this, as it would help me broaden my understanding of the oneness of all existence.
That's a very good question.
Especially when I know the answer, I always say it's a very good question.
Yes, the oneness of all existence.
Swami Vivekananda said, the way to understand Vedanta is the divinity within ourselves, and the oneness of all existence.
When he says the oneness of all existence, the problem with that is, there seems to be two kinds of existence.
I sort of understand when you say that you are consciousness.
Yeah, I am aware, or I am awareness, I am consciousness.
Vedanta, what Vedanta is doing is, generally we don't doubt that we are conscious.
We are all conscious.
But the question becomes a little more difficult when you say you are consciousness.
You see, when we say we are conscious, what we mean is, I am a bundle of body-mind consciousness.
There is a body here, and I feel a mind, and if you want to distinguish awareness from the mind, I can do that also.
But I feel I am this bundle.
I am a body with consciousness.
Vedanta wants us to say you are consciousness with a body.
Notice the language of the question.
Do all the non-living objects also have consciousness?
Or should we say the objects have consciousness, or consciousness experiences the objects?
Are there first of all objects, and they are all filled with a little bit of consciousness, a drop of consciousness in each of them?
No.
It's like saying, do all the ornaments have gold?
Do the ornaments have gold?
That's a strange way of speaking.
The ornaments are made of gold.
It's more like the gold has the ornaments.
If you touch the ornament, what are you touching?
You're touching gold.
If you touch the table here, what do you say?
Touch wood.
It's not that it's like saying, does the table have any wood?
This is a wooden table.
It's all wood.
It makes more sense to say, does the wood have a table?
So, this is the question.
What is the relationship between me, the consciousness, I, the consciousness, and I can understand other living beings are like me, so they are also consciousness.
In what sense I understand that also.
That's a great step forward.
I'm not the body, I'm not the mind.
The body is there, the mind is there, but I am awareness.
That's what I most closely identify with.
I am awareness.
I am consciousness.
But then that leaves open the question, what about the non-living things?
I understand all living beings, all human beings, and I guess all other living beings also.
There is consciousness there, just like there is in me.
But what about the non-living things?
What are the tables and chairs, the rocks and stones, and the stars and planets?
What about the non-living things, the metal and all of that?
The air, the water, the fire.
What about that?
Is there consciousness there also?
So, this is the big question of the relationship between consciousness and object.
If you stop with this difference, this is Sankhya philosophy.
Sankhya philosophy, very ancient thought, it's a dualistic philosophy.
That means there are two ultimate realities.
There is consciousness and there is matter.
Matter means that which appears to consciousness, that which consciousness experiences.
And the interaction of matter and consciousness is what we are.
We are material bodies, and Sankhya would say material minds also.
Even mind is matter.
Why?
Because we experience mind.
What's the definition?
What is the analytic definition of consciousness and matter?
That which is experienced is matter.
That which is experienced is object.
That which experiences is consciousness, is the spirit.
And in Sankhya terms, Prakriti and Purusha.
Prakriti, nature.
Nature is material.
It is matter, energy, time, space, dynamism, change.
All of that is nature.
This vast nature.
And you are consciousness.
Consciousness is not part of nature.
If you make consciousness part of nature, it becomes materialism.
Some form of matter in the bodies, in the brain and nervous system produces consciousness.
That's materialism.
But Sankhya is not materialism.
Sankhya says consciousness is a fundamental reality.
So there is consciousness, and that's called Purusha.
And that's what we all are.
Each of us.
And there is a material nature.
And we interact.
And that interaction is what we call life.
A living body is an interaction of consciousness with life, body, mind provided by Mother Nature.
This is what we are right now.
This is Sankhya.
And if you ask this question to Sankhya, Is there consciousness in material objects?
The answer would be no.
There is consciousness in you.
You are consciousness.
And you interact with material objects.
But now Advaita Vedanta is not satisfied with this answer.
Because Advaita Vedanta says that, Ah, so you say all of life is consciousness interacting with matter.
And yes.
But how?
This is the problem with any dualism.
If there are two fundamentally different entities, how would they interact?
See what's wrong?
Why can't they interact?
But imagine the point of contact.
How would they contact each other?
The point of contact, consciousness and matter.
Here in the body you are saying consciousness and matter are interacting.
But how?
Where, at which point is consciousness touching the matter and driving this physical body?
The point of interaction is that matter or consciousness?
At which point they touch?
The two fingers can touch because this is physical, this is physical.
They can touch.
But if I say I touch the finger with my thought.
How? Where?
So, two utterly different realities cannot interact.
If they are interacting, they must be of the same kind of reality.
Advaita Vedanta starts with this insight.
Shankaracharya says that these two realities, which he labels as I and you, they are opposite like light and darkness.
And they can never interact.
But all the time they are interacting.
They are exchanging properties.
Where are they interacting?
Here, I am this body.
I, the light, the consciousness.
But I am saying I am this physical body.
And what is this body?
It is I.
This physical body, which is matter, I am saying it is I, the consciousness.
I am identified.
When I say I am tall, I have taken the property of matter, of a physical body, upon myself, consciousness.
What does it mean to say consciousness is tall?
If I say that I am male or middle-aged, that's the body.
If I say I am unhappy or disturbed, that's the mind.
I am taking the properties of the mind upon myself.
Not only that, I am putting myself into the body and mind.
Because you see, this is a living body.
This is a conscious body or a conscious mind.
Consciousness has been transferred to mind and body.
How is this happening?
Shankaracharya asked.
He said it should be impossible.
And yet it is happening all the time, all over the world, everything is a... This interaction, as the Sankhyan said, interaction of consciousness and matter.
How is this happening?
He asked this fundamental question.
He says it's possible only if they are not different.
And they can be... Then it means, he introduces his great insight.
He calls it Adhyasa, superimposition, theory of superimposition.
That means, although they appear to be different, one of them is an appearance of the other.
Two utterly different things, and yet they must be same somehow.
In that case, one must be an appearance of the other.
It appears to be different, but it's actually the same thing.
This is called Adhyasa, superimposition.
Now which one is real and which one is the appearance?
The materialist will say, we are saying the same thing.
The materialist today will say, we are saying the same thing.
We are just saying matter is real.
And your consciousness is a by-product, epiphenomenal.
So everything is matter, and therefore they can interact happily.
Somebody brought it to my note.
Three people have sent me that article.
Carlo Rovelli wrote an article, there is no hard problem of consciousness.
People are thinking, now see, he is contradicting what you said, or what David Chalmers said.
But I knew that, because he is a physicalist.
From his perspective, see when I quote somebody, it doesn't mean that I agree with everything they say, and not that they agree with everything I say.
But there are insights to be learned from that.
Why I quote Carlo Rovelli?
First of all, he is a superb writer, an expositor of quantum theory.
Second, because his understanding of quantum theory is very much like the Buddhist, the Nagarjuna's understanding of the world as interdependence, as emptiness.
So that's interesting.
And a lot of echoes of Vedanta and Buddhism in his understanding of quantum theory, for that reason.
But he doesn't accept the hard problem of consciousness.
He tries to explain consciousness as matter, material processes, as domain.
But I think that's an uninteresting solution.
Because at one point he will say that, it's matter.
How?
I don't know, but it is.
That's what he has said in the article.
And all materialists have to say that somehow.
Whereas Shankaracharya does the opposite.
He says, not that consciousness is a by-product or an appearance of matter.
Rather matter, he is bold enough to say, matter is an appearance in consciousness.
Consciousness appears to itself as its own object and we call it matter.
As the professor Arindam Chakravarti said, what's the definition of an object?
An object is anything that objects to your consciousness.
Whatever you are aware of, it's as if it's objecting to your consciousness.
See what a brilliant description of matter.
Matter is, or object is, consciousness appearing to itself.
Now, what does it do?
Number of things.
One, it tracks our experience very well.
It's literally true to our experience.
What is matter to you right now?
That which I experience?
It's literally true to our experience.
If you take the materialist perspective, it becomes very difficult.
Bernardo Castro has given this argument.
If you take the materialist perspective, what happens is, we are all sure that we are conscious.
I am conscious, it's totally sure.
Number one.
Number two, I also think you are conscious.
Like the person in the question, he says, I understand the others are also conscious like me.
How do you know that?
How do I know that you are conscious?
Well, the argument would be, it has happened at least once in my own case, I'm sure.
You also look like me, so probably you are also conscious.
So it's an argument.
That probably I can extend the same courtesy to all of you.
You are all conscious.
But third, logical step by step argument.
Third, there is something outside consciousness called matter.
These things exist outside consciousness.
The problem with that is, these things are experienced only in consciousness.
Never experienced outside, nor can they be ever experienced outside.
Experience outside consciousness is a flat out contradiction in terms.
Experience requires consciousness.
So none, this thing which we call matter, can never be experienced without consciousness.
And yet materialism claims, it exists independently and separately from consciousness.
And finally, the most atrocious of all, materialism is forced to claim, that so-called very dubitable matter, which exists independently of consciousness, that is causing you the consciousness.
That is producing you the consciousness and all conscious experiences.
As a logical argument, it's atrocious.
Whereas from an Advaitic perspective, matter appears in consciousness, very straight forward, all the time, literally our data, everybody's experience is that, matter is that which appears in consciousness.
Not only that, it does not do any violence to science.
The science of matter, energy, time, space, can proceed perfectly well.
If you accept this perspective.
So, matter is an appearance in consciousness.
Now with this background, with this theoretical background, we can answer the question, do non-living things have consciousness or not?
The answer would be, what you call non-living things, material things which are not living, where you do not find any consciousness in them, you don't think there is consciousness.
They are appearances in consciousness.
And being appearances in consciousness, there must be nothing other than consciousness.
The table is nothing but wood.
It's made, it's through and through wood.
Our, whatever we see in our minds, in our dreams, all the people, objects and things we see in the dream, they are mind only.
Even if they are human beings, even if they are plants or lakes or sky and earth, they are all mind, mind, mind.
Because they are projected by the mind.
In dreams, what is there except the mind?
Similarly, whatever appears in consciousness and does not exist outside consciousness, must be consciousness.
Is consciousness alone appearing to itself as its own object?
Why?
One sadhu put it very nicely.
I haven't found it in Vedanta book, I found it in Hindi.
This monk explaining it nicely.
He said, look, sort of very naive kind of argument.
The nature of consciousness is to experience.
But if Vedanta is right, there is only consciousness, there is nothing to experience.
So consciousness will experience, because that's its nature.
It will experience itself.
But wrongly, because consciousness is not an object.
So it cannot experience itself as an object.
It projects itself as an object.
That which is eternal, projects itself as continuously changing.
That which is never an object, appears as an object.
Otherwise it cannot be experienced.
That which is all-pervasive, appears as the limited.
That which is you, appears as the other.
That which is nirvana, appears as samsara.
So that's consciousness experiencing itself.
And there we are.
So yes, non-living things, it's not that they possess consciousness or there is consciousness in them.
Consciousness alone is non-living things, our appearance of them.
Now if you don't like the appearance word, you can say consciousness has become all of these things.
This entire universe which it experiences.
That's called parinama.
The dualistic schools of Vedanta, they use that one.
They don't say that the world appears in consciousness.
They say that pure consciousness becomes or transforms into the world.
There again there are huge problems with non-duality.
We'll not agree with it.
But anyway, we'll leave it at that.
Yes, please come.
Come here and tell us your name and ask the question.
Namaste Swamiji.
Good morning everybody.
So I've been reading... Tell us your name.
Yeshodara.
Yeshodara.
I've been studying the nectar of supreme knowledge and I came across one passage which is kind of... I'm having difficulty getting past it.
And something called badit vidya.
Where it... What the shloka actually says is that just like animals or creatures born from eggs run away from a mountain on fire, similarly the person who is Brahmavid will not let that stuff get... you know, bother it or affect them.
And then in the note it says that... But even for somebody who is Brahmavid, because of this word called badit vidya, the ignorance of it, they are coming from the prarabdha, will still come in the way.
And they'll still express anger or other sort of negative behavior, but they're not bound.
So I just want to understand this better and I would like to hear... Yes.
The question would be, after enlightenment, after you realize that all of it is one shining reality, one consciousness, and you are that.
What happens to you after that?
Life continues.
The world is appearing, so the body will also appear.
Some people, they misunderstand.
It's said that you... that the ego is gone forever.
Not really.
Even the ego will reappear, but the word is reappear.
There's a difference between reappearing and our state of identification with the ego.
For us, the ego and I are the same thing.
When I say I, it means the ego, ahankara.
I am this person.
That's exactly what the Buddha is also attacking and Shankara is attacking and Ramakrishna is attacking.
That sense of self is not real.
That's the one sense of self we all know.
That's what is being analyzed.
But now the question is, suppose you make the breakthrough.
Suppose you feel, I am that one shining light and you are very clear about it.
Now would you still continue to behave in the ways that you did earlier?
That would be strange.
If you are that one consciousness, one immortal light, then you don't die.
The body will die.
So you shouldn't be afraid of death.
If you are that one consciousness shining in all beings, then all beings are not apart from me.
I shouldn't have any relationship of anger, jealousy, hatred.
Rather, my relationships with all beings would be you and I are one reality.
It should be one of affection, love, compassion, oneness basically.
We are one being.
And yet sometimes you find people who are very spiritual advanced, sometimes, I don't know if they are fully liberated in life, but anyway, definitely spiritually very advanced.
But they react in ways which express anger or irritation or every other human emotion.
What's the difference between that?
First of all, why does that happen?
And second, is there?
There must be a difference between that and us.
Otherwise, what's the good of knowing that you are Brahman or Atman?
That's uninteresting.
In Hindi, a monk said, ‘rota hua gyani kisko pasand hai’ A whining enlightened one is not very appealing.
I am enlightened.
I realize I am one with God.
But I have this whole list of grudges and complaints.
That is not very edifying.
But why does that happen?
So, what's the difference?
There are so many such examples.
Sri Ramakrishna says it can appear.
And as you said, it's called badhitanubhratya or badhitagyana Badhita means sublated.
Sublated, again, that doesn't help.
It's a technical term.
It means you have ascertained that it's an appearance.
It's not real.
It's like living in a dream and you know it's a dream.
It still looks like what it looked like earlier.
But you know it's a dream.
You know it's a Matrix movie.
Virtual reality.
Also, another movie I saw is Inception movie.
In the airplane, they played that movie.
I saw that.
It's like living in a dream.
Very nice.
I like that.
It's like a Vedantic movie.
So, suppose you know it and you are living like that.
Then what will happen?
Then your reaction should not be as it were earlier.
So, this is called badhitanubhratya.
That means the recurrence or the reappearance of that which has been negated.
Consciousness appears to itself.
So, it will continue to appear to itself.
The samsara will again come back.
But you know it's an appearance now.
Now, two things can happen.
One is, depending upon the level of preparation prior to enlightenment, to what level the mind has been purified and prepared, it can digest this new knowledge and act accordingly.
That's called jivan mukta free while living.
Or, it may take some time to digest this new knowledge.
Vivekananda says, truth is an acidic substance, is a corrosive substance of infinite power.
Once it has come, it will continue to work upon you in the mind where it has arisen, this enlightenment.
It will continue to work and transform you even if you do not do any spiritual practice at all.
If you do the spiritual practices, the transformations are much faster.
Why not instant?
Because, remember, the body and the mind are manifestations of nature.
Nature itself is a manifestation in consciousness, according to Advaita, but still it's nature.
And nature functions with natural laws.
There is an inertia.
Just as you realize your pure consciousness, the body will still age.
The enlightened ones, body ages.
The body will get disease at some point and the body will die at some point.
The mind, the way it has been conditioned through years of practice, remember, you're a spiritual seeker, so that mind will react that way.
If the practices are not thorough and complete, then there will be a recurrence of the old irritability or anger or preferences.
Sri Ramakrishna liked the Bengali sweet jalebi.
Vivekananda was more of a city boy.
He liked ice cream.
After enlightenment, one liked jalebi and the other one liked ice cream.
Why?
That's how that mind has been seeded.
That mind has been conditioned in that way.
Now what's the difference?
The difference is, are they bound by their desire for jalebi and ice cream?
My life is ruined if I don't get my jalebi fix.
If I don't get my perfect sweet or candy or cookie, then my life is ruined.
No, they're not bound by it.
There are many such stories and I have seen it also in my life.
There is Swami Premananda, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna.
There he is.
So he was the first manager of the main monastery at Belur.
Many young men were very attracted by his teachings and they came to become monks.
Now he was a strict discipline.
Before you became a monk, you would be very loving.
But once you were in, he was very tough.
So one day this young man who later became a monk, he was not a monk at that time, he was visiting the monastery and Swami Premananda was speaking with him.
He saw that Swami Premananda was scolding a brahmachari, a novice, another youngster who had just become a monk.
And Swami Premananda was very fierce.
So his face had become flushed red with anger.
He was scolding that novice monk.
And this person, he writes, I thought immediately, I thought, oh, this sadhu has anger also, this monk has anger too.
And immediately, the moment I thought that, Swami Premananda turned to me with the sweetest smile and started inquiring about me, about my welfare.
So I was stunned, what happened?
And the moment I thought that, he turned back to that unfortunate brahmachari and his face became red and started scolding him.
See, the anger doesn't bind him.
Vivekananda says, only the foolish cannot get angry, the wise do not.
So, it is natural to get angry in some circumstances.
But can you control that anger?
That's one discipline.
And the enlightened one is not bound by it.
In the sense, at an instant you can come out of it.
Because it's something that, even while anger is appearing, you know it's an appearance.
For us, that's not so.
For the enlightened one, I am that one light in which this ego, the personality is appearing, and in the mind of that personality is a flash of anger, and it acts in that way.
But we don't say that.
We don't say, we say, I am mad at you.
We don't say, the appearance of I in me has identified with the appearance of anger, and then is expressing it to that appearance called you.
But we are all one consciousness.
We don't usually say that.
They're not bound.
And at a level, some steps lower than that, still far beyond us, I have seen it.
This old monk in an ashram where I joined the order.
This is, I still remember that.
A tiny incident, but very dramatic.
So this monk who was training us, the youngsters, one evening we were walking with this senior monk.
He was the head of the monastery.
And that's the time we would recite verses from the Gita.
He would give us instructions, teachings, stories of senior monks and all that.
Very nice.
Treasured moments of my life.
That evening we were walking.
The old monk was there, and we were surrounded, four or five youngsters.
And we walked towards the gate of the monastery.
There was a religious procession.
And this, at that time, this was the state of Bihar.
Now it's in Jharkhand.
Think of it as Texas transplanted to India.
Everybody has guns.
And the highest, at that point, now it's much better.
But it was an epitome of lawlessness.
So this is religious procession going past with drums and music and light in the evening, remember?
And there was this person who was drunk.
And he was performing a sword dance.
Sort of ritual, part of it.
So we went outside the monastery gate to watch the procession pass by.
And suddenly, before anybody could do anything, this man jumped out of the procession, screaming and swinging the sword wildly at us.
And all of us young people, we jumped back.
And I still remember so clear in my mind, the old Swami, who was in his 70s, this little old man, standing there, I saw his foot took half a step back and stood still.
So there's that fraction of a second when he reacted like the rest of us.
Then he stood still.
And the screaming man in front of him, swinging the sword an inch in front of his neck.
And this Swami stood absolutely still and stared into his eyes.
Until other people came and dragged that man away.
I still remember that.
And what interested me was that half a second of hesitation, of an instinctive stepping back, and arrested within a second.
And the rest of us, we were in turmoil.
And then we thought we should go and save the Swami or something like that.
Swami Brahmananda.
This was in twice.
Once in Bhubaneswar and once in Chennai, in Madras.
He is the President of the Order, the head of our whole organization.
So the person who writes, he was an attendant to Swami Brahmananda.
So once in the forest near the ashram, the monastery in Bhubaneswar, there were leopards.
So one day a leopard stepped out suddenly in the forest path in front of us.
And we froze.
We didn't know what to do.
And Swami Brahmananda just stared calmly at the leopard.
And the leopard looked back at him and then walked away.
Then even more impressive, in the narrow lanes in Chennai, in a place called Mylapore in Chennai.
So Swami Brahmananda is walking and two of his attendants.
So he is an old Swami.
He is the President of the whole Order.
And two youngsters who were his attendants, young monks.
We were walking and this maddened bull came charging down the narrow lane.
There was no way to escape because it's a narrow lane.
And the two of us, he writes, we jumped forward to defend the Swami, to protect the Swami.
And in astonishing speed and strength, the Swami simply picked both of us back and tossed us back behind him.
And he stood in front of us, covering us.
And the bull lowered its head and swung its head from side to side.
And then calmly trotted away.
Yes.
So see, that reaction.
There might be a hesitant moment, but they overcome it.
Now, in the simplest, maybe a little silly way, a very senior Swami, I saw him in our main monastery about 25 years ago.
A young person had come to be a monk.
And he was being interviewed by a senior Swami.
A very spiritually advanced Swami.
So he was sitting there and the young person was sitting in front of him.
I had just gone to meet that Swami and bowed down to him.
At that moment, the Swami had ordered a cup of tea from the attendants for that young man.
And for himself.
And the tea came.
And the Swami was telling that young man, See, I asked for the tea and the tea came.
But maybe it wouldn't have come.
Maybe there would be no tea.
If you are absolutely serene in both tea and no tea, then you can be a monk.
I could clearly see the young man was completely confused.
He didn't know what does it all have to do with tea.
But I could see the point the Swami was making.
Life will go on as it is.
But what's your reaction to it?
That should be tremendously different.
Your manifestation of that could differ.
But internally there should be no binding at all.
Swami Bhutesanandaji Maharaj, who was president of our order, He said when he lived for years in the mountains, begging for his food and then practicing austerities and meditation in a hut in the Himalayas, He would say that among the monks there, so they are dependent on begging for food.
They had a saying.
This is in Hindi.
About food.
Kabhi ghee ghana, toh kabhi muthi bar chana.
Or kabhi wo bhi mana.
So it means, sometimes you get rich food with ghee, which is clarified butter.
Some maybe rich householder offers it to the monks.
And sometimes you get just a handful of gram.
Mutthi bar chana.
And sometimes even that is forbidden.
You won't get anything.
No food that whole day.
And if you are equally serene in all three, then you are qualified to be a monk.
If you do get upset, you really delight over the nice food and get upset over the bad food or no food, then you are not qualified to be a monk.
So this is the recurrence, the reappearance of that which was negated.
It's a very technical, dry way of putting it.
But when you see it in action, it's amazing.
I've seen it so many times.
I don't know whether they were enlightened or not.
But clearly the effect of spiritual practice.
To change our reactions to the world.
Yes, it's a good question.
One more person from there.
Yes, please come.
Tell us your name and ask the question.
Pranam Swami.
My name is Arnab.
My question is about truth.
The Upanishad says that Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti The truth is one, the wise speak differently.
It's right there.
I didn't notice that.
But every realized soul who sort of realized the truth and spoken about it, it's always through the, it's either Kali or Narayan or Shiva.
Nobody describes what it is to feel like Brahman.
They are realizing the same thing, but why is it that the description is always qualified?
No, not necessarily.
Upanishads themselves, you quoted the Upanishads.
So Upanishads are the teachings of enlightened ones.
So they are talking about Sat Chit Ananda, Satyam Jnanam Anantam Brahma.
Brahman is infinite existence consciousness.
You yourself quoted Ekameva Sat The truth is one without a second.
So those are all teachings of the sages of the Upanishads.
It's true.
Yes, yes.
So the enlightened ones can describe it as impersonal, like the Upanishads, or they can describe it as a personal deity.
Sri Ramakrishna did both.
For him God was always mother, Kali.
But also there is Guru Nibbana.
For him Kali had those two different aspects.
One was formless, impersonal, pure consciousness and being.
Other one was the blissful divine mother, personal.
Just as we, each of us, we have two sides.
We have a body and a mind and a personality.
But we are also consciousness itself.
Impersonal principle with a personality.
Now you can stress the personality and exclude the impersonal principle.
Then you get the dualistic religions.
You can stress the impersonal and exclude the personal.
You'll get something like Advaita, Sankhya.
You'll get some yoga.
You'll get something like Buddhism.
So yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This question is from Professor Patil from Ireland.
Dear Swamiji, I trust this finds you in the best of health and spirits, as do we all.
With regards to the various states of consciousness that have been outlined in the Vedas and Upanishads, I have some queries regarding the waking state, which according to that framework is also a type of dream.
In this regard, the waking state, to my understanding, has the following unique properties.
It maintains a degree of continuity so that objects remain where they are and reference points do not change illogically within it over a span of time, distance or memories.
It bears a degree of sharing so that individuals who are not connected to each other share the same sensory and external experiences, although they have no framework provided by the other person.
It influences our sleep and dreaming states, whereas the reverse is not true.
Hence, it is often the case that what we perceive during the waking state is processed to a degree in our dream state, whereas our dreams are not processed during our waking state.
These three points cause me confusion because the implication is that the waking state is not only much larger in content and duration than the other states, but is also materially different from the other two.
Please clarify.
The first point was that there is a continuity.
Yes, I don't know.
Yeah.
So here's this question.
The Mandukya Upanishad, for example, equates the waking and the dream states.
The dream is a dream and the waking is also another kind of dream.
So there are only two states.
There is a dream and there is a sleeping.
Sleep is deep sleep and waking and dream are both kinds of dreams.
Now he says, but it's not true.
The waking state is clearly different from the dream state.
Why?
He gives three reasons.
One reason.
There is continuity.
Every time you wake up, you wake up in the same room, in the same bed.
At least you are the same person in the same context.
But every time you go into a dream, it's a different dream.
Different place, different time, different people, different things happening, different story.
So that's one thing.
Waking state is continuous.
The objects and the people and the situations in the waking state are stable because they keep coming back again and again and again.
Therefore, he says waking state is different from the dream state.
Dreams are unstable.
Objects and people and the events in the dream are unstable.
Number one.
Number two.
In the waking state, we share experience.
It's a public experience.
This altar which I am seeing, you are also seeing.
But what you see in your dreams, I don't see.
What I see in my dreams, you don't see.
We don't share our dreams, but we share our waking.
So the waking is different from the dream.
Third, we have our experience in the waking state go back and generate the dream state.
The samskaras, the impressions, the feelings, the complexes, the guilt, the desires in the waking state, they are manifested in the dream state.
But not the other way around, generally.
So for these three reasons, he says, they are not similar, waking and dream.
Rather, the waking seems to be, as he said, a larger context, a reality.
And the dream is a dream.
So this is real.
And the dream is just a dream.
What would you say to that?
I would say, wonderful.
What is the phrase?
Knock yourself out?
Go ahead with this.
This is one approach in Vedanta called Shristi Drishti Vada.
There is a world which is created and into that world we come and then experience the world.
From here, if you start, this is a very common sense way of looking at it.
If you start from here, can you have Advaitic realization?
Of course.
It will be a little bit of a scenic route, but of course you can still have it.
And there is pure consciousness with Maya, which we call God, who has created this universe.
We are pure consciousness limited by avidya, ignorance.
There are many of us.
And we keep coming, going back and forth in this world and other worlds.
And then we shall have to strive for our enlightenment.
To realize that this world and our bodies and minds is an appearance made by Maya.
I am pure consciousness and that pure consciousness which is God, we and I are the same reality.
And then supported by meditation and devotion and purification of mind, all of that, we realize I am that one consciousness.
So it's a long process.
And this is called Shristi Drishti Vada.
Shristi means creation.
Drishti means experience or seeing.
Creation first, then seeing.
And that's common sense.
Universe was created, then we see it.
And here the waking and the dream will be different.
The dream is individual, each one of us generates it.
And the waking is the common waking world created by God.
Each dream world is created by each one of us.
It's a projection, imagination.
Fine, this is exactly what he is saying.
But then this is not his question.
His question is, but then why, in what sense do the... There is another approach in Vedanta, Gaudapada, the Mandukya Karika.
It says that waking and dreaming are same.
You have to treat them both as dreams.
But I can't.
I cannot.
Because the waking is clearly different from the dream.
Why is it clearly different?
Luckily he gives three reasons.
So what are the reasons?
Normally there are three reasons.
There are many reasons.
And all of them can be cut down.
So first, let's take this one up.
Continuity.
There is continuity in the waking state.
There is no continuity in the dream state.
Each dream is different.
But that's what you are saying from the waking state.
In the dream state we never ever feel, Oh, it just appeared, it must be a dream.
In the dream state it feels like waking.
This is a universe.
It's been there for billions of years.
And I've been born here and I'm interacting with these people.
This is my world.
This is my job.
These are the people I know.
And there is a vast universe here, which I guess has been existing for billions of years.
That's what we feel.
Do we ever feel in the dream, this is a flickering, illogical thing, this must be it.
We don't.
If we did that, we would wake up immediately.
So, the idea of continuity, it's there in the dream also.
If you are in the dream.
When you come out of it, yes, you see, oh, there was a discontinuity.
Other way around.
Let's take another argument.
Suppose, we have, a person has a strong case of Alzheimer's, forgetfulness.
And the person forgets what happens.
Just now, short term memory is gone.
And every night, they have the same dream recurring.
Now, from their perspective, the dream is continuous.
Every dream is the same dream.
But every day is a new day for them.
Will you say then, waking is a dream and the dream is waking?
No.
Continuity is not an argument.
Continuity, the feeling of continuity is not an argument.
It is equally there in waking and dream.
It can be absent in waking and dream.
Just because I forget everything and there is no continuity, it's still in the same waking state.
I may have, I just have Alzheimer's.
I don't remember anything.
So, this is the first argument.
It doesn't stand.
Continuity doesn't ensure that waking is different from dream.
Second argument, shared experience.
We all experience the same thing.
And you can say that, you don't see my dreams, I don't see your dreams.
But this we all see.
But this is true in the dream also.
If you are sitting in the park and having a cup of tea with a friend, and it's a dream suppose, with a friend, the friend will say that, I can't see the tea, it's in your mind.
What park, what, it's all you are dreaming.
How will I drink the tea?
I am not in your dream.
No.
In the dream it feels like, here is a shared world.
You are having tea and here is the park, and you are sitting and enjoying your time in the park.
Here is the sky and the sun.
And your friend also sees the same sky and sun.
There seems to be a common experience in the dream.
Nowadays we understand it with shared virtual realities.
When you enter a virtual reality, you will see everybody is in that virtual reality, will see the same virtual reality.
That's because it's projected by a computer.
Similarly, in the dream, every individual, including you and everybody else you meet, they all have the same reality.
So, shared reality is not an argument for, waking is different from dream.
The third one was, that waking we remember the dreams and, what we experience in the waking is processed in the dream.
The same one again would hold in the dream also.
In the dream also you would feel, I am awake.
Yeah, sometimes I sleep and I have dreams.
In those dreams, whatever experience in the waking world, that comes in the dreams, that's in a dream.
Very much like an Inception movie.
I don't know if you have seen it.
Very interesting.
I think it was a few years ago, they had a movie.
So yes, in the dream also it feels like the waking.
And then you feel that in the dream also, I sleep and I have a dream.
You can have the same kind of experience.
None of them actually shows you, a clear distinction between waking and dreaming.
These are just three arguments.
If you go to Swami Nikhilanandaji's book on the Mandukya Karika, in the appendix, in the Upanishads, that volume, in the appendix, ten arguments for distinguishing between dream and waking are given.
And then he cuts down all ten arguments.
Till you begin to feel that this is also a dream probably.
Okay, one more question and we'll see.
We have run out of time actually.
This is from Harshit Magge.
Namaste Swamiji.
I am a student of Economics and Philosophy from India.
In one of your videos, you have said that to understand Sri Ramakrishna better, we should understand through the concepts of Kashmiri Shaivism, rather than Advaita Vedanta.
My question is, why Kashmiri Shaivism?
How does it make us understand Sri Ramakrishna better?
Oh, this is a new one.
But this is something that I quoted once.
Many years ago, the same professor of Philosophy, Arindam Chakravarti, this was in 1999 or 2000.
I was a Brahmachari at that time, a novice.
I met him at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Gold Park in Calcutta.
There was a Philosophy Conference.
In tea time, he told me, I still remember distinctly, I didn't know about Kashmiri Shaivism much.
I had heard about it, but I had never studied it.
He told me that if you want to understand the gospel of Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna Kothamrita better, Kashmiri Shaivism is a better framework, paradigm, than Advaita Vedanta.
That's what he told me.
And later when I began to read Kashmiri Shaivism, I saw, yes, that's true.
There are many reasons why.
Because Sri Ramakrishna was a devotee of Kali.
What he said, you can find in the gospel, you can find non-dual influences, Advaita Vedanta, you can find dualistic devotion, you can find Vaishnavism, you can find teachings from Shaivism, from Tantra, heavily from Tantra, from, you would quote, Christian teachings, Islamic teachings, Sikh teachings.
So it would come from various sources.
Now Kashmiri Shaivism has a unique nature.
What it does is, all sorts of mystical experiences, remember Sri Ramakrishna was a super mystic.
He had any number of extraordinary mystical experiences.
So all these mystical experiences, Kashmiri Shaivism gives it, technically speaking, an ontological place.
That there is some reality associated with it.
So it makes a very complicated philosophy.
Our Swami Medhananda, Ayon Maharaj, he called it a Baroque philosophy.
It's a very complex philosophy.
Because every kind of experience, it fits into a particular place.
Then it makes a whole system out of it.
It is, it is a metaphysics, an epistemology, built on the phenomenology of mystical experience.
That's a mouthful, but I passed it by our professor Timalsina, who's an expert on Kashmiri Shaivism.
I said, is this a good way of describing Kashmiri Shaivism?
He said, that's more or less right.
That's what it is.
You take spiritual practice and spiritual experience seriously.
Then design your philosophy around it.
But that will be a very complex thing, because so many mystics are there.
They have had so many experiences.
And it plugs it in.
With the basic background of Kashmiri Shaiva philosophy.
It's a Shaiva philosophy, non-dual Shaivism.
Then what does Advaita Vedanta do?
Advaita Vedanta, the difference is like taking a road trip across the United States and flying Delta from JFK to LAX.
If you take a road trip across the United States, you really get the scenic route.
You see everything on the way.
But if you take the plane, you get there much faster.
But you miss everything on the way.
You don't see anything except blue emptiness.
Blue skies and clouds maybe.
That's it.
So, all of this Advaita Vedanta will ask, whatever you are seeing, whatever mystical experience you are seeing, Advaita will say, I'm not interested.
Who or what is experiencing that?
And that which is experiencing all those extraordinary mystical experiences is right here, having the ordinary experience which you are having now.
So why not focus on that reality, that consciousness in which all of this is being experienced.
You are that.
And Vedanta wants to point that out.
Kashmiri Shaivism also does that.
Whatever Vedanta points, Advaita Vedanta points out is also because it's a genuine path.
It's also included in Kashmiri Shaivism.
That's sort of the ultimate in Kashmiri Shaivism.
That's called Shambhava Upaya, the way of Shiva.
But if that doesn't work for you, it is supplemented by what's called the Shaktha Upaya, the way of the Divine Mother, today is Mother's Day.
So if that kind of philosophical inquiry doesn't work for you, well, you supplement it with meditation, with mantra, with Samadhi, and you realize the truth.
And you have extraordinary range of experiences.
If that also doesn't work for us, then there's something called Arnava Upaya, the way of the atom.
What's the atom?
Us.
We are little beings, little creatures.
So based on ritual, puja, worship, chanting, all sorts of... So as you come down the ladder, it gets more complicated, more diverse, more rich.
As you go up the ladder, it becomes more and more minimalistic.
At the top of the ladder, you are Shiva.
That's it.
So that is Kashmiri Shaivism.
If you just take the top of the ladder, it would be something like Advaita Vedanta.
But there's the whole ladder beneath it.
And Sri Ramakrishna had this range of spiritual experiences from dualistic to non-dualistic, the Divine Mother to Shiva to the Avatars, Krishna and Rama, to experiences beyond Hinduism.
And all of which he considered perfectly valid.
The truth is one, the sages call it variously.
So that's why Kashmiri Shaivism is a much richer account of Indians, not only Sri Ramakrishna, Indian spirituality.
I think that's the signal for us to stop.
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti. Hari Om Tat Sat. Sri Ramakrishna Arpanam Astu.
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