Ashtavakra Gita - Swami Tattvavidananda

Class 1

• Yoga, gym… Don’t neglect the body.
• Practical Vedanta with impact on life, not academical. Not sub-serving a system, method, formula. You can’t have both. No prioritization, just one goal.
• Intellect - tool for knowing - pair of tongs. Self-enquiry instead of self-knowledge. Tongs cannot catch themselves. You can only be yourself.
• Who are you? You are not looking for the answer but staying with the question. Where from comes the answer? Mind. Whatever the mind knows is ignorance, not knowledge.
• Suppose you know the self. Then it becomes the other. It is not only unknown but also unknowable.
• Uncompromising scriptures: Upadesha Sahasri, Yoga Vashista and Ashtavakra Gita
• Ashtavakra is outspoken. Of present times only Ramakrishna can be compared to him.
• Aham prakurute paraha
• When you are loving, quiet, peaceful you are not conscious of your mind. You are only when it is sick. Same with the body.

Class 2

• In belief there are no questions, no inquiry.
• You don’t find happiness, health, love, yourself, God outside of you. You have to search, you cannot hand over the responsibility to someone else, e.g. guru. You are your own guru.
• Only healthy body will allow you to search/go beyond the body.
• 1st step in Vedanta - disidentification with the body.
• Maze of verbal expressions vs. reality.
• Conduct daily exercise in discrimination. Look at yourself as something beyond physical body. It is enough to know what you are not. Inhale - I’m not the body. Exhale - I’m not the mind. Train feeling (bhava), not thinking: aham prakurute parah -> brahmanhood. Aham shantaha. Sit upright, allow the mind the become silent. That silence is you. When the mind becomes noisy, I’m not there. Then tell it shantoham.
• Prakuturi = changeful. You are the same in childhood, adulthood and old age while your body and mind is not.
• Religion of the masses vs. true religion - aham prakurute paraha.
• Noisy, extroverted people cannot be silent, they hope this commotion provides some distraction from their own inner misery.
• Inner light: I am and I know that I am. Aham bodhaha.

Class 3

• Religion, belief, followers -> leader. Following, believing is easy.
• Thinking reserved for artha, kama, dharma.
• Wild crane vs. a parrot in a golden cage. Freedom vs. security. Uncertainty, you don’t know what will be your next move. You cannot call nothing your own. Do you love that? You are called mumukshu.
• I provoke you to think. I point out the malaise that has taken root in our lives.
• Without knowing oneself there is no basis for thinking, speaking, acting.
• Remove layers of ignorance. Know yourself, starting with the body, then the mind… -> joy of self-realization: freedom, lightness in life.
• Body - brother donkey. Approach with generous indifference.
• Even when somebody wakes you up from deep sleep, don’t lose sight of your true nature. In your thinking you should always know yourself correctly. Aham bodhaha (awareness).
• Bliss - it is there but you cannot describe it. No difference between a happy and desperate man in deep sleep.
• Which is superior? The costly diamond or the light of awareness in which I see it as diamond. Delusion: belief that the diamond I see is costlier.
• You do all what is supposed to be done by a father. But never believe you are a father. You are Brahman. (controlled folly)

Class 4

• Moha - delusion, taking something for something else. Projection - seeing things that are not there. Snake/rope - seeing something outside that is created in the mind.
• Ignorance: All sorrow comes from self-forgetfulness, from giving importance to the outer thing. Desiring it leads to fear. When the thing is lost, you have not lost anything. This is how we get deluded. This is how we put ourselves in a painful state.
• Wisdom: Be alert. Look at yourself. The thing moves out of focus and does not appear valuable any more. The question of desiring it does not arise.
• Biggest delusion is thinking that happiness, which is your birthright, comes from the outside, e.g. wealth, other people. This is attachment.
• Mortgaged happiness: In a given relationship you experience sorrow because you expect to derive happiness from that relation.
• Origin of (Hindu) pilgrimage: illusion that God is outside of you.
• Difference jnani and samsari. Jnani says all are my people or none is my people. Samsari says some few are my people. Same for world. Like a dream.
• People are afraid of the world because it appears to be alien to them. Only a small part is me/mine. They are in opposition to the rest. Samsari’s world is a fragmented world. The world is produced by his own imagination. It’s a personal world. Hanging by a thread of memory.
• Mine -> fragmentation.
• Bhava = (inner) feeling. Sarvaatmabhava - the entire world is myself = state of realization. Before that vivekabhava = state of seeking -> Nothing is mine. Aham ekaha. For waking state just like in a dream.
• Vedanta - universal philosophy, not Indian philosophy.
• Body shines i.e. becomes evident. The way I illuminate the body the same way I illuminate the world. The same way this body becomes known in the quality of knowingness the same way the world becomes known. First you become aware of the body, then of the sensations, thoughts, emotions, then knowledge in the intellect and then of the awareness itself. That is you and that you illuminates both the body and the world.
• Body and the world come together. You cannot have the one without the other.

Class 5

• Aho = wonder. We gradually lose it. You the person lose yourself in it. When there is wonder, there is communion. There is only the knowing, there is only oneness. That wonder is called bhakti - devotion - wonder in the heart. Once you convert the wonder into an experience (sensorial and mental) and want to repeat it you lose it. Division is created and the act becomes mechanical. No wonder, enthusiasm is left. We convert the devotion, wisdom, reverence into a mechanical ritual.
• Camera converts the present into past so you can enjoy it in future. Present is destroyed. Converts the reality into nama rupa.
• Wonder - my prayer. That is the true religion, not the religion of the masses.
• The world and the body - you cannot have the one without the other. They come and sink together. Water and the wave. Movie and the lens.
• You have space/time only when there is a human mind to project it.
• Look at the tree in a way so that the mind doesn’t interfere. With a suspended mind you are not looking at a particular tree. Mind more quiet - you are not looking at a tree at all. Subject object division collapses. You are not a person any longer. You are a person looking at a tree only when the thing seen is a tree. There is only seeing. Quiet mind -> nama rupas are not projected. You are a Presence, the tree is a Presence and somehow there is no division. The thing you are looking at is not the other, it is the same Being that you yourself are. That is called Advaita.
• When I take myself to be the body mind there springs a world before me - sa šaríram ahó višvam. Ramana Maharshi: The world comes into being when I wake up.
• Rama running after the golden deer - chasing nama rupas. Stop chasing [unlearning].
• Attributed human -> human -> human consciousness -> living consciousness -> consciousness = being absolute.
• Killing the present: name is the past, the thing in itself is the present. Name comes from the mind.
• Immediate perception - do not allow any definition (division) of the mind to intervene. Just pure awareness. Just be (yourself). Don’t be this or that. (Spiritual) ego has no basis without the world around.
• You cannot give up the nama rupa called world by keeping your own nama rupa.
• Allow, don’t force, the mind to become quiet and it will.
• He did not believe in God because he knew God. I’m always in communion with the God. If you see God in you, you see God everywhere. In your own Presence God is present. You do not arrive at God with positive effort but by psychologically giving up all - dismissing the unreal - vivekabhava.

Class 6

• God is the light by which you perceive (fivefold) the world. Appears as little spark “I am” when conditioned by body/mind, which is at the beginning and end of every cognition (knowing). Cleanse mentally of imagined limitations.
• In dualism otherness persists. Attractive for the mind because thinking requires a lot of energy. People prefer to believe.
• Space and time - continuum. You cannot have one without the other.
• Learnings vs. wanting and waiting to be told. Subject vs. object. Living entity vs. dead. Taking vs. giving away responsibility for oneself. While you are learning there is no gurudom in it.
• Being - appearing. Water - waves. Wave, whirlpool, foam etc. is looking at water through the prism of space and time. Looking directly all is water only.
• Nothing is really born. AjAtavAda from mandukya. Child was, is, will be. Human mind gives the birth. If you don’t accept the birth, where are the causes for it?
• Atma alone is, everything else appears.
• Idea of the rose comes from the head. You say plant caused (given birth to) the rose. The rose is not what is there, the rose is what you project. The rose is in your memory. A person who doesn’t know rose never sees rose. Rose comes from the mind.
• Consciousness in movement is called mind. Mind is thoughts (waves) and it’s background is the consciousness (lake). What you call rose is but rose consciousness. Rose is = rose consciousness is. Everything that you perceive as though outside is in your consciousness. What you call outside is also in your consciousness.
• Entire movie and sentiments is in your head. Mind is the film. Screen is the canvas, space/time. You are the light, intercepted by the mind. Whatever you see is outside of the body but not outside the consciousness.
• Vedanta is examining, investigating, not being told. Dumb students need to be told. Even pashu need not to be told.
• When you see a rose you give the birth to a rose. When you stop seeing it is not there at all. A thing is only when you are conscious of it. You are the author of this universe. The universe is not separate from you: Višvam atmanaha na binnam.
• višvam = world. vi - many, manifold. šva - cognised. World is what is congnised by the five senses. Outside, inside both is in your consciousness.
• Dark room with a pot. When you turn on the switch, what will you see? Whatever was not there earlier. Always you see the light. You never ever see the pot. Pot is in your head.
• What is outside is vibration, what you hear is sound (interpretation by human being).
• The entire universe is seen, therefore jada. The one who is looking at it, who perceives is chetana. The God you worship is hopefully chetana. Look for it in yourself, not in jada. Hanuman doesn’t find Sita in the beautiful Sri Lanka, but in the heart - Ashokavanam.

Class 7

• Angiras: by knowing which everything else is known? Know yourself. A drop of ocean is in front of you. Know all about it and you will know all about the ocean. A drop of ocean is everything the ocean is.
• Ideation vs. knowledge. The word is not the thing (word is outside, idea/concept is inside).
• Ideation (in Vedanta) might be just the obstacle to understand the situation, realize what is the truth.
• Set aside the so called knowledge from the head, make consciousness empty and be alert. Realization: ideation -> actuality.
• Heaven = post mortem gratification.
• Moksha according to Shankara = sarvaatmabhaava. Begins with vivekabhaava.
• Vedanta = transformation in consciousness, not ideation.
• If you practice true religion, you’ll be alone or have two, three people around you. Religion of the masses - we want masses around.
• Unless there is a sense of separation you don’t get that identification (religious identity).
• Vasudhaiva kutumbakam - entire humanity is my family.
• Indian -> human being -> conscious being -> being. I’m the existence which is the existence of all.
• As long as you believe that you are born into the world and will leave the world behind so long you will not know yourself correctly. When you wake up the world springs into existence.
• Amrtasya putraha - you are the offspring of immortality.
• Meditate: World is uphold by your consciousness. When you are going to sleep, you devour the entire universe. Whatever appears shines in my light of awareness. I’m all that appears in the concsiousness. Feel this. You are born when you identify with the body. Understanding this is the aim of true religion.
• Clean your heart by driving away malaise, jealousy. You see somebody with good health/luck/etc. -> god bless them! There is no friend, there is no foe and there is only divinity which is myself. Love all as yourself, forgive your enemies.

Class 8

• Rajjusarpa: When there is ignorance of the real, the false makes an appearance.
• When you are afraid of something, that thing will be in your thoughts -> worship. Snake - Vishnu, Shiva. What you are afraid, you’ll see everywhere.
• When you face a snake, you don’t have a problem. You do what is appropriate. That is intelligence, not fear. Imagined snake - problem, fear.
• Horoscope - fear. Chart reading - new religion.
• Word “future” brings only fear in human mind.
• People are afraid of both death and life.
• The more wealth you accumulate the more insecure you become.
• In familial, social, religious live we are driven by fear. It has many shades: insecurity, worry, anxiety. Show me a person free from anxiety and I will show you an atmajnani.
• If there is fear, the other person cannot solve it for you.
• Self-enclosing egocentric activities generate a lot of anxiety. Self-enclosing activity is one that generates some advantage for the apparent self.
• There are not too many wise people in the world. They do not adorn robes of a guru or a priest. They remain quiet without a lot of fanfare.
• Apparent self (center of a circle) is ever changing and mortal, real self is never changing and the self of all (incl. of vegetable and mineral kingdom).
• Ajnana is the single source of insecurity.
• Mahatma + Brahmaaksasa (=jagat) story: you cannot eat me. You can eat the body. I’m not the body.
• If you fight the truth, you’re always the loser.
• You see all these divisions because you are yourself divided inside. If you are integrated within, you’ll see integration outside as well.

Class 9

• Seeing the truth might be difficult and inconvenient - like a person accustomed to darkness seeing the light. There is a sense of security remaining in the darkness.
• Vedanta has nothing to do with religion, Vedanta is beyond religion (karma and upasana). Vedanta is looking at yourself.
• There is no urgency, immediacy, eagerness to know the true self. People have petty issues and are looking for answers for these. Truth can wait. Rise above … samsara has its own dynamic, it will not become perfect.
• Relationships - main sources of suffering. Obsession with body, relationships, world are main obstacles to self-knowledge.
• Guru is the pointing finger. Those who worship the pointing finger miss the moon.
• Mirror with a golden frame. What are you interested in? Outside beauty or beauty in your heart?
• Essence of gurudom - waiting to be told -> losing the sharpness of mind. Learning instinct is not there.
• Learn to look at yourself correctly. Not as the body / mind = original sin in christian mysticism (avidya - hinduism, dukha - buddhism). Identify with Atma = heaven.
• Suppose that you know what you are. Then what you know becomes the other. Are you the other? Know what you are not. You know yourself by being yourself.
• You cannot see sunlight. What you see the daylight - sunlight reflected in the atmosphere. You can only infer the sunlight. Pot shines because of the daylight because of the sunlight.
• Don’t worry about the body mind. It is the mind that makes you worry. Go beyond. The less obsessed you are about the body, the healthier it will be.
• Don’t life in the past which is dead, don’t life future which is not yet. Live in the eternal present.
• Chronological time vs. psychological time vs. timeless. As long as you are identified with the mind, you are in time. Timeless is by not identifying with the body/mind.
• Knowing / learning is never in the future. It is always in the present. Moksha will not come! Process, methodology are in time. Knowing is timeless, doing in time.
• Don’t be caught in the flow of the mind all the time. Step back, do not identify. Just watch. Be not happy, unhappy about some particular thought patterns. You’ve crossed the barrier of mind and thus time.
• Entire universe shines because of the inner light of awareness -> you are the origin of the universe. When the inner light (sun) shines, the whole universe (world) shines.

Class 10

• Only when you perceive, the world exists. A thing only exists, when it is known to a conscious being. George Berkeley - esse is percipi - objects, nothing doesn’t exist outside of the mind because it’s the senses that “prove” their existence.
• In Vedanta we don’t say world exists. We say jagat bhati - world shines (svetlo -> svet svieti, jagat - jagať). Loka - the world is that which you look at.
• What is is and what you see is something else. What IS is spaceless. What you see is spacebound. Infinite, substratum cannot be perceived - no difference to be perceived. That’s why Brahman is formless.
• Wealth - source of endless suffering and conflict in life. There should be no proactive accumulation. Proactively you should prevent the accumulation.
• Space/time “reality” is provided by the senses and inference - snake, dream, movie = illusion, entertainment. Unchanging reality - rope, screen, observer. The secret of the entertainment is that you never lose touch with the ground reality.
• Realization - seeing the false as false. Then you become free of the false, free of sorrow and fear. And the real remains real in its glory.
• Screen - sat, light - cit. Film - mind, canvas - space/time. Adhisthanam for the vishvam - the inner light.
• Be a teacher to yourself. Atma - satguru. Whenever you face distress, just sit upright and look at yourself. Learn to look at yourself - antarmukhatham - fundation of vedantic knowledge.
• Ideation happens in such a perfect way that you even don’t know that you are a victim of ideation. Iota of realization > ton of precept.
• Maru (desert) mareechika (sunlight) - only buddhi will save the deer, not what he perceives (i.e. illusion). Human beings = thirsty deer. We make Gods accomplices to our greed. They can favour us not by reorganizing the world according to our taste but by giving some sense to us.
• Ask yourself - “am I chasing something?” Stop chasing! Shame upon you that you have to chase something.

Class 11

• Transmigration of the soul, all beliefs regarding birth and death - religion. Not part of Vedanta. Atma is immortal.
• As long as you believe you come into this world and leave it you will not know your true nature.
• You are the Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra. The world comes out of you. In every moment there is Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra.
• First you wake up, like Vishnu and then start creating things. The first thing you create - “I am”. Then identify the self-existence with the body. That creates space and time. And then you create the world (this is my house, wife, career etc.).
• Everything starts and ends with the primordial sense of “I am”.
• There is no common world. Every world description has a signature upon it. Occasionally there is overlapping.
• You are the master of your destiny. If it is a lousy world you created, you can make it into a beautiful, happy one. The world you are living in has the origin in you. This is Vedanta.
• Matter is what appears in you. It is consciousness only, light. And it is the human concsiousness that creates everything. I am the creator. If you find yourself creating strife … why not create harmony? You can create what you want.
• The world is a glittering and empty show and you are the showmaster. The world is by your consent. You have the authority to be what you want to be. World is not (real). Gold alone is, ornaments are not. Without your imagination, there is no world.
• My wife, children, career, friend, enemy … just my imaginations. World is the conviction that you are conscious of a world.
• Rose, game, harmony, space … is not outside but in your head. Each is just a bunch of sensations that is converted by the brain into what we believe to be an external object.
• Stop identifying with the body and you’ll understand you’re the cradle that holds the entire universe.
• If there is no original sin, you don’t have a humankind, world. Children don’t have a world. They cry when hungry, sleep when tired, otherwise they are quiet and happy - mind has not yet started projecting.
• Imagination “produces” things, attachment gives reality to them. Precondition: ajnanam. Cut of both imagination and attachment and see what remains. You’re the Shesha. Jnanam is like fire. Fire convertes ornaments into gold.
• Truth is always simple. Complex = unreal.
• Nabhi - navel. Nabha - space. Vishnu (I) -> navel (center, space) -> lotus (earth) - Brahma (human being). 4 heads -> 4 vedas -> speech -> mind (origin of speech; movement in concsiousness, movement = Brahma) -> consciousness (Vishnu). speech = word. word = creation
• I’m the Vishnu, creator is the Brahma, the mind. Vishnu didn’t create this world, Brahma did. Prostrations to myself.