Moksha is freedom. Freedom is becoming free from experiencing the illusion or duality as reality by realizing the fact that, the self is not the form but self is formless. It is not possible to realize this without realizing the fact that, the individual self or ego is reality within the false experience. Thus all the knowledge accumulated by judging on the base of false self, is false knowledge.
People believe in old myths propagated by their religion. Every religion has propagated its own myth. Every religious belief contradicts other beliefs. It is mere blind belief accepted as truth without verification and evidence. This causes division. Modern science has exposed many Religious dogmas as myth. All these dogma were introduced in primitive era before people had the benefit of modern science. Science attempts to objectively discover how life works, and religion makes one blindly believe and cast his burden on the blind belief without verification, to live in peace and harmony in worldly life.
Seekers main aim is to investigate both dual and non-dual experiences to find and define the underlying truth in everything, thereby realizing what the ultimate truth is. Because of so many beliefs propagated by belief system, people think seekers of truth are atheists because they do not accept the belief blindly. Seekers of truth believe the religionist and atheists both are believers because religionist believe in the belief of god and atheists believe in belief of no god.
Pursuit of truth is all about accepting uncertainty and open questions and seeking for the things that are certainty. Believers and nonbelievers will not accept anything other than their inherited belief system or accepted truth. Atheists feel there is no proof for god’s existence. So atheist chooses to just believe there is no such thing called God. And religionists just believe in the existence of their conceptual god. A Gnani is one who is fully aware of the fact that, the existence or non-existence of God cannot be proven on the base of physical self. Therefore deeper understanding is necessary to understand and assimilate the truth about Gods existence to know what is supposed to be the God.
In Vedas the God (Soul/Ataman) has been described as:-
The Self or Ataman is God and God is Self or Ataman.
Sakshi (Witness)
Chetan (conscious)
Nirguna (Without form and properties).
The Soul/God further has been told as
Nitya (eternal)
Shuddha (pure)
Buddha (omniscient)
Mukta (unattached).
It means the ultimate truth is god. That is Atman is Brahman. That is the true self is ultimate truth.
In Advaita Vedanta: - Brahman is without attributes and strictly impersonal. It can be best described as infinite Being, infinite Consciousness and infinite Bliss. It is pure knowledge itself, similar to a source of infinite radiance. Since the Advaitins regard Brahman to be the Ultimate Truth, so in comparison to Brahman, every other thing, including the material world, its distinctness, the individuality of the living creatures and even Ishvara (the Supreme Lord) itself are all untrue. Brahman is the effulgent cause of everything that exists and can possibly exist. Since it is beyond human comprehension, it is without any attributes, for assigning attributes to it would be distorting the true nature of Brahman. Advaitins believe in the existence of both Saguna Brahman and Nirguna Brahman; however they consider Nirguna Brahman to be the absolute supreme truth.
Atman is the true self. The true self or Atman is in the form of consciousness is ultimate truth and it is God.
The Atman is within the mind [universe] and mind [universe] is within the soul. The universe) is within the self and self is within universe. The chicken is in the egg and the egg is in the chicken. The tree is in the seed and the seed is in the tree. The same thing that was told by the Vedas was repeated by the Saint John (10-38)? Father is in me and I am in Father. Thus the father [soul/self] is our immediate, neighbour- love thy neighbour. Therefore, one has to love the soul/Christ in order to become one with the formless spirit/soul/ Christ, which are the creator, sustainer and dissolver of the world/duality.
Therefore, self-realization is necessary in order to realize the ultimate truth or god. Self-realization is real God realization.
People are ignorant and they are unaware of the reality of their true existence. Man and his experience of universe is simply a mirage created out of the consciousness, Consciousness is the real Self, the real Atman, is the reality.
Mundaka Upanishad:- The rituals and the sacrifices described in the Vedas deal with lower knowledge. The sages ignored these rituals and went in search of higher knowledge. ... Such rituals are unsafe rafts for crossing The sea of samsara, of birth and death. Doomed to shipwreck are those who try to cross The sea of samsara on these poor rafts. Ignorant of their own ignorance, yet wise In their own esteem, these deluded men Proud of their vain learning go round and round Like the blind led by the blind.
All the scriptures indicate that Atman is Brahman, and Brahman is ultimate truth. Therefore the soul, which is in the form of consciousness, is ultimate truth. Thus to realize the ultimate truth is the prime goal. A well-directed inquiry, analysis and reasoning will lead one to his non-dual destination.
Self-Realization is direct realization of the ultimate truth or real god, in contrast with traditional paths, which are indirect. And the other paths cannot lead to the ultimate destination because they are based on the false self, which they hold as real self and false experience as reality.
Until and unless one overcomes physical shackle it is impossible to understand and assimilate the non-dual truth, which is beyond the physical existence or the universe. Consciousness itself is lord of itself though not of the universe. And having nothing it has all.
Sri, Sankara says in VivekaChudamani :-
56. Neither by Yoga, nor by Sankhya, nor by work, nor by learning, but by the realisation of one's identity with Brahman is Liberation possible, and by no other means.
58. Loud speech consisting of a shower of words, the skill in expounding the Scriptures, and likewise erudition - these merely bring on a little personal enjoyment to the scholar, but are no good for Liberation.
59. The study of the Scriptures is useless so long as the highest Truth is unknown, and it is equally useless when the highest Truth has already been known.
60. The Scriptures consisting of many words are a dense forest which merely causes the mind to ramble. Hence men of wisdom should earnestly set about knowing the true nature of the Self.
61. For one who has been bitten by the serpent of Ignorance, the only remedy is the knowledge of Brahman. Of what avail are the Vedas and (other) Scriptures, Mantras (sacred formulae) and medicines to such a one?
62. A disease does not leave off if one simply utter the name of the medicine, without taking it; (similarly) without direct realisation one cannot be liberated by the mere utterance of the word Brahman.
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.
64. Without killing one’s enemies, and possessing oneself of the splendour of the entire surrounding region, one cannot claim to be an emperor by merely saying, ‘I am an emperor’.
65. As a treasure hidden underground requires (for its extraction) competent instruction, excavation, the removal of stones and other such things lying above it and (finally) grasping, but never comes out by being (merely) called out by name, so the transparent Truth of the self, which is hidden by Maya and its effects, is to be attained through the instructions of a knower of Brahman, followed by reflection, meditation and so forth, but not through perverted arguments.
66. Therefore the wise should, as in the case of disease and the like, personally strive by all the means in their power to be free from the bondage of repeated births and deaths.
67. The question that thou hast asked today is excellent, approved by those versed in the Scriptures, aphoristic, pregnant with meaning and fit to be known by the seekers after Liberation.
Seeker of truth has to take the direct path and avoid losing precious time and effort loosing himself in philosophical studies.
All the religionists believe in god and goddesses (vidya) and performing rituals and other sacrifices(Avidya) both are hindrance to self-knowledge according to Ish Upanishds, then why the seeker of truth needs worshiping of god and goddesses, when essence of Advaita is Atman is Brahman (soul or conciousness , the innermost self as ultimate reality).
When the self is formless there is no need pada pooja [feet worship] Advaitin gurus to get freedom. A guru who preaches conduct as the means to freedom believes in birth, life death and the world as reality, whereas the Advitic sage Sri, Sankara declares the world as unreal. Therefore, how actions performed in unreal world can get moksha or freedom. Therefore there is need to know the fact that, the self is not physical in order to understand and assimilate and realize the truth beyond physicality.
That is why Gaudapada says that: - The merciful Veda teaches karma and Upaasana to people of lower and middling intellect, while Jnana is taught to those of higher intellect.
It means the people who follow religion and worship of guru and conceptual god are lower and middling intellect. But in this modern world people are sharp enough to understand and assimilate ultimate truth or Brahman or god. Thus it is high time to discard the lower knowledge and move ahead to realize the ultimate truth, which is Brahman or God.
They alone in this world are endowed with the highest wisdom who are firm in their conviction of the sameness and birthlessness of Ataman. The ordinary man does not understand their way. [Chapter IV — Alatasanti Prakarana 95-P-188 in Upanishads by Nikilanada]
Therefore, if one is seeking truth he has to know his true self is not physical but it is the Atman, which is in the form of consciousness.
Isa Upanishads indicates that: By worshiping gods and goddesses and going to the world of gods after death is of no use. The time one spends in ritualistic practices is wasted; one can spend same time moving forward towards Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana, which is the main goal. One cannot reach the non-dual destination by glorifying god and goddesses and by doing that, one goes deeper and deeper into darkness. It surely indicates the fact that, the seeker of truth has to drop the worshiping god and goddess in order to get self-knowledge.
It also indicates that, Religious Rituals (Avidya) is Karma (action) and therefore a hindrance. By performing Agnihotra and other sacrifices (Avidya) is a roundabout way of purifying the mind, and it is also groping in the dark.
In addition, it indicates the karma is limited only to the religious rituals, not on the whole human life. This karma theory based on the human conduct must have been adopted from Buddhism and other theories based on human conducts.
When it says: Perform the obligatory karmas without any attachment to the fruits, and at the same time worship gods and goddesses, again without any desire to go to heaven - then you can get the benefit of both, liberation and bliss. For those who are not yet ready to renounce, this path is recommended, it mean that the religion and its idea of god and goddesses and code of conducts, and its rituals are meant for the mass who are incapable of thinking of the beyond.
In addition, it also speaks of heaven the abode of gods, where one goes after death, and it speaks of rebirth, this contradiction, seeker has to conclude that religion, rituals god and its code of conducts are meant for the mass that is not receptive to self-knowledge.
When the self is not the body (‘waking entity’) whatever one sees, knows, believes, experiences and feels on the base of the body (‘waking entity’) as self is bound to be illusion. Thus, the karma performed in illusion is bound to be illusion. The birth, life and death is happening within the illusion, therefore it is bound to be illusion. Thus, rebirth and reincarnation theories based on the false self within the false experience are bound to be illusion on the base of the true self. Only the witness of the illusion is real (Brahman). Therefore, everything has to be viewed and judged, on the base of the Formless Witness (soul) in order to overcome the illusion or duality.
Seeker of truth has to know somewhere he is going wrong, and it is for the seeker to go on his own and remove the obstacle. The greatest hindrance is mixing religion, god, scriptures, and yogic theories. Moreover, attachment to scriptures, personal god and religious code of conduct keeps one permanently in the grip of duality.
Seeker has to have courage to accept the truth and reject the untruth because most people will not be able to subscribe to path of truth because they sentimentally and emotionally involved with their inherited belief system and even if one does he has to overcome all his doubts confusion and despair. These are problem for the seekers who are from religious back ground because of their conditioning and they are made to accept their blind belief as truth and their interest or insight is not deep. Thus all my blogs are useful analyze these problems because they highlight the what is not truth according to their own religious scriptures and make them to accept the truth and reject all the false conditioning and move ahead in pursuit of truth.
It becomes difficult for the orthodox cult to accept anything else as truth other than their accepted belief, which they hold as truth. Although all religious followers are participants alike in the spiritual endeavour of the world, overzealous flowers of each religion are not prepared to accord equal status to other faiths and assert the superiority of their own. Thus universal brother hood is total impossibility because it is difficult to accept anything other than their inherited belief system.
Most of the pundits are egoic and they try to snub others who question them. They think they are unquestionable authority. They quote the citation from the scriptures as proof without verifying the validity. All punditry is a great obstacle in realizing the Advaitic truth expounded by the Sri, Sankara and Goudapada.
One finds lots of differences between Advaita preaching and practice. There is need to bifurcate religion, concept of god and scriptures from Advaitic philosophy to assimilate the essence of Advaita.
Sri, Sankara says in Brahma Sutras: that Brahman is the cause of the world, whereas in Mandukya he denies it. This is because he says 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.
Sri, Sankara himself has warned us not to use ambiguous words, and to practice semantic analysis in his book "Definition of one's own Self. [" Page 199, v.24 of "Sankara's Selected Works]
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.
Sri, Sankara, in debates with Buddhists and others who did not recognize the authority of the Vedas, had been obliged to prove the truth of Advaita by means of reason alone. Mandukya Upanishad, a scripture which appealed to reason to the exclusion of Revelation.
Non-duality does not need the support of any Scripture or Revelation like the Veda. For it is based, not upon the varying theological fancies, which are as numerous as the sands of the sea, but upon reason, the common heritage of all mankind, irrespective of colour or creed or clime.
Thus, self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana is meant only for those who have intense urge, and courage to accept the truth with humility and reject the untruth. Since people start comparing with their scriptural knowledge, it becomes impossible to assimilate and realize the non-dual truth. Therefore, there is no need to convince anyone other than our own-selves to get the firm conviction.
I am not trying to prove my views, but it is for every seeker who is in the path of truth to prove himself to know “What is truth, “and “What is untruth?” to assimilate the self -knowledge.
Karma, Bhakti, Raj yoga are not the means to path of wisdom. And mixing them up and trying to assimilate ultimate truth is impossibility.
There is no need to practice to devotion, karma and raja yoga because they are not the means to acquire non-dual wisdom. There is no practice as such but perfect understanding is needed. Deeper inquiry, analysis and reasoning revels the fact that, the self is not physical but the self is formless consciousness. Therefore, all the accumulated knowledge, experiences and understanding based on physical self [ego or body as Self] are falsehood based on the false self, within the false experience [waking]. Thus, whatever is based on the waking entity is bound to be falsehood because waking experience itself is false hood. Since many teachers and teachings are based on the false self [ego or body as Self] and they consider the false experience [three states] as reality, they are incapable of grasping the witness, which is within the three states, but it is without the three states.
Thus, the formless knower of the three states has to be grasped mentally and realize the fact that, all the three states, which comes and goes, are mental. They are impermanent. The formless witness or knower of the three states is permanent and eternal. Therefore, there is a need to understand “What is Mind?” and “What is the substance of the Mind?” in order to understand and assimilate the non-dual truth.
For this one has drop all his accumulate knowledge, which he is using as a yardstick and lands himself in pursuit of argument without reaching anywhere. One has to think deeper and analyze and verify everything and accept only un-contradictable truth. Nothing has to be accepted as truth because some great thinker says it or I am saying it.
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. 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 or God 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.
