Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation. Part-9. These difficulties are natural to humanity as a whole. It is not my problem or your problem or anybody’s problem; it is perhaps inseparable from the species of humanity. Particularly in our studies, we have to confine ourselves to the factors which go with human nature. We are human beings, and there is no great point in our going into the details of what we would be if we were not human beings. We have to take reality as it is itself.  As human beings, we have certain limitations and we have certain privileges. We have a privilege and a facility – an advantage especially endowed upon us as human beings – when compared with the other species like the animals, the plants, or inanimate matter. But we have certain weaknesses also, and we know very well what the human weaknesses are. We cannot face the forces of nature. We cannot face even an animal; it has strength greater than ours. But we have certain other faci...

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation. Part-8. Merely shouting slogans of freedom cannot make us free, because these slogans are again an outcome of the herd instinct. If many people say something, we also believe it is so. We are always under the pressure of something or the other, from morning to evening, and we never have the leisure to think independent of these conditions which are hanging on us. We are grief-stricken. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly, we have a sorrow in our minds. We are not really happy people, and we try to appear as if we are happy by drinking, by eating, by a diversion, by going to a picture house, by dancing in a club or by running from place to place in high-speed vehicles. For the time being, we have forgotten that the devil is behind us. If we run fast, the devil is unable to catch us. But it shall catch us, one day or the other. And what is this devil? It is that which we are unable to understand, that which escapes our att...

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation. Part-7. It is difficult to understand what we are really seeking. The understanding in this regard is difficult to acquire because clear, impartial, all-comprehensive understanding cannot operate except as an expression of real freedom of what we really are. The expression of what we really are – not what we appear to be – is what we call freedom. But most of us are appearances rather than realities. We work in a particular manner because we are something politically, something socially, something in relation to something, something physically, and something under a given psychological condition. We are always something under some condition, and because we are tentatively something in that condition, we have to behave in a particular manner. That manner in which we behave under a given condition due to a tentative pressure, whether it is external or internal, cannot be regarded as an act of real freedom, because freedom is what...

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation. Part-6. But, people find very little time to think along these lines because the greatest poverty is not the poverty of physical possessions, but what we may call the poverty of thinking. We are poor in thinking itself, not merely in our economic or physical needs. The poverty of thinking is the real poverty of man, which is the poverty even to understand what is good for one’s own self. Do we mean to say that all of us are quite clear as to what is necessary for us in our life? From time to time, from moment to moment, we shift our centres of understanding as to our needs – again, according to the pressure of circumstances. We seem to be puppets of certain pressures, and this would not be a credit to us if we are to consider ourselves to be free individuals. How can we regard ourselves as free in any way if we are to work under a pressure – whether it is egoistic, sensory, psychological, political, social, or economic? If something is pulli...

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation. Part-5. But one does not know that life is not constituted merely of these necessities. We are neither political units entirely, nor persons involved in society wholly, nor physical bodies one hundred percent, nor anything exclusively, for the matter of that, though it is true that we are all these things also, at the same time. We are sons and daughters of some people; we may be bosses or subordinates, we may be rich or poor, we may be happy or unhappy under given conditions – but we are none of these entirely. We may be something in ourselves other than being a daughter or son of somebody, other than being associated with circumstances which we call political, social or economic. If these associations are cut off, we may be still somebody. Do we mean to say that we will be nobody if we have nothing with us? If we are nobody in the political field, nobody in society, we have no family, perhaps we have not even food to eat – have we...

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation. Part-4. It is not that we are going to be secure in this world and be scot free merely because we have bread and jam to eat up to the brim. There are troubles which can threaten us and shake the very ground under our feet, in spite of all the commodities that we may be hoarding in our house which make us physically secure. The tragedy of modern life may be said to consist mainly in an overemphasis laid on certain pressures exerted by the sense organs and even by the mind and the ego of the personality. We are often politically oriented, socially oriented, economically oriented, family oriented, sex oriented and pleasure oriented. All these are not unknown to us in our daily life. But oftentimes, all these aspects do not come in a heap or a crowd. They come one at a time, two at a time, three at a time – not all at a time. We have not been able to face all of them at the same time; one or two come and speak to us in their own langu...

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation. Part-3. All this difficulty, even after being well-educated in the ordinary accepted sense of the term, arises because of what I mentioned in the beginning: an overemphasis on certain values of life. We have today a peculiar trend of thinking called job-oriented education. People are after that, and they are after nothing else. There is no denying that jobs are very important. One has to find an occupation in life. We have to do some work and earn our bread – accepted. This is a very important need. But is it the only need of our life? And can we brook total ignorance of the voices of the other values of life merely because a particular voice is loudly crying before us, drowning out the others? Do we mean to say that a well-placed person economically, and in a job so-called, is a safe person in the world? Is his need in life answered properly by the occupation of a position we call a job? If education means only the manufacturing of an i...

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation. Part-2. Most of us who are well-educated persons may not be regarded as these specimens of individuals who can be so easily overcome by a single pressure, to the total ignorance of the presence of all other values of life. Education precisely means only this much: the capacity of the mind to recognise all the values of life connected with one’s existence, and not to overemphasise any particular value, which many a time gets identified with a desire. A person who cannot think in this all-comprehensive manner even in respect of his own existence cannot be considered to be an educated person, much less a cultured person. That would be the specimen of an animal walking with two legs. And, if education is to be understood as merely the obtaining of a paper certificate with somebody’s stamp, then whatever be our outlook of life and the depth of our understanding, we will find that we are not safe in this world – because the...

Ch-1. The Knowledge Situation. Part-1. The different classes which you will be attending in the Academy are supposed to represent the different needs of your psychological personality, which mostly receive scant attention from us on account of an overemphasis laid on certain needs only, due to the pressure of circumstances. For instance, when we are intensely hungry physically, we are likely to be clamouring for food and thinking only that aspect of our needs in a pre-eminent manner, notwithstanding the fact that it is not our only need. And, many a time, we are prone to commit a dual mistake in this attitude of our life. Firstly, there is a proclivity in our mind due to which we are likely to channelise our attention wholly and exclusively in the direction of a particular necessity or pressure felt, as if that is the only thing that we need and there is nothing else that we want. Now, this overemphasis on only a particular need of our life, to the exclusion of other n...

 NDM: Okay, so then this cycle is going to end at some point.     Swamiji: This cycle will go on forever until the one who looks at the cycle wakes up. So till then the cycle will go on.         NDM: Oh, for the individual.         Swamiji: Yeah, for the individual, the cycle will end. The cycle will end after getting this knowledge that the whole thing is myself, and therefore this is a big long dream.         NDM: But why the dream in the first place? Why the dream?         Swamiji: This is how Isvara is. He didn’t create anything. If He created, I can ask Him, “Why did you create?” He didn’t create – this is how the truth is.         Really speaking, there is only one reality. Therefore the fun is that there is subject, there is object. That is the fun.     And reality is really a fun reality. (Laughter) It’s a very fun loving reality. They ...

 NDM: Before creation – before this – before the manifested creation…       Swamiji: It was unmanifest. The creation was there unmanifest.       NDM: Unmanifested?       Swamiji: Like in a seed, a tree.  NDM: Okay, with that seed, how is it nirguna [without attributes] if it has a seed in it?       Swamiji: It’s all there. All the attributes are there – undifferentiated attributes. All the attributes of the jagat – the world – are there. Like in a seed, the tree is there, the twig is there, the leaf is there, the flower is there, the fruit is there, roots are there, all these are there, but undifferentiated, in a software. This is a software. Whole thing was unmanifest – software – of the previous manifest form. In a cycle the previous jagat is now in an unmanifest form. Again, it will become manifest. Then it becomes unmanifest like your waking up from sleep. Nirguna is the truth of this mithya jaga...

NDM: The Taittiriya Upanisad 2.6. says, “The Lord in the beginning of creation desired, ‘May I become many, may I be born.’” What prompted the first desire?         Swamiji: There is no first desire because it’s a cycle. In a cycle there is no first desire. The unmanifest becomes manifest. The Lord became – abhavat. It is something like a sleeping person wakes up. The whole jagat was unmanifest, and it became manifest. That is a graphic description of that – some kind of a poetic description of that –  so 'kamayata bahusya prajayeya [He wished: may I become many, may I be born.]         One beautiful thing is that He is the creator and the creation is non-separate from Him – asrjyata abhavat – two words. Asrijyata means ‘created.’ Abhavat means ‘became.’ So both the creator and the creation are one and the same because He became the creation.       So He thought of the world, and then the world was there al...

NDM: Modern advaita teachers today charge money for sitting with the teacher. Like to sit with a teacher like this it would cost maybe $35 for an hour. So maybe they get 100 or 150 people together in a group. Then each person gives the teacher money. Traditionally, how do you do that?                         Swamiji: (Laughs). You know, they have to survive, and this is India’s contribution to that fellow’s life. And so, for his livelihood, India has contributed something – some words, which are useful for him to earn his livelihood. And he earns his livelihood, and there are always blokes to subscribe to all that. And therefore, that’s fine. There is nothing wrong in it. He has to live his life. He has to pay his bills, and therefore he charges what he needs to take care. So teaching becomes his profession. He is an advaita professional. (Laughter).                   ...