Sri, Sankara says: one must first know what is before him. If he
cannot know that, what else can he know or understand? If he gives up the
external world in his inquiry, he cannot get the whole truth.
Sage Sri, Sankara says :- VC-63.
Without causing the objective universe to vanish and without knowing the truth
of the Self, how is one to achieve Liberation by the mere utterance of the word
Brahman? — It would result merely in an effort of speech.
In Brahma Sutras Sri, Sankara says: Brahman is the cause of the world,
whereas in Mandukya he denies it.
This may be because that at the lower stage of understanding, the former
teaching must be given, for people will get frightened as they cannot
understand how the world can be without a cause, but to those in a higher
stage, the truth of non-causality can be revealed.
As one goes deeper investigation he finds:- Sri, Sankara founded his
Advaita Vedanta either on reason independent of sruti or on sruti confirmed by
reason." Sri, Sankara's commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad,
II, 1: This [the unreality of duality] is
borne out by the Srutis ... But it is possible also to show the unreality of
the object world even from pure reasoning, and this second chapter is
undertaken for that purpose.
Sri, Sankara himself had often said that his philosophy was based on Sruti,
or revealed scripture. This may be because Sri, Sankara addressed the
ordinary man, who finds security in the idea of causality and thus in the idea
of God—and Revelation is indispensable to prove the latter. He believed
that those of superior intelligence, have no need of this idea of divine
causality, and can therefore dispense with Sruti and arrive at the
truth of Non-Dualism by pure reason.
Those who lack the intelligence to discriminate between formless witness
(subject) and three states [object] will not be able to grasp what is real and
what is unreal. Both subject and object are consciousness, not subject alone.
The truth can never change. The nature of truth is, it can never be
changed under any circumstances. It may be misrepresented. It must apply to the
whole of existence, to the whole of the universe. It is in the object (three
states) alone that one has all changes, as deeper analysis points out.
The subject (formless witness) remains unchanged. The subject
(formless witness), as such remains immortal. It can never die for it never
changes. The body and world are an object, and goes, but the subject or knower
of the body and the universe, can never go. The seeker has to take this principle
as his guiding thread and non-dual truth becomes easy to grasp. The formless
witness can never be subject to the changes of the object; it is unchanged. The
mistake usually made is that subject becomes object, or that object is subject.
If one wants to have absence of contradictions, absence of duality,
there must be one entity, one being. If one has experience which is an object
(mind), there is contradiction between subject and object, for "mind” is
an object.
The duality is reality on the standpoint of the false self (ego or body
as Self). The duality is mere mirage on the base of the true self, which
is formless consciousness. This understanding comes only to the serious seeker,
who has real urge to know the ultimate truth, which is beyond the all the
teachings and teachers. There is neither teaching, nor teacher, nor student in
the realm of truth.
Different
paths will not converge to the same Ultimate Reality because they are based on
the false self. They are not the different stages in the same path. People
fight about the differences and greatness of their chosen paths but only
through wisdom one can realize the Ultimate Reality.
One has to
have perfect understanding and march a head, surely and steadily, towards that
Ultimate Reality, which is consciousness or Brahman or Christ or Buddha. One
becomes limited to the concepts, names and forms within the waking or dream.
Waking or dream originates from the soul.
The
soul is the true self. The soul is in the form of consciousness.
Realizing the consciousness as the true self is truth realization.
Consciousness is formless, limitless, permanent and unchanging, and by its
nature non-dual and universal. The consciousness is the formless knower of the
mirage (universe) which comes and goes.
Realize Brahman or ultimate truth here and now, in this very life , not in next life and in
ii next world by realizing the fact that this life itself is illusion.
In dualistic philosophies the imaginary god is made as creator basing on
cause and effect theory. Then the doubt natural arises, who is the cause of the
creator. The creator is dependent on creation for his existence. Without
the creation the creator ceases to exist. Thus the dualistic theory holds no
water, because it is based on mere imagination and speculation, which they try
to prove it on citing the mythological stories and doctrine of code of
conducts. When the self is not the body then all these dualistic ideologies
hold no water. Therefore the devotional paths, which are based on
the human conducts, are not the means for TRUTH –REALIZATION.
Even the religious based non-dualism is not the means for truth
realization, because their preaching is based on the nonduality but
their practice is based on dualistic view point. Therefore, it is
difficult to get TRUTH –REALIZATION from conduct based
orthodox non-dualism. Thus it looks like the real essence of non-dualism is
lost or destroyed in the past by the orthodox oriented priest craft and
propagated and injected only priest-crafted non-dualism, to the mass, the
reason best known to the masters of the past. Therefore, it is impossible
to come out of all these priest crafted confusions in one life time. Through
orthodox non-dualism it is impossible to get truth realization.
There is no need to collect all these baggage of confusions, if
one is seeking truth, nothing but truth. The guru is necessary only in
religious and yogic paths, but guru is not necessary in pursuit of truth.
Path of truth is a personal path and it is the path of verification. But
in religion and yoga the verification is not allowed. Blind faith is main
ingredient in belief system and yoga. Gurudom is playing with words
because maybe the meaning is floating somewhere in between the spaces of
words...
People who think themselves to be in a position to air their knowledge
forget one basic fact, namely that they go by mere appearances. Someone
expounds knowledge and the one who receives it begins to ape the person from
whom he has received the knowledge. They never question the validity of
that knowledge.
Thus, whatever the guru wears, he will wear; whatever mannerisms the
guru affects, he will imitate. Thus, they only learn to pretend. And all
so-called accumulated knowledge" is mere speculation based on the physical
self/ego. This is how tradition became established and traditional forms of
worship came into being and passed it on the one generation to the next.
All these have nothing to do with the Self- Knowledge.
Whatever One has heard, whatever he has been told, will have no value as
far as the ultimate point of view. Whether one accepts the fact that, the only
knowledge that he really has is the knowledge that he exists, that is
consciousness. Other than that, whatever knowledge he thinks he has as a
person, is part of the illusion, something acquired, based on the illusory
consciousness.
The realization of truth is not intellectual understanding. Self-
Realization is about realizing the fact that, the self is not physical, but it
is the formless soul or consciousness. Intellectual, logical, analytical
perspective is based on the false self, will not help the seeker to reach his
non-dual destination. The truth is beyond intellectual understanding and only
the serious seekers who are free from preconceived accumulated ideas can get
there.
The seeker of truth moves ahead by verifying the facts and by removing
all the obstacles and reaches his non-dual destination. There is a need to
bifurcate spirituality from the religion.
