Atma Bodha - Post 13

VERSE 6:

संसारः स्वप्नतुल्यो हि रागद्वेषादिसङ्कुलः ।

स्वकाले सत्यवद्भाति प्रबोधे सत्यसद्भवेत् ॥ ६॥

SAMSARA SVAPNATULYO HI

RAGA DVESHADI SANKULAHA

SVAKALE SATYAVAD BHATI

PRABODHE SATYASAD BHAVET

(The world which is full of attachments, aversions and so on, is like a dream. It appears to be real as long as the dream continues but becomes unreal when one wakes up, when true wisdom dawns)

From verse 6 – 9, we shift our attention from the Self and Self-knowledge to the world of appearance of names and forms.

Samsara here means the world of transmigration, the world of births and deaths in an endless cycle, which can only be escaped through knowledge of the Self. The characteristic feature of this Samsara is that “it is the realm where one thought is not like the next thought, and thoughts change so rapidly from one to the next. That is the nature of Samsaric life.

Samsara means “that which is ever-changing”, and that is why it is such an appropriate word to describe this world – which is a play, changing every moment.

A thought does not stay for long in the mind; it changes moment to moment. The message of this verse is to show how unreal this world is. 

It does that through a beautiful simile… “Swapna –Tulyo” Nyaya or Analogy: The world of objects, existing in time and space, is compared to a dream as it is viewed from the waking state.

Raga Dwesha Aadi: The word Aadi after Raga-Dwesha indicates “etc”. It refers to the whole chain of qualities of which Raga and Dwesha are the first two. The others are Lobha, Moha, Mada and Matsarya.

Translated into English, the six negative qualities are likes, dislikes, greed, delusion, pride and jealousy. By keeping these alive it is like stabbing ourselves daily with six daggers!

The world which is full of attachments, aversions, etc., is like a dream. It appears to be real, as long as it continues but appears to be unreal when one is awake (i.e., when true wisdom dawns).

It is very hard for a seeker to get conviction that the world so clearly perceived is unreal and the only reality is the non-dual Atman. Hence the compassionate Acharya in this verse is explaining the relevance of the world by the analogy of the dream.

  

DREAM AND WAKING STATE

In dream, the mind creates fanciful existence. Unfulfilled desires, passions and emotions which we carry in our minds when we go to sleep, often manifests in our dreams.

In this verse, Sankara compares a human being’s life full of attachments, aversions etc. with the dream state explained above. 

When a person is dreaming, then the dream world itself is mistaken as real, in that world one may become a king and be happy or lose everything or even die and become sad or afraid. 

Till the dream exists, i.e. till one is in the dream state, all this may appear as real but once one wakes up from that state, the dream is known to be nothing but as an illusion. It is unreal because it is impermanent and never exists forever.

Once a person wakes up from his dream, invariably every human being in the world knows that whatever was experienced by him in his dream is unreal and is only an imagination.

We experience thus so many times in our life when we go to sleep and we get a dream.

• We get such dreams which we can never imagine in our normal life.
• It is often, though not every time, that we get certain things in our dream, we enjoy certain things in our dream which we aspire for in our life but which we never get in our life.
• Also, when our thoughts are not pure and serene, we get dreams some times in which we undergo sufferings 

What happens when we get up??

• We realize at once that the environment seen in the dream, the people, the events which were seen/ experienced in our dream - all of them are not there at all when we wake up and come to our senses.
• We often caught it away internally , saying, o, what a crazy dream it was, How can all that be true in our real life?

STATE OF ILLUSION / IGNORANCE  AND STATE OF REALITY / WISDOM

• Exactly the  above points about dream applies to all the worldly experience which we get in this objective world.

• Due to our ignorance ( which can be related to our dream in the above analogy), we believe and we indulge in so many experiences in our life in this world.

• These worldly experiences are exactly comparable to our dream experience where, we had so many dreams and in the dream, we were actually there, very much involved in the events that were going on in the dream and we are smiling, we are crying , we are undergoing so many things there.

• The world that we perceive is felt through our senses and is full of attachments and aversions. These are only due to ignorance.  The ever changing world can never be real and is an illusion only. It is just like a prolonged dream created only by our mind.

• Till one is in ignorance, the world with all its duality is perceived as real, and one gets deluded by bonding, hatred etc. of different objects of the world. Just as in the dream world, one may feel happy and proud about ones wealth or sad thinking about all miseries.

• All these arise only due to ignorance and once the knowledge of the Self dawns, then this world is known only as an illusion, just like the dream world that never existed.

Till one is dreaming, we cannot know that  the dream world is unreal. Similarly, the world perceived in the waking state can be realized as unreal only after the ignorance that creates it is completely negated.

Thus Acharya here is explaining that world appears to be real only as long as one is ignorant about the nature of Self. 

A seeker must hence constantly remember that the world that is perceived and appears to be real is only an illusion created by mind and must not get affected by all its happenings. 

Just as the dream world, it will be known as unreal once one ‘wakes up’ from this state of ignorance.

A person who has a balanced and a controlled mind, who is not tossed by anger, pride and petty jealousies, likes and dislikes- he does not wander away into wild dreams created by a feeble mind.

Such a man of realization recognizes the experience in this world as “a dream” wherein he experiences this world as a realm of objects, time and space.

Just as dream is so distinctly different from the waking state, so also the waking state is distinctly different from the state of God-realization. This is the appropriateness of the analogy.

Love

PS- If a person continues to believe the world as real and moves around in the world with Attachment, Aversion etc. then what is his state in the context of a dream?

We often observe that in a dream, we ourselves would be seen witnessing all that is happening in the dream and in the dream, we ourselves stand there and pass a judgement that this is not a dream this is all real. This happens so many times to us. Does it not??

State of a person who has not realized the world of attachment etc. as unreal is exactly like this. 

He exists there, witnessing the illusory world very much (like the person who stands there and experiences the dream experience happening to him, as a witness) and, as explained above in the context of dream, he also passes a judgement that all these experiences in his life are real because he has a mistaken notion on account of his ignorance that his identity as a limited  jiva is real, the world is real, all the experiences which the world fetches to him are real!!!

Due to the grace of God or a Guru, time comes in one's life in some birth or the other when this ignorance is broken, the falsity of the world and our limited existence with this body is known and our actual, true identity as the infinite SELF/ATMAN is realized!!!

Love

Atma Bodha - Post 12

Yesterday we understood that ignorance is not ‘removed’ but only negated. Let us continue further on this…

Example of the “Kataka-nut”:

The above process is compared with the effect that the powder of the kataka-nut has on a bucket of muddy water. In India, this powder, which is also ‘dirt’, is added to water which is to be used for drinking, especially during the Monsoon season, when the water sources are always very muddy.

The powder has the special quality to precipitate the fine muddy particles in the water and make them settle to the bottom of the bucket. The clear water left behind at the top of the bucket is decanted for drinking. Finally the dirty mixture of mud and the powder at the bottom of the bucket is discarded, having done its job of clearing the rest of the water.

The simile applies in the following manner: 

1) The water is the Self. 

2) The adulteration with mud is the impurities embedded in our Jiva due to the lifestyle fostered in us by Ignorance. 

The ignorance referred to in these verses is the Primal or the first and the subtlest ignorance of the real truth that we are divine. This Ignorance gives birth to our identity as a human being with a Body, Mind and an Intellect. This then extends our identity to so many things like - I am a doctor, I am a CA, I am rich, I am  poor, I am handsome, I am bad looking, I am this, I am that .........., the list is endless.   

3) The remedy for a disease depends on the cause of that disease. Here, the disease is IGNORANCE. So, the cure for this disease has to be KNOWLEDGE.

4) So, the Kataka nut in this case is the KNOWLEDGE of Brahman to remove the DIRT of our ignorance, which is covering the clean water which is SELF.

5) Thus, only the state of "AHAM BRAHMASMI" can drive away our mistaken notion of "I AM SO AND SO".

It does not end there. 

When once, a disciple approached his Guru and told, "Guruji, I have known Brahman", the Guru says only 2 lines - "SHUT UP AND GET OUT".

What did the Guru mean??

The Guru meant " GET MORE AND MORE INWARD WITH THE APPARENT KNOWLEDGE  ABOUT BRAHMAN WHICH YOU HAVE GOT, WHEN HE SAID, " SHUT UP".

AND WHEN HE SAID "GET OUT", HE MEANT, LET THAT KNOWLEDGE ITSELF GO OUT OF YOU WITH THE INWARD EXPERIENCE YOU WOULD GET WHEN YOU GET INWARD!

Dear All,

This verse stands out as one of the most crucial verse in the entire Atma Bodha text, in the context of those who take up the path of Knowledge or Jnana Yoga for God realization.

One dangerous disease which grips one who studies all treatise on Knowledge, the upanishads, all vedanta treatise is that, the person is internally blown up with the impression that he is the most learned person on the earth.

This is called as "Shastra Vasana", i.e., impression about one's expertise and one's knowledge of shastras.

When such impression sets in, the entire knowledge gathered by that person of wisdom has only added more ego to him, rather than removing the very ego, the very ignorance of the real truth that HE IS VERILY DIVINE SELF.

So, the actual culmination of Knowledge happens when the knowledge gathered is absorbed so intensely that it transforms into inner subjective experience of the TRUTH, the ONLY TRUTH that ONE IS DIVINE SELF. Once such a Jnani abides in SELF, then the so called knowledge or say, the impression about one's knowledge does and must leave him once for all, like the kataka nut dissolves in the water after clearing all the impurities so that the water is rendered pure and clean!!!!!

This inward experience of Knowledge is easier said than done. It is the last stage in Sadhana where, having spoken or meditated enough on "I AM BRAHMAN", the meditator actually attains the intuitive intimate inner experience of Brahman which is referred as BRAHMA ANUBHUTI and thereafter, there is no object of meditation - Brahman, there is no one who is meditating on Brahman, there is no meditation even.

All the three - the meditator, the meditation and the object of meditation merge together like the Triveni Sangam where Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati come together and merge in Allahabad. 

Thereafter, the Jiva is freed of all bondage and becomes a Jivan Mukhta!!

Love.

Atma Bodha - Post 11

VERSE - 5 

अज्ञानकलुषं जीवं ज्ञानाभ्यासाद्विनिर्मलम् ।

कृत्वा ज्ञानं स्वयं नश्येज्जलं कतकरेणुवत् ॥ ५॥

AJNANA KALUSHAM JEEVAM 

JNANA ABHAASAAT VINIRMALAM

KRUTVA JNAANAM SVAYAM 

NASHYET JALAM KATAKA RENUVAT

(Constant practice of knowledge purifies the Self (‘Jivatman’), stained by ignorance and then disappears itself – as the powder of the ‘Kataka-nut’ settles down after it has cleansed the muddy water.) 

In previous slokas, we learnt that it is only knowledge that can remove the ignorance and the ever present Atman is untainted by ignorance just as the clouds covering the Sun. 

In this sloka, Acharya is again explaining the reality of the non-dual Brahman by explaining about the nature of the knowledge that removes the ignorance. A student may doubt that after disappearance of ignorance the knowledge may remain and hence duality would always remain, thus leading to the wrong conclusion that removal of ignorance cannot lead to the non-dual blissful Atman.

Let us analyze the ignorance and the knowledge a bit to understand Acharya’s answer to this doubt. Ignorance is nothing but forgetting one’s own nature of Self. It can be neither termed as real or unreal and can never be proved. 

Knowledge can be termed as that which is got from the scriptures which is the paroksha jnana and that from self experience which is aparoksha jnana. 

These are again but modifications of mind or experiences only and hence limited only to the realm of the empirical level. Thus this knowledge can also be called as illusory only.

It is this knowledge that negates the illusory ignorance. But the Self knowledge which is but the consciousness, i.e. the Self is ever present just as the sun behind the clouds and hence is unaffected by this illusory and illusory knowledge.

The ignorance can never be ‘removed’ as it is not that which is newly acquired to be removed, also that which is removed can be got again. We can never remove anything that is neither present nor absent. Ignorance as we analyzed is something that is neither real nor unreal. It is just a mere illusion. 

Just like the illusion of the snake in the rope or the water in the desert. Like the snake in the rope that can never be removed as it never existed in the first place, by knowledge, this ignorance is not ‘removed’ but only negated.

We shall take up the example of Kataka Nut in the next post.

Continued...