Transcription
[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] om [Music] shant shant shant om. May Brahman protect us both, the teacher and the taught. May Brahman give us the fruits of this study. May our—may we accomplish great things together. May this study enlighten us. May there be no disharmony amongst us. om peace peace peace.
Welcome to the first class on, uh, the subject is Introduction to Vedanta, or Vedanta 101 as somebody put it. Questions like fundamental questions: Who am I? What is God exactly? What is the purpose of life? How can I get permanent satisfaction, happiness, if at all, if that is possible? How can I overcome sorrow? What is this universe which we see spread out before us? If these questions, and questions like these, if they are of interest—and they are of interest to everybody—these are fundamental questions, then this this course is for you. This set of classes which we are starting this evening is for you.
The answers that we will discover over the course of several evenings to follow, these answers are the answers provided by the most ancient civilization on this planet; the answers given, answers found by the sages of the most ancient religion existing on this planet today. These are the answers that we get from Vedanta.
Now, in a course like this, it would be customary to start with an introductory lecture, you know, where I tell you what Vedanta is and what the fundamental texts are, and um, many preliminary questions: What is expected of us? What are the preparations? So on and so forth. But I shall not do—none of those things—to begin with today, for two reasons. One is that um, none of you—almost all of you—have been coming to the Vedanta Society for quite some time, so none of you are nov—visist Vedanta, and I'm sure all of you, even if there are a few who are coming for the first time, you all spiritual Seekers. We are all spiritual Seekers, so these questions are not new to us. Even the answers are not new to us. So I shall not start with a, you know, usual formal, boring introductory lecture. That's the first reason why I shall not do that.
Now, the second reason is, I have selected for this class a little text, this text uh, called *drisha vya*, which is in hands of most of you this evening already: the analysis of the Seer and the scene. This text is what is called a—a *prar*, an introductory text. Loosely translated, it would be exactly what we have called this course: Introduction to Vedanta. So this text itself is an introduction to Vedanta, and this text is a very interesting text. One reason I've selected it is because it has certain very unique characteristics. This text is a very exciting text. The author does not beat about the bush, does not waste any time on preliminaries; wastes no time on preliminaries. Not a single verse in this text is wasted on anything, though there are important preliminary questions, but he dismisses all of them, and he goes straight into the heart of the matter in the very first verse. It's just—it's quite interesting to note. All traditional texts start with salutations to Guru, to God, and so on. You—you would have noticed—he doesn't even do that; he goes straight into the subject matter, and the text is dramatic. Maybe the most important verse in the whole text is the first verse, and there are other remarkable verses which come up one after another which have become famous in the entire purpose of Vedantic literature. So it's a text which is full of drama, of movement, um, profound philosophical thinking.
So, in the spirit of this text, instead of wasting time on preliminaries, I shall get to all that much later, but we shall go straight into the subject matter straight away, in the spirit of the author of this text. The author of this text is a bit um, is obscured in Mystery. One Source puts it—it has that Shankaracharya wrote—Adi Shankaracharya wrote this text 1200 or 1300 years ago, but that is not a very credible um, idea. There are two other possible authors: one is Bharati Tirtha, and the other one is Vidyaranya. You might have heard of a very well-known non-dualistic text called *Pada Shastra*. So the author of *Pada Shastra*, Vidyaranya, was probably the um, the author of this text, but no author is mentioned. If he was indeed the author of the text, the text is 600 years old, six centuries old, but you'll see how fresh it is and how powerful it is.
So, without any further introduction, further advertisement, since I've already got a captive audience, let's go straight into the text. The way I'll approach it is this: this is, of course, a Sanskrit text, but you needn't worry. I presume no knowledge of Sanskrit, and indeed have very little to do with the Sanskrit in the text, but I will chant the Sanskrit, and you can follow after me if you like, and then it will be entirely in English, with a few smattering of few Sanskrit terms which I will explain a number of times.
Um, two points about using this book: if you can read the Sanskrit text, very good; you can read it. Otherwise, you can read just the English translation. So here you—you have the Sanskrit text; you have the word-by-word meaning of each word translated into English, and the meaning of the entire verse given uh, in brief, followed by certain notes. So you can read the English translation. I would ask you not to uh, go into the notes now. I would ask you to concentrate on what I am saying. Later on, if you like, you can go to the notes. Often the notes uh, are not very helpful; they're a bit dense. Um, so focus on what I am saying and try to follow that. The book has 46 verses. There are two versions of this book: one with 31 and one with 46. The entire text is here, but traditionally it is said that the 3—31 verses—verses 1 to 31 of the original verses, and we will see that it completes the whole text. So we shall study 1 to 31. The scholars feel that the verses from 32 to 46 have been added later, so we will not go into all that when we study this.
The procedure I would like us all to follow is three-fold: first, we shall study the verse, shall talk about, translate the meaning, and talk about the meaning. So the first stage is: am I able to repeat back what is there in the text? I wouldn't ask you to repeat back the Sanskrit original, though that is what is done in traditional, you know, traditional gurus in Uttar Pradesh. They will ask the students to memorize the text. I will not do that for fear of scaring away the audience. Uh, but what we—we should require of ourselves is that once I read it and I listen to it, can I repeat back what the book says? Can I repeat back what the book says? I'm not asking you to—to say that you have understood what the book says. The first stage is simply to repeat back: this is what the book says. Maybe I don't understand it; maybe I don't believe it, but can I say what the book said? That's the first stage, and that's the basis. Without that uh, we—we are lost. So the first thing is: what did the book say? In the next stages: do I get it? Do I understand intellectually? Do I understand what the book said? That's a second stage. So I should be able to answer questions, doubts which come up in my mind. I should be able to answer that. So: do I understand what the book said? And the final and most important is: is it real to me? Is it real to me that what the book says is—do—can I recognize it as a fact? If you can recognize it as a fact, that's the—that's the last stage, or the penultimate stage to enlightenment. Now, I wouldn't require that of anybody, not—not you and not myself, because then we would mostly be disqualified. If you see that all these things become fact to you immediately after you read it uh, that's too—setting the bar too high, but these are the three stages of grasping the meaning of these Verses: first, what did it say to me? Second, do I understand what it is trying to say? Third, can I acknowledge that it's—it's the truth; it's the fact; it's a fact.
Right. With having said that, let—let's plunge straight into the text. Let's see what this author, 600 years ago in South India, in the state—what is the state of Karnataka now? It was the Vijayanagar Kingdom 600 years ago—what the author has to say to us in Hollywood in the 21st century, and we'll be stunned at how profound some of these things are. I was reading uh, few—few days ago that every year nowadays, every year we publish more books—more books were published in 2015 than have been published in all of human history until the 21st century. That is true. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of books and monographs are published, but you know how many of the greatest books of humanity? And maybe a few hundred or few thousand books have been published in the last 2,000 years until the 18th or 19th centuries. But you will see, among the greatest books that we have of humanity, human civilization, those are the few books which were written hundreds of years ago. And of the books—thousands of books—which we published last year, I don't know how many will be remembered this year or the year after. So this book is like that: it embodies Timeless wisdom, the core of not only Hinduism—this is the core of all religion, especially in this modern age, age of reasoning and questioning—the answers are here. We shall see all that as we go in. I shall read; please follow after me. Then we shall discuss. [Music] [Music] This is the verse. What does it mean? We'll leave the Sanskrit alone for the time being now. Focus carefully on what I've got to say. Focus as you have never focused earlier. I am going to talk about this verse in four stages: stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four. And all throughout I would like us all to remember one operating principle, one—and one operating principle alone. What is that operating principle? The seer and the scene are different. The seer and the scene are different. Seer means I Am. The Seer, literally. Seer here means the one who is seeing. I am the seer here, and this book here is the scene, and they are obviously different. You can clearly see the two are different. Two different—what do you mean by different? Different entities. The one who knows is different from that which is known. The subject is different from the object. This is the operating principle, and here the book is not asking us to accept anything on faith. It's a common—it's common sense. That's what we accept anyway. Eyes see something, and what the eyes see is different from the eyes. That's common sense. We know this. Everybody knows this, and the book says that is sufficient. Just hold on to that. That is number one, and that's an important principle that we have to hold on to.
Now, what does the verse say? Stage one. I told you four stages. Stage one: the verse starts very simply. The verse starts very simply. It says: forms, colors are—are the seen; that which is seen. Eyes are the seer. The eyes are the seer. The eyes see, and the forms are seen. They're not making a sophisticated statement, not a scientific statement, not a deep philosophical statement, just common sense, just the way we experience the world. Eyes are seeing, and the forms and colors in the world are seen. Now, what is the principle that we were—we are going to hold on to? The Seer and the scene are different. So the eyes are different from what they see. Quite obviously true. What I'm seeing around, they're all different from my eyes. In fact, unless an object is at a distance from the eyes, the eyes cannot see. Even the spectacles which I wear on the—if you wear spectacles on the bridge of your nose, the spectacles also must be at a little distance from the—from your eyes. In fact, the only thing that the eyes cannot see—see are the eyes themselves. Eyes cannot see themselves. You can see a picture of your eyes; you can see a reflection of your eyes; you cannot—the eyes cannot directly see the eyes themselves; they can only see things which are different from them. So the Seer and the seen: the eyes are the—seer, the scene—eyes are the seer, and the scene is this world of forms. Literally, the Sanskrit term *rupam* means color, but also you can extend it to forms—all shapes and forms—whatever you see actually in your visual field, they're all different from the eyes. Now, what the verse is going to do here is like any good teacher, the verse—the—the book—the author starts from the known and will take us to the unknown, like any good teacher: from the near to the far, from what is to what shall be. That is the Golden Rule of teaching: from the known to the unknown, from the near to the far, from what is to what shall be. And that's what the author is doing. First, he states something that's so obvious we feel like: right. Many of you would be feeling now, okay, you advertised it a lot, now can you get a move on? We know this. This is—is very simple, but wait, we are going to take a few more lessons from this and then move ahead. First one: we all know the seer and the scene are different. That's one. Second: the eyes are one—I don't mean we are one-eyed—the one organ of vision, the same organ of vision, and the things the eyes see are many. I can see white here, black here, gray here, blue here—so many shapes. I can see people here, benches and—and the carpet and the light and this beautiful Hall—so many things, so many forms, all are seen by the same eyes. So what is the principle we extract from the—from this? Eyes—the seer is one, the seen are many. The seer is one, the seen are many. That is one—one uh, lesson we take from this. The second lesson we take from this is: if you sit and watch—here I'll find—what—what I see is continuously changing. This Hall was empty; people came in. This Hall was dark; it was—it has been lit up. After some time we'll all go away. What you see keeps on changing, isn't that so? The eyes being relatively the same and unchanging—relatively—it's part of the body, and body is changing, of course, but relatively unchanging—the what it sees continuously changes. So the seer is relatively unchanging—seer remaining unchanging, the scene keep changing. The seer remaining unchanging, the scene keep changing—changing. So three things we have taken from this: the first thing is our original lesson that the seer and the scene are different. That's number one. Number two: the seer is one, the scene are many. Number three: the seer is relatively unchanging; the scene keep changing. Okay, that's—that's stage one. Now let's go deeper. Let us go deeper. The book tells us—the first verse tells us—the eyes themselves become the seen, and the mind is the seer. The eyes themselves become the seen, and the mind is the seer. Now what does it mean? It means not only do I see the world with my eyes, but I also know with my mind. My eyes are open—open—this guy is boring me so much, I can't keep my eyes open. I know it. I can see very well. I know that my eyes are good. I can't see very well; I need spectacles or contacts. So the conditions of my eyes, those are known to me. Who knows that? Not the eyes themselves. The Mind reflects upon the condition of the eyes. So the mind is the Seer. Now the word seeing is used metaphorically; it means the knower. So the Mind becomes the seer; eyes become the seen. The Mind becomes the knower; the eyes become the known. The mind is the knower, The Seer, and the eyes become the known or the seen. Fair enough. We know all the conditions of the eyes and all the body. In fact, not only the eyes, the same applies to the ears and the nose and all the sense organs. In fact, the whole body: it is the known, and the mind is the knower.
Now let's apply the three lessons we learned earlier, the three principles. The first and fundamental operating principle: the seer and the seen, the knower and the known are different. Is it true that the mind is different from the eyes? Yeah, pretty obvious. Mind is whatever the mind is; it's definitely different from the eyes, different from the ears or the nose or the—the skin or the tongue. So the mind is different from the sense organs. Number one. Number two: the conditions of the eyes keep changing. The conditions of the eyes and the ears and the nose—they are many. Sometimes eyes are—are good; sometimes the ears—you cannot hear well, and so on—all of these variety of the conditions of the sense organs, of the body, is known by the same mind. The same mind knows the variety of conditions of the different sense organs and the body. Second, third: the eyes—the conditions of the eyes, the ears and the entire body—they keep changing. The Mind, compared to that, relatively unchanging. It's the same mind, after all. Mind changes into mind, but the eyes, ears, body, they all keep changing in various ways. So the variety of changes in your body are known by the same seer—the mind. That bears repeating: the Seer and the seen are different. Number two: the seer being one, the seen are many. Number three: the seer remaining relatively unchanged, the scene keep changing. And again it's obvious. Again it's obvious.
Now let's go deeper. Now the Magic Begins. The third stage of the verse talks about: the Mind itself has seen. The Mind itself has seen. Are we not aware that I can understand what this person is saying? Are we not aware that I cannot understand what this person is saying? When I have—I want something, a desire, I'm aware of my desire. When I'm happy, am I not aware that I'm happy? When I'm sad, am I not aware that I'm sad? When I can remember something, am I not aware that I am remembering something? If I cannot remember something, my memory is failing me, am I not aware that I cannot remember something? So all the functions of the Mind are known to us. Whatever is happening in the mind are more or less known to us; we are aware of it. Therefore, the mind is also something that is seen; it is something that is known. We can immediately do it: close your eyes and look into the mind. It's called introspection; you can do it. So the mind is something that is known. If the mind is known, the mind is something seen, and there is a seer of the mind; there is a knower of the Mind. What it is we don't know exactly, but we can call it the witness. The Sanskrit term is *sakshi*. Let's call it the witness. Why would you call it the witness? Because it is that which sees the mind; it sees the mind. So the Mind becomes seen, and there is a seer of the Mind within us. So what—well, here is where things start getting fun. Let's apply those three lessons. Number one: The Seer and the seen are different. So that which—the witness which watches the mind is different from the mind. And the second one is: the Seer remaining one, the seen are many—thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas are many in the mind—continuous stream of movement in the mind always. The knower of the mind is the same. Third: the mind has many types of—mind is continuously changing—so many types of thoughts, feelings, emotions—that's the mind is manifold; the knower is one. And the third point is: the mind is continuously changing; the—the *sakshi*, the witness is not changing; it—it watches unchangingly. These three lessons. So what—well, here's where I usually tell a story—was very interesting, instructive story. There was this uh, businessman in India who had problems, like businessmen do, and uh, what they do in India is they go to a Swami, and the Swami usually lives in the Himalayas, and the higher in the Himalayas the wiser he's supposed to be. You live higher, you live—the more wisdom you're supposed to have uh, and it gets colder, and you're supposed to wear less and less clothes as you go up there. And that's a really great Swami. I remember seeing this cartoon in *Reader's Digest* long long ago, and they had this comic uh, you know, Peaks—mountain peaks—just like triangles, very sharp up there um, a small one, a medium one, and a very high one, and on each of them—these Peaks—there were four or five of them—each of them there is a Swami sitting there on the peak itself, in—in yogic pose, with long beard and looking up—each of—looking up. Now when you look up at the highest peak, what are they all looking up at? On the highest peak is a television set. So they are looking out there. So this businessman, he—this um, this chap, he goes up to a pretty great Swami who lives very high up in the Himalayas, and he says to the Swami um, oh Swami, I am miserable. I am miserable. Help me. Swami says: are you—do you experience your misery? Do you feel your misery? Says: of course I do; that's why I've come to you. Then he says: if you feel your misery, if you feel your misery, if you know your misery, then you cannot be miserable. You are the knower of the misery in your mind, because the knower and the known are different. Misery is a feeling in your mind; if you are aware of it, you are that which is aware of the feeling in the mind—aware of the misery in the mind. That which is aware of fear is not fearful; that which is aware of sadness is not sad. Now this person thought about it, and if you think about it, you know, if—if you do that, the result will be, at the very least, the problems in the mind will become a little quieter the moment you put some psychological space between the problems in your mind and yourself. Then what happens is we start questioning whether these belong to me. I'm aware of it, but do they belong to me? You—of course they belong to me. Why have we ever asked this? Does the Mind belong to me? Of course, this—I mean, we think we are the mind. If you make a distinction between yourself and the mind, you'll say: Swami, at the least, even if—if I am not the mind, all right, I can grant you that, but at the least it's my mind, so I care whether there's sadness in the mind or misery in the mind or ignorance in the mind. But is it really your mind? What kind of question is that? Of course it's my mind. Well, think about it. You go on a train; you—you board a train here, a day train, and you have a passenger who sits in front of you, and you get to know this guy; you know his name and what he does, and you can see him—what he looks like, what he talks like, everything you know about him. After a few hours he gets down and he's gone. Just because you know about him, just because you are with him for a few hours, he doesn't belong to you; never has, never will. Anyway, more of that later. Now the man thought like this—mind calmed down a little, as it will; you can try it—and he came back to the Swami, and um, and he said: Swami, you are right; that's really profound, Swami. I am very peaceful now. The real fun Starts Now. The teachings—that was not the teaching; the teaching comes now. And the Swami immediately says to him sharply: no, you are not peaceful; you are the knower of the peace in your mind. You see how profound that is. The moment I say there is misery in my mind, and I get attached to it, and the Swami teaches me that which I'm aware of is different from me, so I'm aware of the misery in my mind, so I am different from the misery in my mind, and the misery sort of diminishes, sort of becomes controllable—ignore—you can ignore it—and mind feels peaceful. The moment I say I am peaceful, I'm again attached to the mind. What will happen is: this chap, when he goes down from the Himalayas into Delhi or whatever else, you know, like—like you go away from here into 101, the peace disappears again. That's the nature of the mind. If you're attached to the peace in your mind, the—
Moment the Mind loses its peace, she say, “Oh,” and the Vant society or in the Himalayas, I was so peaceful. Now I have lost the peace in the mind. You are a knower of the peace in your mind; you are the knower of the lack of peace in your mind; you are the knower of the happiness in your mind; you are the knower of the misery in your mind. You are different from the happiness; you are apart from the misery. You are you are the Observer, quite different from the peace in your mind. In fact, thus being different from the peace or the lack of peace in your mind, that is true peace. In the Advaita Mandukya Upanishad, one of the names for the Atman, the self, one of your names is peace, shant. [Music] The name of the Atman is peace. It’s not that the Atman, that the the the spiritual self is peaceful; it is peace itself. Whether the mind is at peace, whether the body is at peace, whether the world is at peace, you are eternally undisturbed. That peace, that is the witness; that is what you are, even when you touch the mind to yourself. This is my mind: the misery of the mind is my mind; the ignorance of the mind is my mind; the unspiritual nature, the worldly nature of the mind is my mind. Even then, we are telling ourselves something that is false; we are attached, so strongly attached to the mind and, through the mind, to the world.
I often give this very stark example: we find in the Vant, among the swamis in the Himalayas. Think of the greatest possible attachment in the world; the greatest possible attachment, human attachment in the world, is the attachment of a mother for her baby. The greatest possible attachment—it’s a good attachment, the baby needs it—but it’s the greatest possibil—it’s extremely strong. Whatever the mother does, somewhere at the back of the mind will be an awareness of what the child is doing and how the child is. Now imagine that mother when the baby goes to sleep, and finally the mother goes to sleep. I can see some lady smiling. Swami, you don’t know anything about babies. Mothers do not get much sleep. Yes, but when the mother finally gets goes to sleep, that mother, so tremendously attached to the baby, would not like to be separated from the baby for more than a little bit of time. That mother happily, completely, totally forgets the baby; not unwillingly, willingly goes into deep sleep, complete forgetfulness of the world, of the baby, of her own body—everything forgotten—and it does the mother does that every night and does it willingly and happily. It’s a it’s a common experience; we never reflect upon it philosophically, what it means philosophically. So whatever is there in the mind, you are the witness of that mind, and the witness is ever separate from the mind. The very fact that you are the knower of the Mind means you are not the mind. Not yet Vant, very far from it, but already just about every problem in the world is solved.
What a strange statement, Swami. Think about it: problems are in the world, or in our bodies, or in our minds. If you are separate from the mind, you are an entity; you are independent of the mind and the body. The problems of the mind and the body do not touch you. You may be aware of them when they come up; you are aware of them when they go away; you are aware that the problems have gone, but they are not your problems; they never were; they never will be. You are free to clutch, hold on to them: my misery, my poverty, my failure, my desires. You’re free to hold on to them, but they do not belong to you. You have to learn to let let go of what you actually—you cannot hold on to it; it will go away anyway. It has come; you imagine that you’re hold holding on to it; it will go away, however hard you hold on to your worst problem. It goes away; it goes away every night. Just think about it: the guy with the worst kind of problems in the uh in the Intensive Care Unity of the of the what’s the hospital, Cedar Sinai? In the Intensive Care Unit of that hospital, of dying, multiple diseases, organ failure, no hope—the moment that guy goes into sleep, into deep sleep—that guy’s deep sleep and the Billionaire’s deep sleep and Obama’s deep sleep, the president, most powerful president of the most powerful country in the world, their deep sleep is exactly the same: no problems. All right, now you know: learning to let go.
I can’t help but tell you the little story here; it’s it’s another of the Swami Stories the Swami in the Himalayas tell. What is this learning to let go? There’s this monkey, a farmer who is to keep uh bananas in a jar, and the jar had a narrow neck, and there was a monkey who watched this, and when the farmer would go a little distance away, the monkey would come down from the tree and put its hand in the um in the jar and take out the bananas and run away. And the farmer thought, “How how do I get, you know, control this pest?” So what he did, he got a jar with a much more Nar a narrower neck, and he put it there, and he forced the bananas inside. One by One. The Monkey watched all this. When the farmer went a little distance, the monkey climbed down, put its hand in—you can imagine the triumphant grin—and caught hold of the banana. But the problem is now it can’t pull the banana out of the jar because the the neck is not wide enough for the banana and its hand, and the farmer comes and trashes the poor little monkey, you know, gives him a solid beating. Now how can the poor little monkey—it’s not very poor, pretty naughty monkey—how can the Monty monkey escape the thrashing? The only way the monkey can escape is to let go of the banana, but the monkey doesn’t—it’s so attached to the Manana, tremendously, “I will not let go,” and it takes a beating. You can just let go, and it can run away, but it will not let go. It is not trapped; the only thing that traps it, its desire and its confusion, that “I cannot take my hand out.” You cannot take your hand out because you’re holding on to something which is not part of your hand. It’s—how does the monkey escape? By letting go of the banana. Letting go of the banana, the monkey becomes a monk. You let go of what never belong to you anyway; what does not belong to you—that which belongs to the world, that which belongs to the body, that which is part of the Mind—none of this belongs to you; you are the witness. Right, the fourth stage. This is the third stage; the fourth stage here it here is where Vedanta really starts.
So supposing such a witness is there, even if I feel, okay, it could it could be true that I am this unchanging witness; it’s only because I’ve become identified with the body and mind that I feel I am this limited individual. The body is born; I feel I have been born; the body gets older; I am getting older; body gets sick; I am sick. In the mind there are thoughts; you know, I learned something; the Mind learned something, so I have become learned; the Mind forgets; I have forgotten. Oh, I cannot but tell you this story; see how even before coming to the fourth stage, the third stage, how it helps us. One of the greatest Scholars I’ve met, master of both Eastern philosophy and Western philosophy, a philosopher—he’s still alive—I met him at at one of our ashrams in India, and he had a mild stroke. He taught in USA, in Germany, and in India, so he’s old now. He had a mild stroke, and he was a little depressed. He told me, “Swami, I am forgetting what I’ve have learned, and I feel bad.” Imagine somebody who’s gathered millions of dollars over over the years through hard work and suddenly economic Bust or whatever and loses it—what you have worked for your life, and that is slipping out of your fingers, so you feel bad; you’ve invested your life in that. So a great scholar has invested his life, entire life, in cultivating learning, and that’s going now; the mind is not sharp; mind is losing what it has learned. That’s one picture. The other picture: there was a Swami in our order, not very well known outside, but in inside the order we all knew him, Mand Ram Maharaj. He has passed on now. He used to teach; even I was lucky enough to learn under him. He used to teach in the in the training center in Bat—vastly learned Swami and a very great Swami. Now see the difference: I used to go to him with questions as a young novice. So one day I went to him; he used to be in in the what we call the aroga B where the old Swami stay; he was sick; he 12 14 hours in a day, sometimes oxygen had to be given to him, and always there was a twinkle in his eyes and a smile on his lips. Anyway, so I used to go to him with questions towards the end of his life. One day I went with the last time I went with a question to him; he thought and he thought and he thought and he said, “I can’t remember anymore; it’s all going away.” Okay, till this point it matches the next; he said with a big smile, “Let It Go; its work is done.” All the Vant I have studied in my life, all the scholarship I have got, Let It Go; its work is done. He has got something Eternal, something permanent, something unshakable, from which position he can let go of everything; he can let go of the banana; there’s no problem anymore. This is the this is what happens when we truly truly understand and feel that we are not the body, not the Mind. Fine. Now suppose we are this witness of the of the Mind, unchanging witness. Immediate question will be, “Great, that’s what I want to know now. Can you tell me, Swami, how do do I know this witness? How do I get this witness? How do I realize this witness? How do I know this witness?” And the answer comes in the last quarter: You can never know it; you can never know it. I can see the shocked expression on most of your faces. “Swami, you should have told us this earlier; I wouldn’t have signed up for this course. Can I have my $3 back?” More than 100 years ago in London, Swami Vivekananda was giving a talk on Advaita, on Jnana Yoga, and he said exactly this thing: the self cannot be known; is not an object of knowledge. Then he says, “Har on,” and says, “But you must not go away with the idea that it is unknown; it is more than known.” In every knowledge, the self reveals itself. The Kena Upanishad says, “What is the self?” The knower, the witness. The Kopish says it is something different from the known. Oh, so it’s unknown? No, it’s something different from the unknown. Think about it: if I ask you a question, “What is it that’s different from all that you know?” All the subjects you know, the people you know, your memories, ideas, opinions—different from all of that, and different from all that you do not know. There’s a vast ocean of the ignorance which we have; we do not know many things, so there are many things which we do not know, and there there are many things which we know. What is it that’s different from both of them? It’s not something that we know; it’s not something that we do not know. Yes, some people have an idea. Yes, what you are, exactly yourself. You said, “No, Swami, I know myself.” What do you know about yourself? You know what your passport tells you, your driver’s license tells you; you know your body; you can see the body; you know your memories, your family—all that’s in the mind. And if you know all that, it must be different from you—that which knows all this. Do you know that? No; it cannot be an object of knowledge, and yet it is not unknown. For what is more known than yourself? You know that you exist; you know that you are. It’s exactly like: how do I know you are all there? Because I can see you. How do I know that my eyes are there? I can’t say because I can see my eyes. I know that I have got eyes, and they’re in perfect working order, because not because I can see my eyes, because I can see you. Whatever I see proves to me not only that object is there, but also that my eyes are there. In the same way, whatever experience you have, you see something in the world out outside; it proves that you are the conscious self. You feel; you have a feeling in your mind and memory, an emotion; it proves to you not only that the emotion is there in your mind, but also that you are the witness, the conscious self. Every experience is a proof that we are Consciousness; we are this witness. The Upanishad says, “When you realize the infinite existence, infinite Consciousness in every experience of your life—not just in the temple or in the church, not just at the time of prayer, not just even in Samadhi—in every experience, when you’re talking, you’re thinking, you are laughing, in every experience when that self, this this uh existence, Consciousness place is realized, that is immortality, and that is possible.” So the fourth quarter says, “This self, the witness, is the true Seer.” What about the mind? It is the seen. This witness plus the Mind becomes the Seer of the body and the sense organs. This witness plus the mind and the body and the sense organs becomes the Seer of this world, but the true, real Seer is this witness alone; everything else is the seen. This witness is the knower; everything else is the known; and this witness is separate from all that is known; this witness is unchanging; everything else is changing; this witness is one; everything, all others are multifarious, multiple. This is, in brief, the explanation of the just the first verse. I’ll say one more thing, and I’ll throw it open for questions. Last 10 10 minutes or so we can have questions, I think so. Just one more thing: I said there are three stages of understanding these verses. One stage is you should be able to say now what uh the verse said. Number two is understand what it said. Number three is is it a fact for you? Is it is it real for you? Look at it; take it stage by stage. The first stage says, “The eyes are different, and the forms are different.” Is this real? Is this a fact for you? Do you have to believe this? Is it high philosophy? No, it’s common sense. Is it a fact? Yes, it’s a fact that my eyes are different, and this book is different. It’s a fact; I don’t want to learn about this; the book is just telling me what I what’s already a fact, just drawing my attention to it. Second, that my eyes are different, and my mind knows the eyes; the mind is the knower, and the eyes and this body is the known, and the mind is different from from the the sense organs. Is that a fact, or do I have to believe it? It’s a fact; I experience it. That the witness is different from the Mind. Third stage: witness is different from the mind; is it a fact, or is it something to be realized? Is it a fact now? Yes, that’s what the book claims. Most people would say at this stage, “Well, it’s a great Theory, and it is something to be—I can—I don’t disbelieve it, but it is something to be realized after lot of sadhana, lot of spiritual practice, and then finally I will realize I am different from my body and mind.” That’s all right, but that’s not what the book is saying. Just as the eyes are different from this microphone, exactly in the same way, you, the knowing self, is just now, right now, you are completely different from the body and mind. Only in our understanding the monkey has caught hold of the banana; we have caught hold of the body and mind in our understanding, not physically, in our understanding; that’s why we feel trapped. So just now also it is a fact that you are not this body, not this mind. The Sanskrit goes like this: I’ll quickly run through it; those who can read Sanskrit you can follow me; don’t have to repeat it. I’ll just say: rupam means forms; disam means that which is seen; Lam means eyes; d means the Seer; d draa means Seer. The book is the analysis of the draa and drisha, the Seer and the seen. So the eyes are the D, forms are disa. Go deeper. Second stage: the eyes become the seen; mind becomes the Seer. D and the mind and the eyes are different. Then the third stage: the mind, the thoughts, feelings, ideas in the mind, they all are disa, things which are seen, and there is something watching them; that is called the sakshi, the witness. The modifications of the Mind—here the the word is used as a global term, buddhi—those who are interested in Vedanta, you know, all of them are included here. And finally, the fourth quarter: that sakshi, that is the real draa, the real knower, the real Seer; that never ever becomes an object of knowledge; never ever becomes an object of knowledge; and that is who you are; that is who you are; that is who I am. Many questions will come about this: if that’s what I am, why don’t I know it? If I am this permanent witness, why is it that sometimes I’m aware, sometimes I fall asleep? So Consciousness comes and goes; what happens to this witness? All those questions will come: what is this world? How was this created? What is its relation to the witness? Why is it there at all? Things like this: so many questions are there which will come up one by one. I will stop here, and uh we’ll do a peace chant, and we’ll throw it open for questions. We have 10 minutes for questions. Oh, shant shant shant omish. Any questions? Yes, there’s a question there. All right. Let’s say I get a flish in stomach, and how do you separate witness from that pain? Or is there a way to do that? You you have a pain, an ache in your stomach. Suppose somebody punches—somebody punches me in my stomach. Well, first of all, deal with the guy; you can punch him back or whatever. Then you can then you can do Vedanta. This question of having dealing with pain, and the grossest form is physical pain, physical pain. And this question is immediate, and it works here too; it works here powerfully; it works here just now, even before we are realized souls and enlightened Souls; it still works. You see it works this way. This question was asked by the student to Shankaracharya. There’s a book called Upadesa Sahasri; in that Shankaracharya gives this this, you know, philosophical way of analysis of your feelings, emotions, pain, and so on. Then the student asked this question, “But sir, in the book it’s there, but sir, if if my hand gets burned, it hurts, even after I read Vedanta, it still hurts.” Shankaracharya says—their answer is—“Are you aware of the pain?” “Of course I’m aware of the pain.” If you are aware of the pain, you are that which knows the pain, and you must be different from it. Remember, Vedanta is not anesthesia; Vedanta is not a painkiller. In Hindi they say, “Does not try to change the world of appearance.” Karma Yoga tries to change something; it change it does good to the world and purifies the Mind. Bhakti Yoga tries to make a change in our, you know, take away desires of the world and focus it all on God, love God; it’s a change. Raja Yoga, path of meditation, makes a change in the mind, focuses the mind on God and tries to attain Samadhi, which is also a state of the Mind. Jnana Yoga alone does not try to change anything; it just tries to get knowledge which removes ignorance. So it’s not going to take away your pain, but what it going what it’s going to do is something more profound. Sri Ramakrishna, terrible pain of cancer in the Thro throat; he’s lying there sick sick and weak in Kashi in in Kolkata, last days of his life, and Swami Vivekananda, he comes and he asks, “Sir, how are you today?” And Sri Ramakrishna sort of croaks, you know, “I can’t eat; it hurts,” and “I don’t know why.” He said, “Well, I can see that you are in great joy.” And Sri Ramakrishna bursts into laughter and he says, “This Rascal has caught me out! This Rascal has caught me out!” That it pains and it hurts, and I can’t bear it anymore—up to this we all understand; we are we we experience that. The next part of it: it does pain, and it’s terrible, and at the same time I can transcend it in a blink of an eye. That is possible only for the Jnani. The same Hari Maharaj, in the last days of his life, two incidents I’ll tell you. One is with Swami Atulananda Maharaj, who was with whom he was in America and later on in Banaras, in in in Kashi, in India; they traveled together. Once somewhere, I think near Hardwar or somewhere, there was a group of pilgrims, and they’re sitting together at night. Swami Atul Ananda, who was Dutch and also American—he was in America—he was a Swami, and Swami Vivekananda, they’re sitting together talking about Vedanta; group of pilgrims had gathered around them in the campfire and listening to talks on Vedanta. And then somebody disputed it: “Look, sir, all this sounds fun; I mean, all this sounds great, but that you are not the body—easy to say these things. If you put your hand in the Fire, won’t it get burned?” And Vivekananda says, “I can do that; I can put my hand in the fire; it will get burned, but it does not affect me.” And he rushed to put his hand in the fire, and the others jumped in and caught hold of and pulled him back. Now this is one incident. The second incident is very well known: he was in Kashi, shasham, old in his old age, and he had a wound in in the hand. Once he had a cunkle also; there was an operation, but also a wound in in a on a hand and finger, and it had to be lanced. A doctor came to lance the wound, and the doctor said, “It’s going to hurt terribly, and I’m to put an anesthesia.” And the Swami said, “No, there’s no need to put an anesthesia; you can operate.” And the doctor did operate, and the Swami sat there calmly, smiling. Established, I believe in the knowledge that I am not the body and not the mind; there is a cutting in the hand going on; there’s bleeding there, and there’s terrible pain there; I’m I watch all of that. That knowledge is so strong within it that the knowledge itself calms down the mind which wants to react in shock and pain. The funny thing happened the next day. The next day the doctor came again to dress the wound, and he opened the bandage, and he was about to dress the wound, and the Swami shouted in pain. The doctor was surprised: “Swami, yesterday this this hurts; I know, but yesterday when I operated upon it, it must have hurt much more; you you you had no reaction then, and you are shouting in pain now. What is the mystery?” And the Swami said in Bengali, “You should have told me that you’re going to touch it; I could have, you know, lifted my mind from the body.” They can do it immediately. So it’s possible. And yeah, I’ll come to that, but I cannot help but add the funny sequel to all these stories: it’s a well-known story; I don’t know how true it is. Among monks of our order it is well-known; it seems some Monk read a lot of Vedanta, all these books and everything, and was convinced about it, and one day he had an operation somewhere, a minor operation, and the doctor said, “Do you need anesthesia?” And he said, “No, I am the Atman; go ahead and cut.” “Are you sure, Swami? It’s going to hurt.” “What do you say?” “Hurt like blazes.” And the Swami said, “Of course it can hurt, but I’m the witness of the pain.” And the moment the knife cut through—just cut through the skin—the Swami shouted, “Stop! Stop!” “Swami, what happened to your Vedanta?” And he—this works best in Hindi; I’ll translate: he said, “All that stupid Vedanta is in the books of Vedanta; it’s not in real life; it doesn’t work.” You have to be—so what works? It is as I said, you know, just like this book is different from my eyes; it’s a real fact for me; you don’t have to tell me; you don’t have to convince me.
No philosophy is necessary in the same way. I must be separate. I must be convinced, clear that I'm it. It's obvious that I'm separate from my body and mind; then only it will begin to work. Okay, last question: How do I? How do I make? How I sure that witness isn't a function of the mind? I'm intellect.
To yes, that is a question one should definitely come up to any thinking person. You see, it's very clear when you are—please repeat the question exactly. It's an important question. The moment you say that I am, there's something watching the mind, and that which knows the mind is different from the mind. But you see, the mind can also watch itself, which is not a problem when it comes to the body or the world outside. The mind has a capacity to reflect upon itself; this capacity is called introspection. So when I say I am watching the feelings in my mind, the thoughts in my mind, the memories of my mind, is it not simply the mind watching itself? Isn't it introspection? Isn't it introspection?
I will answer that in—I just give you the answer in brief, in two ways. Just consider it. One answer is a standard answer given in Advaita. The clear proof that you exist apart from the mind will be if you have an experience where the mind is not there, but you are there, isn't it? And they say deep sleep is exactly such an experience, which we have all the time. You say, "No, in deep sleep I was not there." You were not there. Then who slept? No, it's just the body was sleeping, but you wake up and you say that I slept happily. I did not know anything. I slept happily. I did not know anything. If you did not know anything, that is also an experience; something must have experienced it. I'll leave it—you leave that with—with you. It's there's a lot of argument about this, a lot of thinking about it, and there are different schools of thought. But that apart, let me give a—a more subtle but much more uh simple example.
When you are not introspecting, when the mind is not watching itself, are you at that moment still not aware of the mind? When you do not—when you do not think about yourself—"I am watching the mind"—don't do it. Normal times, talking, walking, and all that, at that time also there is a basic level awareness going on all the time, even when you are not self-reflecting. That is what is interesting. There is something illumining the mind, and the mind, of course, can self-reflect. But when the mind is self-reflecting, it is one thought thinking about another thought; it's one idea thinking about another idea, or a feeling, or something; intellect pondering upon memories and feelings and perceptions. But apart from all that, you still—there is consciousness in the mind, even when you—even when you're completely absorbed in a task; a surgeon operating on a patient, completely focused in the state of what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi would call "Flow," completely forgotten self-awareness, complete self-awareness forgotten. At that time, is the surgeon conscious or not? Of course, he is conscious; he's completely conscious, just that "I" feeling is not there; the self-reflection is not there. That's one function of the mind. So the witness is different from the ego. Witness—witness, in fact, one of the definitions of the witness in Advaita is the witness of the ego. Buddhi in one of the sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, we find Buddhi—one who knows everything but who is not known by anything. Who is that? Say, "Oh, God." No, in Advaita, it's you, the witness of the intellect, witness of the ego. We'll go further into it; all those things will be explored slowly.
So as I promised, it starts with a bang. Tremendous first verse. Tremendous first verse. Advaita, as we will see later on—what is Advaita? What is Advaita, and what are the roles of meditation, worship? All those things have a role; we'll—we'll plug them in as—as we go along. But it claims that all the worship that we do, all the religion that we do, all the good works that we do, all the meditation that we do, all of it is supposed to culminate in this knowledge. This is the crowning jewel of philosophy in India. Radhakrishnan, Dr. Radhakrishnan, called it—called Advaita the fairest flower of Indian philosophy. I might even say it's one of the grandest philosophies the world has ever thought of. So we shall undertake this journey. It won't take very long; it's a small book. Maybe in six or seven months, if we get two classes a month, we can cover the whole thing. Thank you very much. Thank you.