Vaakya Vritti

August 08, 2021

Table of Contents

Satsang 2021-08-03

The right way to listen to a speaker is to set aside your knowledge. Knowledge - accumulation. You neither agree nor disagree with the speaker. The idea is to think about it and that is how we learn
Most of meditations can be classified as fancy or imaginations. Sometimes this fancy or imaginations acquires a status of tradition.
Law of repetition: whenever there is repetition it is bound to become a cult. Then it blunts the mind.
Is meditation a practice or state of consciousness into which the mind comes very smoothly and abides in that? Effort -> karma -> karma phalam… True meditation is effortlessness itself. That requires huge sensitivity. When you’re attentive there are no thoughts.
Effort brings in the element of time. Anything where time comes in will bind you. Real freedom - time is not involved.
(Inner) simplicity in life. A mind free from ambition, competition, scheming… A mind which believes it has achieved is not a simple, humble mind.
Repetition is when there is memory. Memory converts experience into repetition.
Buddha was the first teacher of vedanta. Walking all his life. Giving one lecture in the morning and one in the evening.
There is fear only because you seek pleasure.
When there is fear, there is cruelty. Like sacrificing an animal.
A heart filled with fear can’t know what is love.
Pleasure, fear, cruelty is hallmark of ritualism. This is what Buddha dismissed.

Class 1

Meditation is state of consciousness where there the ideas of effort and reward are not present. There is only attention, that does not exclude anything. Attention of what is. It liberates and transforms.
I do not do meditation, I come into meditation.
sa:vakya - sentence. In this case “tat tvam asi”.
sa:vrtti - function. Function of the sentence (tat tvam asi).
Primary meaning vs. secondary meaning (lakshanah).
Once you know your self, you’ve known God. There is no other way of knowing God.
When it comes to jnana section of the Veda, primary meaning is put aside.
Masses - always wanting something or the other. Undisciplined. With a collective consciousness of fear and want.
People find it difficult to be humble because they have a sense of achievement.
If you learn you’re not a follower any more.
Abheda garbha namaskara: I’m praying to a god who is within me and non-different from myself. Vimala bodhakanam namami.
Anything 100% like sugar, salt is called crystal - ghana. Homogeneous. Monolithic. Here ghana of knowledge (boddha) of the self. Knowingness in which there is no knowing. Knowing this or knowing that is already contamination.
The bigger it includes the bigger but the lesser doesn’t include the bigger.
This is not a prayer from periphery to the center. This is the prayer where the center explodes and merges in the whole.
Out of my own knowledge I create, I sustain in my own knowledge and I take it back when I go to sleep. You sustain a city - that is the power of human thought. You can understand the infinite power of brahman only when you look at your own power. Acintya zakyam.
You can create illness for you, you can cure your own illness if the doctor cannot cure. The lord who created all commands all. You created a world for yourself and you command it. Nobody can make you miserable except yourself. Now, am I describing the brahman or am I describing you?
Brahman also makes mess. He created dharma and adhmara. Hell and heaven. Hero and the villain.
The moment you create a form you made a form you become a sect. People who hold on to one particular form are divisive, sectarian and not in sync with the truth.
Ananta murti: in reality brahman has infinite forms. You are also one form. Even silly gold can have infinite forms.
Two options: either hold on to all the forms or embrace the formless. Both are the same.
Bondage briefly: general sense of sorrow and fear. Idea like presently not all is well with me.
Lack of want - foundation for complete sense of well being. Freedom. Settlement. Sometimes sorrow might come, but it will also go.
When children are playing, they’re in bliss. When you watch them, they stop playing and become shy. There is bliss in you but somehow you’re an obstacle to what is in you.
You need a mirror to see your self, to enjoy your self. For brahman, the mirror is the maya shakti called shrI. One loves the image in the mirror. The image in the mirror is different yet not different from herself.

Class 2

Duty. In the language of Gita: svakarma.
The being is first and foremost in you, then only elsewhere.
Do your study with all the love and enthusiasm. In doing so, you’re worshiping Ishvara.
True religion vs. religion of the masses. Vedantic religion vs. popular religion.
Swami: I never liked the philosophy that a person is unhappy today because in his childhood his parents have done something to him. This has become a big psychological law. Maybe actions were wrong here and there. But the intent was clean.
Whatever happened in the past, put it aside. Live in the present.
When you accept on person as a guru that day your learning has come to an end. From who so ever we learn, he’s the guru.
The right (outer) guru is the one who takes you to the inner guru. Gurus of the world don’t tell you the truth. They maintain the disease so you are patient year after year.
All is myself. My diamond ring - it is not carbon anymore, it is myself. I’m projecting myself outside and relating to it as though it is other than myself. I’m the only reality in this entire creation.
sa:prasada = benediction
If I care to understand the all-pervading Vishnu is in me and not different from me. Aham eva vishnuh.
God made you or we made god? There is no god other than godliness. God sounds like a person. Convert god into impersonal. The god you’re worshiping is not outside but in you.
River is a projection. Bank is a projection. It is prthivi. You give names and believe they are real. Everything is a projection. The one who projects is real.
The guru is the one who shows the way back home which is your real self.
Mahatma has clarity of thinking. He’s not confused. He sees/understands things as they are. Entire world is confused. People see things as they imagine. Jeweler sees gold, people see ornaments.
To think of god you have to experience some insufficiency or deficiency in you. You have to think of yourself as limited as small.
In Vedic vision god is impersonal. Puranic people have converted it into personal.
When you say “God” you always feel separation. When you say godliness the separation is not so strong. What you call jiva is a bundle of desires and fears. As that you’re separate from God.
Satguru is the guru who takes your attention to the (inner) guru in you. Satguru is the adma.
Allow the mind to be silent and you’ll experience pure consciousness. Once the mind projects the body you’re the body. Once it projects the riches you’re the rich man. Once it projects the gender, you’re a man/woman. If it projects nothing, you’re the pure light of consciousness.

Class 3

Tapatraya. Worldly life throws three challenges on us. Nobody is exempt. Tapas - suffering, intense discomfort (associated with intense heat). 1) physical. Body is sick in all kinds of ways 2) elements around us 3) gods. Sending unseen enemies like corona virus.
sa:arca - blazing sun.
Life is full of conflicts among humans.
Entertainment is an industry. There is so much boredom in lives of people. Shut it down and people will go crazy.
Nobody seems to know the meaning of life.
People are caught in self-centered activity of ambition, competition and status seeking. People want to achieve something all the time.
We’re caught in our own thoughts all the time. People can’t stop thinking.
Superstitions. In popular religion people can’t tell the difference between superstition and facts.
Routine of habit.
Psychological dependence upon faith, religion.
When you’re dependent there is fear. Fear and psychological dependence go together. When there is fear, there is conflict.
Tourism. Celebrations. You’re escaping from yourself. One of the biggest escapes is religion. In the mean-time old age comes. It comes much sooner than we expect.
Everybody is looking for a leader. People want to follow. Followers will destroy the leader and the leader will destroy the followers. That is not the way to escape samsara. A spiritual leader should encourage learning, not worshipping.
You have to equip yourself with shama (mind), dama (body functions). So you can be with yourself for a length of time.
If you’re a good student you’ll find a good guru. A good guru is one who has no agenda for you. He’s not looking for some reward. He’s the one who is encouraging you to discover the truth in yourself by yourself. One who points to the inner guru, atma - be a light unto yourself.
Total attention is when the mind becomes entirely quiet. Then you experience yourself as he pure consciousness.

Class 4

sa:bhagavAn - one who’s revered.
It is enough to revere the teacher, you need not worship him.
Bondage we’re talking of is bhava bandhana. bhava - worldliness. You don’t need thrills. They will destroy people.
Doesn’t matter whether you’re sick or healthy. Cycle of pleasure and pain is a problem. Worldly people get accustomed to this problem.
There is so much effort from the people to grab a piece of happiness. It shows that we’re very unhappy. That’s bhava bandana.
Suppose I don’t seek any happiness what so ever. That is freedom.
Effortlessness doesn’t mean you sit in a corner and rot. If life is sedentary, you’ll become sick. That is not Vedanta.
People believe sadhana means intense effort. Effort determines the outcome elsewhere. Not here. How much effort should you put in to get good sleep?
The more punishing, the more reward. This doesn’t work. You’re carrying a huge stone on the head. Stop carrying it. That’s vayragyam. Raga is opposite of vayragyam which is freedom. And vayragyam is effortless.
Dialogue is very characteristic for Vedanta. Everywhere else you’re learning about something that is not you. Meaning of a dialogue, a student going to a teacher, is about learning life and oneself.
Buddha: nobody can hurt you. Only you yourself can hurt you.
Maturity: he he’s had successes and failures, he’s been exhausted by karmas. He wants something that is effortless now.
Three states of the mind: distracted, concentrated and alert.
You work and work and work you feel tired. Happily. Physical fatigue is very good for health. Whereas emotional fatigue is very bad for health. Intellectual fatigue is very good for health.
Concentrated mind is recommended by the hathayoga people. Concentration of the mind is the punishment. The problem is exclusion. It demands tremendous energy, makes you conflicted.
In alertness (sAvadhAna) nothing is excluded. It makes you healthy. It is your true nature. There is no effort involved.
Clarity of though: No way silly emotion will come into it. No personal prejudices have a role to play. In Vedanta no way the clarity of thought should be compromised.
Sri Krishna uses more the word “seeing” than “knowing”. The one who knows Niagara doesn’t know Niagara. The one who sees Niagara now knows the Niagara. We’re 2nd hand people, we don’t know what is 1st hand. All our religion is 2nd hand. There is nothing experiential in it. Idam tad iti - this is that! Direct perception. Apperception.
Suppose I realize I need not seek happiness from the world. It cannot and need not give any happiness to me. That is freedom. That is 1st hand knowledge.
Generally people only quote others. That is 2nd hand knowledge. If I quote from the reverence, but the knowledge is mine, that’s 1st hand knowledge.
We’re looking for emancipation, not redemption.
How can jnanam have a reward? Karma will give you a reward. But emancipation is not the outcome of an effort.
Suppose you are grieving. You’re grieving because of a misapprehension. You go to a mahatma and he shows a mirror to you: Look at yourself! You’re holding to a false notion. Suppose the person understands - the grief is gone. Grief is there only because of false notion.
Study of nyaya (indian logic), or other dualistic philosophies, doesn’t help in understanding advaita vedanta at all. Vedanta is neither divisive nor logic. It is oneness and love. Rather than studying nyaya make some money, enjoy life and come to Gita and get liberated.

Class 5

“How” is relevant when something is a process. You’re not a process. You’re yourself without any respect to place and time.
I’m with my self, the world is completely shut off. The world experience comes to a grinding halt.
It is nothing short of a miracle that I sustain the world (which is the world experience) in myself. So much so I can stop it. Just by being with myself. Simply I am. I alone am.
I can put aside the world-experience at will or I can bless the world-experience to continue. I’m the master of it.
Only rarely somebody wants the freedom from worldliness. People are interested in artha, kama and then dharma (for reaching other worlds). Heaven is a copy of this world, just more refined.
When you gain this knowledge but you do not realize it, it just remains conceptual knowledge, slowly it becomes poison. You get false notion that you’re a vedantin. And then you may consider yourself as a teacher of Vedanta. The process of learning has abruptly come to an end. Poison: this kind of knowledge makes a person egoic, arrogant, hottie. Jnanam: something you understand first hand, within yourself. You know it yourself.
“Tat tvam asi” can do it. What you want to be you already are. This simple and practical it is. Teacher cannot do it for you. You have to give it a chance. You’re free from sorrow. Otherwise I cannot help you with your sorrow.
It is very legitimate to do whatever it takes to be happy. The happiness you’re seeking you already are.
The moment you say supreme power, God, Ishvara a schism is created. It sounds like it is other than you. If you say paramatma, supreme-self… God is God in the clouds. Paramatma is ocean. To experience water, to which part of the ocean you have to go? It doesn’t matter.
Whatever difference you feel/perceive/conceive between the supreme self and you is the essence of ignorance. It only shows that you do not know the glory of your own self. This is the story of Hanuman. He’s to leap across the ocean. The thing is he can, but he doesn’t know that he can. But Jambavan knew.
Schism between what you imagine yourself to be presently: crying, begging, unhappy living entity and what you are: supreme self, embodiment of happiness. You’ve to cross that division. That’s leap across the ocean. That journey is not in space.
tadatmya - oneness. That is this and this is that.
Somebody wanted heaven (or hell). The kingdom of heaven is within you. You can create both.
You’re under the kalpavrksha - wield yielding tree - with the name of tatvamasi. It is in you. You want to be unhappy? -> You become unhappy. You feel you’re old? -> Then you’re old. Oh my legs don’t cooperate too much -> they don’t. I can learn! -> you can learn. I will make everybody happy -> you make everybody happy. Tatvamasi.
tat - that understanding = idam - this direct perception. tadatmya vishayam jnanam, tat idam mukti sadhanam.
The moment you recognise the folly it goes away. You’ve to discover the inner fullness. Every soul is potentially divine.
The scripture tells you to go and do the puja only if you believe to be the doer. The scripture says don’t do bad things because you’ll get papa. The scripture doesn’t say you’re the doer. You say you’re the doer.
Don’t connect the higher and lower paradigms. Only when you’re a doer, you’re responsible for the outcome of the action. For the higher, there is no action, no doer, no result, nothing.

Class 6

Body fits into the medical science only when it is “the body”, not “my body”.
Can you come out of the “me” and “mine” syndrome?
The world is not real because it is limited and it will perish. The real is unlimited. Brahman.
Proverb in Telugu: “The goat always believes the butcher”.
Speech is the link between the thought and action.
In entire Phoenix, can you find a person who is not in search of something or the other? And all that search is in vain. When you do not yourself, your search is in vain.
Can there be life without relationships? No.
Without knowing myself properly, there cannot be any meaningful relationship.
Knowing oneself is not opposed to relationship, not opposed to the society.
You do not need what you think you need. You need only to know yourself. Nothing else.
If somebody is talking very complex things, he’s not talking the truth.
To believe is very easy, to look at oneself requires tremendous sensitivity. Keep healthy mind in healthy body then you’ll have it to examine the issues of life.

Class 7

we’re trained to be isolated persons. The person comes from the thought process - conditioning of the mind. Minus the mind there is no person.
Comedy helps to drop the person.
The so called “secret things” I collect and make a person out of it.
You don’t find “me” and the sorrow separately. The sorrow/fear/dissatisfaction itself is the “me”.
The conflict itself is the person. When the person is negated, the conflict is gone.
In religious context you always say “aham”, “mama”. The person is there.
Objectify the body, watch the body. Similarly objectify that person, the ego. That takes you to the spirit. This is the foundation of “sakshi bhava” - being the witness of the person.
If there is some conflict be a sakshi to that conflict and see what happens with it. That takes you out of the psychological dimension, which is a prison, not your home.
citti samjnana -> cit (ending “i” is an marker)
Table is not solid. It is 99.99% void / space. “Solid” you get by the impression of the touch. Body is not a thing, it is an idea in the mind. Bhagavan buddha said: “body is a wave”.
You have a body only when you think of a body. That is the foundation of the anesthesia.
If body is not the thing what is the thing? Caitanyam is the thing, it is what is. Like in a movie, all you see is not a thing. Light is the thing, nothing else. Everything else is phenomenological.
Look for what is. That is how the search for the truth goes.
You’ll not be able to appreciate ananda, as long as you seek pleasure. You’ll not the joy of good health as long as you eat spicy and tasty food.
shanti - subsiding, dousing (of the mind). Shanti = ananda = true joy != pleasure.
vigraha - matrix. The stuff which the appearing is made from. The essence.
kim na prapatyase - why don’t you realise/understand?
The person, along with all its problems, is a phantom. Phantasmagoria. To understand that you need to have a quiet mind.
Christ: “when somebody slaps you on the right cheek, show him the left one”. Means that his home is not the hurt body mind.

Class 8

3 levels: matter, energy, intelligence - the spirit. You’ve to look at yourself correctly. Otherwise whole life becomes a punishment.
There is nothing like missing anything. Mahatmas who know anything are like wind, they come in and they go out. No identification.
Whenever you notice you’re getting annoyed, tell yourself you’re chitananda shivoham.
Best service you can do to the society is take away one ignorant guy from the society.
How long you feel I’m a punjabi as long you’ll say I’m satchitananda. Did I ever tell you the village I was born? I do not identify with space. Did I ever tell you my age, birthday? I did not identify with time.
Suppose I feel “I’m swami TV”. That’s only a name. What is there in a name? The rose smells as sweet even when you call it by any other name (Shakespeare).
I’m the witness to the ever changing moods of the mind (time) and states of the body (space).
A mask is intrinsically a piece of cloth with two strings attached. It is not (intrinsically) a mask.
Body is not flesh. Feet until loins - prthivi. Abdomen - apah. Tummy - fireplace. Chest - vayu. Neck and above - space. You’re not the body.
What do you get out of the discovery that you’re not the body? Nothing positive. But great freedom.
Business guy is money-conscious. Soccer player is goal-concious. While cooking you’re conscious of the dish … most of the time you’re not body conscious. You’ve to overcome the residual body-identity. You’ve to dismantle structures which promote body identity.
You cannot control the body. That is not in your hand. But you can stop identifying with the body -> feeling of lightness.
Normally people live a living of craving and fear. Because we’re identified with the body.
Pot half filled with water is the same as the body. A bunch of panca-bhutas.
Physician treats the body, not the person.
You do not identify so much with the body as with the attributes of the body: age, gender etc.

Class 9

You’d be able to say “I don’t know” only then your mind is open.
If Vedanta becomes conceptual it just becomes another kind of religion. Only nomenclature changes.
Stay with it for a time, contact a physician by all means, but don’t battle the illness.
In life you have to ask the question: did you put some goal in-front of you and you’re running to it so it can be put behind you? That is insanity.
Repeat any number of times: I’m not the body, I’m the one who knows the body. You have to deal with the body-identification.
Implication of never being born is never going to die.
When it comes to self-knowledge, cheating doesn’t work.
Don’t you ever make a big issue out of birth and death. There is nothing like birthday.
Space is freedom. Develop inner space. Begin with the body. “Body is ill” - there is space. “I’m ill”- there is no space.
You don’t need as much outer space as you believe. Leo Tolstoy: you need 6 feet.
When you have an inkling that you’re not the body that is the intimation of the infinite. That is self-knowledge.
Knowledge is always in the present. Never in the future.
Don’t make a goal out of the self to be reached in the future. You’re the self.
Gravitation is space (akasha) -> kinetic energy (vayu) -> heat / radiation -> water / electricity -> magnetism (prthivi). In gravitation there is only attraction, no opposites.
String theory - everything is only space.
Seeing is not effort, doing is.
Pot is the seeing. I’m the seer. Pot has a shape. I have no shape. Pot was born and will die. I the seer was never born and am never going to die. Pot is insentient, I’m sentient - I know myself and also the pot. Where the pot doesn’t know itself and anything else.
Mahatma being sick: today you can ask only questions where there is no body identification.
See, what are all the areas, where the body ID is ruling, recognize it and dismantle them. Suppose I’m putting color to my hair - that is body Id.
When the spirit and the matter interact, the matter doesn’t leave any residue in the spirit and the spirit doesn’t leave any residue in the matter. Conduct yourself as you’re not the body.
Jesus of Nazareth became Christ only after crucification. You have to crucify yourself. What is the crucification? Realise I’m not the body. How? Don’t act on behalf of the body.
Vasudeva acarya: you’re accusing the annamaya, the body, not me. I’m not the food body. What are you? Take seat and I will tell you in the class.

Class 10

The one alone not seeking happiness is happy.
Are you walking or are you aware of walking? By practising the walking meditation you’ll realize yourself as the witness of walking. Same for speech meditation.
There is the teaching. But you do not feel like a teacher, you do not look at yourself as a teacher.
As long as you entertain the sense of doership your mind will be disturbed under stress. The day you realize you’re not the doer you’ve discovered timeless peace of mind.
You’re seeing a plant -> you’re aware of the seeing. Like an optometrist looking at your seeing of the letters.
You not only hear (ID with the function) but also you know that you’re hearing (dis-ID).
Close the eyes. The eyes are not seeing any forms but you know you’re seeing. I see that the eyes do not see now. That is what you are. Not just a mere function of eyes. You’re the eye of the eyes.
The way to do it is to stop with the ID habit, which is in the worldly people - readily identifying with every - and anything. No mine, no me.
Not identifying -> humility. Identification -> arrogance, egoism. Not pretended humility -> truth shines -> everybody loves you. When you’re humble, there is freedom.
Looking at the lighted cellphone screen makes the mind very agitated, restless, blunted and dull. In the old-age you’ll have neurological issues.
Nature never forgives, nature never respects personalities.
Learn to engage the intellect in productive use. Use it or lose it, never identifying.
Mind like glass appears to be self-shining. C’mon, glass doesn’t shine. It only appears so because it is transparent. It is the sun that shines. Mind is so subtle and so close to the atma.
Spirit - source of knowingness. That is shining. Mind is so close that it appears to be shining by itself.
You cannot stand yourself if you cannot be with yourself. How do you think others will stand you?
Be alone and look at the mind, see what’s going on. Some chatter, seeking is going on all the time. Do it and you’ll not be bothered. Suddenly minds gets quiet. Instead of watching the mind I became one with the mind that’s why it is going somewhere and you become alert - ID has broken.
Silence and spaciousness go together. Thought has bounds. Silence has no bounds.
There are two things taken wrongly as love by people. Lust (attachment) and cupidity.
Difference (by inference) between a cadaver a living person is prana. Somebody says I want to live longer - ID with prana. Essence of non-ID with prana - vipashyana meditation of Buddha - watching the breath. You realise yourself as the witness.
Witness is not a person. The identifier is a person.
When there is an emotion. Sit down, close the eyes if necessary and step back - watch the emotion.
Because of the misfortune alone you have so many clients for the astrologers, numerologist, there are so many crowds in the temple, ashrams… No misfortune -> swamis will not have any sisyas with them. But people present a facade in-front of the sorrow.
People learn only from misfortune. Great poets come from sorrow. A poet and a philosopher know the sorrow and have digested it. Normal people can’t and suffer. Befriend the sorrow. Step back and watch it. Use it to your advantage. Sorrow -> metamorphosis (-> wisdom/poetry).
Watch the jealousy and don’t identify with it. It will get digested. Establish yourself as the witness. Emotionalism (ID with mind) has no value.
Loving, quit, wise, understanding but not emotional. That is where you reach by not ID with the mind.
When you know the non-self as the non-self you become free from the non-self.
Bhagavan creates human beings. Who created the son? Son creates the father (drsti-srsti vada, for advanced students). Not father creates the son (srsti-drsti vada, for beginners). Child is the father of the man.
Ajata vada - zenith of the wisdom. No creation. Mandukya.
Children - bundles of rajoguna. When people are given to a lot of rajoguna, give karmakanda to them. They don’t deserve atmajnanam. When they are saturated with the world, give them atmajnanam. There is a place for everything in the scheme of things.
The parents want their children to hold to their values so in adulthood they follow their way of live. It is a mechanism to dominate and possess the children.
Children have to be terrestrials, play in the mud, not celestials.

Class 11

Meditation: if you keep the posture from memory, it becomes something which you repeat. When the posture is fresh, it is not a practice, because there is no time in it. Time is memory.
If you repeat the posture, you create the time.
Mind is memory. Mind is the parasite. Mind is the knowledge in terms of accumulation.
Mind becoming silent is the same as dropping the memory.
Paradox: the answer has to come from the mind which is knowledge, past, etc.
Here is a question without answer: “Who am I”? The seeking of answers is the past-time of the mind. Don’t allow the mind to intervene.
Are you the present or are you the past? People are the past history walking around.
Astrologist are the bluff-masters. They tell you something about the past and sell is as future.
Tomorrow is Monday? That is past (no matter what day)! Whatever mind projects and gives the label “future” is also past.
Life is present. Living is past. People know only the living. Wake up and don’t allow the past to be flooding. Tat tvam asi.
When you don’t give names all you see is brahman. Sarvam khalvidam brahman.
Be loving, don’t be emotional (mind).
If you don’t admit a thing called assembly in addition to its parts, the word “part” has no meaning. Vedantins and bauddhas do not admit assembly. Implication: there is nothing like body distinct from individual parts. And you can’t call them call parts either.
Knowledge as accumulation binds you. Village guy who did not accumulate knowledge is free like wind. Philosophers don’t look at the body as a separate thing in its own right.
Pancha bhutas are material things. Not the body. It is an idea in the mind. There is body only when you think of the body. Basis for anesthesiology.
Practice generous indifference about the assembly, dis-ID with it. When you give status you make it real. It is a phenomenon - appearance in the flow of time.
Wherever you are interested, that will bind you. Suppose you walk to a shop and get interested. You become customer and consumer. A small wheel in the giant wheel of consumerism.
Wise man moves around the trees not taking himself for one. Same for body.
Sun is, other than is, it doesn’t perform anything. Whereas the living beings function all time. Time is there only when there is movement (therefore function). Sun is timelessly.
Pot is unreal. Real is already occupied by clay. When you touch “pot”, you’re touching clay. What you smell, taste is clay… The real! When you weight it: 100g clay, 0g pot.
Illusion can be based on similarity: snake and rope. Or conditioning: pot and clay. Tarzan knows clay. If you put “pot” in-front of him, he’ll say “clay”. He doesn’t know pot.

Class 12

Always look at yourself correctly. Remind yourself of your true nature. Make not the mistake of ID with what you’re not.
Tattvam is the impersonal truth. Person is a manufactured phantom by the mind. It is the problem.
BG 13th chapter - prakuruti purusha vibhaga yogah - distinction between prakuruti (always in flux) and purusha (ever changeless).
There is nothing static in this universe. Even when there is an equilibrium, it is an dynamic equilibrium.
prakuruti - prakrstham krtihi - intense and constant motion, flux.
When we fit ourselves into prakuruti, then we’re samsaris. When we understand our true nature as purusha distinct from prakuruti, immobile (kutastah), you’re not a samsari anymore. You’re a realized soul.
All change presupposes a changeless background. Wind is blowing because space is changeless. Waves are change-full because water is changeless. Train wagons vs. rails. This is not violation of newtons 3rd law. It applies to prakuruti, has nothing to do with purusha - you. There is no doership in you.
You are the being, shining as the knowing, in which there is no doing.
You don’t cook the food. The fire cooks the food. Bertrand Russel: “I see the flower” is a mistake. Seeing is not an act. And then you’re not a doer. Error of judgement. You better say: “The flower is seen”.
It is your sense of doership that haunts you to no end.
The false cannot stand scrutiny. The moment you examine it is gone.
Sense of doership is wrong. Where action is needed action happens. Man is not the actor. The natural thing happens naturally.
Are you making the tree grow? The same thing happens with the children.
Example (bringing milk): only the doer can not do a thing. Allow the natural thing to happen naturally.
There is no free will. What is will? Will is not free, that came from some psychology in which the mind is real, jagat is real. Vedanta should not be brought down to the level of psychology. There is only the illusion of free will.
An actor does what whatever he does because the director asked it.
People are born in samsara. There is no free. Let’s examine. Will is the desire. Will the sense of doership. Your presence makes everything function. Without you, nothing functions.
You don’t do things. They are done to you. You’re lived by the cosmic life, you don’t live. You’re not the karta. You’re the karma.
It is the our constant concern about the welfare of the body that makes the body sick. You live with no concern about it and the body will remain in a good place - you seldom become sick. You’re not the one that becomes sick. You’re the immutable.
vikara (change) is not in you. It is in the mind. Wind blowing is not in the space, but in the wind. Nothing ever happens to the space.
Whenever you’re in distress, remember soham. Be a light to yourself.
Don’t create an enemy out of the mind. It is neither good nor bad.
Watch the mind. The past comes in waves, it doesn’t ask for permission. You cannot stop it because you know it only after it came. It covers the mind by the recollection of the past and you’re already sorrowful. You cannot prevent it. All you have to do - be alert. Be aware. Like sky, it was clear 10 min ago, now it is overcast. Be aware.
In Vedanta you don’t need progress. You need patience. Patience is not from A to B. It is now.
Desire is you transport into the future. In desire you seek what you do not have in the present.
Be fully devoted to the present. Another name for the present is duty. Forget future. Now it is gone. And you live a happy and blissful life.

Class 13

alert is cit, present is sat. When the mind is calm, you’re that. Otherwise a worldly person. Just by sitting straight, eyes slightly closed mind gets calm and you cross the threshold.
Don’t be bored by the peace, serenity of the sat cit. Learn to love the peace of sat chit. I love to be the aware-full being.
satcitanandoham = shivoham = soham = om.
Witness is always relative. Witness with respect to… It must be associated with the witnessed - body/mind and world.
Sakshi is like daylight. It is (always shining sun-) light from the other side. Daylight is sunlight reflected in the atmosphere. Sakshi is in reference to body/mind. Citabhasa - reflection of the atman. Being citabhasa it is really speaking no different from cit, the absolute. Citabhasa, when identified, it becomes the person.
Window. From one side it is part of the room, with a size etc. From the other of the unlimited space. Sakshi is window to the truth.
The movement of the mind must be there to experience the body and the world. If the mind becomes quiet, they vanish. And now the witnessing awareness is not witnessing anymore. It is pure awareness, the atma.
We prefer the falsehood because we’ve invested in the falsehood. “Vested interest”. Psychological dependence. (Christ - only when you leave everything you can be my follower).
Mahatmas are not inflicted by what all is happening around - body, mind, family, society, world. In the eye of the cyclone, it is all sunshine, no rain, no wind.
It is the mind which moves in your presence, because of you, but you’re not the mind. Because of you the body is alive, but you’re not the body. Because of you there is a thing called family going on. If you want to take yourself as a family person, forget about sat cit ananda.
You’re a problem to the family if you identify as a family person. They will love you, how non-demanding, non-attached you’re, by inspired by you when you realize your self as sat cit.
In non-ID the body becomes very healthy, seldom it become sick. It doesn’t hurt the body, mind, family, community. It helps them all.
When you hurry you get worried. When you’re worried you get hurried. Avoid these two. If you do the things in a hurry you make more mistakes. Even in the face of a disaster, most challenging situation, you’d not hurry. Remain cool.
When you’re greedy you’ll be afraid. When you’re attached you’ll be afraid. Sat cit ananda is not for you.
Worry, the hurry, the attachment and the fear you’ve to overcome.
Fear is the foundation of religion. Why do you believe? Because you’re afraid. Fear and belief go together. Religion puts so much fear into the minds of the people.
In religion it is all authority, and therefore fear, no understanding. In Vedanta, there should be no authority, understanding only. When there is authority, you need not think, only believe. When there is thinking, there is no authority. People are lazy, also intellectually.
True religion puts love in you, not fear.
Negation of ego is perfect relaxation. Ego is tension. Ego is high-energy state (like exited electrons).
Give up all clinging to the body. All desire. The moment you desire things you’re likely to be disturbed (desire -> fear -> anger). You get into vikara.
If you don’t have desire, automatically you become free from fear and frustration. Give up also all ambition.
When you’re depressed. Be on your feet, don’t sit on a sofa. Don’t remain in a room, walk into the open. Walk rapidly, briskly. Hands and legs must move. Then brisk breathing comes. That cheers you up.
Or within the house, stand in a dark corner. Take in air deeply within. Exhale trough nostrils. Do it rigorously. When breathing, tell yourself - I’m breathing the wind of the universe. Then trough the nostrils, tell yourself, I’m throwing out all laziness, all depression, all ignorance.
Don’t be a victim of petty cares. All cares are petty cares. Realize yourself as soham.
pratyak - innermost. Timeless journey in a partless land. Understanding is the journey.

Class 14

Would you write notes about yourself? Studying other than yourself, it makes sense. When it comes to yourself you try to understand.
Any idea of knowing atma is not acceptable. No objectification. Atma is the knower.
Studying atma is learning what all you’re not.
To call the bluff of belief a bluff you need courage. You need courage to see the false as false. To look at the body as non-self you must be very courageous person.
Seeing false as false is most important. You become free from it. That is moksha, mukti.
Similarity - sadrshyam - is the reason for confusion.
Self is that which knows. It is the knowingness by its very nature, matrix of all nature. Knowingness which appears as all kind of knowledge (knowledge of pot, tree, scriptures, social studies …). Atman is essentially the knowingness. In the presence of atman the mind appears to be the knowing entity.
Mind is insentient, jada. Whatever knows is called cit, cetana. The self. All other is jada. In the present of the self the insentient appears to be knowing. Like the lamp appears to be shining but it is some plasma. In the presence of the self the insentient mind starts to show brilliantly and therefore you make the mistake of taking the mind as the atman.
The body is sick. You’d not say I’m sick. Body appears as the self, is not the self. You’re the atman/knowingness/satcit/sah. Body becomes sick, mind arranges for medicine. It’s between them. We don’t do nothing.
The body and the embodied are not of the same order of reality. Body is time-bound, in space and transient, the embodied is permanent, eternal, space-less.
Surgeon: two people came for the same surgery. If one has dispassion towards the body, he gets cured easier. The other is obsessed, worried and takes more time to recover.
Biggest cruelty you can do to yourself is to identify with the body or mind. Biggest blessing is not to do that.
The trick the mind is playing: it picks up some some sorrow as if it is now and here the fresh thing. If you identify with it, then you cannot understand the trick being played upon you.
Another name for presence is being. That is myself. It shines as the knowing.
Difference between dead and live body. Dead body has no sensation. There is no cit in it. Whereas we live by sensation.
First sensation (touch, optical), then thought. There is a gap. In case of looking the gap is so small that we miss it. There is sensation that is immediately followed by a thought that projects name and form.
Can you break this habit of converting the sensation into a thought? Meaning you don’t give a name to the sensation. Then there is neither pleasure nor pain. Enjoyership is gone.
Thought is projection. What else? Look at a young lady. No further projection. You’re free.
Mahatmas have the same sensations as samsaris. But they are beyond plasure/pain cycle. Break it. Sometimes there is enjoyment. I’m not seeking it, I’m not against it. I allow the natural thing to happen naturally.
Discover the gap between sensation and thought.
Mahatmas don’t divide people into good and evil. No sva (our) not para (other). Mahatmas can merge into any family. And they leave any family, just like that.
Good and evil is thought, not sensation. There is no good and evil in the sensation.
Those who know how to withhold the thought (=projection) they overcome good and evil, sense of ownership. There is enjoyment, sometimes pleasant, sometimes painful. But you’re not the enjoyer.
For women it is also soham, not saaham, because there is no gender at the level of atma (nor intellect). It’s the right expression common to all.
Prakarana is more universal than Upanishad. Upanishad needs some connection to Vedic culture. Prakarana complements what the Upanishad teaches.

Class 15

World is what I experience through the window of senses and mind. This understanding makes me the master of the world. I can shut off the world by closing the window. The world experience is over and I’m with myself.
When I’m with myself, there are no desires. There are desires only in the context of world experience. Desirelessness/fearlessness is not a goal, it is the truth of myself.
You need the world experience to project a goal other than myself.
Start with the understanding that I’m the witness only. This puts an end to all kinds of self-definitions.
We’ve cut ourself from the nature by identification with the body. That becomes curse to the body.
Nowadays temples are devoted to rituals only. There used to be teaching as well.
You’d have the quality of earnestness for Vedanta to own the vision.
It is the desire that generates the fear when fulfilled and the frustration when not fulfilled.
You have an outside guru only, you yourself don’t take up the role of the sat guru, the inner guru, you remain ignorant. You guide yourself. You be a preceptor unto yourself. You tell yourself I’m the witness only.
Normal, routine, common, universal experiences are enough if examined carefully to understand your true nature. No need for any mystical experience.
Who is it that is aware of the constant change happening to the mind?
I’m the witness. The procession is that of the mind. Thought procession. Can you be a guide to yourself to remain yourself that you’re not involved? This job the outside guru cannot do.
Witness is very much like space. The space is not contaminated by anything it contains. If you identify, then you cannot be a witness anymore.
Did you notice all the forms of god are human in nature? I’m a form therefore god has to be a (very similar) form. A mental form is as gross as the physical form.
Advice to householders in BG: keep yajna, tapah, danam in your live. Danam is danam only when you give to the needy and deserving. It must be spontaneous, otherwise you become a professional philanthropist. What you do spontaneous it remains with you, your secret.
When you do things spontaneously it is likely to remain all good.
You don’t own nothing. You currently posses, have presently with you.

Class 16

If you have 24h hour identification with body and/or mind, you’ll not be able to sleep.
Outer light helps you to know everything. Inner light - awareness.
First you become aware of your self. Then of body/mind. Then of the world. First light of the sun, then everything.
soham ityavadhAraya - I’m that is to be understood.
states (waking, dreaming, sleeping) belong to the mind. Sun has no states, it is the same all the time. There is no time in sun. Time is there only on the earth. Because earth rotates around itself and the sun.
How to get self-confidence? Just recognise your competence. Hanuman (was competent, not confident) - Jambavan discussion. You lack understanding. Know yourself.
Incomplete data. There are three states and you take only the data offered by the waking state only.
Without the unconscious there cannot be conscious. Tree is not possible without the seed. The manifest is not possible without the unmanifest. Allow the unconscious to flow into the conscious. How to? Sit in meditation and be silent. When the mind is silent you’re aware but the waking state is no more.
Without deep-sleep waking state is not even possible. Meditate upon it. Reenact it. You’re there (always), but the mind is not. It brings enormous rest and relaxation.
When you prove yourself, you need not prove the theological god anymore.
You always know the falsehood only. The truth you’ll not know. You yourself are the truth. What we call knowledge is always knowledge of ignorance alone.
Idealism: the hero and the heroine they are inside your head but you see them outside on the screen. Realism: what you see outside and is outside.
Vedanta: waking state is idealism. Samsara: waking state is realism.
Waking up to the truth = knowing better.
Mind is moving, it is the dream. Mind is moving, it is the waking. Mind stops moving, you go to deep sleep. Mind becomes entirely still, even when you’re awake - waking state is no more. Therefore waking state is entirely manufactured by the mind and its movement.
Brahmacari cooking upma. What are you cooking? “Brahman”. Swami: Never ever trivialize this great vision. Don’t ridicule it.
There is no calamities in life. There are only happenstances. It is the ignorant mind that creates misfortunes, calamities, desires by saying this is valuable, this not. Then it creates fears, insecurities.
Movie is a passing show. Dream is a passing show. This incident that is going on now is maybe only a passing show.
What is the waking state? It is not a few things that are there. It is a series of experiences. Is it not “coffee there”. It is your “tasking up coffee here”. It is not “your son accomplishing something” but “your experience of son accomplishing something”. Suppose there is a thing which you never experience. Such a thing, does it even exist? It can be imagination only.
This world exists only because you’re experiencing it. It is the object of waking experience. It hangs by the thread by your experiencing it.
Experience of nothing (nothingness of the sleep) is also an experience. Which is illuminated by the inner light of awareness. In the deep sleep you’re aware of nothing but you’re still aware.
Know yourself correctly and be liberated.
Sakshat - directly. Mind is known directly whereas the world is known through the intermediary of the mind and sense organs.
Peace of mind, serenity, you’ll experience only when you know you’re not the doer.
Job is done when you uplift yourself. Nobody uplifts others. Things happen. You don’t do. Just like a person riding a camel. Why don’t you put your bag on the camel? Oh, the camel needs to carry already my weight. I better ease it for him by carrying it myself.
You’re not the doer of anything. A single action is made possible by innumerable elements involved in it. Understand it and be at peace.

Class 17

Absence of experiences is also an experience and once again, I’m aware of it.
Self-realization: I’m what I’m.
When one slips into body ID -> animal man. ID with life force, intellect -> normal man.
Prana and intellect word in tandem. Prana is blind, buddhi is lame.
Concepts - feeding people with words (=ideas). Religious life.
Does the cup limit the water? Yes. Does the cup limit the space? No. You can say space is everywhere and is reflecting in the cup.
Serving the purpose, negatively or positively, doesn’t prove reality of it. The unreal serves as much purpose as real. An unreal serpent creates as much consequence as a real serpent.
Waking state is full of opposites. Sukha/dukha. Dharma/adharma. The ground of awareness is not contaminated by either. In that sense it is transcendent. To that extent it is called immanent.
Walls and the castles do not imprison us. Our false notions imprison us. Once you see the false as false you’re free from the bondage of falsehood.
Image - psychological. Word - verbal. Both can’t reach the truth. The actual is beyond the words and images.
Way to listen to the shastra - actualization of what you hear and think and lastly feel. Feeling is deeper than thinking. Thinking is rupa, word is nama, feeling is the actualization. Not needed in religion.
Awareness illuminates the body. Body is known to you, shines in the awareness. How can there be ID between the two.
Whatever you see, is outside the eyes. Whatever you’re aware of, is other than the awareness. And it is limited. While your awareness you can envelope entire galaxy.
You can say I’m the sun only when you’re not the body but the awarefull presence. First in the body and then everywhere else. I’m the light of this body and light of this universe. Like the light that illuminates the cup also illuminates the entire hall.
What I’m is left open. Nothing concrete is said. The moment you do, you commit a mistake against yourself.
With respect to the body/mind the sakshi is the chitabhasa. With respect to its source its atman absolute. Chitabhasa is the window. One side of the window is the sun, the other is the room.

Class 18 - love, beauty

root(pri) -> priti, priyam etc.
Worldly people do not know what is love. Love is not memory.
What is sorrow? A thought. What is ego? A thought. Thus only when you think there is the ego.
Mind collects a few elements and creates a person out of it, the ego. Ego doesn’t know what is love. In the context of ego there is only attachment. Ego is the attachment. There is no division.
A 10 dollar cellphone is not “my cellphone”. It is “cellphone”, it is a useful thing. A 1000 dollar cellphone is “my cellphone”.
Ego is attached to (physical) objects.
You’re beautiful, not the flower. Suppose you’re not beautiful, the flower will not be beautiful. The ego is always outside. The beauty of the atman is in you. It is you. People only know the outward, physical, artificial beauty created by thought.
When I read a verse that is beautiful, listen to some nice things being said by a mahatma, when I see a wild meadow, that is beautiful to me. Not your carefully orchestrated burden.
The father wants his son to become engineer. Is that possessing and dominating? We want children to think the way we think, to desire what we desire. To fear what we fear.
ACID test: in love, there is freedom. In dominating and possessing there is no freedom. Puja Swami: “The amount of freedom you give to the other person is equal to the amount of freedom you get.” Love engenders freedom while attachment is bondage.
Known is memory, mind, thought. Mind moves from the known to the known only. It cannot move from the known to the unknown. The way to realize the unknown is negating the known. Attachment is known to us and therefore we negate the attachment. Approach love negatively, not positively.
Possession brings out jealousy. When you possess the son, you compare and become jealous. Rank means comparison, and you want a better rank - that is ambition. And you don’t get the rank you desire, that is conflict. And somebody else gets the higher rank - that is jealousy. Children don’t have any of these things, unless they evtl. learn from us.
Classical mother/daughter in law syndrome is fear of the mother of losing her son.
Sensation, sentimentality - emotionalism - is not love. Love can never turn to hatred.
Do you respect your servant? You respect the boss. That is no respect. Only if you respect the lowliest of the lowly then only you’ll know what is love.
In the social life, where authority and hierarchy is, the respect you show is not love. In the religious life, the reverence you show to the guru is not the true reverence. There also you go by hierarchy. You divide people. That is not love.
Where there is no respect, there is no love. Similarly when there is no mercy, pity, forgiveness, there is no love.
When these things do not occupy your mind, then you’ll know what is love in you heart. Only when you discover love you’ll be transformed. You’ve to discover you’re not the person you think yourself to be. You’re the divinity. Imagine how much inner transformation you need for that? Transmutation!
Systems, cults, sects, rituals, rituals, celebrations … cannot bring inner transformation. Only love can. You do really love only when you not possess, you do not dominate, you’re not envious, not greedy. When you’re respectful, when you’ve mercy, compassion all the way. When you’ve enormous sensitivity for all.
When the things made of hands occupy your mind, like costly classes, costly cell-phone, car, food, parties, attires … you’ll now know what is love.
You do not anything. FYI, you don’t own even your own body.
parigraha. Accumulation. The acquisitive spirit. If it occupies your mind, it kills the heart, the love. It is the monstrosity of the superstition. There is not an iota of truth in that. When you discover the love
Love of the atman. I love not only my son. I love all the sons. I love all people. I love all animals. I love a blade of grass. I love all. That is what love is.
In ego’s attachment there is the fragrance of the love of atman. Even in attachment you experience the joy (of atman) when things go your way. In ego’s attachment is sipping of the love of atman. The love of the self is spilling into your experience.
In a ripe ego the love of the attachment of the son can transform it self to the pure love of the son.
It is your inner-most self that is the source of joy, not the experience of SOMETHING. People in their folly believe that SOMETHING makes them happy.
When you see the Picasso and there is joy it comes not from Picasso but from your self, which is the same as Picasso’s joy.
Understanding of this is freedom. Don’t throw away the objects. But then you might even not cling to the objects. When there is time to give up you give up.
Love of your son should not be auxiliary (shesha) as attachment to the ego. It should be auxiliary as all-encompassing love to the atma.
Beauty could be attribute of the insentient? Or is it the attribute of the sentient? What is beautiful in insentient. Jada cannot have beauty. Beauty is not an attribute of physical things. Beauty is the innate essence of the inner-most self. That’s why the self experiences everywhere wheres the worldly person has to spend a lot of money to experience the beauty.
Nothing but atma is lovable.
I’m is fundamentally the being. But then the being which is shining as the knowing. Suppose you say the “book is” the “is” is the being. But the book doesn’t shine by itself. It shines only when there is mind, eyesight and the knowingness (atma). Whereas the being shines by itself. It doesn’t acquire eyesight, mind. It shines by itself.
Decartes went to the restaurant. Waiter: “do you think you need any food?” Decartes: “I think not.” And then he vanished.

Class 19

Detachment is not a process, not an effort, just shifting the attention away from the world simply by looking at myself.
Eyesight is not like a camera, it is like a mirror. Eyesight is not attached. As I close the eyes, does the eyesight miss any of those countless forms? If you carefully examine, the answer is “no”. I’m fine. The absence of forms does not make me deficient in any way. This is a revelation that I’m not attached to any form what so ever.
Why do you love ice cream/money/nice home? Because you love yourself.
I was never sorrowful in my life and I will never become sorrowful in future also. I’m the very ground of supreme (para) love (prema).
Real sorrow should have crashed you by now, you would have not arrived at where you’re are now. You only imagined that you’re sorrowful.
Stop dividing. No suppression, no driving away thus no separation (of me from the anger), no escape from the anger. No conflict. You’re aware of the anger. Once you’re aware of the anger it will go.
See the trick of the mind: the movement called “me” is the same as “anger”. Mind creates a conflict between me and anger and wants to escape it, unless you recognize it.
When you’re angry/sorrowful there is a very pronounced “me” there. And that “me” makes the sorrow appear magnified. When you don’t divide and thus there is no attempt to escape the sorrow by 1) making more money 2) pursuing pleasures 3) religion - rituals.
It is not my sorrow. It is the “me” that is sorrowful and it is the sorrow which creates the “me”.
The sorrow is a guest. It comes, stays for a while and goes away. Joy is intrinsic. A sorrowful person goes to sleep - he’s happy. A happy person goes to sleep - he’s happy. Whatever comes, will go. Whatever is, is.
Physical pain might be inevitable but sorrow is optional.
Self-identification with the limited (physical object) is the real cause of the suffering. There is sofa. Not “my sofa”.
To what are you attached? Consciousness? Nothing happened to it. Life? Panca bhutas? Nothing happened to them either. You can be attached only to form.
Mind is addicted to thinking wrongly: “I’m this and I’m that.” Thus it constantly fears the loss.
Root of psychological suffering is the ignorance of the self. People do not know the self and they do not know that they do not know.
When you’re looking with total attention, there is no division.
If you use the word experience, it is not conceptual knowledge. It is more direct perception. That’s why we say “spiritual experience”. But “experience” in the context of realization of the truth is not like experiencing a sunset with the eyes … There is no duality in this particular “experience”.
vrtti - modification of the mind.

Class 20

ego, the person, is not the real self. It is the historic self. Every person is a walking biography.
tvam is not the ego, it is the real self. The real meaning of aham.
you have a sense of me only when you are frustrated, angry, unhappy … It is possible to be aware of things without being the ego.
bodhaha (boda) - awareness.
sakshi is a very provisional status. It is sakshi not intrinsically, only in reference to sakshyam. That is the meaning of tvam. A way to solve problems - deny the very problem itself.
Why do you call mind “my mind”? It never ever obliged me. Why should I call it “my mind”? Don’t believe your mind. Step back from it - be a witness to the mind. If the mind is sorrowful, be a witness to the sorrow. Don’t be the ego, which is the sorrow.
Watch the pain. Keep the external external. I’m not the pain, don’t internalize. BG: sparshAn krvtvA bahir bAhyAn. Same for sorrow of the mind, or any other emotion of it. That sorrow is the other. I’m the higher dimension of pure light of awareness.
There is no action involved on the part of the light. Illumination is not an action. Knowing is not action. Knowledge is separate category, it doesn’t commander the category of action. Watching is not doing, it is not a job, action. It is illuminating. When you’re aware of the mind you’re termed the witness of the mind.
Thoughts float through the mind like sounds float through the air. And you’re aware of the thoughts.
Witnessing of whatever happens (is present in the mind) is most simple, spontaneous. It is not a new thing you have to do.
Witness is the great unborn - ajah.
Searching for the witness is missing the point all together. You be the witness. No sadhana is the best sadhana.
Situations around constantly change the qualities of the mind - vikara. Of these is the witness completely free from.
World, body, sense-organs, mind, intellect, ego - unreal. Witness - real/unreal. Awareness absolute - real. Witness is the window to the truth. In witnessing the awareness is aware of the mind. Whereas in absolute awareness the awareness is not even aware of itself.
sharana - refuge.
Don’t contradict yourself. If you want health, deserve health. If you want peace, deserve peace.
There are no things independent of knowledge. The pot cannot have an existence separate of knowledge. There are no actions separate from knowledge. On the movie screen, can you have some part not enveloped by the projector?
It is not the things, not the actions. It is the experience of the things. It is the experience of actions. Some experience we label as pleasure and pursue them, and some as pain and we avoid them. Thus we’re caught in the net of experiences.
Witnessing is stepping back from an experience and externalising it. Not only with unpleasant but also pleasant ones. You remain avikari - unmodified.
Somebody says nice things, I do feel good, but I step back. Somebody else says some silly things, I might feel a little disturbed, but I step back.
Food should be proper. Meditation is the way. Witnessing is the way and goal. You need to have a light body and mindset. Should be laghu, not guru.

Class 21

The fact that you are aware of something eliminates the possibility that you’re it at the same time. Eyes cannot see themselves. Hand cannot touch itself. Mind does not know itself. It is the higher dimension that illuminates it and is aware of the mind.
a-kasha, pra-kasha. Kasha is the awareness which illuminates both. It is also called Kashi.
Between body and the pure light of awareness is the mind.
The reflection has its own characteristics. Sun appears small in a waterdrop. Chitabhasa = “I’m” in the mind. It can identify with either the body or the source.
Quality of the reflection is based upon the perfection of the mind. Because of the crudity of the mind and ID with the body you become a person.
Mind lacks discrimination because of tamo- and rajoguna. Sattva stands for the purity of the mind. Correct knowledge.
Knowledge is everything. Knowledge is very powerful. Remove rajo und tamoguna and he mind is pure.
Desire (rajas) or fear (tamas). Don’t give it the strength of ID (saying “my desire”). Creating a division, leading to conflict. Just be aware of it (“there is a desire” - no conflict). It won’t be strong or powerful. It will just be there. And slowly it will disappear.
A little of rajas and tamas won’t hurt you. A bit of them is needed. To do stuff, you need rajas. To sleep, to eat food, you need tamas. But they won’t dominate you. You know yourself as the spirit. That is the moksha.
Jaska in nirruktam defines 6 stages (shat bhava vikara) of material objects: jayate, asti (duration), viparinamate (change), vardhate (grows), apakshiyate (decline), nashyati (vanish).
Don’t expect the market people, religion to enlighten you. They won’t help you to disidentify with the body. It is the lot of philosopher. Like a guy who always brings bad news. That’s why most of the preacher and gurus gave up philosophy and ventured into religion.
Philosopher: the earlier death comes the better. You know troubles associated with long life. Not longevity but senility. Sanat kumara was happy with being turned into camel so he would not have to cook the food.
No wonder there is conflict everywhere. We go on living having forgotten who our true self. It is the life of shadow self.
pratibhasika = appearance
All the thoughts resolve into I’m. I’m-ness also resolves to pure awareness. I’m-ness is the window to the truth.
There is no difference between I’m-ness and pure light of awareness.

Class 22

Human nature: first take care of the world. -> Religious nature: first ask what is god? -> Philosophy: first and foremost know yourself.
Before going into the world, which is not a very friendly place, you’d know yourself. You can be happy and secure in the world, living and interacting in the world, provided you know yourself.
You cannot know God, unless you know yourself.
Before going into the world, you’d know yourself, or else it will bind you, even in most favourable circumstances.
Your god is based on your estimate on yourself. First understand yourself, not god. Understanding oneself - tvampadartha zodhanam.
Theocentric vs. homocentric religion. Which do you want to follow? Religion of puranas is theocentric. Religion of karmakhanda is theocentric. Religion of the upanishads is homocentric. Religion of Buddha is homocentric. That’s why there was a conflict (karmakhanda).
Swami: sometimes I ask why old and new testament are printed together. New testament is a revolution over old testament. Until Vatican converted it again into theocentric. Same in vedas, karma khanda and upanishads.
When there is a contect between tvam and tat, true religion is centered around tvam. Homocentric. That is Vedanta.
In a patriarchal society, this young man starts the relationship with his wife with a sense of superiority and domination. The lady is willing to submit and that’s how the entire society survives.
Love doesn’t recognise higher and lower. Is beyond divisions. Start relationship with love.
Even in the human relationship you estimate of yourself is the critical element. What to speak of religion. Your understanding of god will depend upon depending your understanding of yourself.
tat, which is the infinite, is embedded in tvam. How to realize that? Remove boundaries of tat and tvam itself emerges as tat. tat estimated wrongly is separate from tvam.
Realizing god can be done only in one way, realizing one’s own divinity. That’s why tvam takes priority.
Negative understanding is the highest understanding. When you negate the four elements, what is left is the space. All positive understanding understanding comes under the category of ajnana. The right way to arrive at the truth is to see the false as false, which is not easy. Gradually a stage comes when all the negative understanding is in place and then you come to direct appreciation, direct perception in which the real, the tat, is understood in positive terms.
It is a sin to call yourself a sinner.
Suppose you take yourself wrongly as a person than your god will be also a person.
Once the outer (false) self calls itself for a person then it is separate from all the other persons. The outer self is always seeking advantage, anxious, afraid. Sometimes cheerful, sometimes bold. Lustful, doesn’t know what is love. Sick and healthy. Old and young.
You have to negate the outer self all the way. The real self is unchanging - kutastah. There is only one which is the self of all, incl. animals, vegetables and mineral kingdom.
The spirit of true religion is essentially a change of heart. Replacing the egoism with divinity.
Special spell, which makes is free, not bound. Love. You’re unbound.
True love, which has no opposite.
Show the path of love which stops the winds of the hatred to the world.

Class 23

realized = Real-ized. ized = to make, to actualize. You have to understand tvam, not just gain some knowledge of tvam.
You need a humble heart to admit and acknowledge the gap between knowledge and realization. Then realization is not far away.
If I acquire knowledge I have to make it real. Not come with an external reason for the gap like “I need the grace of Ishvara” or “the mind is impure”.
Basic difference between true and popular religion. In popular you need not realize anything. Believing and following is enough. That is the ritual.
Religion is realization. That discontent, that I have not yet realized, one should have.
Hear, understand and realize. That’s the way it has to go.
Yoga is what unites tvam with tat. In yoga there are no failures.
Idea is never the truth. Few things are not: word, idea, symbol (murti). Then knowledge is not realization.
Brahman means the vastness.
Knowledge is always of the limited, of things. Knowledge of the brahman is a contradiction. Table limits the book and the book limits the table - one cannot occupy the same space at the same time as the other. No object of the universe can limit brahman.
Brahman is the substratum of every object. What you call the table is brahman with a certain limitation. Brahman with nama rupa added is the table.
You must be able to negate nama rupa only then you’ll be able to go to the underlying reality. Suppose you negate all nama rupa. Now the consciousness is free from all the nama rupas and you brahman is already with you. No need to invite.
When the mind becomes silent, there is the quality of spaciousness in that silence. Where there is nama rupa, distraction, there is no silence.
Is time in consciousness or consciousness is in time?
Being able to contemplate upon something means being able to understand and realize.
The world itself is the unknown and unknowable. There are a trillion galaxies with millions of stars in them. A table is 99.99% space. And 0.001% of matter. And that matter is atoms made of particles. What are the particles? Nobody knows. Now you cannot ask the question “how is it created?” What is there to be created? You can only ask the question “how come it appears this way?” How come I experience is as this? What is the basis for this experience?
In Aristotelean materialism the consciousness is byproduct of matter. Whereas in Sankhya system the consciousness is an independent entity. Vedanta: brahman is substantive (means that alone is real) and constituent material cause.
Matter is something illuminated by the consciousness, not independent of consciousness. Which is subservient? Both are one and the same and that is the brahman.

Class 24

tat - something that is unknown and unknowable.
vidita - known. Both vidita and avidita are in our experience. What you call unknown is also within your experience.
People are always anxious to reach out beyond “this” (world) to reach out for that.
Your consciousness has the history of entire humankind. Brain is the product of millions of years of evolution. Your DNA has the history of the entire mankind.
This is already in our experience. We’re saturated with it, we’re unhappy with it. It constantly creates problems and that’s why we’re constantly trying to reach out, not reach in, for that.
There is security in the known. Keep your (false) security! But you’ll be bound. Come out out of the security created by words, concepts, ideas. There must be a discontent, revolt in you. To reach out for t(h)at. In t(h)at human consciousness there is this vijnasa. Because this is unsatisfactory.
Once the discontent is gone you’re unfit to know the truth.
tat - paramatma, tvam - the historic self.
jagat is myself and what I experience. tat is its the origin, the cause of the subject-object duo. Subject is I’m, object is there is. The origin is neither subjective (mind) nor objective (matter).
In Vedanta you don’t have definitions. You only have pointers. Because the real is beyond known and unknown, beyond the senses and the mind.
Gravitation is the origin of matter. Matter is space. Mind is always past, future - movement - therefore time.
tat is all. Substantive and constituent cause. Not the Aristotelean material cause. And yet it is nothing. Gold is all ornaments. But it is not an ornament. It is the totality and the exclusion. It is the immanent and yet transcendent. It is the fullness and also it is emptiness. Look at space - it is both.
The day you started to fill your braincells with definitions that day your study has divorced from realization.
You cannot describe it but you can lose yourself in it. Like space. When mind becomes silent it becomes spacious.
You’ve to deny reality to both subject and object. To all.
Philosophy: object is real = realism. Subject is real = idealism. Advaita Vedanta is beyond both. Generally you start with realism, come to idealism, rise above it also.
World is the same as world experience. World experience is the product of senses (provide the nama) and the mind (provides the rupa). Deny reality to the world experience. Now you come to the subject (historic self). Deny reality to it also. Then you come to t(h)at which cannot be denied. That is brahman, that is paramatma.
Body is the scaffold, for both mind and senses.
Even a very well trained mind cannot conceptualize it. It is beyond. Even the attempt to know the mind by the mind is a contradiction. Mind moves from known to the known.
Why do you think you need the mind to know? The silly jada senses, mind know with the light of atma. Atman cannot know all by itself? Why do you think you need the mind to know? Leave the mind behind. You know atma by its own light. Now the means of knowing is its very light.
I’m the guest. What you sense first? Guest-ness or being? Being. I’m is the sensing of the being. There is a pot. What is first? The sense of being. What is the division between the sense of being “I’m” and “there is”, subject and object? identification, ajnana is the boundary . Body and mind are objects.
Being is its own pointer.
In the upasanas dvaitam is provisionally accepted. If you’re dealing with saguna brahma you can use the word “manifest”. Talking about nirguna brahma you have to use the word appearance.
The being is what you’re sensing. Always you’re sensing the being. But you think that nama rupa you’re sensing. Example: what are you sensing, cup or clay? Don’t relay upon eyes all the time.
When you say subject it is the being what you sense. When you say object it is the being what you sense. The being is still limited. Take care to dismiss nama rupa. When nama rupa has to be attached, why do you call it being? That object, whether the subject sense of beidg or object sense of being is the pointer to the real.
A pointer is not limited in space time. satta is the pointer. Everywhere you’re sensing satta (not roads, buildings, pots). In sensing that being becomes a pointer.
What you call “all” is reduced to here/there, now/then, this/that … pairs of opposites.
We’re not hurt by anything. If something says against us/Rama … we bless him. Philosophical mind never gets hurt.
We’re like a frog in the well. There is so much wisdom out in the world. On the part of Rshis/Upanishads there is a tremendous effort not to objectify brahman. By doing that you’re making brahman jada. You convert it to tamoguna.
sat is the being. Satyaha is the truth. Shankara: yat sat tat satyam - what is is the truth. What is called being that alone is the truth. The being of the subject is the truth. But the subject itself is not truth. The being of the object is the truth. But the object itself is not truth.

Class 25

When you miss it, it becomes shunya. When you catch it, it becomes purna.
pot is unreal (abhava). Idealists (vijnanavadis) stop there, for them that is the truth. That is zunyavada.
Taste of your mouth exists, you experience it, but you can’t say whether it is sweet, pungent … It is pointed by the abhava by all six tastes. It is what remains after all these tastes are negated.
Arrogance of scholarships (I know … and teach …) puts the person entirely on the wrong track. Negation gives you humility.
When there are distinctions, there are reactions. When there are no distinction, here is only action. What remains is very simple and you cannot describe it. It is very solid, like a diamond. You cannot describe it, it is real.
When mind is active, you’re stuck with distinctions. There is only rationalizations. Too much of rationalization doesn’t leave you anywhere. When the mind is silent, there is only wonder (bhakti).
Mind is habituated to distinctions and reactions. And reaction of the mind is expressed in speech and movement. Robot. This is what we do in temples. That mechanicalness kills the creativity.
When there is no reaction in your heart, shesha remains. Isvhara is called sheshsa. Bhagavatam: shishyate iti shesha samjgnaha. That snake thing is the agrarian mindset.
Sunyavadi: no-thing-less remains. Not all-together different from advaita’s purnatvam. That’s why they say purnata (nothing-ness). Buddha is the student of upanishads. He was not a ritualist. His purnata does not contradict what he’s learned - the upanishads. Buddha is atmavadi, not sunyavadi.
Brahman is the unconditioned. How can you describe the unconditioned?
Krishna: Akarshati papat. Is a positive hint to connect with the real.
In Vedanta we’re not very keen on positive terms. Positive terms are only hints, understood properly.
Happiness is happening when you’re not seeking happiness. When you’re seeking it the “me” is seeking it and therefore there cannot be any happiness. Any desire puts the sense of me, that’s how it is created.
If there “me” that is attachment, not love. Love is caitanyam. That sentient being (table cannot have love) is brahman is manifesting as love.
Ananda with oneself, prema with relating to everybody else. In fact they’re not different.
Brahman is neither saguna, nor nirguna. It is what it is. Ajatah vada. Saguna -> nirguna -> ajatah.
There is only one brahma. Wrong question cannot be answered, only shown as wrong.

Class 26

Wind is one. But it goes around the entire universe and acquires all kinds of shapes. Breeze, hurricane… The inherent power to become many must be there in Vayu. Same for fire. Same for brahman. That is the shakti of saguna brahman.
When explaining the jagat, then you have to resort to saguna brahman. For saguna teachers, words like nishkriya, nirguna sound bad.
ajnana of cit, caytanyam makes you believe, that the two forms of cit, jiva and isvara are real. How do you know the ajnana of cit? By cit only.
When somebody questions the belief it results in animosity.
Vishnu is rich peoples’ god. Shiva is poor peoples’ god.
When you have leader, you stop thinking. Leader is context of knowledge is one who thinks on your behalf. Once you stop thinking you go into a belief system easily.
Example: a person who has seen the ocean describes it to somebody who has never seen it. Similarly the acarya describing the tat to a worldly person as sarvajnah, sarvashaktih…
Peoples’ self definition is usually based on the account of their actions performed, usually work. I’m a doctor, teacher etc. Define yourself based on your power of knowing. Everybody has it, only few pay attention to it. I’m a philosopher, mathematician, researcher…
No matter how much you know the sphere of knowing is always smaller then the sphere of ignorance. When you declare what you know you also declare what you don’t know.
When you know the real it doesn’t matter how much unreal you know.
What you call ice, steam, water is water only. There is not water as such. It is sat alone appearing as water. Everything is sat only. That sat is brahman.

Class 27

Brahman is not something else. It is not only transcendental, but it is immanent - substantive and constitutive cause of everything in the universe.
Brahman was there before creation. Brahman has become all. Sarvabhavana. Substantive and constitutive cause. Adhisthana of entire universe.
Idealism: there are objects and conciousness. Brahman is that which is beyond both. It alone becomes the conciousness as well its objects. Yet it is beyond both.
Mind and matter are the states of the same reality. That reality is stateless. If it is a state, you can describe it.
Brahman is utter stillness, quietness. Movement is maya.
svayamprakasha - it doesn’t require any other pramana than itself. That’s why it is called aprameyaha. It is not and it need not to be available for other pramana. You know yourself as the awareness absolute just by being.
Don’t think you know just by pratyaksha, anumana or shabda (book) etc. Final is knowing by being.
Ignorant silence: hathayogi. Atmayogi’s silence is like a computer with all information going to sleep. That silence is full of vision, inner understanding. There is a name for it: Intelligence.
To know brahman, you do not need the mind. In fact, it becomes an obstacle.
Mind only knows attachment, if disturbed it becomes aversion. Mind doesn’t know love.
All divisions are in citta, the mind. None in cit, the brahman.
What all you say about god is not coming from god. It is coming from you.
Puja Swamiji: God has made man in his image -> once the man makes the god in his image. That god makes the man in his image. Therefore you’re the god you’re worshiping. When you’re describing tvam it emerges as tat. When you’re describing tat it emerges as tvam.
There cannot be a god without a devotee. God is the blossoming of devotion.
Mathematician talks of the infinite of something that is known. Vedantin’s infinite is not known. That which mind cannot reach. You can reach it by being the infinite.
You know brahman by looking at the prapanca, understanding the prapanca and then negating the prapanca. There is no other way.
You cannot negate something which you don’t know.
Brgu went to Varuna, his father. Varuna did not even teach. He said you find out the god. Why teach? It cannot be taught. It has to be discovered in your heart as the inner-most self. Varuna did teach how to discover.
Ready made brahman: one mantra, one tatra, one yantra.

Class 28

Christianity, their theology, is nowadays all about miracles. You are made a saint if you perform miracles. This is not vedanta. This is devanta. Vedanta is that which encourages you to know that which is worth knowing if you want freedom.
pravesha - entry, entering
Brahman created this universe - brahmAnda. The moment brahman enters into the cosmic body is not anymore brahman. It becomes cosmic person - hiranyagrabha. Brahman is the same as hiranyagrabha. Hiranyagarbha has another name - prathama jivaha. We’re all the offspring of it. What is called Hiranyagarbha in upanishads is called Brahmadeva in puranas.
Vishnu is also Hiranyagarbha, Shiva also. What is Hiranyagarbha that you’re. In your case brahman entered this single body. Entered as jiva (individual soul).
Shining is knowing. That inner shining. Eyes know, nose knows, ears know. Mind and thoughts. You’re aware of everything. That is the brahman.
“me” is also a thought. Just like any other thought. Somebody is dancing or studying or watching movie … it is all thought. You’ve got a desire/fear it is a thought.
See the eyes, see the ears. It is obvious that brahman has entered as jiva.
What entered and what is there cannot be two different things. The family person entering the bus and the passenger now are not two different persons. Two are there - that is dvaita. Dvaita people have converted all pravesha shruti into dead letter.
The inner light of this body-mind is the brahman. If brahman has entered how can be jiva other than brahman? This is the spirit of pravesha zruti. There is no physical entering, it is a metaphor to establish oneness.
Sruti - in Veda you only hear. Read is book.
Do I belong to the limit body/mind or do I belong to the infinite life within, the inner light, brahman?
Suppose I’m cut off from the Vayu of the universe and stay with my limited breath. How long will I live? I’m with svasa or am I with infinite Vayu? This is called Pranoupasana.
Your heart is the meeting place of brahman and the body/mind.
Die to the mind: die to the memories of the past. Die to the imaginations of the future. Die to your attachments, aversions, frustrations, anger, greed… Die to your ownership and possessions. This is the crucification of the Christ. The jiva identified with the body/mind has to die to the body/mind. Not tomorrow, but now. That is yoga. That is the spirit of pravesha shruti. That is the learning of Vedanta.

Class 29 - you’re dutiful, not responsible for karma phala, relax

What you think you know about Shiva, is not knowledge. It is ideation. Without knowing, mind forms ideas. Knowledge in the form of ideation is not going to help.
In true religion ideas alone have no value. In true religion you should know deep within, you should realize God.
Karma is the most important in life. Life is karma. What is awareness? Awareness is knowledge. That is the difference between the two. Human existence is karma + jnanam.
Field of karma gives you that wonderful opportunity to get an intimation of that real. Intimation is enough, you need not realize the whole truth.
samsari - samyak sarati. Always active. He planes his action based on the results he seeks.
The question comes, who will give the result? You need not perform karma if you could give yourself the result. God will bless me. If god will bless me, why should I do karma at all? Mimamsakas: it is the karma that will bless us. That will work, if karma is the sole cause of the result. But then performing karma correctly should always give the desired result, which is not the case. Or sometimes somebody without karma is getting karmaphala. There must be a thing higher than karma to give the karma phala.
A thing is the way it is only because the universe is the way it is.
Causes are countless. Effort doesn’t determine the outcome. There is a higher power which does.
All the power of life in you. If you don’t put in effort and just sit in a corner, you’ll become a sick person. You’ve to put in the effort. But you’ve to understand (avadharaya) that the result is not determined by this effort alone. The result is determined by the universal reality - God/brahman.
First step: hands to the work, heart to the god. This is karma yoga. This is how mahatmas live.
Karma doesn’t give phalam. It would amount to you giving the phalam to yourself. That is the ahamkara. Somebody claims he’s a self-made person? Ahamkara. He’s God made person. To reach where you’re God had to bless you.
Surgeon’s effort doesn’t heal you. It is the higher power manifesting in the body that heals you.
The idea that I’m responsible for the outcome weights heavily on the people. You’re responsible for the karma! Do karma and relax. Do the most sincere effort. Some people might like it or not, but leave the rest to the higher power and relax. Learn to relax.
After karma you’ll be physiologically tired. If you think you’re responsible for the outcome, you’ll be tired psychologically as well.
Divine madness: putting in all the effort and not worrying about the outcome.
Connect your self to the karma, never ever to the karma phala. In fact, give up karma phala. There is peace immediately.
There is karma. But am I the doer? When there is speaking, speech is happening. Power of life and power of knowledge are responsible for the speech. Power of life is given, I’m not the author of it. Nor the parents.
Language, knowledge are not personal, but universal.
Power of life, power of knowledge come from the higher power. I’m the conduit for the speech to happen. Is fan going round and round? Or is it made to go round and round? Hetu karta (electricity for fan) is the God. And you see it behind everything happening. Do you cook the food or is the food cooked through you?
Become free from the huge burden of responsibility.
BG 2.47: karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana - you’ve every right to work but not expecting fruits of it. Do not focus on the fruits and never be inactive.
This upadhi, this conduit is now surrendered to Isvhara. Let ishvara treat it the way he likes. How long he wants to use it? Let him decide. I’m not responsible, I’m not doer. Now the divine madness is complete.

Class 30

If you can connect the life (of action) to that tat it leads to realization. OTOH if you look at tat from the standpoint of the intellect alone, there is some value in that also, but it is more likely to become intellectual exercise. And you’re likely to remain stuck there. It can make a good teacher out of you, but not a realized person.
Every day you are going through the cycle of sukha and dukha. That is the karma phala. If you can connect it to brahman it is not conceptual brahman anymore, it is living brahman.
samatvam is equality. tadatyam is not! It is identity. E.g. 8-2 = 2x3, but 8-2 not ID 2x3.
samsarga - undifferentiated association. Pot is blue. That is not ID, but association. Nila is different, ghata is different, but they are stuck together.
vishistatvam - togetherness. dAm AnayA.
akhanda - they appear different but on close examination they are identical.
If you carefully examine, you’re sarvajnah. Everything is in your knowledge. Some things are known to you - vidita. The others are avidita. But they are also known to you! Suppose something is not known to you, can you put to avidita/vidita? You: not even God cannot be knowing all the things all the time. Believer: but he has the potential to know. That cit and this cat have the same potential. Division is put there out of habit, lack of proper understanding one self and conditioning.
You contradict yourself all the time, so much habituated that you don’t mind it. As long as you’re a person and the devotee of a personal god, tat tvam asi is not for you. Dead letter.
Vivekananda: examine the god you worship. It is the projection/blossoming of your own inner spirit.
As long as you live in contradictions, you will not realize the truth.
Aupanishadah and nAstika look alike.
Brain, the conditioning, has become a cover for the heart, the endless love you’re. What you call God is in you, only covered. Learn to look for God within.
You go out of sleep, first you are aware (of nothing in particular yet), then aham comes.

Class 31

My prayer is very simple and short, because I value your time.
pratyak bodhah - innermost awareness (not knowledge). Primordial awareness (e.g. gold for ornaments). In which there are no parts (advaya), and no change. Bodha - you cannot know it, you can be it.
Suppose you abide in your self and the mind is silent. You’ll not experience any second. No sense of division.
Ananda - pure awareness, all shanti - quiet. Sukha - pleasure (agitation, restlessness).
There is only one way of realising God - as the inner most self. Dismiss all other silly stories. Explain them.
Do you want brahmajnanam? Really? The one who gets brahmajnanam will not be there by the time he gets it. If you’re not prepared for that go home and do some work. Don’t waste our time.
You’ve to want to become a nobody, wholeheartedly. You must want to lose your self. Telugu proverb: I want to be like a goat in a sheep herd. Do you want to be the selfie or the self?
pratyak bodhah - pure observation without any center. You observe and become happy/unhappy - that is the center.
Notice your consciousness and note where there is sense of division or fragmentary thinking. Suppose you’ve sense of caste identity, doership, jealousy, frustration, anger … All are based on sense of division and prevent realisation.
Only when your life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge you’ll have it. First book and then silence. Love without knowledge becomes sentimentality and will destroy you. Knowledge without love makes you a very cruel person, technocrat, monster.
You need food for the tummy and food for the intellect. Is that your purpose of studying vaakya vrtti? Should not be. The purpose should be to get rid of the abrahmatvam of the tvam. Do you feel yourself as brahman? Like in sleep, do you feel any want? Any fear? You’ve to reproduce it in the waking state.
Why don’t you know that I is the brahman? Because you don’t want to know it. It is divine madness and you would be God. You want to retain your smallness, your abrahmatvam.
Overcome the habit of abrahmatvam.
Go and eat banana, don’t desire it. Or it will establish you in abrahmatvam.
A child doesn’t need a god outside. Why do you need a god outside? You feel yourself so small, petty, poor. That’s why you need a brahman outside.
Examine your life how superficial it is. Centered around the body and its needs, comforts, welfare. The mind and its frustration, envy, gratification, attachments, aversions etc. You miss the real depth of tvam padartha all the way.

Class 32

paroksha - farawayness (parah+akSa - eyesight). Terrible conditioning coming from puranic literature. Erase it. God is pratyaksha {prati+akSa}.
Swami: I’m not a temple guy. Not a pauranikah. I’m aupanishadah.
When mother is alive, you don’t need another god. When mother is no more, acharya is. When acarya is no more, entire humanity is.
Love your neighbour - love entire humanity.
There is no friend, there is no foe. There is only divinity.
Love of what is not important. Love of all, everything. That is god consciousness. Boundary between good and evil is gone.
Suppose God is not parokSa anymore. Tvam is not abrahma anymore. Then what? Tvam becomes one with the God.
srunu - listen!
Outside there is no fullness. Fullness is in you in the form of unbounded spacious awareness. Find it.
To experience any want, you have to come down to the level of the mind. All want is in the mind. Once you discover it, even when the mind is there it won’t disturb the fullness, you, God.
You do everything for happiness. As long as you seek it, you’ll be away from it. If somebody offers happiness, say “thanks no”. Reach a point of consciousness in which you do not seek. Then you’ll discover you’re the bliss. As long as you seek you’re a small guy, abrahman.

Class 33

unmatta pralAbhaha - blabbering of a crazy guy
karmakanda is all vacyarta. In Vedanta it is dismissed right away.
If you can define brahman, it becomes unpure.
When it comes to the matters of inner reality, all conclusions are wrong. Same for tvam and tat. Keep it open. Lakshiarta - open-ended meaning. Vacyarta - conclusive meaning.
Stop highlighting the body. Go on negating the ID with the body. I’m beyond all this.
In tvam pada all the physical things have to be dropped. Then mental things.
You arrive at lakshiarta by negation.
Accommodate it. The symbol is not the thing.
Whatever you perceive that is not God. And that is not you also. You’re what makes perception possible.
The tvam and the tat they merge. Tvam doesn’t remain tvam anymore, tat doesn’t remain tat anymore.
People have problems. The fact that they are still doing religious rituals prove the problems are not solved.
Ritualization -> losing the sensitivity. Mechanization.
All is god, everything is god. And you see yourself as totally different from body/mind and physical things.
pravartate - moving forward
To make a religion you need a separate tat and separate tvam. Otherwise where is the religion? Therefore take tat and add impurities (shabala).

Class 34

Shankara makes a difference between shabda (word), pratyaya (idea) and vastu (thing outside). Apply to tvam (aham). You have to reach beyond the word and its meaning. Just the word and its idea have no meaning without he vastu. The basis is the sense of myself, being, I’m-ness.
Mind is the function, work of the braincells. An object throws light upon the eyes and optical sensation happens. That sensation is interpreted by the mind as the thought. The interpretation is called cognition. Cognition is indifferent. When it is made into experience it becomes more important and gets imprinted in the mind. Otherwise mind will be deleting the cognitions. Estimated 99 out of 100 are deleted.
Mind records and keeps it so you can pull it out later. Another name for this memory is mind. What you call mind is but thought, past recordings. And all thought originates in memory.
Feeling of the sense of being, I’m-ness, is possible only when the atman reflects in the body/mind. In the absence of this reflection atman doesn’t feel itself.
To know tvam, which translates as aham, do you look into the book? To the speaker? Or do you look within?
Mind projects boredom, because it wants a variety of things. You have to teach the mind to keep quiet. You have to understand. Who’s your best friend? Atma.
Feeling is deeper than thinking. Feeling is in the heart, thinking in the head. Be a heart person (all love), not head person (all logic). Prefer love to logic. Suppose the other insults you. Love demands try to bless the person. Logic demands revenge.
Suppose it is the mind looking at the mind. That is known to whom?
Aham - pure awareness in which there is no knowing. Mind knows the object - there is knowing.
When you go to the jeweler’s shop you don’t see many things. There is only one thing. Eyes + mind together see many ornaments.
Character of mirror: show things that don’t exist. Break it and you’ll see. Mirror doesn’t reflect no things. It only reflects light.
Without mirror, a lense there is no movie. Your eyes are also lenses. You see things that are not there while missing what is.

Class 35

tat pada comes with a blemish (shabala) - paroksha. What is aparoksha is taken as paroksha and indicated as tat. The impurity comes always from the upadhi. Upadhi of brahman, is maya. Material cause. Jagat.
What you’re calling material cause is the same as substantive and constituent cause. Chaitanyam. What you call matter is chaitanyam alone, which appears as matter.
From the jagat side, the substantive cause. From its own side, from karana side it’s constituent cause (karya-karana bhava). Both is brahman. Both are the same as the very lose expression - the material cause.
jonih - cause.
Maya is the upadhi of brahman, without which which there cannot be apparent division between jiva and brahman, the world.
vadah - theory. You need the theory of maya to explain the world. In case of maya it’s not a theory. It’s a statement of fact.
The basis of our life is contradiction. Are you life or are you death? We have to move through these tremendous contradictions, the opposites. In Rama you’ll find some adharma and in Ravana there is a lot of good too. Death follows life like a shadow follows a person. Our life moves through these contradictions and maya is the explanation for them. Maya is a way of understanding the tremendous contradictions of our lives.
You need not, cannot understand brahman, your self. All you need to understand is maya.
Example: Maya is whirling of “I love you”. Maya has to move. Brahman is kutastah, changeless, immobile. In the case of jagat the whirling is replaced by the mind. Mind is not a thing, it is movement. The thing is chaitanyam. This elaborate thing of the power of moving associated with ajnana makes you believe that there is a jagat.
There is no difference between ajnana and mind.
We don’t call it avidya when you put maya as the upadhi to brahman. You worship saguna brahman. You do not identify with saguna brahman. Saguna brhama is different and you are different. Maya as avidya would sound bad for worship purpose. So we say maya or shakti.
Maya is avidya only. In fact there is no difference between jiva and brahman.
Parokshatvam - provisional division (dinstinction) created between alpajnah jiva and sarvajnah ishvara. Created for worship, for the purpose of overcoming maya.
To begin with it was personification. So poetic and beautiful but then it became literal. So maya is stri-linga. And there are three gunas in maya. Thus three women. If there is a woman, what is the right thing (in India)? Get married. Man may not marry but a women should. Now there are three. When women marry what they do? Fight among themselves. So sarasvati, laksmi, parvati will be most of the time very friendly but occasionally they fight also. Now there are currents worshiping maya only without shiva (saguna brahman).
You’ve to worship saguna brahman. Maya is included. What is it? The rising sun. Panca bhutas. Need not have a particular shape. The life in every lifeform. Namaste vayo tvam eva pratyaksham brahmasi.
Brahman is neuter. Maya is the upadhi, not a woman. First you put a woman there and then you say woman should be given priority etc. Saguna brahma upasana only should be done. Once you lose the track and dismiss saguna brahman and hold on to the maya shakti now the ground is ready for an enormous degeneration. e.g. vamacara. An enormous degeneration happened in the Hindu dharma. And that division went on and on and on. Women were suppressed and not given proper status, then caste divisions, caste among gods.
Some muni: I would like to see the entire Hindu society chanting gayatri manta and worshipping saguna brahman in the rising sun.
Example: “I love you” is not what is there. “I love you” is what you see! How come? Maya. Translation Maya = illusory, delusion.
Suppose glow (cit of brahman) is not present at something, then it doesn’t even appear.
Maya you cannot entirely explained. If you could, it would be not maya anymore.
If you don’t go to the real of the nama rupa, then your worship loses its purpose.

Class 36

Do not seek. Why should you seek, when you get things without seeking? Seeking stands in the way as a wall. It perpetuates division, dvaita, duality. Don’t seek anything from the world, god, body/mind also.
Immanent - present in all there is. Transcendent - not bound by the nama rupas.
In conceptual Vedanta they don’t go beyond words. Guru said the words and the words are the truth. Why did he say so? Because his guru said.
pravaha - flow of water
We’re accustomed to contradictions. We reconcile all contradictions. That’s why we remain where we are. Primary sadhana is absence of contradictions.
Contradiction is the worst obstacle for self realization. Suppose you have contradiction it means you’re not very earnest about it.
There are many professions. People don’t want self-realization. They want to become vedantins - one more profession..
There are moments when there is no desire, no fear in your heart. Do you think of god then? Because you’re the god. Because desiring and fearing upadhi (jiva) is gone.

Class 37

You want to give up something? You have to do a 180 degrees turn. Slowly decreasing won’t help.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re sanyasi or grhasta, you suffer because of attachment. You have to understand attachment and come out of it. You cannot keep some attachment.
Buddha’s teaching is homocentric. Upanishadic teaching is real-centric. Religions are theocentric. In theocentric (puranas, upasanas) you’re a soul and god is a bigger soul somewhere else.
Primary meaning have no value, are contradictory. Dismiss certain aspects of primary meaning.
sah <-> ayam (this). That devadata from there is not this devadata from here and now.
World is jada. If you’re jada you’re of the world. But you’re not of the world, you’re only in the world.
On the land even you cannot move a boat. Water is the place where boat should be. There even a child can move it. But suppose water is put inside the boat. Then the boat will sink. That is how we sink in life. We put the world in ourselves.
People fail to reach beyond the words. Therefore, when they do and are unable to realize the divinity within they will find other ways. Chant it, do puja, do homa … - convert it into a ritual.
Conceptual meaning of life (“the Plan”). That’s the only meaning of life we know. This entire meaning of life collapses in time. All of it. Not one bit remains.
You do not wait for the time to end the conceptual framework of life. You end it yourself. If you allow the time to end it, it will and your heart will be broken. You’ll plunge into darkness. If you do it yourself, by knowledge, it is called “bhaga-tyaga lakshanah” - I’m not the one who lives. It is the body who lives. Body’s achievements, children, lifespan etc.
Whatever is conceptual is meaningless. 80y lifespan, marriage, children, attachment, aversion, worship of gods and goddesses with sense of duality, time, space … everything that mind can conceive is meaningless. That is bhaga tyaga lakshanah. By doing so you get connected to the reality.
Whatever your mind conceives is false and whatever it desires is utterly useless.
You’re just aware of the people. You do not look at them as spouse, friend etc. Same for events. Somebody puts a garland upon you. Somebody else throws mud at you. You’re just aware. Entire conceptual meaning of life is dismantled. The person you imagined yourself to be is gone. And you merge wit the truth.
Things happen one way, you’re aware. They happen other way, you’re aware. They do not mean anything anymore, they’re all meaningless. Only the conceptual mind has given them some meaning, which is utterly useless, which will end. Before it ends, I end it myself.
Tatvabodha is all head-study. Atmabodha is all heart-study, takes you away from concepts.
What is better, sravanam or niddidhiasanam? People conveniently forget about mananam. Swami TV: I consider mananam most important. The discussion which of the three is better is wrong.
Superficially there are three sadhanas but essentially there is one.
You have to make your mind less worldly. You cannot keep the mind very worldly and yet hope to accomplish self-realization. How to make mind less wordly? Shamah - make mind less worldly, damah - keep the organism alert.
When you give some nice food to people they won’t be able to do shravanam. Damah won’t be there. Excessive food consumption makes the organism very dull. Damah is very important.

Class 38

All parokshatvam of God is imagination of theologians. Because for them god is a human being.
There is no reason to make the jiva and the deva separate.
Ajnana provides tremendous security. Because of the insecurity people don’t want to know. In “aham brahma asmi” there is no security. You will not be secure, you’ll be free. People prefer to keep the items of the world. Parrot inside the gold cage has security, the wild crane has not. But it entire space belongs to the wild crane, while parrot never knows.
Human nature: We don’t want this to be over. It has to continue. Just like a hospital is not interested in all people being healthy.
Ajnana is convenient. Jnana is most inconvenient of all.
You create falsehood all round you. Falsehood provides security. You seek security, so long “aham brahma asmi” keeps at a distance. Sri Ramakrishna: aham brahma asmi is like you’re holding to a branch of a tree. You stop holding.
Giving up takes no time, if you really want to.
What you’re giving up is not real. And the real you cannot give up anyway. You’re giving up nama rupa.
You need some quality sravanam, then quality mananam that inspirates and uplifts you. And that niddidhiasanam - be aware of what is going in your mind, of its movement.
Keep god universal, don’t make him South-Indian.
People are ready to believe anything.
Once you become a group person, your self-realization is out.
You’re suffering because of ignorance, because your understanding is wrong.
When somebody dies I never grieve. For me death is death of the body and the person is merged in Isvhara. What is there to grieve about it?
Examine and make a list of all different elements of bondage which cause suffering. And then dismiss all of them. (recap) That is what you have to do by understanding the vision with the help of an acarya.

Class 39

What happened in Hinduism is that we’re left with the acaryas and we lost the shruti. When that happens, the entire religion goes to the wrong direction.
Shruti is the vision. Acarya is only presenting the vision.
Why do the students give so much importance to the outer “self”? Because the guru does. Sad. The guru should lead dismissing the outer self (shadow). That invisible inner self cannot be seen with the eyes.
The one who says god and jiva are different he will not take much time to say you and I are different. And then he’ll say I’m superior and you’re inferior.
The body identified self tries to derive some advantage/glory out of a name.
Root cause of samsara: outer self pursuing a thing or not. Also, check if you’re anxious. That belongs to the outer self.
People are childish. Just like them they take things very literally. Amrta is not liquid. Amrta is amrtatvam, status of one’s true nature.
People are waiting for death. When you create time for yourself (I’m young, old, 30 years old, etc.), you’re waiting for death. If death is today, you don’t wait for it, you face it.
Those who hope for knowledge in future will not get knowledge at all. They will get only death. There is only one thing certain in future - death.
Amrta is absence of psychological death. You step of net of time.
Farmers grows a plant to get crop. Landscaping people are cutting the plants for no reason. Doing a lot of himsa. Same for hunting people. There is only one life-form in the creation that hunts for entertainment. A cow doesn’t destroy grass if it is not hungry (Don Juan - don’t take more then required / greed).
I close the door cautiously, I put the book, use the mask … carefully. The same self is present everywhere. Use it when and how appropriate. This is how the one who knows the invisible inner self looks at the world around.
People resist. They’re not open. They do not have clarity of thinking. They are conditioned. They’re a bunch of conditioned clowns. Be harsh if necessary, that is the labour of love.
acarya prasAdena - by the love of acarya
bodhah - understanding
Any ending, whatever it is that ends, you’re liberated. In the moments of ending there is bliss. Anything, in good and bad.
Ramanamaharshi: do you have a mind? That is avidya. You do not depend on the mind upon the truth. Your mind can only block the truth.
There is freedom from something, e.g. sorrow. And there is a higher version, just freedom - freedom absolute. And both are your own - svarupa.
Jnana is not visible. Only ajnana is visible. Unless you study and examine a person for a long time you can’t tell.
Only ajnanis are anxious. Jnani is not anxious. He knows that he’s not the body/mind. The mind will take care of the body by laws of nature. Body is thirsty, mind will find water. When there is hunger, food will come. When there is illness, medicine will come. How? Mind will work out something. Jnani knows this and need not interfere with it. The only difference in this context between jnani and ajnani is utter lack of anxiety.
All rituals are result of anxiety.

Class 40

You identify with the organs of action, you become karta. If with the sense organs, you become bhotka. These three (w. mind too) are totally gone for a jnani. “My body” is an idea. Body doesn’t say it. For him, it is “a” body and “a” mind, not “mine”.
Jnani is not a karta. What needs to be done it gets done.
Suppose there is a desire. You’re acutely conscious of the desire, whereas you’re not of so many things of the physiological and psychological functions of the system. Now you want the desire to be fulfilled, for that you do karma, wait for the karma-phala, create psychological time and get bound.
Jnani is not afraid of death, he’s not afraid of life.
Jnani lives a quiet life and quiet death. Quiet is happy.
Why not death be a simple thing. It should be a simple affair. It should not be an enormous burden on the people left behind.
Jnanis do not create vasanas in their hearts. Advantage is one is free to love. You need to be free to love.
For a jnani only, there will be agama karma.
Sancita karma and agami karma are destroyed for the jnani. Even prarabda karma is not there for jnani, it’s there for the body/mind.
Jnani = absence of a self-conscious person.
If the person is not liberated before death, it will not be liberated after death.
vega = momentum. Prarabda karma has a momentum. In life, everything is a moment. It is a flow. It has a velocity.
Prarabdha will take you forward in the life till that momentum becomes zero and the body falls.
kevalasya bhavaha = kaivalyam
There are no others for a jnani. All others getting moksha is ridiculous. Double ajnana: I’m ajnani and all others are ajnanis. There are no others. There is no second at any time. Who’s left? I’m. Kaivalyam.
What you see on the screen is in you. Where is she? On the screen or in you? Dance? Music? In you.
When everything ends, you’re there.
Kaivalyam is same as Vishnu. In Vedas there is only all-pervading reality, which is brahman. “Vishnu sahasrama” is “Bhagavan’s sahasranama” and Vishnu is one of the names. Vaishnavas made it into “Vishnu sahasranama”.
Parama pada - supreme goal, abode.
There is something always better. Then the following happens 1) The joy we’re getting melts away when you a better thing 2) the joy that you’ve derived from a given objects stops giving the joy because of the law of diminishing returns 3) it becomes monotonous.
Monotonous -> no joy. There is only one joy - ananda. Which is you get moksha. You get into sarvaatmabhaava. This jnani gets that.
vaishnavam - belonging to Vishnu.
Satyam is the truth as ascertained by the study of the scriptures. Living, practicing it is called rtam. What you’ve learned from the scriptures you live in life.