E182 - Swami Sarvapriyananda: The Advaita Vedanta Explanation of Reality, the Self & Suffering

Swami Sarvapriyananda unpacks the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta and its central claim: you are not the body, not the mind, not even your thoughts — you are pure consciousness itself. Through rigorous reasoning rather than blind belief, he guides us step by step into a direct inquiry of who we truly are. We explore the limits of faith-based religion, the pitfalls of mystical experience, the distinction between intelligence and consciousness in the age of AI, and the profound implications of non-duality. This conversation is not about adopting a belief system — it is about dismantling false identities until only the undeniable remains. FREE electrolyte sample pack with any purchase @ https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself BON CHARGE - 15% off red light therapy products I personally use https://www.boncharge.com/knowthyself [Code: KNOWTHYSELF] André's Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:18 What Is Advaita Vedanta 06:44 The Promise Freedom From Suffering 10:16 Liberation While Living 15:09 The Three Spiritual Paths 23:38 The Path of Knowledge Jnana Yoga 28:42 Discovering Our Ignorance 29:49 Descartes and the Indubitable Self 32:36 Ad: LMNT 34:50 Deconstructing the Self 37:18 Are You the Body 42:09 From Body to Breath to Mind 47:30 AI and the Difference Between Intelligence and Consciousness 49:12 Consciousness in Deep Sleep 52:23 If Not Body or Mind What Are You 53:23 Pure Consciousness Explained 55:04 Dualism vs Non Dualism 57:42 The Dream Analogy 59:17 Maya and the Appearance of the Universe 01:00:28 Ocean and Wave Analogy 01:01:13 Ad: BON CHARGE 01:03:35 The Shift From Person to Awareness 01:10:00 Awareness as the Ground of Reality 01:18:00 The Root of Suffering 01:26:00 Ego Attachment and Fear 01:34:00 Living as Pure Awareness 01:42:00 Practical Self Inquiry 01:50:00 Free Will Karma and Responsibility 02:02:00 The Illusion of Individuality 02:14:00 Consciousness and Modern Science 02:26:00 Death Rebirth and Liberation 02:38:00 What Enlightenment Really Means 02:50:00 Final Clarifications on Non Duality 02:55:00 Closing Reflections ___________ https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If I'm not the mind, if I'm just bare light, what am I thinking? Nothing. What do I need? Nothing. Who are my enemies? Nobody. Fear comes and the mind kicks in. As long as I'm a mind, a person, everybody's a person to me. The moment I step back from physicality and I realize everybody is that light. The day I finished my last assignment in college and went straight to the monastery and joined, that's how I became a monk. We have been born many times and we have died many times. And that's not good news. But the really important promise is here and now, in this life.

• 0:33André Duqum?

  You can have possessions but not be possessed by the possessions.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Well put, yes.

• 0:37André Duqum?

  You can have things, just the things don't have you.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  Yes. Comfortable life right here and now means no progress. It must be pushing the envelope somewhere. It's a human limitation that we think if this is right, everything else has to be wrong. In meditation, when we calm down, that's what the ego hates. This is how you thin out the ego. So we sit still, closing the eyes when we are ready.

• 1:04André Duqum?

  This is actually the first No-Lay Self podcast with our new background set.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  Oh, I see.

• 1:10André Duqum?

  Yeah. We're making some changes. So it's good to have you in the studio. Swamiji, thank you so much for being here.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me, Andre.

• 1:20André Duqum?

  I have been loving watching your talks and reading some of your books over the past few years. And the conversation today is one I'm very passionate about. And it's been very much so your life study. For people that don't know, what is Advaita Vedanta?

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Well, Advaita Vedanta is a very ancient school of Indian nondual spiritual philosophy.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  If you back up a little bit, the big picture kind of. If you see the study of spirituality and philosophy in India, it's like a big project you can discern from all the way back, long before the Buddha. This quest to know reality, reality about the world, reality about ourselves. It was not like our modern scientific quest. Rather, it was a quest that there is something, if we uncover that, if we realize that or find that out, then our life becomes fulfilled. So that was the quest. This quest, it went by many names. Moksha, freedom, mukti, which means freedom, nirvana, kaila. There are multiple names and multiple traditions.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  Many of them were based on the Vedas, which are the root texts of Hinduism. Even those which are not directly based on the Vedas were often reactions to the Vedas, like the Jainism or Buddhism. And in the Vedas, you have these texts called the upanishads, which are sort of the final, the highest spiritual teachings of the Vedas. And based on these upanishads came multiple schools of what are now called Vedanta. Vedanta just means the end of the Vedas. End, not in a literal sense as the end of the book, but also in the sense of the end teachings,

• 3:16Speaker 00

  the final teachings or the highest teachings. But these upanishads themselves were interpreted in a variety of ways. One of the ways, and among the most well-known ways, is the way of Advaita Vedanta. Advaita just means non-dual. So, non-dual Vedanta. It's a non-dual interpretation of the upanishads. Based on the upanishads, there is a text called the Brahmasutras. And the most well-known text of Vedanta, I guess that's the one book everybody would have heard of in the world, the Gita, the Bhagavad Gita. So, that is the textual basis and background of Advaita Vedanta. And it has continued down from that time onwards till today. It's a living tradition.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Millions who follow it, who study it, who practice it. There are thousands and thousands of monks also. Like myself, I'm one of them, who have made it their lifelong pursuit to study, practice, live by and manifest this philosophy.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  So it's a living tradition, it has been for millennia. Its central teaching is radical. You are that, tattvamasi in Sanskrit. You know, one beautiful thing about Vedanta also is of ocean of literature. But it can be expressed, the central teaching of Vedanta can be expressed very elegantly. In half a verse. So there's a Sanskrit saying, Brahmasattvam jagatmitthya jiva brahmavanapara, which means Brahman alone is real. The world is an appearance. And you are that ultimate reality. The sentient being is that ultimate reality. You can compress it further into a short sentence.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  You are that, tattvamasi. That means you are that ultimate reality. That means if we were to really inquire and find out who or what we are, if we knew ourselves, we would discover something amazing. That's the promise, something, the greatest secret of all. In fact, the point of it all, rather. Other sentences are there in the Upanishads. Aham brahmasmee, I am Brahman, I am the ultimate reality. Pragyanam brahma, consciousness is the ultimate reality. I am atma brahma, this very self is the ultimate reality of the universe. You can compress it further into single words. Just the word Brahman.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  Not the Brahmin, which is a caste in Hinduism. Brahman literally means the vast, the limitless. Sometimes in the Upanishads, it's just called tat, that. The word purnam, which means complete or whole or limitless. Anantam, which means limitless. You can make it even shorter. You can just say om. And if you unpack that, the monosyllable om, you would get all of Vedanta. You can make it even shorter, just silence. They say that Vedanta can be expressed as silence.

• 6:19André Duqum?

  So what is the promise that this way of knowing this end of knowledge or culmination of knowledge is providing? In essence, what is Jivan Mukti? And what can, by virtue of listening to this podcast, can our audience, community, listeners, hopefully get a bit of a glimpse into of that same goal or promise there?

• 6:45Speaker 00

  That's a good question. And the promise is really, really big. It doesn't get any bigger than this. I can put it in two ways. One is the traditional way it is put in India. Not just for Advaita Vedanta, but for all these paths, all these ancient paths. It's freedom from the cycle of birth and death. That's how life is understood in India. And that's not peculiar to one school. It's sort of axiomatic across all schools, except the materialists, who say everything ends at death. But other than that, all other schools, Advaita Vedanta, the other schools of Vedanta, you know, the Shaiva schools, the Shakti schools, the Buddhists, the Jains, the Sikhs, every shade of religion and philosophy in India,

• 7:30Speaker 00

  they've sort of axiomatically said that the description of life is this cycle of birth and death. We are not, this is not our first time here and won't be our last. We have been here many times. We have been born many times and we have died many times. And that's not good news because we have been repeating this cycle of birth and death. It's a limited existence. It's full of suffering and limitation and sorrow and struggle. And the freedom from this cycle is possible. And so that's seen as the ultimate goal. So now that's the way it is traditionally put. In Advaita Vedanta, the result is moksha, freedom from the cycle of birth and death.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  But if you want to put it in less theological terms, if you will, something much more universally acceptable. When I came here to the West, they warned me that this talk about the cycle of birth and death doesn't go down so easily in the West, in America especially, as it does in India, because it's sort of axiomatic in India. But suppose one doesn't have those presuppositions. What can be put something, you know, in a form that is universally acceptable to everybody is the attainment of deep lasting happiness or bliss, if you will, and overcoming of suffering, a deep solution to the problem of suffering, existential problem of human life.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  So basically, it amounts to the same thing, overcoming the cycle of, you know, transcending the cycle of birth and death and overcoming suffering, basically the same thing. This is also the language in which the other schools are also put, you know, Buddhism also, the Buddha said, "Life is suffering and there is a possibility of freedom from this suffering," and that's what he called nirvana. Exactly in the same way, Advaita Vedanta says, "Deep lasting fulfillment is possible." It's Sanskrit word, "ananda," bliss is possible, and freedom from suffering is possible. And that's what it aims to deliver. This is the promise. And this is sort of universally acceptable.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  This is the, the principle on which the United States was founded, the Declaration of Independence, the pursuit of happiness and of liberty and the right to life. So life, liberty and happiness, if you put it in Vedantic terms, pursuit of happiness is ananda, bliss. The pursuit of life would be eternal existence, that means freedom from death, literally, and freedom, liberty, the first, I don't know if the founding fathers made, meant it in a Vedantic sense, but they hit upon something very profound, very deep. Now, Vedanta also says that this realization is possible, it's not a post-mortem spirituality,

• 10:21Speaker 00

  that you have to wait after death, you know, after death you go to see, get to see God, or after death you get to go to heaven, quite possible, and I do believe that's possible. But the really important promise is here and now, in this life. So that's the word you refer to, jivanmukti. The Sanskrit word jivanmukti means free while living in this body. So that's what the Advaita Vedanta aim said. That is not common to all the schools because some of the schools would say that you really cannot be perfect in this life. You have to die and be, go to a higher state of existence. All that went be fine, but Advaita Vedanta, you know, it is, that way it is very, very practical.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  It says that what is there must be here too. There's a saying, if you have it here, you have it there. If you don't have it here, you won't have it there. So the enlightenment which you get here will serve you there. There means maybe after death or in heaven or wherever it is. So realization of this and living it in this life. Swami Vivekananda, he put it beautifully. He said, basically spirituality is the manifestation of the divinity already within us. So the divinity already within us, our real nature, to know it and not just to know it, but to live it, to manifest it. He put it in other words. He said, my mission in life can be put in a few words.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Vivekananda, this Vivekananda, he says, it is to teach unto humanity their inner divinity and how to make it manifest in every movement of life. So in our thought, in our emotion, in our speech, in our actions. So that is the promise.

• 12:03André Duqum?

  And Advaita Vedanta as a path within what you might say is the umbrella of Yana Yoga as a vehicle towards self-realization. We all have our own individual constitution and maybe resonate towards specific paths, which I'm sure we could, you know, elaborate on. But there's something that has resonated so deeply within me, the path of Yana Yoga, to be able to experientially verify claims and in our real time experience and especially as an intellectually and analytically dominant society and culture, I think is a really beautiful pathway and opening of the door for people to start to examine the nature of self in reality.

• 12:48André Duqum?

  And, and you do that and you help guide people and that as well so beautifully. And so when you think about the epistemic orientation of Yana Yoga, of the way in which we come to know, could you expand about that?

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Yes, I'll just touch upon this. You just mentioned our constitutions differ. You hit upon something very deep there. One reason why a variety of paths is desirable. Well, there are two aspects to this. One is the nature of that ultimate reality. It could be, in fact, we hold that the nature of that ultimate reality which we are seeking, our ultimate reality and the reality of this universe. This is what Vedanta is inquiring, and Vedanta's teaching is that they are the two. The two are the same. Our ultimate reality, what we truly are and what this universe truly is, is one and the same thing.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  In Vedantic language, it's Atman is equal to Brahman. Atman means our inner self. Brahman is the reality of this universe. It's the same reality. So, one thing is that the ultimate reality is so capacious that you can approach it in different ways, you can have different theologies, you can have different philosophies, and all would be right. It's a human limitation that we think if this is right, everything else has to be wrong. This is something really beautiful about ancient India, until today, it's part of Indian culture, that there can be multiplicity of viewpoints. And it doesn't mean that one is right and everything else is wrong. They could all be right. In fact, we hold that they are all right.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  Also, that's from the perspective of the ultimate reality, but from our perspective, as you said, we are diverse. Human beings are of many kinds, the internal constitution. So, it makes sense to have multiple pathways. Some more emotion-related, heart-related, some more intellect-related, some more action-oriented. Vivekanth, in fact, was the opinion that, he was of the opinion that you should have all of them in your spiritual life. A balanced spiritual life should be intellectual, should be devotional, should be meditative, and should be action-oriented also. All of them can be and should be part of a wholesome spiritual life. All right. But now to your question about the epistemology of Gyanayoga. Yes, you're right.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  It's extreme, I find it extremely attractive, and I see large numbers of people are drawn to that side of Gyanayoga. Let's put it this way. All these paths work, but let's put it under three broad paradigms. I'm just trying to bring out the uniqueness of Gyanayoga. What makes it so special? One path of spirituality is something that is very common, immediately understood. You might call it the devotional path. There's a Sanskrit word for it, bhakti, the love of God or devotion. So if you see temples, churches, mosques, they're all devotional paths. Here we are told that there is an ultimate reality, call it God or Vishnu or Shiva or Father in Heaven or Jehovah or Allah.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  And how do we know that? If you ask an epistemic question, the answer would be, you know it by tradition, by faith, and because your masters have told you so, because your religion tells you so, your holy book tells you so, the testimony of the saints and so on. So you know it that way. It's primarily a path of faith. And the way it is practiced is also, if you look closely, it is love, devotion, prayer, music, surrender, adoration. It's a worship of the other, the divine as the other, God. The problem with it, it's a beautiful path, and it's a genuine path. It has produced mistakes and genuinely enlightened people across the centuries.

• 16:41Speaker 00

  And it's the most common path, which is what you get when you come to religion, first of all. But if you want to play the devil's advocate, especially in this day and age, we have never had so many atheist or agnostics ever in the history of humanity as we have today.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Because in this path, because it's based on faith, it's possible to believe, it's possible to disbelief, it's possible to believe otherwise. So yes, I believe in God, just not in the way you do. Yes, I have my own holy book, you have your own holy book. The problem with faith is, one may believe, one may not believe, one may believe differently, one may believe strongly or less strongly, and one may disbelief. And because it's not immediately experiential, it's based for a long time on faith, although ultimately it does culminate in experience, it can be doubted.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  And that's why you have all these, this day and age, if you talk too much about God and faith and devotion and love, you're going to run up against, you know, Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or his past, or Sam Harris, and the militant atheists. You'll run up against your own sense of reason. This path, it does not tolerate questioning immediately. It acts, it is based on, you have to start on faith. So this is the problem with this path, the path of belief. Again, genuine path. If you have belief, go for it. But this is the weakness of that. And if one is purely on a belief path, in the long run also, there are problems.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  One can, one's belief can be shaken. Life has a way of shaking you up. One's belief can be weakened. One can go very far in this path and still have doubts. I read a diary, Mother Teresa's diary, quite advanced in life, and she says, very touching, she says, "I pray and pray and pray into the darkness, and there's no reply." So that can happen. In contrast to this, you have a second path. That is the path of direct experience. Let's call it the path of the mystics. In Sanskrit, we can use the Sanskrit term, the yogic path, where we are told, "No, no, no, not a question of belief. It's a question of experience."

• 19:10Speaker 00

  As Vivekanji said, religion is realization. And this experience is open to everybody. We can all have that experience. And not only can we have that experience, we must. That's the whole point of human life. That's why we are here. And how do you get this experience? There is, there are practices. You sit in this way, you breathe in this way, you focus in this way, you visualize, meditate in this way, and eventually you will see for yourself. The claims of spirituality can be verified in our personal experience. So an experience shall be. A classic example here would be the Patanjali Yoga Sutras. So they don't start with any demand for belief in anything.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  You just have to have a working belief that there is something in this, let me investigate it. And the point would be actually to experience it for yourself. But notice, even here also, if one were to be a little bit of a devil's advocate, you know, try to find fault. Here also, notice the weakness is these mystical experiences. These are not public experiences. These are not shared experiences. These are not easily available experiences. And that's exactly why it takes so long and so hard and so rare. When they're genuine, they're powerful, they're transformative, and they're conclusive. For those who have had genuine mystical experiences, they don't need any other proof. And that's the testimony of mystics in every religion.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  They are people who saw men and women across the centuries, across civilizations, across religions, the testimony of the mystics. But if you were to look at the lives of the mystics, how were they received? When they say, "I'm hearing the voice of God," or Sri Ramakrishna would have the vision of the divine Mother Kali, the first reaction of people around them is, "You're crazy." Why? Because it's outlandish, and we don't see it. You say you are seeing it. As the philosopher Hume said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." Saying God, there is not even ordinary proof, let alone extraordinary proof.

• 21:20André Duqum?

  There's that saying, "The psychotic drowns in the same oceans that the mystics swim with delight in."

• 21:27Speaker 00

  Beautifully put, yes. I've read that somewhere. And there's the other side of it, that, yeah, there can be a psychopathology of it. There is. You can't deny that. If there are genuine mystic experiences, there are also minds which are profoundly disturbed. There are ways of distinguishing between the two, but that ways can be subtle. They may need not be entirely obvious. And we have, one of the superpowers which we all have is fooling ourselves, deluding ourselves. Minds can do that. They're very powerful that way.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  In this day and age, maybe in more political times, politically correct times, nobody's going to accuse of you of being crazy. But the neuroscientist will come and say, "I'm sure you're seeing the light, you're seeing God, or if you're feeling one with the universe, I'm sure you're doing that, I'm not denying it. But it's just because you have a stroke on this hemisphere of the brain or the, you know, someone..." Neuroscience will come up with a physical explanation. You're not one with the universe, certainly not. But you just feel like that because there's a stroke in your brain or there's some bleeding going on, some tumor pressing against such and such neuron. Or they will just say, "What are you smoking?" Especially here in California, or even now in New York. "What are you smoking? Are you high on something?"

• 22:44Speaker 00

  So the mystical experience in principle is not conclusive. And there can be many explanations of that.

• 22:54André Duqum?

  Meaning it's not externally verifiable because it's an subjective, transpersonal experience that is within your experience.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Yes, it's still a very good, strong claim because it says, "Like science, do this and you'll see for yourself." But then there's a whole question of distinguishing it from neurological problems, from mental illness, from wishful thinking, or from drug-induced experiences. How is that any different from this? As against that, there is a third paradigm of spirituality. So we have the belief-based paradigm, the Bhakti traditions. We have the direct experience paradigms, the mystical, the yogic traditions, which are all very powerful. And the Bhakti traditions themselves would culminate eventually in mystical experiences.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  That's how it is understood in India. You would eventually, Mira Bhai would see her beloved Krishna. But it starts with belief, whereas the yogic path starts with practice. Whereas the third paradigm, now I'm narrowing down to the question about epistemology of Advaita Vedanta. This path of knowledge, Jnana Yoga simply means the yoga of knowledge.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  It is not based on faith. If you believe it, well and good, we're told that you are that ultimate reality, your limitless consciousness, existence, place. If you believe that, well and good for you, but that's not the point. One has to come to grasp this and to realize it for oneself. It's like going to college and if the professor is teaching math or physics or something, I say, well, I really like you. I believe what you are saying. The professor would just be exasperated. He says, you don't have to believe what I say. I hope you come to see it for yourself. It's important that you learn this. So Vedanta is, first of all, it's not belief-based. Second, it's not even based on special experiences.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  See, in Vedanta, it is experiential, but in a much broader, much more acceptable, universal sense. What do I mean by that? We wake, we have a waking state, we dream, we have dreams, we sleep, we have deep sleep, all of us. These three states are common to everybody. You don't have to be a mystic, just about everybody is awake and we sleep and dream. Even animals do that. And Vedanta says that common, universally acceptable experience is enough to begin our inquiry. What Vedanta does is it takes that and then step by step shows us clearly demarcated methods, methodologies which will point to us what Vedanta wants us to realize.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  They're saying that what the reality we're trying to point out, we know yourself, well, you are right here. And what we are trying to point out about yourself is also right here. It's just that we don't see it and Vedanta aims to help us to see it. So it is not faith belief based. It is also not based on special mystical experiences. It's based on experience. That's a great, you know, claim to our attention that it's based on already available experience. Waking, dreaming, sleeping, all the five layers of the human personality. The physical, the vital, the mental, all of us have it. And all that Vedanta does is it looks inside.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  It's also entirely rational. Every question, we must ask questions and every question does have an answer. It's been worked out. It's not free thinking in the sense of doing philosophy. Because it's more like pointing out the masters, they already know what they're talking about and they want us to see it. So the goal would be to listen carefully to them, try to grasp what they're saying and then look for ourselves. In fact, that's the method of Vedanta, the threefold method of Vedanta. To listen and to reason and to meditate. In Sanskrit, Shravana Manana Nidhidyasana. Shravana means hearing, listening. You listen from a teacher or you study it.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  But the core thing is actually listening from a living teacher. And then reasoning about it, question it, analyze it, threadbare. One needs to have conviction. This is the path of knowledge. The intellect must be thoroughly convinced. The intellect by itself cannot help us to become enlightened. You can't argue your way to God, but the intellect can block us. It can throw up, it can tell you that this is crazy or this is not real. So intellect must be convinced, must see for itself, yeah, I get it now. And then it must come to see for itself also. So there is a gap between understanding and then the realization of it. So there is the hearing, there is the reasoning and then the realization.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  But that's how knowledge works. You go to a classroom and you want to learn something, that's how it works. You ask questions, read, listen, argue. And then you have the eureka moment, oh, I get it. So this, I think, is a special appeal of Advaita Vedanta. It's also the way of the, I'm joking here, tongue in cheek, the way of the lazy one. Because it's the, the claim seems to be, you want it instantaneously or you want to work for lifetimes? I want it instantaneously. All right, you'll get it. Do you want it effortlessly or do you want to work really, really hard for decades before you get a glimpse of it? I want it effortlessly. Of course, there's a fine print to that.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Instantaneous, effortless, true. But that is at the end of a long road of seeking and investigation. Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 02

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• 29:42André Duqum?

  Now, how important do you feel it is to acknowledge one's own ignorance to be, to then begin the acquisition of true knowledge? How important is the awareness of our own ignorance?

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Oh, very important. That's where it begins. If I've, you know, in Advaita Vedanta, the problem is not that we do not know who we are, you know, know thyself, not that we do not know who we are. The problem is we think we know. In fact, that's the last place we would like, we would look, you know, we're looking for the ultimate reality of all things, for God, for enlightenment. We think we know who we are and we are quite convinced the answer lies out there. Advaita Vedanta wants to show us the answer lies within you. In fact, you are the key to it. But for that, it has to show us that we don't really know ourselves. So the discovery of our own ignorance, that there are great depths to myself,

• 30:42Speaker 00

  that is the first step in Advaita Vedanta. You know, person, I'll show you why it is so important. Descartes, Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. You know, he started his project of skepticism, doubting whatever could be doubted, to find the ground of all knowledge, the one piece of knowledge which can never be doubted. Nobody ever doubts that. And he says, it's our own existence. Just the fact that I'm doubting it, just the fact that I'm thinking, shows that I exist. And that fact cannot be doubted. Nobody ever doubts, do I exist or not? Even in the act of doubting, you are proving your own existence. The doubter exists.

• 31:25Speaker 00

  So that part of it is famous, Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I exist. But a little further down in the meditations, Descartes says very touchingly, you know, he says that we know so little about ourselves. He says, it is passing strange. That which I am utterly convinced about, that which I can never doubt, I know so little about it. And that which I know so much about is always open to doubt. We know so much about the world. Now, three hundred years after Descartes, we know much, much more about the universe. But it's always open to doubt and correction.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  And we, one thing we know that can never be changed, that I exist. But this I which exists surely, indubitably, Descartes says, I know so little about it. I don't know anything about it. But then he stopped. There's a difference between Vedanta and Descartes. He stopped because his quest was outward. How can I justify all this knowledge? He wanted a firm basis for all the knowledge of science or religion, whatever it is. And he found it in the indubitable existence of the self. That he did not investigate further. I exist, absolutely sure of that. Now let's get on with the business of justifying knowledge. Because Vedanta says, wait a minute. I exist. The self exists.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  There's no doubt about it. But what is the nature of that self which exists? Let's investigate. Descartes sort of had the intuition, you can't find out anything more about it. Even Kant had that kind of intuition that it is, but then we can't know anything more about it. Vedanta says, oh, we can. We can know a lot about it. And in that discovery lies our salvation. So that intuition, knowing yourself, it is entirely possible, but possible in a special way. Descartes, Kant, they were right. It's not in a sensory way. We can't see ourselves here or smell or taste or touch that reality which we are, pure consciousness. We can't even express it adequately in language, not even express it except indirectly in thought.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Still, we can know it.

• 33:36André Duqum?

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• 34:19André Duqum?

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• 35:08André Duqum?

  So I would love to have you walk us through from the belief of a separate egoic, individualistic self to the experience of "I am that," the experience of the consciousness,

• 35:25André Duqum?

  which is the more fundamental aspect, the fundamental aspect of self. And so when you take somebody just walking, living their conventional life, randomly pick them up off the street and you say, "Who are you?" or "What are you?" There are all these presumptions about our name, our ethnicity, our religion, our caste, our creed, who we are as a mind and a body. And what you're proposing here, which is not foreign to people who have listened to the show before, from the various different mystics and sages to the consciousness researchers and physicists, we've explored this. But I'd love for you to walk us back into examining

• 36:04André Duqum?

  who we are in our most fundamental essence and consciousness as it's often referred to as "light." I would love for you to draw on that metaphor as well, if you could.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Yes. As you said, it's not new. And it's not in particularly unique to Advaita Vedanta. Though I believe in all my explorations of literature in the field, in the East and the West, modern and ancient, nothing is developed as deeply or in such a sophisticated way as Advaita Vedanta. In many traditions, it's there, but it's been either marginalized or even actively persecuted, this nondual teaching that you are that ultimate reality. Sometimes it can seem extremely blasphemous. In Vedantic schools also, there are dualistic Vedant schools which consider us the nondualists just outside the pale, because you guys are crazy, you're megalomaniacs, you think you're God or something. So, yes.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  The path of Advaita Vedanta is analytic, and it starts with experience and analysis of our experience. Experience here, the path is what philosophers today call phenomenological, looking into how it feels. As I said, it is not unique. As you have talked to people who would have said more or less the same thing. But it's good to cover that ground again and again. Listen carefully and see where it takes us. So it starts with the misconception that we know who we are. And first, that must be dissolved.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  To know who I am, Advaita Vedanta starts with deconstructing who I am. So if you, as you said, ask the person, just off the street, "Who are you?" And I like the question, "What are you?" "Who are you?" is more catchy. But who can be misleading, especially in our day and age? Who means, "Oh, am I a musician? Or am I a scholar? Or am I a good person? Or what kind of person am I? Or what's my profession? What's my destiny in life? What's God's plan for me? That's how I define who I am." That's not what Advaita Vedanta is talking about. It's much more literal sense. "What exactly are you?" And then if you push the person, in fact, it's helpful to ask, "Point to yourself."

• 38:27Speaker 00

  We generally would say, "Here, I am this." So Advaita would say, "So you are the body?" I'd say, "I guess I am." Well, notice something. I, the self, I say I am the body. But notice that the body is an object. Like this glass, like this table. It's an object. It's something that I experience. I, the experiencer, the subject, and the object are not literally the same. It's in fact even not allowed either by grammar or philosophy. It is self-referencing. So the object must be distinct from the subject.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  And then in that case, the body is an object. Clearly, it's an object. Another way of looking at this is that I am the experiencer, and the body is the experienced.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  I see, I can see the body, I can smell, I can taste, I can touch, I can even hear my tummy rumbling. So like, all my senses operate on the body as an object, as they do on other things in the world. So that which is an object of experience and that which is the subject of experience, in Vedantic terms, the seer and the seen, they are never literally the same. So that is an intuition which we apply. These arguments are not geometrical proofs, you know, they are not mathematical proofs, but they are more like legal arguments, like a lawyer would argue in front of a jury, trying to persuade you with a battery of arguments. So one is the intuition that I am the knower, the experiencer,

• 40:10Speaker 00

  the subject of this body, which is the known, the experienced, the seen, the heard, the smelt, the tasted. How is this different from anything else that I see or hear? And I don't say I am that thing, I see it, that doesn't make me a glass. I see the table, doesn't make me a table, it's ridiculous. Why does it suddenly change when it comes to this object? Which is also a thing, it's a biological machine of enormous complexity, but why do I think I am this?

• 40:40Speaker 00

  Then another argument, even more subtle argument would be, notice, you are conscious and you're conscious of the body.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  What Vedanta is trying to do here is argue, we all accept that we are conscious, nobody denies it, we are conscious. But we think we are a body with consciousness, or we are a bundle of body, mind, consciousness and all of that. But Vedanta is saying, no, you are consciousness with a body. In fact, more precisely, you're conscious, we are conscious of a body.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  If we ask the question, you and the body, on which side would you put consciousness? You and that object, on which side would you put consciousness? What does it feel like? Does it feel like consciousness is there and I'm here? No, it means like, I'm here, I am conscious of that thing. I have no feeling of whether that thing is conscious. In fact, the only place where we find consciousness is in ourselves. Immediately I must clarify, people will say, well, you're surrounded by people. Andre is conscious, but I am not conscious of Andre's consciousness. I'm conscious of Andre's body, language, behavior, you know, the visual evidence, body language, all of that. If I were a telepath, I would look into Andre's mind.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  But at no point, it's just technically impossible. It's impossible in principle to make consciousness an object. That's very interesting. Everything else can be objectified. So you find consciousness is always on the side of the self. And the body is an object, consciousness is not on the side of the body. This thing is an object and I am aware of it. So that which I'm aware of, an IZ awareness, these two must be distinct. Another argument could be, the body is a stream of changes. There's matter continuously changing here, I'm eating and the body is perspiring or evacuating, eliminating waste. Matter is continuously flowing through this machine.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  And I have the intuition of being the same person. The baby's body and the child and the young person and the middle-aged person, so different. I've changed so much. But a common sense tells me, memory tells me, law tells me, you are the same person. That baby and the child, the young person and this middle-aged person, you are the same person. Then the same person and the ever-changing body. The never-changing person, self, the ever-changing body. How can never-changing and ever-changing be the same thing? They can't be the same thing, literally not the same thing. And like this, so Vedanta will do is, point to something in our experience. Subject, object, seer and the scene.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Conscious, not conscious, changing, not changing. And begin to convince us, I, whatever I am, am not literally the body. I, the unchanging, cannot be the ever-changing body. I, the consciousness, cannot be the object which is the body. I, the seer, cannot be the seen or heard or smelled or tasted which is the body. So psychologically, intellectually at least, a gap opens up between myself and the body. And then I'm trained, take your time, settle down and regard, see the body as an object. Feel it as changing, as not literally me, not literally I.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  And then our attention is drawn further inwards to the breath, which is part of the prana, the forces which keep this body alive. And the same arguments apply to it. Changing, unchanging. In-breath, out-breath, short breath, long breath. The prana, which is healthy, or sick, or hungry, or fulfilled, satiated. So it changes, like the tides in the ocean, the prana flows in and out of the body. But I notice, if you look at it from the perspective of the self, I am the same self which breathes in, which experienced breathing in, and I am the same self which breathed out. And you say, what's the point? The in-breath and the out-breath are not the same. They're two different breaths.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  But I am the same self which experienced both. So the self is unchanging, the breath is changing. The self is the observer, the breath is the observed. And that's the basis of all mindfulness meditation, that you observe the breath. What Vedanta takes away from that is consciousness is the observer, is the experiencer, is the subject. The breath is the object, the experienced. Consciousness is on your side. The breath doesn't feel conscious. I feel conscious. I am conscious of the breath. I am aware of the breath. The breath is not aware of itself. The breath is not aware of anything else. The breath is not aware of me. I am aware of myself. I am aware of the breath, and I am aware of lots of other things also.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  So awareness or consciousness is on my side. In this way, we argue the same arguments will hold for the breath. And then Vedanta interiorizes it further. You know, we have gone from the body to something subtler. Interior means not physically inside the body, because if you go physically inside the body, you'll just find more body. But in our own experience of ourselves, breath, interiorize further, make it more subtle. What do we find? The mind. Immediately when we look inside, we find the mind. Thoughts, feelings, pleasant, unpleasant, happy, sad, miserable, depressed, energetic, whatever it is. Our feelings, our emotional states, our vital states, perceptual states. That's the mind.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  Memories, desires, and impulses arising and floating away. So that also, same arguments will apply. Vedanta will point out, does it change? And we say, oh, boy, does it change, all the time. And yet, I am the same one. The one who experienced depression, now I experience joy. The one who experienced restlessness, now I experience peace. I am the same one.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Restlessness and peace are just not the same. They are diametrically opposite. So the mind changed dramatically from restlessness to peace, from depression to joy. But I am the same one. Then I can't literally be the mind, changing and unchanging. Subject and object, even the mind. See, here it becomes interesting. Until now, we regarded the mind as the subject. I am the mind and I am the subject of this world. I'm basically what I call a person. But now even the mind becomes an object because we can examine our own mind. We can objectify our own thoughts and feelings. It just requires us to introspect a little bit. We notice these feelings appear and disappear. Thoughts and memories appear and disappear.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  So the mind is also object and I am the subject. And most dramatic of all, I am conscious of the mind. The mind by itself is not conscious. It's not something that I'm stipulating. It's very important to come to realize this. It's extremely important for Advaita Vedanta to realize the difference between mind and consciousness.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  I am aware of the thought. If I just think a thought. It's very easy to do this experiment. Let's just think A, B, C, D. I'm thinking A, B, C, D. Now I notice I am aware of A, B, C, D.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  A, B, C, D is not aware of me. I'm aware of myself. A, B, C, D is not aware of itself. A, B, C, D is not aware of the next thought, 1, 2, 3, 4. I am aware of both these thoughts. So consciousness is on my side, not on the side of the mind. Even the mind is by itself non-conscious. When I say A, B, C, D, it's just like mental talk.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  So I am conscious of the mind. Consciousness and mind are not literally the same thing. Just a little segue, a little footnote here. This whole issue of AI now, I think it just goes to prove this point.

• 48:34Speaker 02

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• 49:04Speaker 04

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• 49:34Speaker 00

  People are scared of AI because AI seems to be doing more or less the stuff which we thought only we could do. Be creative, write stories, make, compose poems or songs, make a movie. AI is doing all of that. We thought, you know, the robots will come and take over the hard work, the laundry and the cleaning. Now it's we have to do, still have to do the laundry and the dishwashing and the cleaning, but the machines are taking over the higher order human functions, creativity, decision making. So where are we? Vedant has the answer. Vedant says it's no surprise that these machines are able to do that because you are not even the mind. As the body is a biological machine, the mind is a psychological machinery. It's machinery.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  It's extremely subtle and powerful, still machinery. And it's no wonder that you have come up with another kind of machinery, a silicon-based machinery, which can duplicate the activity of the mind. But notice, guess what? There's one thing that these AIs are unable to do. They are not conscious.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  Ask any of the experts in Silicon Valley. Is your AI conscious? They will say, even some of the most optimistic ones would say, rather defiantly, why not? But do you really believe they are already conscious or they could be conscious? And they would say, no, most people would say, they're not conscious in that sense. They don't have feelings. They are machines, extremely clever machines, and they are intelligent. There's nobody who doubts they're intelligent. There's very few who claim that they're conscious. That means you can be intelligent without being conscious. Going to prove what Vedant is trying to show you, that the mind and consciousness are different. And it could go further. Suppose you dismiss the perception of the world, dismiss perception of the body,

• 51:21Speaker 00

  dismiss perception of the mind, just utter stillness and silence, something like deep sleep, if you can simulate it. There also, that silence, that absence of everything, that too is being revealed to consciousness. That's also an experience. The silence of deep sleep, or coma, or general anesthesia, is not an absence of experience. It's an experience of absence. Whenever you have experience, consciousness must be there. So there is a very, you can debate about this, because this seems very radical, that there's consciousness even in deep sleep, even in general anesthesia, even consciousness doesn't go away.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  In fact, in principle, it's impossible to imagine the absence of consciousness. If you could visualize the absence of consciousness, there is consciousness. But that's what's experiencing the absence of consciousness. So now you do this and dissolve this sense of self in the body-mind. So what have we achieved so far? We deconstructed ourselves. I'm sure I know what I am. I have this intuitive feeling, I know what I am. That's the first thing I know. But now, whatever candidate I put forward to the question, "Show yourself." Body. Now I have to admit, I'm not literally the body. I'm not literally bones or flesh or blood. The breath, prana, I'm not literally prana.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  The mind, thoughts, my own story, my memory, my narrative about myself. I'm not literally that either. Those are also objects. The intellectual understanding of who I am, that also is a part of the intellect. It's part of the mind. To dismiss everything, that also is an object. So whatever I put forth as I know myself, and yet I can't point to myself. Whatever I point to, I am forced to admit, no, not quite, I'm not quite that. So what we have achieved now is a deconstruction of our sense of self. If I stopped here, I would be a good Buddhist. That's where the Buddhists stop. You see, this is enough.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  The no-self. But we're still left with Descartes and his intuition that I still do exist. I can't deny my own existence. So Vedanta asks this point. Now that you, on one side, you are sure that you do exist, and yet you can't point whatever you pointed to as yourself. Now you yourself admit that I can't be that. So we are left with the question, this absolutely sure sense of existence, indubitable sense of your own existence. But now I can't point to what am I? Then what is this absolutely sure existence? What's it mean? As long as I'm the body, I can point to what I am. This is what I am. As long as I'm a mind, I can point to myself. I am this bundle of body and mind.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  At least I can know what I am, this person. But if I'm not the body, not the mind, and yet I do exist, what am I? And there Vedanta says, what is the one thing that you cannot dismiss? Consciousness? Existence? I can't dismiss existence and I can't dismiss that I'm conscious. Not conscious in the sense that I'm thinking. Even if I drop all thinking, here is where we leave Descartes behind. Even if I drop all thinking, I'm still aware of not thinking. I asked a philosophy professor that I think therefore I am. Every time Descartes falls asleep, he stops thinking. So does he not exist? Does he pop into existence every time he wakes up?

• 55:00Speaker 00

  In fact, there are gaps between thoughts even when we are awake. So does he pop in and out of existence? There's a school of Buddhism, the mind-only school, which actually says this, that our existence is actually a series of flashes of consciousness. But Vedanta says even the gap between the flashes is also illumined by consciousness. So consciousness is also existence, existence is consciousness, phenomenologically speaking. There we have the bare nature of the self. But that consciousness is not an object, it can never be an object. Everything is an object to it. It can never be denied, and yet it's not an object. It's something utterly different. For the first time, we're confronted with something utterly different from anything that we have ever known.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  All that we have known were objects, the objects to consciousness. In fact, even the so-called subject, even the so-called self, was an object to consciousness. Now we are left with the pure subject. This is what it means by pure consciousness. It doesn't mean a consciousness which is very clean or, you know, pure in a moral sense. It's just pure because it is bare consciousness or bare awareness. This is who we are at the ground level.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is only the beginning of Vedanta, Advaita Vedanta. This is where a school like Sankhya, a very ancient school, it stops here. It says that, so we have two ultimate kinds of reality, consciousness and objects. We are consciousness and the universe is objects. This collection of objects which called the universe, they give it a name, nature, prakriti. So they have a totally dualistic system, purush and prakriti, consciousness and object. And it's intuitive kind of, because that's how we experience the world, subject and object. It just goes, pushes it to its limit and says, everything objective includes your body, includes your mind, your thoughts. It's not yours, they all belong to this object, they all belong to nature.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  And you are bare awareness itself, the utterly non-objective, pure-subject awareness.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  But Vedanta goes further. It says that, what is the relationship between subject and object? The next question it asks is that, alright, I am awareness. Here is this objective universe. It contains everything I knew so far, entire universe, but also what I thought I was. The body is part of this universe. Physics says the body is part of the universe. And we go beyond physics. We go to Vedanta saying, even my thoughts, my mind, the personality I consider myself to be, that's also part of the universe, that's also part of the, of objective nature.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  Then what's the relationship between me, the consciousness, and all these objects? What's the relationship between purusha and prakriti? Sankhya says they are different, they interact. And the problem there would be, if we go by first principles, by argument, is how would two utterly different things interact? Two things which are, as Shankara Charia says, like light and darkness. They can't interact, and yet they seem to interact. Why can't they interact? Where would they touch? The point at which they interact, would that be consciousness or object? Everything is either object or consciousness, and they're interacting. You use the light metaphor.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  In Vedanta, we often use the light metaphor, but you know, it has its limitation too, because light is also a material light, and this is also a material table or a glass. And it's reasonable that material light can interact with these material objects. But if consciousness is not, not a material light, then how can it interact with a material universe, which is utterly different from it? And so Advaita Vedanta comes to this conclusion that they are not utterly different. They are in fact one and the same thing. And here it might be confusing. I said, didn't you expend so much energy trying to separate the two? Yes, we did. But notice the fine print.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  We said that you, pure consciousness, you are distinct from everything that you experience. The entire universe, including your body, what seemed to be most intimate to you in your personality, you're distinct from all of that. You are this impersonal consciousness. And we hold on to that. But now what we are saying is, we never said, you are distinct from all of this. But what about all of this? Is all of this universe distinct from you? Vedanta says, no. What does it mean? In our dreams, the dreamer experiences a dream world and dream people and actions. In fact, a dream body also. We are ourselves there in our own dreams, like an avatar in a virtual reality. So we are there.

• 59:59Speaker 00

  But when I wake up, the whole thing disappears. I, the dreamer, I am distinct from whatever I dream about, the contents of my dream. Because I can exist, I exist before the dream. I exist during the dream. I exist after the dream. But the contents of the dream, they don't exist apart from me. They are all projections of the dreamer's mind. Similarly, what Advaita Vedanta is saying, the final conclusion it comes to is, yes, you are this impersonal consciousness, pure consciousness, bare consciousness, the ultimate subject. It is true. But whatever you experience, this entire universe, physical and mental, all of this is also you.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  You are appearing to yourself as your own object. So, just like a dreamer experiences himself as everything in the dream, you are distinct from the entire universe. But the universe is not distinct from you. This is the meaning of non-duality. There is no second reality apart from you, the bare consciousness, the pure consciousness.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  This is what's called Maya. That pure consciousness can appear to itself as a physical, vast physical universe, as time, as space, as objects in time and space, as bodies, as personalities, as lifetimes, birth and death, all of that. And yet, it continues to be nothing other than pure consciousness. So this is the meaning that Brahman is all. This is the meaning of "you are that." Tathva masya. This is the meaning of nonduality. Nonduality in what sense? Nonduality of the universe with consciousness. It's like, if you look out at the Pacific Ocean, you have thousands and thousands of waves, with the nonduality of all the waves with regard to water. If you, if we count water, then there's only one thing in the, in the Pacific Ocean.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  You can't say there's water and a thousand waves, because then you're double counting. The waves are also water. So the waves are nondual with respect to, even though there are a thousand or 10,000 in number, and always changing, they are nondual with respect to the waves, with the water. If you see the water, there's only one thing there, that's water. The 10,000 waves are also that same water. They may be continuously changing, but what does not change is that they are water. They may be big and small. They may be tsunami waves or little bubbles, but what does not change is that they are water. And of course, this water-wave analogy has its limitations. But here, consciousness itself is appearing as its own object and experiencing itself.

• 1:02:31Speaker 00

  This makes you one with the universe. That's why it's nondual. Nothing in the universe is separate from you. This makes you the ground of this entire universe. I mean, I like the Buddhist language, that, that primordial ground of being. If you do not know it, it appears as samsara. If you know it, it appears as nirvana. This thing itself, it appears as samsara as long as we do not know who or what we are. And when we know, realize who or what we are, this itself will appear as nirvana, as freedom. So this is the basic, you know, the theory of Advaita Vedanta, the philosophy and teaching of Advaita Vedanta.

• 1:03:15André Duqum?

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• 1:04:27André Duqum?

  So this distinction of falsity, that the world and its many different appearances in essence are, is non dual. It is not distinct actually in the way that we were describing as subject and object, but that water is the one pervasive thing that everything is made up of, like the many different waves in the ocean. Now, can you help us kind of close this gap to be able to understand and experience for ourselves? And maybe you have a guide to practice, maybe it's just more through the reasoning, how, because for many, I think that's the big jump is to say that, okay, I can see that I am from

• 1:05:09André Duqum?

  a fundamental place, my conscious awareness is observing my body, my breath, my sensations, even my thought and subtle fluctuations of my mind, even absence itself.

• 1:05:22André Duqum?

  And yet, to make the claim that, like, ontologically speaking, that the universe is not separate from that field, how would you walk us to that understanding?

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that's a big jump. The first part of it is not all that difficult to come to, that I am awareness. The first part of it is going from, I admit I am aware, who doesn't? We're all aware, we're all conscious. So I think of myself as a body with consciousness, and from going from there to consciousness with a body. I think of myself as this bundle of body-mind-consciousness, going from there to consciousness with a mind and a body. That's the first step. And Vedanta says it's already a fact. Vedanta is trying to get us to see that. It's not trying to get us to change anything at all, except our perspective of it.

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  It's getting us to flip that. And there's actually a moment of an actual breakthrough, where it suddenly falls into place, "Oh, I see." But then there's the further inquiry into this universe of experience. Are there, there seem to be things out there. Vedanta says it's only because we are body-based. If I'm this body, clearly all the other bodies and all the living and non-living things are outside me. It's quite clear. If I'm mind, then my mind refers to objects which might be outside the mind, or at least even the thoughts, they come and go. But as consciousness in which all of this appears, is all of this ontologically separate from consciousness or not?

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  Is it a separate, independently existing reality? Vedanta would claim not. That's the doctrine of the false city of the world. It's like saying, "There are 10,000 things, ever-changing things in this ocean called waves, as long as I don't know what water is." And then, somebody would be right in pointing out, "What you are thinking of is not real." What you're thinking of, the reality there is water. You're thinking there are things called waves independently existing out there without an appreciation of what water is. The moment you understand what water is, then the waves are also explained what they are in reality.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  So that's the doctrine of the falsity of the world, what the Mahayana Buddhists would call the emptiness of existence. In itself, they are not independent separately existing entities. Before we go into the practice, we take a little philosophical step back and say, what alternatives could there be to this? Take the most common alternative, materialism. Materialism is also a kind of monism, just says that the one reality of the universe, the one non-dual reality of the universe, the materialist can also say, I'm a non-Dualism, but the non-dual reality which I'm talking about is matter. And everything else is nothing but matter.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  Whereas the Advaita says, the non-dual reality is consciousness. Even matter is nothing but consciousness. So what is this relationship between matter and consciousness? Today, this is the hot subject, it's called the hard problem of consciousness. Going back to the question about AI and consciousness, notice that it should have been easy to replicate consciousness. Why? Let me tell you why. AI is doing some really complex stuff. Creativity is difficult. AI is doing it. Decision-making is difficult, AI is doing it. Driving a Google car, a Baybo taxi is difficult, AI is doing it. These are very complex tasks.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  It requires billions of dollars and thousands of hours of training to get the AI to do that. Such difficult, complex, high-order tasks, which human beings, no other animal even is capable of doing it, but AI can do it. Whereas consciousness is very simple. It does only one and one thing only. All that consciousness does is give you the feeling of it feels like something. It gives us experience. The complexity of experience is entirely the complexity of the objects being experienced. It is not the complexity of the experiencing consciousness. The complexity of experiencing consciousness is simple. It's just bare consciousness, like bare light. There's no complexity there.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  Whereas what we find as a very complex experience of life, entire complexity is the object of universe. So this very simple consciousness, why is it so difficult to replicate? If it was nothing more than the mind or the body, should have been easy to replicate. Or take a look at the hard problem of consciousness. If the brain is just another organ of the body, which it is, the kidneys are an organ, the lung is an organ, the brain. So why should it be so difficult to, you know, pin down what it does exactly? If we assume that it produces consciousness, should have been pretty simple to pin it down.

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  These processes are the ones which are producing consciousness and here we demonstrate it. But we run up against that hard problem of consciousness, the wall. That objective processes, you can break down complex objective processes into simple objective processes. The last thing that you can observe in the brain, the subtlest thing with our FMRI machines and all, are minute electrical activity, neurochemical activity, electrical activity in the brains. But they're just neurochemicals and electrical activity. It's not music, it's not a glorious sunset, it's not the feeling of pain or sorrow. There is no feels like about that electrical activity. Where does that come from?

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  You just have to say somehow. No, nobody knows that. Therefore, this movement, now we're back to ontology again. This movement to reduce consciousness to matter, consciousness to brain, is running up against huge obstacles. We have, we have no way, we don't even understand it. That's a very interesting thing. You get attraction on a problem when you have one or two explanations of it, contending theories. Tika, guess how many contending explanations of consciousness there are? Robert Kuhn in his Closer to Truth podcast, he talks about a landscape of 325 theories, distinguishable theories.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  325 competing explanations of what consciousness is. The latest issue of Scientific American has an article which talks about 29 major theories of consciousness. And they are very different from each other. And what does it mean? It just means we don't know. In science, when you come narrow down on a particular theory and the peer-reviewed process says, okay, we agree. This is the explanation of this phenomenon. That's when science says, we know. Now it can become a published paper or part of your textbooks. That's called knowledge in science, when you have one theory. You can revise it later. But if you have 29 competing theories, or worse, 325 competing theories,

• 1:12:50Speaker 00

  it just means we have utterly no idea of what's going on. We are grasping at various possibilities. Therefore, the movement to reduce consciousness to matter, brain, neurological processes, or a broader attempt to reduce the subject to the object. There was a movement, for example, in 1950s and 60s, the Common Language Philosophy in Oxford University. So Gilbert Riles, this, the concept of mind.

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  You can reduce consciousness or mind to a way of talking. There's no such thing, it's just an illusion created by the way we talk about it. None of that works. The question still remains. On the other hand, if we entertain the possibility that matter can be reduced to consciousness, the first immediate thing we see is that tallies with our experience. If that's your ontology, that consciousness is primary, notice that ontology and epistemology agree happily. Epistemically, knowledge and experience-wise, consciousness is prior. Nobody denies that, nobody. Even the materialist does not deny that. Consciousness has to be prior. It's consciousness which experiences.

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  So everybody agrees, epistemically, consciousness, epistemologically, it's first. Ontologically, what is primary or prior? Materialist says matter is prior. Our experience says that it is to consciousness that matter appears. The philosopher Gallen Strossen says that, you know, he wrote a tongue-in-cheek article in New York Times, "The Hard Problem of Matter." He says, "There is no hard problem of consciousness. We are conscious, that's the first fact. It's before every fact." And then matter appears to us in consciousness. So the question is, what is matter? Not what is consciousness? And when we investigate matter, we find it is disappearing before our very eyes, you know, into subatomic particles, into quarks. Now they're talking about superstrings and whatnot.

• 1:14:51Speaker 00

  It's becoming more and more mysterious. In this context, I remember the physicist cosmologist Penrose. I heard a quote about, he says, "I'm uncomfortable being called a materialist because, you see, I do not understand what matter is." It's becoming more mysterious. And curiously enough, somebody pointed out that in the last twenty years in physics conferences, there's a curious new entrant, consciousness, which is the last thing you would expect. You'd think consciousness is a biological thing, product of the brain. Why is it back into the fundamental nature of the universe again?

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  This points to the Advaitic thing that maybe the two are not different. On one side, time, space, matter, energy. On the other side, consciousness. If you can't reduce consciousness to matter, then it stands to reason, how about treating consciousness as something fundamental? Leave them apart, consciousness and matter, but then you have the interaction problem of Sangha. So if you do the other way around, in principle, consciousness is something that is that which is experienced in... Matter is that which is experienced in consciousness. Notice it preserves all our scientific findings and it solves the hard problem of consciousness also in the sense that consciousness becomes fundamental. What does consciousness do?

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  It gives you experience. It feels like something to experience. If it... And then the implications of it. If consciousness cannot be reduced to brain, in that case, it opens up the possibility that when the brain dies, consciousness need not die. If it's not being produced by the brain, if the brain is something like the door. Everybody who is here has walked through the door. But we don't say that door is amazing. How did it produce all these amazing human beings? No. You can learn something about the stuff in this room by looking at the door. Certain dimensions and limitations don't... So you can learn something a lot about mind and consciousness by studying the brain, as we are. But it doesn't explain consciousness, doesn't even explain mind.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  So here is the ontological justification.

• 1:17:11Speaker 00

  You can, Indian philosophy, by the way, these are not final answers. Because Indian philosophy, thousands of years deliberated upon this and came up with every possible alternative which is there in the world today. All those three hundred twenty-five theories were also prefigured in many of the Indian thinkers centuries or millennia ago. There are materialists, there are idealists, there are subjective idealists, there are absolutists, there are positions which have still not got any corresponding modern equivalent. But I find Advaitic answer very satisfying. Philosophy, reason, but also your personal preference.

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  It locates the ultimate reality in yourself. It locates the ground of all knowledge in yourself. And it also locates all value in yourself. Sat, chit, ananda. If you look at philosophy, there is a study of reality, ontology. There is, you know, there is a study of knowledge, epistemology. And there is also something called axiology, where you club together all questions of value, of beauty, of value, of goodness, of morality. And look at what Vedanta does. It says that there is, the ground of all ontology is this being or existence, sat. What makes all knowledge possible is chit or consciousness. What makes all value possible is this anand or bliss.

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  And then it goes further and says these three are not separate. They are in fact the same entity. That which is ontologically primary is also epistemologically primary, is also axiologically primary. And then it makes the most stunning claim of all, it is you. It is the real nature of the self. It's not that the self is part of that ultimate reality. No, the self is that ultimate reality, and that ultimate reality is the self.

• 1:19:06Speaker 00

  I would like to start with a really profound story, a well-known story of the tenth man. So this old Indian story of how ten people, where friends were on a journey and they crossed a river. And then they had a doubt whether everybody's crossed or did somebody drown, and let's count. So one person starts counting and he counts, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. That can't be right. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And he says, oh, the tenth person's drowned. He's not here, he must have drowned. And somebody says, no, you're not doing it right. And that guy counts. Everyone who counts finds only nine. And then they sit down and start wailing and weeping. Oh, our poor friend, he drowned.

• 1:19:49Speaker 00

  And a wise passerby comes by and he says, why are you crying, my friends? Well, we were ten and our poor friend drowned. Now we are. How do you know that person's drowned? Well, we counted. There are only nine of us left now. And so clearly, the tenth man is not here. He must have drowned. We just crossed the river. And this guy, this person must have counted them and found they were ten and he understood what's going on. Then he says, the tenth person is there. Don't worry, don't stop crying. Really? Is there? Will you show us? Yes, I'll show him to you. It's perfectly all right. How? And he says, you count. We've already counted. There's humor be, count again.

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  So one of them got up and started counting. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I told you, nine. And this passerby catches hold of the counter's hand and turns it around and says, ten, you are the tenth. In Sanskrit, dashamastuamasya, thou art the tenth. And this man goes, oh, I see, I'm the tenth. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Ten, wow. Others say, let me try, let me try. And they try and everybody finds the tenth one and they're very happy. Now Advaita Vedanta uses this story. In fact, in more than one text, it's been used. In one text specially called the Panchadashi. So it illustrates the seven stages of the spiritual journey in the Advaita path.

• 1:21:19Speaker 00

  So there is the first, the ignorance about the existence of the tenth person. Then the error that the tenth person is drowned. So like samsara, we do not know who we are or what we are. Then the error comes, sorrow, struggle, suffering, life and death, samsara. That's the second stage. They're like they are weeping for the tenth person. And the third stage is the wise person comes along and tells them the tenth person is there. That they still don't know what the problem, they don't know what the solution is. Where is the tenth person? But they believe the wise person. They take it that it's true. This is called indirect knowledge in Vedanta.

• 1:22:03Speaker 00

  When we read about Vedanta and we are told about Brahman, existence, consciousness, bliss and all the stuff, we begin to form a general idea of what is, which way we are going. So such a thing is there and somehow I am that and therefore everything is fine. So this is indirect knowledge. It still is not. Then, then comes the, the direct realization. The, the stage where thou art the tenth. And you suddenly realize, ahum brahmahasmi, I am Brahman. My ignorance is removed, next stage.

• 1:22:46Speaker 00

  And then the sixth and seventh last stages is that, you know, my sorrow goes away, the result of it, and bliss is found. So the stages of this story, when you realize, oh, the tenth person is there. I am the tenth person. Tenth person is there and I am the tenth, there's a world of difference between the two. There is Brahman, there is an ontological ground of being, an ultimate reality. Great. But what about me? I am that reality. If that becomes clear, suddenly it flashes, it's, it makes all the difference. And then there's a further stage of the sixth and seventh stages of progressively in our lives, we see the disappearance of sorrow and the perversion of bliss. All right. So this is the story.

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  And then we go into the practice. So there are multiple modes of inquiry in Advaita Vedanta. We shall sample one of them.

• 1:23:41Speaker 00

  So when we are ready, we can sit comfortably. Vedanta, by the way, can be done in meditation posture with eyes closed or with eyes open. You are Brahman regardless of whether you are in meditation or you're working or playing or relaxing, all the time you're exactly the same reality and it's equally available everywhere. Initially, it's easier if we are quiet. So we sit still and keeping the back straight, closing the eyes when we are ready, breathing in and breathing out, relaxed.

• 1:24:21Speaker 00

  Let us bring our attention to the body. Opening the eyes, we look down at the body, at our hands, at our lap. Closing the eyes, we feel the sensation of the body.

• 1:24:38Speaker 00

  Internally, the little aches and pains are the sensation of warmth, different parts of the body. This is the body.

• 1:24:49Speaker 00

  And question is, am I literally the body?

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  Then we are invited to notice that the body has changed dramatically. Look at what it is now and what it was when it was a baby, so very different in size and shape and as a child, as a young person, even what it was five years ago, it has changed dramatically and it's changing further.

• 1:25:20Speaker 00

  The body undergoes the so-called six-fold changes. Traditional Vedanta talk about the six-fold changes. Birth and then coming into existence, then childhood, then youth and maturity, then aging and death. Those are the six changes. And yet, I feel I am the same one. I was the one who was in that baby's body. I was the one identified with a child's body. And the same one, at one time claimed to be a young person. Now I claim to be a middle-aged person. I am the same one. The same and the not the same. The changing and the unchanging cannot literally be the same.

• 1:26:05Speaker 00

  Cannot be one and the same thing. So I, the unchanging, and the body, the ever-changing. I can't literally be the body.

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  Relaxed, stay with that idea.

• 1:26:20Speaker 00

  Now, another thing, I see that the body is an object to all my senses. I can see the body. I can touch the body.

• 1:26:33Speaker 00

  I can smell the body, taste the body, even hear the sounds in the body. The body is objectified by all the senses. It is that which is seen, known, and I am the subject, the seer, the knower.

• 1:26:50Speaker 00

  The seer, the knower, is never known, never become. I never become an object to myself. The body is an object to myself. Therefore, I, the seer, and the body, the seen, cannot be the same thing. I, the subject, and the body, the object, cannot literally be the same thing.

• 1:27:11Speaker 00

  Relaxed, take a breath.

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  I am aware of the body. I am conscious.

• 1:27:23Speaker 00

  I notice, I am conscious, I notice myself, I am conscious. And I notice the body also.

• 1:27:31Speaker 00

  And as far as I can notice in my experience, there's nothing to suggest that the body knows me, the body is aware of me, or the body is conscious of itself.

• 1:27:43Speaker 00

  It's an object in my consciousness. I am conscious, the body is not conscious.

• 1:27:51Speaker 00

  And if I stay with that, I see I, the conscious, and the body, the non-conscious, cannot literally be the same thing. Hence, I conclude: even as I am experiencing the body, I feel the body. Now, this body, the changing body, and I, the unchanging, I cannot be the body. The body which is seen, an object of knowledge, and I, the subject, the knower, I cannot be the body. The body which is not aware, I am aware of the body; I, the consciousness, the awareness,

• 1:28:33Speaker 00

  and the body that which is not conscious or aware in itself, cannot be the same thing. I am not the body. Let me take a breath, relax. Gently draw our attention to something more subtle in our experience of ourselves, phenomenologically: the breath itself. Breathe in and out. Notice how it is ever-changing: in-breath, out-breath, short breath, long breath, shallow breaths, deep breaths.

• 1:29:13Speaker 00

  And I am the same one who experienced the in-breath, out-breath, long breath, short breath, etc. I do not change with the varieties of breath. I, the unchanging, the breath, the ever-changing, ever-flowing. And I know the breath. I am the knower, the seer. I am mindful of the breath in mindfulness meditation. The knower and the known cannot be the same, so I, the knower of this knowledge, the subject,

• 1:29:56Speaker 00

  and the breath, the object of this knowledge of the breath, are not the same thing.

• 1:30:04Speaker 00

  Third, I am clearly conscious, and I'm conscious of the breath. I'm also conscious of myself, my own existence, and I'm conscious of other things. But as far as I can experience, the breath is not conscious of itself, nor is it conscious of me, nor is it conscious of anything else, including the next breath. Therefore, I, the conscious, and the breath, the non-conscious, cannot literally be the same thing.

• 1:30:34Speaker 00

  Relaxed.

• 1:30:38Speaker 00

  I look inwards, further, not body, not breath, subtler, inwards. Thoughts are there, memories are there, sensations are there, impulses and desires are there, likes and dislikes come and go. This is the mind.

• 1:31:01Speaker 00

  And similarly, same arguments apply. I notice, let us notice, the ever-changing nature of the mind. That is something we can notice immediately. How much the mind changes in the course of a single day.

• 1:31:18Speaker 00

  We look further, and we notice, the mind can be known. I can introspect and know my own thoughts, my own desires, can register them, my perceptions, my feelings, my memories.

• 1:31:36Speaker 00

  The mind, the known, and I, whatever I am, the knower of the mind, I cannot literally be the same thing.

• 1:31:49Speaker 00

  I, the knower, the mind is the known.

• 1:31:54Speaker 00

  Moving on, a very subtle observation. I am clearly aware. And the mind, most startlingly, the mind is not aware by itself. Think a thought, A, B, C, D, or 1, 2, 3, 4. Just think it right now. Notice the A, B, C, D is something that I am aware of. A, B, C, D is not aware of me. I am aware of myself. A, B, C, D is not aware of itself. A, B, C, D is not aware of the next thought or the preceding one. I am aware of all the thoughts. If I choose to direct my attention, I will objectify the thoughts.

• 1:32:36Speaker 00

  So I, the unchanging, I, the knower, I, the consciousness, I cannot literally be the thoughts of the mind, the feelings in the mind, which are ever-changing, which are known, which are not conscious.

• 1:32:56Speaker 00

  Breathing normally, relaxed.

• 1:33:01Speaker 00

  Let us bring our attention to the higher mind, the intellect, knowledge, the very instrument which is doing all this analysis right now. Whatever we are doing now is being done by the intellect. That which knows, that which has a firm sense of ego, I am so and so, which is clear to itself. Even that changes. Whenever I learn something new, intellect has changed. And I was the one who did not know. Now I know. I am the same one. I, the same, the changing intellect cannot be the same, cannot be identical. I know the intellect. I am aware of, when I don't know something, I can see that I don't understand.

• 1:33:46Speaker 00

  When I understood it, I could see that I did understand it. And therefore, I am the knower of the intellect, the various stages of the intellect, and intellect is the known. And finally, I am conscious of the intellect. The intellect, just like artificial intelligence, is not conscious of me. It's not conscious in itself, nor is it conscious of me.

• 1:34:12Speaker 00

  So I, the unchanging, the intellect, ever-changing; I, the known, intellect, the known; I, the consciousness, intellect, non-conscious; I cannot be the intellect also.

• 1:34:28Speaker 00

  Relaxed, breathing normally.

• 1:34:34Speaker 00

  Let us look back, the physical body, let us feel the physical body, which I am not. It's there, but I am not it. And breathe in and out. This breath, here it is, this breath, but I am not it.

• 1:34:53Speaker 00

  And the mind, thoughts, memories, it's there, subtle, I can look at it, but I am not it. And the intellect, which is doing this kind of an analysis, that also I am not, because I'm aware of it. It is changing.

• 1:35:12Speaker 00

  All of this, I drop. The physical, the vital, the mental, the intellect, I drop. They disappear into nothing, they simulate a complete blank.

• 1:35:26Speaker 00

  What is it like to be in deep sleep?

• 1:35:30Speaker 00

  What is it like to be in general anesthesia?

• 1:35:37Speaker 00

  That utter absence, even the absence of an I, the experienced self, that also goes. There's nothing there to experience. That nothingness itself is the object of experience.

• 1:35:53Speaker 00

  Consciousness is still there, but not obvious, because there's nothing to experience.

• 1:36:05Speaker 00

  So I am not that blankness, that nothingness also, that darkness of deep sleep or general anesthesia. That too comes and goes. That too is known. That too is a non-conscious object or absence of objects.

• 1:36:24Speaker 00

  Relaxed.

• 1:36:31Speaker 00

  Now I bring to mind the tenth man's story. How they counted, the tenth man counted all the other nine and did not count himself.

• 1:36:44Speaker 00

  But why did he not count himself?

• 1:36:47Speaker 00

  It's because all the other nine are objects. All along, he's used to counting objects, noticing objects, dealing with objects, speaking about objects, thinking and feeling about objects.

• 1:37:02Speaker 00

  Never about the true self.

• 1:37:05Speaker 00

  And thus, when he counted the nine,

• 1:37:09Speaker 00

  he couldn't find the tenth. Because there was no object to count as the tenth. Where would he look for the tenth? Exactly where he found the other nine, outside, as objects to be counted.

• 1:37:23Speaker 00

  But the tenth is not an object to be counted. It does not mean that the tenth doesn't exist, it's drowned, no.

• 1:37:30Speaker 00

  He's himself the tenth. And so the turn comes from the ninth, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, then turning towards oneself and noticing oneself as the witness of the nine, as the counter of the nine. That completes the ten. Similarly, let us do it now.

• 1:37:51Speaker 00

  Relaxed.

• 1:37:55Speaker 00

  Breathing normally.

• 1:37:58Speaker 00

  This we will just notice. Here is the body, I notice the body. Feel the body. Here is the breath.

• 1:38:11Speaker 00

  I notice it, I feel it.

• 1:38:14Speaker 00

  Here are thoughts, memories, sensations, that's the mind.

• 1:38:22Speaker 00

  And then there is the intellect, which is doing all this thinking.

• 1:38:26Speaker 00

  Then visualize the absence of all of them, nothing.

• 1:38:31Speaker 00

  Now, quick, to whom or to what are these five? The physical, the vital, the mental, the intellectual, the absence?

• 1:38:41Speaker 00

  What are they appearing to?

• 1:38:45Speaker 00

  Don't try to answer it, be it.

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• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  Breathing normally, relaxed.

• 1:40:16Speaker 00

  As the attention goes to the mind, breath, and finally, the body, and we become aware of where we are sitting. Notice, that light, that bare light, that bare consciousness to which the physical, the mental, the vital, the intellectual, that are appearing and changing and disappearing, that one will still be there when we open our eyes and interact with the world. It wouldn't have changed.

• 1:40:44Speaker 00

  Gently open our eyes. Look around. It is by that light which experience the mind, the intellect, the breath, the body. It's by that light I'm experiencing the world.

• 1:41:00Speaker 00

  That light I am. And now let's use the intellect to appreciate what we have found. If that light is not the body, then the properties of the body belong to the body and not to that light. The aging is aging of the body. The sickness or hunger and thirst is of the prana, not of that light.

• 1:41:24Speaker 00

  That light neither ages, it can't, the body ages.

• 1:41:28Speaker 00

  The light reveals the aged body. That light does not sicken, the prana sickens. That light reveals the health and sickness of the prana. That light cannot be depressed. It notices the depression in the mind, it illumines and reveals the depression in the mind. The arising of depression like a dark cloud in a blue sky and the disappearance of that cloud. The vast blue sky is unaffected. The light that which shines upon the depressed mind, that light in itself is not depressed.

• 1:42:00Speaker 00

  Confusion, incomprehension, understanding, a dull intellect or a sharp intellect, brilliant or just plain dumb, those are attributes of the intellect, not of the light.

• 1:42:13Speaker 00

  So I am the witness, unaffected, of the five layers of the human personality. The physical, the vital, the mental, includes the emotional also, the intellectual, and the absence of all of these, all appear and disappear to that one light which I am. And that one light shining through these bodies and minds is what we truly are.

• 1:42:41Speaker 00

  This is the result of this first discovery in Advaita Vedanta, that we are not body, not mind. Shankaracharya sings, "I am not the intellect, I am not the memory, I am not the ego, I am not the mind. I am bliss, I am consciousness, I am Shiva, I am Shiva." "Manobuddhyahankara chittaninaham." He says, "Chidhananda rupa shivoham, shivoham." This is exactly what it means. It's something available to us all the time, and we can notice it.

• 1:43:16Speaker 00

  All right.

• 1:43:18Speaker 00

  That's one of the kind of inquiries that we do. Notice here, it's a meditation, but not quite a meditation in the yogic sense, not quite a meditation in the mindfulness sense.

• 1:43:26André Duqum?

  Yeah. Thank you for that guided practice. I found it very beautiful. And also to picture however many thousands or hundreds of thousands of people may have joined in on that collectively, and just to feel the energy and the image of all those people sitting touches my heart and the potency of that reminder. To me, this is where the intellectual understanding, by tasting it experientially, becomes an embodied way of being. When you took us from the ten-man story, where you go from the state of ignorance of self

• 1:44:11André Duqum?

  to awareness of ignorance, to awareness of self, to then you could say the end of suffering, the rejoicing and bliss of your true nature, of your true self. To me, it fundamentally, completely changes your life in how you perceive pleasure, pain, what freedom and liberation is, and how possible it is for us all individually. Because right now, we are living in a paradigm that is baked into postmodern culture that says happiness comes by virtue of externally arranging your external circumstances in a certain way, the acquisition of more. And the more money, the more followers.

• 1:44:55André Duqum?

  The more power you have, the happier and you know, the more increase in well-being. And what this experience, coupled with the reasoning, allows us to really see in our life is that we have all of those sensations, all of that experience of freedom and liberation within us irrespective of what's happening externally. And so to me, this is where I would like to ask and inquire with you around this energy of what renunciation truly is, not as a mere turning away to go into the seclusion of forests and a sort of resignation and retirement from the world, which is, I think, conventionally

• 1:45:36André Duqum?

  thought of, but as an inner orientation towards how, I believe Socrates was quoted, going to Athens and saying, "Who knew there were so many things in this world in which I do not need?"

• 1:45:47Speaker 00

  Wow, yes.

• 1:45:48André Duqum?

  And by then, having this experience where we just went through a guided practice and you carry that and it resonates and you build that experience into more of your daily life, it fundamentally changes how you orient towards your work, your relationships. There's not a single area in which it doesn't transform. And so I would love to get your perspective on that quality of renunciation as it changes fundamentally how we relate towards all life.

• 1:46:15Speaker 00

  I'm glad you asked this question about renunciation. Vedanta gives tremendous emphasis on this renunciation. Swami Vivekananda said, "Renunciation is the turning point in all the yogas." What he means by that is spirituality starts with renunciation. This is not stressed enough, not just in California or in America, but even in India. It's not something that we want to hear. First of all, it seems rather dark and bitter. Oh, this is a nice world, I have to give up all this? The answer is that genuine spirituality is not possible without renunciation.

• 1:46:58Speaker 00

  What, consider what is the, the counter, the, the opposite of renunciation. It's going around in this world of objects. If I am consciousness itself, then I'm going around in this world of objects with a begging bowl, with a hat in hand, looking for handouts. Make me happy, make me happy, make me happy. Give me this, behave this way with me, say nice things about me. My fulfillment, my happiness depends on the object. Whereas it does not. My real nature is this ever fulfilled consciousness.

• 1:47:32Speaker 00

  If I'm not the mind, if I'm not even the intellect, if I'm not the memory, if I'm just bare light, as bare light, what am I thinking? Nothing.

• 1:47:45Speaker 00

  What do I need? Nothing. The need comes when the mind starts acting. But if I've shut down the mind and just bare light, illuminating the shut down mind, what do I need? Nothing.

• 1:47:58Speaker 00

  What am I afraid of? Nothing. Fear comes when the mind kicks in.

• 1:48:04Speaker 00

  Um, then what, who, whom am I against? Who's, who are my enemies? Nobody.

• 1:48:12Speaker 00

  The moment I realize I am awareness, I am this light, then I immediately realize everybody is this light. Why? As long as I'm a body, everybody's a body to me. As long as I'm a mind, a person, everybody's a person to me. But the moment I step back from physicality and personhood into that light, then I realize everybody is that light.

• 1:48:34Speaker 00

  And bodies are different, even persons are clearly different. Vedanta gives another dramatic insight. Vedanta is full of these, um, what our senior swami used to call start bombs. Uh, it, an explosion which says, oh, how many consciousnesses are there? I think Shirdi Gurus said, consciousness is that singular which has no plural.

• 1:48:57Speaker 00

  Is it possible that we are all one light? One consciousness? Then we are all one being, literally. Not just the brotherhood or sisterhood of human beings. No, that's just rhetoric. Literally one being, we are just one. And then shining through multiple bodies and minds, we become all these beings, all these sentient creatures. So Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, "One undivided appear as if divided into many." "One undivided light, which I am, not part of it, the whole of it." There's no part and whole there, actually. It's undivided, so indivisible. "I am that as everybody else is." Now, from that perspective, if I forget that and I engage with the world,

• 1:49:42Speaker 00

  is basically I'm going dependent on the world. I'm incomplete, and I need the world to complete me. And it'll never happen. Because I'm operating on a wrong premise. I am fundamentally complete. So to turn away from that, to step back from that, is what's called renunciation. Without that, even spiritual practices will be, again, part of my project of trying to find completion in the world. It'll become part of my repertoire. And, you know, I learn languages, I also learn meditation. I learn philosophies, I also learn Advaita. It's all part of the same project. It won't work. I mean, to some extent, it'll give its results, it's pleasant, it's very nice.

• 1:50:27Speaker 00

  But the enlightenment which I'm seeking, crucial to that is this renunciation. What is the renunciation? That this world, we, for the first time, we realize what is it really to be? I am not dependent on the world. There is nothing really deeply that the world can give me. I can demand a million and one things from the world, and the world will give me everything. Vivekananda says, "Do not desire anything, because you will get it." We think desiring is a, will lead to frustration. No, if you desire something, you will get it in this life or the next, and you will realize it didn't do anything for you. Nothing will do anything for us, because it cannot. It's not meant to. We are already complete.

• 1:51:12Speaker 00

  So to discover the treasure within, to discover that I am complete, I must give up this illusion that I'm ever dependent on the world for stuff.

• 1:51:23Speaker 00

  Initially, we try to rearrange the world to our liking. A little wiser thing is to rearrange my life to, to make myself happy. That's a wiser way of doing things. Even wiser than that is to rearrange my inner life, my thoughts, emotions. Meditation does that, devotion, inner change. That, that's where most of positive psychology stops. Vedanta says, go further. Not changing stuff in the world. You can change stuff in the world, you can't help it. You'll be keep changing stuff in the world, in our own lives, in our minds, all very good. But stepping back from all of them with the query, who am I apart from the world? Who am I other than the body, other than my thoughts?

• 1:52:07Speaker 00

  And when I discovered that, to discover that renunciation is necessary. Now that renunciation, does it mean you have to be a monk? You have to live on top of a mountain in Tapanga? Do you have to do that? Or can you be in a city? Can you be in the midst of life?

• 1:52:26Speaker 00

  I saw that book, Rishikant Maharaj.

• 1:52:30André Duqum?

  Yeah, I am that.

• 1:52:31Speaker 00

  I am that. So one story I like about him is when he became enlightened, he had this enlightenment moment.

• 1:52:38Speaker 00

  He thought, that's it, I'm done with this. He used to live in a very poor area of Mumbai. And he would sell these hand-rolled cigarettes, the cheapest kind.

• 1:52:50Speaker 00

  And it was a difficult life. So he thought, I'm gonna give, I don't need any of this. I'm off to the Himalayas. I'm going to spend the rest of this, this physical existence immersed in bliss. And then he thought, what am I doing? That which I have found, what is there in the Himalayas is equally here. What is here will just be the same in the Himalayas. Why am I making a change externally? And he came back and he lived in that, in those circumstances, very difficult circumstances, for the rest of his life in great bliss and joy. So, this is renunciation.

• 1:53:21Speaker 00

  Often renunciation is put in such a way that you must give up your family, you must be a monk, you must give up sensual pleasures, you must give up all artistic intellectual pursuits, property and all of that. Then only, it seems like a dry and suicidal advice, you know, that you're asking me to give up everything I know. I know you're promising me infinite existence, Brahman, but those are words, those are concepts, but this is physical life. So Vivekananda said it's like a man who was troubled by a mosquito and his friend came and said that, "Look, I'll help you, just sit still." And he gave such a blow, he killed the mosquito, but he killed his friend too.

• 1:54:05Speaker 00

  So renunciation seems to be like that. The advice is you give up everything. Maybe it'll help me, but at the same time, it's destroying everything that I know. That's my life you're talking about. What renunciation really means, Vivekananda says, is to see the divinity in everything. Wherever you are, whomever you are with, that ultimate reality which you're seeking is already here. You are that and all of this is also that reality. To see that is renunciation. One of the Upanishads, Isha Upanishad, there's a very famous first line, which Mahatma Gandhi said that if all of Hinduism were to disappear and just that first line of the Isha Upanishad remained, all of Hinduism would remain. And the Upanishad first line goes,

• 1:54:49Speaker 00

  "All this in this universe which moves and moves not is to be covered with God." Isha vas yam idam sarvam yat kinccha jagatyam jagat. Now, covered with God means what? The commentator Shankar Acharya says, "Covered with God means to uncover God, it's already there." Not by imposing, not by positive talk affirmation, "It's God, it's God," no, not like that. Uncover, God is already there. And how do you uncover? He says, "Discover." How do you discover? Now, it's pretty easy. Easy means you know the path now. Any discovery requires inquiry, inquiry into ourselves.

• 1:55:31Speaker 00

  So this is real renunciation. It can be entirely in the midst of life.

• 1:55:41Speaker 00

  With people, with property and all. Except that, one has to be monk-like inside. Externally monk or not, that depends on one's karma, really, we believe that. Someone asked Ramana Maharshi, a lady, "Do I have to be a monk living in a mountain, like Ramana Maharshi, to be enlightened?" And he said, "No, you can continue to be a housewife and can be in the kitchen and be enlightened." Then she asked, "Then why are you like this?" And he said, "That is my karma, to be here. Your karma is you're a housewife in the kitchen, but equally, both of us can be enlightened." That's the thing, that's the thing. That is renunciation, but it's an internal switch.

• 1:56:25Speaker 00

  It's equally dramatic, but it's internal, to become monk-like internally.

• 1:56:30André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:31Speaker 00

  It means, I affirm firm conviction, what I'm looking for, this world cannot give me. Turning away from the project, this world is going to, I'm going to squeeze out like toothpaste my fulfillment from this world, it will not give me, giving up all hope that it'll give me there, and then turning inverse in our spiritual practice, through meditation, through philosophical inquiry, through devotion, through service, service to the world, not for getting something, rather for giving, instead of getting, giving. And then, realizing the truth within, this is renunciation. Having a project about the world, the world will give me stuff, and then I'll be fulfilled,

• 1:57:15Speaker 00

  that is non-renunciation, that sabotages all the spiritual paths. Then spirituality also will become a part of the project of getting stuff from the world. Even after realizing, even after renunciation, and I am this witness consciousness, already realizing the perfection within, the project of the world can continue. You can and should look after the health of the body, we can and should look after people in our lives. We can and should develop our potential of the body, of the mind, of our creative powers, of the intellect, to the maximum possible. And one day, they will fail, thirty, forty years down the line, body will fail, mind

• 1:57:57Speaker 00

  will weaken, that's also perfectly all right, because I am perfectly all right anyway.

• 1:58:03Speaker 00

  So the project of improving our lives can continue, but without any investment, that is where my life will be fulfilled. No.

• 1:58:15Speaker 00

  Instead of asking life to fulfill me, I will use life to manifest the divinity already existing. I will realize what I am and then live it.

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• 1:59:28André Duqum?

  Yeah, I really love the Taoist maxim, "The master does nothing yet leaves nothing undone."

• 1:59:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:59:35André Duqum?

  And to me, it speaks directly to this, what you're referring to and how the Gita and many different texts have referred to is

• 1:59:44André Duqum?

  you can have possessions but not be possessed by the possessions.

• 1:59:48Speaker 00

  Well put.

• 1:59:48André Duqum?

  You can have things, just the things don't have you.

• 1:59:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:59:53André Duqum?

  And I think that's really important because for many of us, especially that are listening to this podcast right now, likely aren't going to live a monastic life in that sense.

• 2:00:02André Duqum?

  And that if we are going to have a family, build a business, the more involved we are in the world, like you referred to, and I'm glad you gave the reminder of, it will increasingly require us to have this embodiment of this realization, to be able to not be swayed by the whims and the cravings and aversions that life inevitably is going to bring towards us.

• 2:00:25Speaker 00

  There's a story about Emperor Janaka, who was enlightened, and the monk Shukadeva, who's also enlightened, but he was a monk. The emperor was an emperor, he had an empire. And the monk Shukadeva was a monk. He had only a change of loin cloth and nothing else. And he would come and they would discuss philosophy, non-duality. Once they were talking about it and news came that some part of the capital city has caught fire. And the monk ran out like a shot and disappeared. After some time, he came back panting. And the emperor asked him, "What happened, my friend?" He said, "The place which caught fire? I remember, I took a bath in the pond there

• 2:01:10Speaker 00

  and I washed my loin cloth and I put it out there to dry. I was worried it might be consumed by the flames because that's my only change of loin cloth. And I went there to make sure and I said, "It's fine." And then the emperor smiled and said, it's a famous saying in Sanskrit. "If my capital city were to burn down, nothing of mine would be burnt." Not that he played the fiddle while Rome burned like Nero. He did whatever had to be done, the emperor. And yet, with enormous possessions, he was not attached. The point of the story being, I have no possessions at all. The only little thing that I have,

• 2:01:55Speaker 00

  I have tremendously attached to it. I'm quite anxious about it, a loin cloth. So this is not being possessed by the possessions.

• 2:02:04André Duqum?

  It's a beautiful analogy into what also I feel like Jesus was hinting at, or in the New Testament was referring to when they said that the foxes have holes, the birds have nests, the Son of Man has no place to rest his head. We also heard another teacher refer to The bad news being you're falling through the void with no parachute. The good news is there's no ground. Waking up to our true nature in many ways, we stop relying on the external world to fulfill us like we thought it once would, which to some, initially prematurely, in a juvenile sense, makes, it seems like we're throwing away the world or there's this big negation

• 2:02:48André Duqum?

  of the world and that you no longer can be involved in the world. And yet, you're a perfect example of somebody who's, yes, taken up the monastic life, but you're also very much so in the world and you're giving these talks and building these relationships and all of these things. And so, I think that's just an important reminder because it helps bring in to our day-to-day life this possibility and not, oh, one day, some other lifetime, when I go be a monk. But this realization is available to us in every given moment. Now, I'm curious because as somebody who is deeply passionate about my devotion to seeing

• 2:03:29André Duqum?

  life as it is, to be able to see clearly, one cannot but help see the various different ways in which we color perception in life, the vasanas and this personality structure that we are so often perceiving the world through. And as you gave us a glimpse into that meditative experience where you kind of go back and be experienced to witness that's beyond all of these arisings phenomenologically is really potent. But when you think about the individual and how often our psychological makeup and constitution is coloring, shaping, distorting whatever we're perceiving, I'm curious your thoughts

• 2:04:13André Duqum?

  there because it's quite wild to just perceive how often we are self-deceiving.

• 2:04:20Speaker 00

  You're absolutely right. That's the framework of samsara, our cravings and our dislikes, preferences and dislikes. That's what constitutes our worldview. And spirituality is stepping back from that and discovering that one sameness underlying everything. One characteristic of a truly spiritual person is the evenness or sameness. Nothing truly will upset such a person.

• 2:04:49Speaker 00

  Nothing truly can will tempt such a person. We are always driven by temptation or terror.

• 2:04:56André Duqum?

  The stability of mind, equanimity, would you say?

• 2:04:58Speaker 00

  Equanimity will come. Where does this equanimity come? Where does this serenity come? Because they have, this is psychological, equanimity or serenity, which is grounded in the spiritual ontology of this, the ultimate nature of things, which is a thing that you can utterly trust. And because it is you, you can never lose it also. Once we realize it, a great relief comes because you've found the ground of ultimate security. There's one thing we're searching for. We are afraid, so we search for security. We want fulfillment, so we search for pleasure. But the ground of all fulfillment and all security is, is there within us, is us, actually.

• 2:05:43Speaker 00

  All you have to do is discover it and remain and relax into it. Life will continue. Now, do you throw away life? No, you don't. In fact, now you, now you remodel life. It becomes an enlightened project. And let's call it an enlightenment project in one sense. What do you do now? You manifest what you have already found. Instead of continuously trying to fill an unfillable hole within ourselves by grabbing stuff from the world, now I feel, I feel I'm full. Now, life still continues. Here is the body. Here is the mind. Here are people and opportunities all around me.

• 2:06:26Speaker 00

  You radiate what you have found, and that's a beautiful way of living.

• 2:06:31André Duqum?

  There's something really potent about that phrase, "Only what I do not give can ever be lacking." When you look at it from the physics lens of how color works, right? We know that light is comprised of, you know, you could say, seven main colors and that whatever we are perceiving as a color is what the object is actually giving away.

• 2:06:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:06:55André Duqum?

  And that... A black object is actually absorbing all seven colors. A white object is actually giving away all seven. And so in a similar way, I think about the the nature of these these these qualities of being, these joy, love, peace, happiness, equanimity. Just the orientation of how, once we give it, we essentially are it and we have it, in a sense. Not in the way we possess it permanently, but in the sense where, yeah, we we are that. So I'm just curious, your thoughts on that, how when we give, we are in the act of being that thing.

• 2:07:32Speaker 00

  Yes, it's true. Very beautifully put. I never thought of that metaphor of the black body and the white body. White bodies that which is continuously radiating out. That's true. It is the childish, instinctive, almost animalistic, insecure psychology which always seeks to take, to extract, without any thought of giving back anything, physically, emotionally, materially, intellectually, all for me, I, me, myself. For a little child, that might be fine. Children need, they need to take in order to grow. But once we grow out of childhood, even for a certain stage in childhood,

• 2:08:16Speaker 00

  desire to share and socialize with others, that's the giving that must come. Otherwise, one is, has not grown up, has not matured. So this radiating outwards from this limitless source, we find that we are full. Being full, now I interact with others. In between is most people, the the crudest, the child, the insecure one seeks to extract. Most ordinary people have a transactional view of giving. I give you stuff and you give me stuff. I give you love and you give me love.

• 2:08:59Speaker 00

  I give you appreciation, you appreciate me. I like your posts, you like my posts, things like that. This is shopkeeping, buying and selling.

• 2:09:11Speaker 00

  What higher than this is that fullness which comes through genuine inward spiritual reality, it's a reality, it's a fact. And then one can be entirely giving. There's nothing that you want really from anybody. There's no question of taking. There's also no question of giving in return for getting something. Rather, it's your nature, it's your very joy, bliss in variating, like that white body to radiate outwards continuously. It becomes very natural to you. You're not doing an act of philanthropy or being kind or charitable to somebody. No. It can also be an act of worship.

• 2:09:55Speaker 00

  Since you find that light everywhere, you're overwhelmed by it. And as Vivekananda said, let the receiver stand up and receive, let the giver kneel down and offer. You feel like you're offering to that awesome divinity all around you. Yes. So the transformation from satisfying my own likes and hungers and appetites and assuring my own fears and insecurities, that's the one. In between is the transactional and the spiritual perspective is to give because you're full, you really don't need anything from anybody.

• 2:10:32André Duqum?

  Yes. It makes me think about how when we're under the presumption we are an individualistic, conventional, relative self, between subject and object, we don't understand or have the experience of self as other, then we're going to continually record things on a personal basis, right? We're keeping the scoreboard of giving and taking, it's a transactional relationship within all life and... When we come to experience our mind, our body, our thoughts, our emotions, not as us, but as something, as objects in consciousness essentially, it makes me think of this analogy when,

• 2:11:17André Duqum?

  let's say you just bought a brand new Porsche and you go and drive it on a really rocky rugged road and you're terrified because you just got this car and you really want to take care of it. And so it's frightening. And you're being very careful and you're taking care of it in a sense. If you now imagine that car, that Porsche was a rental, you know, there's a certain liberation with being able to, it's, it's, it becomes a joyride all of a sudden.

• 2:11:43Speaker 00

  Not an egreg position.

• 2:11:44André Duqum?

  Right. And there's, and there's something that is very analogous to understanding about these human relationships, our mind-body constitution. And I'm curious how you think that relates to, to love? Because a lot of people are under the presumption of love

• 2:12:03André Duqum?

  really enacting from our preferential standpoint of, of somebody's

• 2:12:11André Duqum?

  orientation towards us and what our values and likes and dislikes are as opposed to recognizing the self as other where true intimacy is born. And so I'm curious what our misguided perception of love typically is? And what love in essence actually is from your perspective?

• 2:12:31Speaker 00

  The Advaita view of love, it's, it's very interesting. There's one of the major Upanishads, the Brihadartha Upanishad. There is a dialogue between husband and wife. The husband is teaching nonduality to the wife who becomes his student now. And he talks about love. He says, "My dear, the husband is loved not for the sake of the husband, but for one's own self, for one's own sake. The wife is loved not for the sake of the wife, but for one's own sake." Children are loved not for the sake of children, but for one's own sake. And so on, he goes on. Wealth, people in the world, living beings, God. Everything is loved for one's own self.

• 2:13:14Speaker 00

  Now, that might sound like a very selfish way of looking at things. But then he says, but this self is the self of all. There is only one true self. So what we are loving in others is this one underlying reality. That is the source of all joy and fulfillment. That's the connection between love and nonduality. The nonduality of the self is manifested as love between everybody. When it manifests as duality in this world, as multiplicity in this world, what happens to that nondual existence, the sat, the pure being? It appears as existing things, which no longer seem nondual. They seem very dualistic.

• 2:13:59Speaker 00

  What happens to that nondual consciousness? It appears as subject and object, as the known and the known, as somebody experiencing a variety of experiences. What happens to that nondual bliss? It appears as love. It can appear as desire, it can appear as love. But because we do not know ourselves as that underlying nondual self, then that love becomes transactional, it becomes limited. Advaita says, if you fall in love with one, you're trapped. If you love all, then that's the manifestation of your nondual self. Because what you are loving is present equally in all beings. It radiates out unconditionally.

• 2:14:44Speaker 00

  Conditional love, there's some ignorance involved, some distortion about who I am and who the other person is. Unconditional love, it's not for, I am already full. I don't need anything, then I can only give in love. I don't demand anything. And this loving itself is a manifestation of the nondual self. So that's what it is. And it can't be done all of a sudden. It might be difficult to swallow all this immediately. But the more one brings this nonduality into love, the more one brings unconditionality into love, you'll see that love will become much better, much healthier, deeper, more fulfilling,

• 2:15:27Speaker 00

  more independent, no longer dependent on the moods and the whims of the other person, or the conditions of the other person.

• 2:15:37André Duqum?

  It makes me wonder, when you first reason your way to the experience of having a nondual experience essentially, you realize the absolute completeness, fulfillment of consciousness.

• 2:15:54André Duqum?

  Why would we go on this game of forgetting, taking on this individual notion of a self, to then go on through all this effort of realizing that in which we fundamentally are? I'm curious if there is any meaning to that outside of a person who's subscribing the meaning? And why this game is unfolding the way it is? If you have some insight into that?

• 2:16:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a question one comes to at some point or the other when you're talking about nonduality. And the answer to that also is very interesting. The practical answer is, if you ask a monk and did this answer they give you, don't try to prove ignorance. Cut down ignorance. They will say, "Oh monk, do not try to establish ignorance. Cut down ignorance." If you ask, "Why is there ignorance? Why don't we know ourselves from the very beginning? Why all this drama?" And that to life after life. They will say, "If you think it's your ignorance of a real nature, then realize your real nature and be free. Don't try to find out why this happened." If you push further, "No, I want to know why this happened." They will say, "There is no why."

• 2:17:05Speaker 00

  Ignorance is not causally linked to reality. The rope appears in ignorance as a snake. Now, if you ask the rope, "Why are we appearing as a snake?" The rope will say, "I didn't. What looks like a snake to you is your problem." The reality is, what I mean is, the reality has no causal link with appearance.

• 2:17:28Speaker 00

  The reality is entirely free of the appearance. The desert, which is dry of water, it appears as a mirage full of water. And if you ask the desert, "How is it possible? Why are you doing this?" The first answer is, "I am that. Nothing has happened. I am still this desert." Now, it looks like that there is some, you know, there is some mechanism because of which the mirage appears there. It looks like this, there's a mechanism. The mechanism is ignorance, and then there's an error, and then the error is followed by suffering, all of that. But if you want to link the ignorance to the underlying reality, want to link all this to Brahman, there's no link. If there were, we would be in serious trouble. Then it would be causally linked.

• 2:18:13Speaker 00

  Then you would say Brahman wants this to happen. No, it doesn't. And luckily, first, we are Brahman regardless of whatever trouble we are going through. That's one. Second, the door is always open. Knowledge is always open. The day we come to it, we can realize it. And third, then we see the meaning in all this. Once you realize you're this non-dual Brahman, then all of this becomes very fulfilling. Because it's like a movie screen. You realize the movies are unreal, the screen is reality. But then if you say that it just has to be a screen, it would be a very boring screen indeed. If it now displays the movie one after another, then you enjoy the whole thing, whether

• 2:18:57Speaker 00

  it's a comedy, or a tragedy, or a science fiction, or a horror show, all of those you can enjoy, and that's the potential of the screen, that it can appear in all these ways. It would be, absolute being would be very boring if it could not be existing things, you know? Existence itself, it sounds nice, but if there are no existing things, it would be a very poverty-sticken existence. Pure consciousness, sounds very nice, but if there were no conscious experiences, it would be a very boring kind of pure consciousness. Pure bliss, but if there were no blissful experiences, then it would be, it wouldn't amount too much. So, the potential of being consciousness bliss is realized in these ways.

• 2:19:40Speaker 00

  If you know yourself as that, if we don't know ourselves as that, we suffer, we struggle through this.

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• 2:20:48André Duqum?

  So do you think then that the suffering is an inevitability and almost a cost of admission for the illusion of separation, which allows us the joy of then realizing our true nature?

• 2:21:02Speaker 00

  Suffering means there's something wrong. And then we investigate it and we find. A doctor investigates the symptoms and goes back to the cause, the root cause. And the root cause here, suffering in samsara, we find the root cause is ignorance of our real nature. By the way, ignorance of our real nature is replaced by knowledge of our real nature. We realize the truth. And then the external world still continues. One can still get sick. One can, they can be suffering at the, you know, so somebody said, pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional. So what enlightenment does is it, it takes, it helps you to transcend that suffering. All that a physical level suffering might go on.

• 2:21:45Speaker 00

  That story about the Buddha, the two arrows story where, you know, a monk goes to the Buddha, and this is actually from the original sources, not something invented later on. The monk asks the Buddha, I have a question. You said the goal is to overcome suffering. And you said suffering is old age, disease and death. Yes, what is your question? The question is that we are following your teachings. And we're still getting older. And we still get sick. Some of us have died. And you are clearly enlightened. But you're still getting older. And you are getting sick. And I suppose that one day tragically you will die. So how have you overcome suffering? How has enlightenment helped? The goal was to overcome suffering.

• 2:22:30Speaker 00

  It's still there, old age, disease and death. And then the Buddha says, "The nature of suffering is like a man hit by an arrow and then hit by a second arrow. The first arrow is what the world throws at you. The second arrow is your reaction to it. What I teach you will remove the suffering from the second arrow. On the first, I cannot do anything." So the world will continue. What knowledge does is it does not change the setup. The setup will be like this. But it makes sure you will no longer be upset with the setup. You've found something so deep that it, uh, nothing in this world matters anymore. You are deeply fulfilled. It's not that you somehow make do and you sort of resign yourself to it. Well, it can't be changed and so it's not defeatist.

• 2:23:15Speaker 00

  It's rather maximalist. Krishna says in the Gita, "Having found that, after which nothing greater remains to be found. Being established in that, after which even the heaviest of sorrows cannot shake you." So you have found that. And then this world becomes bliss. Even the so-called previously what was called suffering, old age, disease, death, none of it is any problem for you then.

• 2:23:41André Duqum?

  So for each of us that are going about our life, maybe sit in the meditation practice, they listen to this conversation, they have a deep resonance, they see the intellectual rigor- uh, rigorousness of the, of the understanding, and we still fall back into ignorance in our day-to-day life.

• 2:24:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:24:02André Duqum?

  Can you share some thoughts on the evolution of the stages of this realization? And how we can come to have it not be a, uh, so often recurring insight or experience, but a pervasive experience in our day-to-day life?

• 2:24:17Speaker 00

  In the Gita, Krishna teaches all this to Arjun. In the second chapter, the end of the second chapter, Arjun asked this question. So, what are the characteristics of the sage of stabilized wisdom? It's very interesting, instead of saying enlightened sage, he says of stabilized wisdom. So we have this wisdom, now I've heard it from you, I've got this wisdom. Maybe I've got an inkling of it, an intuition of it also. But it's not stabilized. It doesn't help me to live life. It should nourish me and transform me into a real sage. How do we do that? And the answer is, practice. The four, what practices there also, the four yogas, very beautiful classification by Swami Vivekananda, is first this inquiry.

• 2:25:02Speaker 00

  This inquiry should go on. Now that we have got the hang of this inquiry, do it often, especially in trouble. So here is the pain. But isn't the pain an object? And I am the one aware of the pain. That which is aware of the pain, is the pain in that awareness, or is the pain in the body? We think like this, it may not be that the pain will go away, but a psychological space opens up between you and the pain. A logical space opens up between you. Intellect wants the logic, the mind wants the psychology of it. Emotionally, you become insulated from the anxiety caused by the pain. The pain may be there, the suffering is optional, you begin to suffer less. So the inquiry must go on.

• 2:25:47Speaker 00

  What we did all now, till now, it is all Advaita, it is inquiry. But it's also understood in the tradition that this is the last word. This must be preceded by careful preparation. So preparation at the level of the mind. Inquiry is there, of course. Preparation at the level of the mind, meditation. Some technique of meditation must be a daily thing. We must not always be engaged with the world, we must be able to step back from the world. We must not be afraid of boredom. We must not be afraid of disengagement. So at one time, every day, we must step back from the world, into just ourselves.

• 2:26:27Speaker 00

  Not the world, not people, not activities, not the phone, not even the body. Not even the thoughts, not even the memories, not even plans and projects, not even regrets and memories or desires and impulses, none of that.

• 2:26:43Speaker 00

  And see if I'm fine without all of that. When we try to do this, the first thing we'll realize is how disturbed our minds are. No wonder none of this inquiry stuff really works. Our minds are so, like jelly, they don't take form. Schopenhauer said, "A weak mind, the characteristic of a weak mind, it's like a soft pillow which retains the impression of the last bottom which sat on it. The weak mind retains the last book which it read." You know, the mind must be strengthened through meditation, focused, steady. We must have a very high boiling point. A monk said, "Don't boil over so easily.

• 2:27:25Speaker 00

  The liquid's at low boiling point, it's just when the temperature rises it boils over." Some problem? One swami put it this way, "If the setup is not to my liking, I get upset." No, the setup may not be to my liking, I don't get upset, I deal with it. Another swami put it so beautifully, "What Vedanta does for you is you move from 'what' to 'so what.' You're dealing with it, it's not that you're escaping, you're dealing with everything. Internally, you're serene, and that's, everybody must admit, that's a much better way of living life. So meditation helps us there. Another practice is devotion, a deep faith in God. These are helpful for that self-inquiry.

• 2:28:09Speaker 00

  Often, people play them off against each other. "Oh, you people are believing in God, that's kindergarten. I am non-dualistic, I'm self-inquiry." No, the two go along very well together. If you see the lives of the saints, the non-dual masters in India especially, here also, you will find they are all devoted, in their own way, maybe very privately, so they have a devotion. An acceptance of a great power, you call it Ishvara, or God, or the God of religion, which guides and controls the world. It's a great thing to have on your side, none greater. So a heart full of devotion, surrender, faith, love. Then karma yoga, spiritualization of one's life activities. How can I be of service to, what can I do for you?

• 2:28:55Speaker 00

  So these broad preparations, altruistic life, life of selflessness and service. That is karma yoga. Devotional life, a life of love, worship, adoration internally to the supreme. Then a meditative life. This is plenty to be doing every day. And the self-inquiry, the self-inquiry cocooned by these practices germinates into stabilized wisdom. Without that, it flickers. In a flickering light, the results of self-inquiry will also come and disappear. In a mind filled with a hundred desires, self-inquiry might come up and will be disregarded the next moment.

• 2:29:37Speaker 00

  The mind suddenly gets distracted like a little child and runs after something in the world. In a selfish mind, it's all about I, me, myself. Self-inquiry might reveal to me a hundred times that you are limitless consciousness. But my feelings are all about this limited person. Yeah, I might be limitless conscious, but right now I have to take care of this guy. Vivekananda says, notice this is renunciation, the turning point in the yogas. In karma yoga, renunciation is the renunciation of selfishness. Very difficult, but one must try. And to the extent that one tries, one gets benefits immediately. In bhakti yoga, the yoga of love and devotion, it shares to

• 2:30:22Speaker 00

  channelize a hundred, a thousand desires flowing towards the world to channelize them into one almighty love of God. That is renunciation. And in the meditation, the Raja Yoga, the Dhyanam, the yoga of meditation, the renunciation of every outward movement of the mind and the senses. I want to see, no. I want to hear, no. I want to talk, no. I want to touch, no. I want to taste, no. Okay, sit quietly. Then the mind kicks in. I'm going to think. I'm going to remember. I'm going to plan. I'm going to grumble and, you know, dwell over my hurts and insecurities.

• 2:31:06Speaker 00

  No. You're not permitted a single thought. You're not permitted a single feeling. Stop. That's a great renunciation. It's a renunciation of every discrete experience so that you can fall back into that one white light before it breaks up into the seven colors of the wine. All of these, this is what makes that inquiry sustainable, stabilized.

• 2:31:30André Duqum?

  Hmm. For your own personal path of the embodiment of that realization, I'm curious, as somebody who is way more than anybody probably who's listening right now is going to have spent your life absorbed in the studying of this material, the understanding and synthesizing of this material, also rigorously studying various different contemplative practices, seeing how they compare, how they differ, like Majamaka Buddhism. And it's really, it's amazing to see the level of devotion you've carried throughout your life to this point. How has it worked for you?

• 2:32:09Speaker 00

  I think I'm very ordinary. That's where I bring in the miracle of formal monastic life. So all that you said, it falls into place because I'm a monk.

• 2:32:23Speaker 00

  And a very ordinary, I really find myself pretty mediocre when I look at the other monks, my brother monks, the way, I've been a monk for more than thirty years, I see how they have developed over the decades. And I'm filled with amazement and reverence, really. I remember when I became a monk, I was so reverent to the senior monks, I found them to be amazing beings, full of grace and holiness. Now I'm seeing it's working. I'm seeing it in my friends, who thirty years ago were young boys coming to be monks. And we grew together, and now when I look at them, I am filled with reverence. I would bow down to them because I see the same holiness beginning to blossom forth in them. And it's just staying with it.

• 2:33:07Speaker 00

  The structure has been given, monastic life. There is this line, because you are a monk, there's this line drawn. A lot of nonsense is already, you know, thrown out of your life. What do I have to wear? It's not a decision that you have to take every morning, because you wear the same thing. So there's no decision to be taken there at all. What do I eat? Exactly what's given to you. So I don't decide I have to go to this hotel or order out food, no. So what do, what is my entertainment? Exactly what the ashram provides. What do I do today? Before yogas, you serve, you worship, you meditate, and you inquire, you study.

• 2:33:49Speaker 00

  So because this monastic paradigm, the formal monastic paradigm, it's a good vessel. I can see how it helps. It answers those questions automatically. It's no guarantee that one is going to develop spiritually. As I've seen people develop in holiness, I've seen people fall by the wayside also. One can ruin it. The mind is good at ruining even the best of things. Yeah.

• 2:34:15André Duqum?

  I'm curious how people would, I think, maybe have this false presumption, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts, just speculating here. But like, as a monk, the acts of ego and identifications just go away, or maybe get easier in some sense. I could see how it could very much bring it up to the surface, and you really have more materials to work with there. But when you reflect on ahmkar and this act of identifying, and the ego's way of very cleverly clinging on to whatever it can, even the identity of being a monk, or being spiritual, or being a podcaster who's bringing virtuous conversations, or it'll find anything it can grab on.

• 2:34:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:34:57André Duqum?

  And I'm curious what you've learned in that process about the ego, the nature of identifying. Because I think a lot of people would think that as a monk, you have, it's easier. And maybe to some degree, there's easier aspects of that. But it doesn't remove suddenly magically this act of, this egoic notion of identifying.

• 2:35:21Speaker 00

  I'd say first, how you thin down the ego, you transcend it, and how you don't. First is, the yogas help you there. Karma yoga. As a monk, all your day is spent in service activities. It could be schools, it could be, you know, giving medicine to the sick if you're in a hospital, or teaching kids, or, you know, giving food to the hungry. And all the time, you're doing stuff without taking anything in return. You're not waiting for your paycheck. Yeah, you get your food, and you get your clothes and a room to stay in. That's it. Now, you're forced into it, and you watch your ego. Does it say at some point, "I'm not getting anything out of this. Why am I doing all this?

• 2:36:06Speaker 00

  I'm pouring out my life, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and I'm not getting one thing back." Good. Do you have any objections to that? And the wise ego will say, "What a relief. Thank God. I don't have to worry about what I'm accumulating. I don't accumulate anything." That's how the selfishness gets rubbed out of the ego. Otherwise, the ego is always in this project of, "What did I get at the end of all this?" Second, that the fact that selfishness is going away is the only thing that I'm getting. And that's great. That's a huge relief. Then, in devotion, when I bring the ego in front of God.

• 2:36:50Speaker 00

  This is so tiny, in front of the cosmic. It's a smash. You're in front of the emperor of the universe. So, the only response could be reverence and worship. And that way, the ego gets thinned out. Then in meditation, the ego thrives on a restless mind. In meditation, when we calm down, that's what the ego hates. A quiet mind is what the ego hates. A restless mind, ego is happy. Excited, restless, thrilled, scared, anxious, busy with the phone or busy with the people. Ego is happy because the mind is restless. Let go of that, quieten down the mind, ego gets thinned out.

• 2:37:35Speaker 00

  And finally, the Vedantic way of, I am not the ego. I am the witness of the ego. This is how you thin out the ego, throughout the day, every day. And what you do not do, the ego by itself will not go away. As long as the mind is there, there will be a sense of ego. Sri Ramakrishna says, distinguish between the ripe ego and the unripe ego. The unripe ego is body-based, is relationship-based. He says, my nephew, my child, my house, my property, that's the unripe ego. Spirituality tends to cut that down. But then you replace it with the ripe ego, because until the ego goes away, it will still be there. The ripe ego is, I am pure consciousness. I am the witness of body, mind, and everything that's taking place here.

• 2:38:20Speaker 00

  And that's clearly a fact, not that I'm trying to be. I notice it has to be that, that's what it is. Or, if you're devotionally inclined, I am the child of God.

• 2:38:31Speaker 00

  Set up a relationship with God if you're dualistically inclined. That's also a ripe ego. I am the child of God. I am the servant of God. This is God's universe. I'm here to serve. So these are the ways in which you deal with the ego. Cut it down, thin it down, and develop the right ego.

• 2:38:48André Duqum?

  Can you pinpoint the moment when you decided to go down this path?

• 2:38:53Speaker 00

  Oh, that's in one sense, easy and difficult. I've asked other monks this. So in some cases, it's a precise moment. Something happened, they met somebody, or they read a book, or something happened. They decided they want to be a monk, and they did it. And there were others in the second group, I'm in the second group also, where I can't point to anything specific. Ever since I was a kid, I had this inclination. I never thought I'd be anything else. I loved aeroplanes, but then I really tried to be a pilot or anything like that. So finding God was my project from childhood onwards. It's not that I was completely clear about my destiny, because I was a kid. I didn't know much about what it would be like to be a monk, but I always felt there's only one thing that I want. I want to search for God.

• 2:39:39Speaker 00

  So as a teenager, I learned more about being a monk. The monastery was close to our house, and I decided this is what I'm going to do after I finish my education. That's how I became a monk.

• 2:39:51André Duqum?

  And for about thirty years now?

• 2:39:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I became a monk in nineteen ninety-four. The day I finished my last assignment in college, I submitted the last assignment and made a and went straight to the monastery and joined. I was just waiting for it to be over.

• 2:40:08André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:11André Duqum?

  I have like just maybe one or two more questions. I know we've been going for a while. I really appreciate this kind of conversation is my sweet spot on this podcast. It's what really is not the only thing, but it's something that largely makes me feel like I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing. And I'm curious, your thoughts on that feeling? That feeling of svadharma, where you're like aligned with your nature? And you're you're doing a sense what you ought to do in any given moment. And it sounds like you followed that. Intrinsic calling to follow your path.

• 2:40:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:40:49André Duqum?

  To whatever degree, I'm successfully, you know, attempted to do that in my own life. For people that are listening, they very much so strive to discover that sense of wholeness, of completeness and alignment for who they are, what they value and what they're doing in the world. And so what advice would you have for people to be able to really discover what is that dharma of theirs?

• 2:41:12Speaker 00

  You use the words intrinsic, alignment and value. These are the criteria. It must be something within yourself. Vivekananda said, follow your own highest ideal. That's the shortest path. Swadharma, the word swadharma means your own dharma. Dharma means religion, morality, spirituality. It's a very wide term. Literally, it comes from the Sanskrit word dhi, that which holds you together. What's the defining theme of your life or of any object? That's the dharma of that, of an object, of a person, of a society and all of that. Swadharma, there is a technical way of defining it because in traditional Hindu society, it was defined by castes and ashramas. Are you a student? Are you a householder? Are you a forest dweller?

• 2:41:57Speaker 00

  Or are you a monk? These are the four stations of life. Or the four castes. Are you a priestly caste member? Are you a warrior administrator? Are you a trader businessman? Are you a laborer? Four castes. So which station of life and which caste you belong to, that metrics would determine your swadharma. But that's fixed in society. It's no longer very relevant. Indian society, like every society, is fluid. But really, what's the point of swadharma? The point of swadharma is it's meant to take us as quickly as possible to enlightenment. So that's the inner secret of swadharma. How do I do that? Vivekananda said, it's not what you might think that, all right, if enlightenment is the goal,

• 2:42:41Speaker 00

  let me read a book on enlightenment and try to do exactly what the book says. No, it might not work. You have a certain grain of your being. You have to cut with the grain, to flow with the grain of your personality, something that we have developed over many lifetimes.

• 2:42:58Speaker 00

  Just because a book or a TED Talk says something new which my intellect, my intellect, by the way, can jump ahead, far ahead of my, the rest of my being, and can, it likes ideas and plans and projects. But when I try to implement it in my life, I find it's impossible to do in my life. Because I have built myself up over many lifetimes in a particular way. So what will determine my swadharma? How do I know? Vivekananda said, "Follow your own highest ideal, that's the shortest path for you." So it must be your own, so it is intrinsic. It must feel like something coming, which appeals to me right now. Not something that should appeal to me, or it's the greatest thing possible, everybody says it, you should do it. It still doesn't pull me. Does it pull me? That's intrinsic, it's a good sign, it's intrinsic.

• 2:43:43Speaker 00

  Second, highest ideal. It must be something high and noble. Many things pull me. I have many desires, many preferences, many cravings. So are those my swadharma? No, no, no, no, no. It must be in the sense of ideas, because it's taking me to the ideal, towards enlightenment. So it must be something high, noble, that which adds value to others, does good to others, or it is something highly creative, you know, in science, religion, philosophy, art, somewhere. Something higher. It cannot be a comfortable life, because comfortable life right here and now means no progress. It must be pushing the envelope somewhere. So your own highest idea, that's the shortest path. Intrinsic.

• 2:44:27Speaker 00

  Even if initially there is lack of success, no path, no matter how you like it, is going to be easy. And that, at that point, you might doubt, is it my swadharma or not? So as long as you know it is taking me higher, towards the goal of self-realization, that it is intrinsic, I really like this. And it is, I feel aligned, my life is in flow. When it goes well, sometimes it doesn't go well. Then it is your swadharma. It can change. After some time, your ideal, you might go from this to something else 20 years later. That's also perfectly all right. Vivekanth gives some checks to examine yourself.

• 2:45:11Speaker 00

  If it unites, it's likely to be the truth. If it divides, if it's something that's divisive and divides, it's likely to be untrue. If it is selfish, it's likely to be untrue. If it is selfless, to the extent it's selfless, it's likely to be true. If it weakens, it says, reject it as poison. If it strengthens, you can embrace that. And these are broad statements. For example, strength, it could be physical strength, it could be moral strength, it could be emotional strength, it could be intellectual strength, it could be spiritual strength, and ideally, all of them. So these are the ways in which you decide your swadharma. Is it bringing me closer to the ultimate goal of enlightenment? Does it feel right internally, intrinsically? Are my days and my months and years in alignment?

• 2:45:56Speaker 00

  Am I flowing towards something? And is it adding value to me and to society, to people around me?

• 2:46:04André Duqum?

  Wonderful, yeah. I think that's super helpful and maps to my own personal life. One could speculate, which maybe we save for another time, why it is we have these intrinsic core values and pulls towards different directions. You mentioned a couple of times karma, the potentiality of different lives, or future ones or past ones. And to me, something I love about Advaita Vedanta is how rigorous the analytical reasoning can be. And for people that don't have the experience of previous lives, reincarnation, within their subjective experience, and not that you or anyone is saying to take it on blind

• 2:46:47André Duqum?

  faith, but I think that the natural conclusion for the doubting mind is, how could consciousness and its infinite nature take on this body-mind? And then, once it's done, have some sort of continuity of memory in an individual in another form of life? And it's something I've thought quite a lot about, and I'm just curious, how do you make that distinction? And how do you wrestle between the belief of something like reincarnation versus the reality of it?

• 2:47:20Speaker 00

  It's a little difficult for me because from an Indian perspective, Indian thought generally accepts this as axiomatic. Think about it, Hinduism is so tremendously diverse within itself. There is Advaita, there is qualified monoism, there is dualism, multiple schools, Vaishnavaits, Shakta, Shaivites, enormous diversity within. But they all believe in karma and reincarnation. Buddhists, they don't believe in a permanent soul. They don't believe in God, but they believe in karma and reincarnation. Jain, Sikhs, so it's a sort of axiomatic in Indian thought. So this is why it's difficult for me to step a little out of it. The reasoning I would give is causality. Basically, what is karma? It's causality.

• 2:48:03Speaker 00

  Causes have effects, actions have consequences. So what we are seeing now are a bunch of effects. They must have had causes. When we push back further, we don't see enough of it in this life. So they project it back to earlier lives. And the things that we have set in motion in this life, we don't see the effect of it all in the usual question of, "Such an evil person, didn't suffer enough before they died?" Well, we are not seeing the results of the actions in this life. So we push it forward to future lives. So reincarnation follows from karma. They feed, it's a loop. Yes. How does it continue? The answer is the subtle body. What dies at death is the physical body.

• 2:48:47André Duqum?

  One of the five sheets.

• 2:48:48Speaker 00

  One of the five sheets. But the middle three sheets do not die. And that's pretty logical also. Because what you see dying, nobody doubts it is the physical body. But notice in our own experience, everybody right now, we have two kinds of experience. One is ourselves to the physical body, which is third person, public. Your doctor can examine it. And another one is first person. What I feel inside. Pleasure, pain, memories of my sensations, my first person experiences, my thoughts, my personality. This set, which is also unique to each of us. We have our own personalities, but it is distinctly different from the physical body. It's not public.

• 2:49:33Speaker 00

  It's available only internally to us. And the relationship between that mind, this mental inner subtle body, and the physical body is not, it's clearly related, but it's not very clear either. It's, it cannot be explained fully. That's also the hard problem of consciousness. So, all these Indian systems, they say, look, death is death of the physical body. Nobody can doubt that. But you have no logical rigorous reason to say that the subtle body also dies with the death of the physical body. If you hold that to be true, then you have subscribed, already subscribed to materialism, that the brain produces this mind. You, the person, you are a product of the brain.

• 2:50:16Speaker 00

  Until one can prove that to my satisfaction, I'm not willing to buy that. Because of the principle, this, there is a problem in principle, the hard problem of consciousness. You can't reduce something first person to pure object. So this subtle body continues after the death of the physical body, but it carries the samskaras of previous lives.

• 2:50:39André Duqum?

  Meaning, for people that don't know?

• 2:50:40Speaker 00

  The samskaras are the traces, the conditionings, the, even some memories, some habits, some tendencies, that's the character which is continued. And a part of that is activated when we are born into a new physical body. It's like a vast amount of data uploaded to the cloud. Now your iPhone or your iPad may be damaged, you throw it away, you recycle it, and you get a new one. And then you download the same data. So what continued, it's not that it's the same iPad. It's a new body. It can be a different, it may not be an iPad also. It might be a phone. It may not be a physical human body also. It could be an animal's body. Now, a part of the data in that cloud is now downloaded into that. And that becomes the character of that personality for the time being that body lasts.

• 2:51:25Speaker 00

  So what continues from lifetime to lifetime is the subtle body. What dies at the end of each lifetime is a physical body, which is born and it dies. And what is behind all of this, call it atman, pure consciousness, spirit, that which lights up and makes the whole show possible.

• 2:51:46André Duqum?

  Fascinating. We could talk, we could probably talk for a couple of hours just on that. And my last thought is because you just, you mentioned a couple of times in the traditions and culture in which you come from. I, and we all have our own, you know, version of that. What are the presuppositions and the axioms which are embedded in the paradigm which we kind of came into? I think the path of the sincere seeker needs to be willing, of course, to throw away all of that and to examine what is, right? Fundamentally, which I see you do and what sincerity essentially is on the spiritual path.

• 2:52:25André Duqum?

  There is one aspect which I see Eastern wisdom traditions fundamentally inherently seem to be lacking, quite possibly because it is a relatively recent 100 to 130 years as a system of thought, which is the characterological development side of things. The Jung, Freud, Adler, James, the understanding of the psyche and the shadow. And of course, there is, it being such a recent sort of understanding of examining the conventional self. There historically has not been as much talk about this

• 2:53:06André Duqum?

  from the Eastern traditions, from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism. And to me, the negation of the falsity of the Maya can quickly slip into this overemphasis on falsity. And

• 2:53:24André Duqum?

  A turning away of the the growing up. You know, I appreciate how you're an integral thinker and the understanding of waking up versus growing up. The waking up to this non-dual experience, the growing up. We have this process of individuation, which Jung beautifully laid out, and many great thinkers have continued to add to. And the former without the latter leads to crazy cults that abuse people sometimes. The latter without the former puts you on this rat rat race and this never-ending wheel of self-improvement.

• 2:54:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:54:03André Duqum?

  And I'm curious your thoughts about how they complement each other, our necessity to be able to come into wholeness.

• 2:54:10Speaker 00

  Yes, I think you've put it beautifully. The core should be spirituality, in whichever form. Advaitic form, or the Madhyamaka Tibetan Buddhist kind of thing, or any other particular form of genuine spirituality which you find in the world traditions, could be a devotional form or dualistic also. That should be the core. But you're right, the development of the psychological self. Vivekananda gave great emphasis on what he called "character building." That's the vessel which will hold the spiritual core. So without that, there's a long process of character building which goes up up to spiritual awakening. And then the spiritual awakening is further manifested through a further process of growth,

• 2:54:54Speaker 00

  which is jivan mukta, freedom, manifestation of the divinity within. That's where all these therapeutic way, this everything from Jung and Freud up to modern positive psychology, especially we're living in a very golden age of psychology which can go very well with spirituality. The Freudian kind of psychiatrists did not go well with spirituality. They would think of it as a pathologic spirituality. So that's why psychiatrists still now, they don't have a they have a Johnist view of spirituality. Whereas modern positive psychology, I think it it works very well with with spiritual practices. My feeling is

• 2:55:38Speaker 00

  Take advantage of modern positive psychology to whatever extent necessary. If you're taking advantage of modern medical technology, I'm sick, I take the help of a doctor and hospitals. For my inner development, I can take the help of the latest developments of positive psychology. Why not? And I'll find that it helps me in my spiritual growth. But keep the spiritual growth central, because otherwise, the mind can be, it's like a never-ending loop. You fix one thing, two things come undone there. You need, Vivekananda said, "All we can do is polish the mirror." The development, character development is part of polishing the mirror. Psychological development is also part of polishing the mirror.

• 2:56:23Speaker 00

  But ultimately, it must lead to the four yogas, which also polish the mirror, until the reality is reflected there.

• 2:56:30André Duqum?

  I really appreciate the thoroughness in which you provide to the understanding of the various different paths that we all individually, like we spoke to, relate to differently. And I think that this podcast, for example, this conversation that we just shared, gets to be one entry point of many, in which people can find the path that they resonate most to. And it's no small feat. I think that it has profound implications on the way that we treat each other, the way that we view ethics, and build a family, and business, and relationships. And so, just a sincere thank you from my heart to yours.

• 2:57:09Speaker 00

  Thank you, Andre. And thank you to your team.

• 2:57:12André Duqum?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:57:13Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:57:14André Duqum?

  And is there anything that you want to just leave with people where they can stay connected with your work, or anything that you have going on, or is there nothing there?

• 2:57:22Speaker 00

  I will leave you with Sri Ramakrishna's parable of the ones and the zeros. He says, "You line up a lot of zeros, it's still zero. But if you have a one after that, every zero has a value. A one zero is ten, two zeros is hundred." So zeros are the stuff which we're doing in the world. Whatever we're trying to grab in the world and, you know, decorate our life with, the one is spirituality. And I mean it in the broadest sense. Be a non-Dualism, be a devotee of God, be a Christian mystic, an Islamic mystic, or a emptiness practitioner. In whichever form, let the core be spiritual. And then, add as many zeros as you like, or don't.

• 2:58:03André Duqum?

  Well, I did there. Thank you so much.

• 2:58:04Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 2:58:05André Duqum?

  Till next time.

• 2:58:06Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely.