Advaita (non-duality) according to Vedanta
Dedicated in gratitude to my living teachers, James Swartz above all, who came my way at just the right time, and Swami Anubhavananda, Swami Tattvavidananda, Swamini Neema, Andre Vas, Swami Sarvapriyananda, whom I have had the privilege of listening to live, and all the great Mahatmas, especially Swami Dayananda and Swami Paramarthananda in text, and many other Vedanta teachers on video. And of course the great conduits in the tradition Vyasa and Adi Shankara. All embody the neutral purveyor of knowledge Ishvara, the only reality that is.
Many of us are (perhaps vaguely) familiar with the concept of Advaita (non-dualism). Reality appears to consist of a multiplicity, but in reality is not-two, but one. How on earth? Well, the ground of everything is simply consciousness, and all impermanent things are a temporary manifestation or expression of that.
Before you can see, understand and realize this for yourself in this way, there is a lot to learn and practice. Advaita Vedanta (called Vedanta from here on out) is the means of knowledge, handed down from Indian Antiquity that put this on a unparalleled way to explain. It is effective and reliable because it has been clarified and tried and tested for millennia, and because it has made millennials realize their freedom. It guides the seeker through non-dual teaching in an unparalleled way, as it was originally intended, and helps her or him work out all aspects of existence. It is not vaguely spiritual, but very precise, and crystal clear is its analysis. The disciple is not asked to assume something blindly, but to test it in his own experience. Vedanta is a science because only self-knowledge can set you free. The reason is that reality is just the way it is, only we are ignorant of it. So you don’t become free, but come to understand that and how you are already free. We can act until we weigh an ounce, as long as we do not know how things are, we cannot be free. It is as simple as that. This is a very nuanced point, which will become clear as we go along. With this, Vedanta is a science with a completely different methodology than we are used to. That is why we call it a knowledge tool for freedom. Isn’t that interesting? It is the science of yourself, your true self that is.
Modern science is relative knowledge, based on sense perception and its derived tools. From that, in turn, we derive all kinds of knowledge, allowing us to live in the relative reality of objects with increasing complexity and sophistication. Unfortunately, we cannot build on objects when it comes to truth and my happiness. There is no object that does not perish, there is no object that makes me (permanently) happy. Vedanta is the knowledge of the infinite, ever-present subject, which is the ground of reality (just now I stated that objects are a temporary phenomenon of that). That “bearing” consciousness is stable, silent, full and free, because in reality without properties and attributes, and infinite in its apparent possibilities. We can also call that consciousness existence, or “being. You could also call it God, because it is the infinite potentiality for the appearance of worlds and lives. You could also call it “I” (not the I as experienced in the mind), because Vedanta shows that everything and everyone must be “it. That is why Vedanta says, ‘Consciousness, existence, blissful infinity, that is yourself.’ The immense invitation is to learn and dare to look that way. Why does it have to be you?
Self-evident
Of some things you can be certain. That you exist and that you are conscious. But also that all experiences come and go. No experience is stable. And yet you are present in every experience. In deep sleep you experience the bliss of being without person and world for a moment, but you are also present in full glory. This permanence of consciousness, and the facts that you are conscious and exist, means that consciousness is the great constant in your existence. This is true for everyone. Therefore, one person’s consciousness is no different from another person’s consciousness. One consciousness. And within that ocean of consciousness that we all are in the same way, each has their own karma, which interacts according to laws. Within that unity of consciousness, which is thus everyone’s true nature, life takes place. Consciousness is always the same shining basis of this. We all know that all phenomena are very relative and impermanent. Even on our body and mind we cannot build permanently. Vedanta says: Be explained about you and the reality called pure consciousness, which is peaceful, infinite and blissful, where there is no threat and no desire. Think about it, meditate on it. Practice it. If you accept this invitation, life will be experienced with certainty and completely differently.
Your own experience
Crass statements, but very plausible. Just look at your own experience. You have seen your body change, you have seen your mind develop, and you have also seen quite a bit of life and current events pass you by. You have seen snatches of the world come and go. You have followed current events, gained all kinds of knowledge of the world. You have seen your mind and body participate in this world. You have laughed, you have suffered. You have been self-centered in your adolescence, and are now possibly altruistic. What transpires now? All this time there was the same silent presence that made it all possible and observed it. Continuously that radiant presence shining on all objects. By objects in Vedanta we mean everything that can be perceived. Including thoughts and feelings in the mind, and the experience of the body. So spirit or mind is different from consciousness. Mind or mind belongs to all impermanent and temporary appearances of and in consciousness. The presence that is always there is what we call real. That is you, consciousness. That which comes and goes is seemingly real, and therefore you can be free of it.
A simple little experiment confirms this. If you close your eyes and try to feel how old you are, you don’t succeed. ‘I feel timeless.’ Everyone always reports that: ‘I don’t feel 40, 60 or 80 yet.’ Only when thoughts and judgments come to the story of my life do I suddenly think I am this or that. The body is 40, 60 or 80 years old. Not you, timeless consciousness.
Then are you, me or consciousness different things? And yet what are all these things that present themselves to me?
In the sections below, which you can easily unfold, this article continues.
Consciousness only
The basic proposition of the ancient scriptures is that all the phenomena that it seems I have to deal with are nothing but temporary phenomena of the same consciousness that you and I are. Whether we speak of phenomena, phenomena, objects or things, it does not matter. Everything that can be perceived as a detached thing does not stand alone, is not what it seems, will change and pass away. Also, all detached objects must depend on a deeper ground that makes everything a coherent whole. Vedanta states that this is the infinite consciousness, which has always been and always will be. Poetically speaking, like the cord that holds the beads of the Mala together. Or like the blank computer screen where infinite information, pictures, stories can appear, without changing itself. Vedanta states that I am not everything that even “is something,” including my thoughts and feelings. In other words, of all that I can perceive, I am the deeper truth, carrier, ground consciousness. Therefore, it is non-dual. By seeing this (knowledge), the seeker can shift her or his identity to this free consciousness. Why is it free? Because it is independent, unchanging and imperishable. Am I then free from my person and the world? Yes, these depend on me, and will leave me again, just as they came, without my asking for it.
Sat, Cit, Atma, Brahman and Maya
There is apparently a potential, apparent force present in consciousness (which is also nothing other than consciousness itself), which foreshadows phenomena to me. That potential force is called Maya in India. How can that be? We cannot say that nothing exists. We perceive a world with everything in it. However, Vedanta states that what we perceive is not what it appears to be. It is a dependent, temporary, changing appearance of self, infinite consciousness. Because consciousness is infinite pure intelligence (also called god) it has the ability to imagine a world, and has the ability to be ignorant of itself. This possibility of the self (Atma) also falls under Maya. Mind you, it is an apparent possibility. In reality, nothing happens, and consciousness (Cit) remains unchanged. Cit is also called Sat. That is to signify that consciousness is existence. And thus the existence of everything is consciousness. One reality, different little words. Another name for Atma and Cit is Brahman. Brahman points to the absolute and infinite of pure consciousness. They are angles through which we can understand it. Atma, self, indicates that you yourself are the truth. Brahman points to the immeasurable, boundlessness of it. Sat indicates that what we are talking about is existence itself, without beginning and without end. Cit points to the radiant, pure consciousness, and the possibility of being aware of something through Maya. This is an initial introduction. These concepts are explained in great detail in the Vedanta teachings. Important for now: The true meanings of these concepts are synonymous, because there is only one reality. Everything refers to the same, free truth of myself. Again, that makes it easy.
A coming and going, but I am and remain
Consciousness, that is you and me, one consciousness. So our minds and our bodies are also just phenomena that appear in it. But consciousness remains pure and does not change. Being is the only certainty you have. Outside of this being there is nothing. Understanding this sets the self-investigator free. Anything that seems to be fixed for even a moment soon turns out to be different than it seems. Go figure. Every object, every phenomenon has a beginning and an end. That we are so eager to hold on to everything gets us into trouble. My life story, my body, my mind also has a beginning and an end. The cosmos too has a beginning and an end, just ask the astronomers. Can the cosmos arise from nothing? Completely illogical. There is a radiant truth underlying it, present here and now in its full glory, if you can recognize it.
My private world that presents itself to me, from waking up in the morning until I go back to sleep, and the cosmos that presents itself on a macro scale to the consciousness of all individuals are wonderfully aligned. And yet everyone experiences this differently. Vedanta has beautiful explanations for this. This has to do with the different types of forces and attributes of Maya, which reflect themselves at the individual level in the mind of individuals, according to how the karma develops. Those who want to go into detail on that, James Swartz has very detailed Maya teachings, found through Shining World . Furthermore, there is also very good teaching structure by Andre Vas on this website on the text Tattva Bodha (Seminar Vlierhof 2023, see Blog) and Kena Upanisad (Seminar Vlierhof 2024, see Blog). In it, these concepts including Maya are also very well explained. In the publication “Explanation of Sanskrit Words” under the Kena Upanisad, all kinds of Sanskrit terms are also discussed in detail.
Freedom is the end of suffering
Why do I need to know all this? At first I thought I was something that keeps changing. A being that suffers. My whole world of thought and feeling is always changing, and I experience life as a roller coaster. But since it has been explained to me (knowledge!) that consciousness is unchanging, completely independent and infinite, and therefore imperishable, and that I am fooled, because it seems that I am always taking on all these forms and feelings, I can understand that I am unchanging, radiant, silent and free.
Why free? All things, feelings, thoughts are temporary, impermanent and therefore dependent on consciousness. If you focus on this insight, you can discover, that it is you who perceive everything, even the movements and feelings in body and mind, without changing yourself. Then I can find out, that the suffering experienced has nothing to do with me. Then can you still speak of suffering? The present, perceiving aspect is unchanging. Because independent, pure consciousness is free from mind, body and world, and you and I are consciousness, we are free. It can be compared to a unique screen on which the film of life is projected. In sleep, for example, the projector is turned off, and I am the bliss of the blank screen. That is why everyone loves to sleep. That empty screen is yourself, consciousness.
When I understand how this works, I am the fullness of everything. Satisfied, full and free. The bliss described here is not a feeling, for feelings are temporary. It is the bliss of realizing to be existence itself, the infinitely radiant being of consciousness. Count on that freedom being blissful! Thus we can say, that reality is indeed good and gracious.
No other
So are you and I different? No, another beautiful one. “Your” consciousness is the same as “my” consciousness. That’s why it’s so beautiful to look into each other’s eyes. What you see is a reflection of yourself. You look at yourself as consciousness, only some personal layers appear, which make it seem different. Why?
Matter and mind are also consciousness
Consciousness, the carrier of reality, has no characteristics, attributes, capacities. Because it is without any attributes, you cannot have several of them. That is absurd. People always get confused, even in the sciences of consciousness, and think that a thought in the mind is consciousness itself. But mind, the contents of the mind and consciousness are of a completely different order. Yes, everything is consciousness, including thoughts. But mind, with its feelings and thoughts, is not a self-contained thing at all. Nothing is a self-contained thing except the one radiant being itself: Pure consciousness. You cannot say, That is consciousness, because consciousness is not a thing in itself. Everything that is is consciousness.
We have just shown that all these life stories are only a temporary representation of one reality. One infinite, unchanging reality, which we call consciousness, self or brahman, and in which a world can arise and a world can disappear into. That which is always permanently present, and that which makes everything possible. That therefore which is “truly real. Truth. So truth is not something that can be described.
So truth is simply the attribute-less substrate of everything. Not in the sense of a house standing on its foundation. No, if we continue to dissect matter, we arrive at consciousness. So matter itself is consciousness. Just as a table is wood. Wood is molecules. Molecules are atoms. Atoms are smallest particles. Smallest particles are information. Information is pure consciousness. Common denominator: Being. And Being and consciousness are synonymous. Sat (being) Cit (consciousness) Ananda (bliss, infinity) says Vedanta.
The final step from subtle matter, via information, to pure consciousness cannot be scientifically proven. No, the scope of science does not extend beyond the most subtly derivable matter (and the mind is also subtle matter). Why? The scientist is consciousness itself, and that cannot be studied objectively (the hard problem of consciousness), only deduced subjectively, with the right means of knowledge. That is the truth, this reality, that is you.
The mind enjoys knowledge
Important addition: Because the whole cosmos, or manifestation, whatever you want to call it, is matter, and matter is nothing but consciousness, consciousness has never really turned into anything. In the final step, as just described, from smallest particles, through information, to consciousness, there is something funny going on. It just seems that consciousness becomes concrete information and knowledge, and manifests into something. That is its infinite potentiality and power. Appearing to change into something, while just remaining infinitely the same, while the infinite show goes on. This is something we can apply to ourselves. Anything that is anything is of a complete (not real) different order, than its truth. This is why freedom is possible. In reality, we remain that one radiant infinite being. No problem. We may choose this freedom, if we understand it. Then the mind will resist for a longer time, to come to live in this beautiful non-dual identity and vision. But that can be trained with a good period of contemplation. Knowledge only works directly. You may or may not know. But that knowing can flash on and off. That is the work. But the mind lifted up by knowledge will be lifted up in bliss. Awareness, the sensation of realization, is a strange thing. When you have understood, you know that you are not the mind, yet the mind will predominantly enjoy. The mind will shoot into all kinds of secret amusement and inner tears about the absurdity of reality. Even though consciousness does not enjoy. After all consciousness is free from sorrow and enjoyment. The enjoyment is apparent, so what?
No theory, no philosophy, this is about you!
Vedanta merely describes the nuances of “the relationship” between truth and how truth seemingly makes itself known. True understanding and realization of this is a very subtle matter. The realization that I am pure ‘being’ seemingly takes place in the realm of not being pure. Perhaps more intelligibly expressed, “The realization that I am being fooled takes place in the domain of being fooled. This makes perfect sense. Freedom, the main prize, is the proof. It is not something that you achieve, it is something that you understand, although the mind takes time afterwards to ‘stay with the understanding’. That too takes place “in the domain in which I am fooled. Do you see the joke? Also in this whole process, I am just freely present as the light shining on these processes. But you then look right through those processes, as it were, and recognize the non-dual unity of everything, because you know it without any doubt. When you have thus realized (self-realization), realized and internalized (self-actualization) you also let go of the understanding (the knowledge) and you are simply the fullness of consciousness. Freedom is so infinitely simple that it is difficult for our neurotic mind. Once you understand it, you could say, “being consciousness” is the simplest and the most ordinary thing that is. Something specific is not ordinary in fact. Consciousness is infinitely deep and rich in its possibilities and at the same time so singular that we cannot imagine it. Notice: This is entirely about you! Everywhere consciousness is explained, you can also say “I. This is not just another nice philosophy or theory. It must be applied to yourself, and when you begin to reap the benefits, you cannot conclude otherwise, than that it must be true. Sustainable well-being is the proof.
This consciousness, this reality is the silent witness of everything, we don’t have to do anything for that. This reality is free from the objects. Free from the thoughts in the mind, from feelings, from life stories and from the world. Because consciousness is without attributes, and because we are it, you can also just call consciousness “existence. Those are synonyms. We also call awareness and consciousness synonyms in Vedanta. What is existence, and what is consciousness? Infinity and freedom. Again, those are synonyms. Existence, consciousness, freedom, infinity. There is only one reality, there is only one truth.
Benefits? No fear, only love
If I know that, how and why I am that freedom, and I practice this knowledge in all aspects of my life, I will be satisfied, full and whole. Then I will see that there is nothing outside of me. Benefits? In full identification with awareness, I would love everything as my own. And try to assist everyone with compassion and empathy, if they are open to it. And, then I wouldn’t be afraid of anything (how can I be afraid of myself). This is not to say, of course, that I wouldn’t use my mind to pay attention in traffic, or that I would just walk up to a madman or predator. Only I would know that if the body dies, I do not die. I was the light, and remain the light. Vedanta explains very precisely how the phenomena with which I seem to be identified relate to me, free consciousness. This knowledge has all sorts of nuances that must be understood for complete self-knowledge.
Knowing something to be happiness, not doing something
Why do people act as if the devil is on their heels? Out of ignorance of this. A person thinks he has to perform and achieve all kinds of things to be happy. But this is not the case. All that is necessary to live is to keep body and mind alive. It is the other way around. Life may be celebrated from the happiness of being full. Life need not be lived, trying to squeeze lasting happiness out of things that are not real, and that are passing. Will not succeed! But because we feel so limited, we do all sorts of things to perfect ourselves. Especially conjuring up anxiety with accumulating security, affirmation, attention, experiences and stuff. We want to be secure and count in an uncertain, threatening world. But happiness does not spring from dead objects within me. I, consciousness, am the living thing about everything.
When I get what I want, I am equally satisfied. But what I got did not cause that. My desire, my hunger, the agonizing thought that drove me to chase after something, has been stilled for a moment, and I am enjoying my own bliss. But that will not last long. Soon, out of habit, the next disturbing desire already arises. A wise person, soon finds out that the world does not bring perpetual happiness. That it can only come “from” myself. Then I can bring my happiness to the objects, a more stable, self-sufficient scenario, we can be kind to each other and I can shine in a material, dark world.
What brings happiness? The right understanding about myself. Once I know that I am the ocean of consciousness in which everything appears, fear, hassles, threats and restless desires lose their binding power, and I can relax. Then the person, who also appears in me, will no longer act to become happy, knowing that she or he is happiness itself. The apparent personality will then act from the bliss of right self-knowledge. That is freedom, celebrating life from the happiness that you are. And not trying to squeeze happiness out of life. I don’t need to become ok, I am already ok under all circumstances. To be wise is to understand this. Who dares?
The full experience of the sage
There are many testimonies of sages throughout the ages who have developed this simple but magnificent self-image. Why should I enter into this? Answer: Because freedom is possible.
You only have to go into Vedanta Satsangs and speak to people, who tell you how the teaching is continuously enriching their lives. Until you meet the one, who generally keeps his mouth shut. That one radiates. That one radiates that it has infinitely enriched her or him. The elusive one, in his whole experience one with his true nature, and therefore with everything, in accordance with the truth. A sage is simply (what he is). Who knows how he is the non-dual existence itself, in which all objects light up as consciousness. Not a piece of consciousness. No, consciousness is indivisible. That person knows that it is ordinary because it has always been so. This person has not achieved anything. No, she or he has understood herself or himself. She or he has recognized her or his freedom and infinity. Something that already applies to everyone, but is not recognized that way. You are discovering yourself. Not your personal self, but your impersonal free self. Self-realization. What is required for this? Self-knowledge.
But she or he doesn’t think about it at all all the time. Well, no, life has just become a tension-free field. The person is just mindful with everything. This is not a specific experience. It is being what is. The fulfillment of being whole and complete is not a specific experience. But because fear, desires, insecurity, threat, otherness fall away, there is peace, fullness and contentment. This is called the bliss, the bliss of oneself. This is also available to us. Why not? After all, we all already are this free consciousness, only we don’t know it. The invitation is to start looking that way, and Vedanta helps you do that.
Ignorance
The crazy thing is that this simple logic needs to be told to you. We look over it. ‘We look over ourselves.’ We look out of ourselves against a make-believe reality, which is also ourselves. That we don’t know this is because the world, which comes to me through my senses, seems so real.
Not knowing that I am infinite awareness is called ignorance. Immediate consequence: Assigning authenticity to material reality as it shows itself to us. And so everyone is stuck with the problem. Ignorance is the problem to be solved. Ignorance makes us identify with our mind/mind, body and world. This is very natural, and applies to everyone. So we need non-dual knowledge. And therefore I can be very humble and grateful that it has been explained to me by me teacher, telling what tradition passes on. It is one great invitation to compassion and empathy for “others” (even though as consciousness they are also nothing but yourself, remember).
By the way, just because the world is not real does not mean it does not exist. No, there is only existence. The world, things do exist, only they are not what they appear to be.
Knowledge
Now we know that ignorance is the problem. So what is the solution? The word has already been mentioned a few times. Knowledge. What kind of knowledge? Self-knowledge. Why self-knowledge? Simply because consciousness is my true nature. Reasoning: There is such a thing as consciousness. I exist. I am conscious. Consciousness is the real ground of reality. I must be that consciousness. This is something that may be explored in one’s own experience. The teacher helps you in this. Then something that is self-evident can also be so experienced by the self-examiner. One of the words for consciousness is Atma, which means “The Self.
Can I know the self as I know my personality? No, for two reasons. We are that which makes knowing possible, and that of course cannot be known. Furthermore, that which I would like to know as an object is well not an object, therefore unknowable as such. Your true nature is the silent witness. The free seer. That one does not interpret, that one has no problems, and that one cannot be objectified. That is. Of course, a true nature which has properties is not free. So you yourself are not sense perceivable, and you cannot form an image of it in the mind. You are the perceiver, but not the knowing, perceiving ego, which thinks something of everything that is perceived.
If you know that you are free consciousness, without even one attribute, and you look that way, you can “see” that the ego is also perceived. It is beautiful to try that out in a meditation. Just look closely. Because we think we are that ego, we suffer that way. But you can infer or ‘see’ that there is a perceiving faculty, which radiates ‘onto’ objects. Then focus on the ever-free subject. Self-knowledge helps with that.
The truth is unknowable because you are it
In Vedanta we define consciousness, the silent observer, as the substratum of everything, as that which makes everything possible, without actually changing anything. As that which makes the unconscious seemingly possible, and as that which makes the conscious seemingly possible. As that which makes the potential possible, and as that which makes the seemingly manifest possible. If my mind still forms an image of that, I am wrong and that is ignorance. The ego is an image in the mind, around which my life story revolves. But that is exactly what I am not. You and I are the infinity (of possibilities) in which all that is “taking place,” without being anything specific. That which makes everything light up in itself, which no one knows exactly what it is. Pure intelligence, with the ability to make worlds appear. That is not no emptiness, that is not nihilistic. Vedanta teaches that you are the radiant fullness of everything. This radiant being, this presence is the self. Nothing can come off and nothing can come in. Therefore it is complete peace, stillness and fullness. Very common in every situation. That truth is not objectifiable is the reason why wisdom traditions call truth indescribable and unknowable. But that does not mean that you are not truth.
These words are also simply but appearances of that truth. So I cannot know truth scientifically, as I know a thought, feeling or natural phenomenon. I can only be the truth. This is so simple, it is very difficult.
Everything is impermanent except you, existence-consciousness
How does knowledge work? Just now we reasoned that you and I are that one consciousness. But we have also seen that we are still identified with the phenomena that present themselves to us, such as our thoughts, our feelings, our bodies and the world. These identifications are thoughts, what else? Identification with the I-thought first and foremost. It all takes place in the mind. It seems like it belongs to me. But if I look very carefully, and I know they are impermanent phenomena, and I can do this best when my mind is calm, there is “a cognitive space” between myself, consciousness and thoughts, feelings and things outside the body. They are projections, presenting themselves to me. I seem mixed up with them, but cognition tells me they are temporary, blanks. And that’s right, afterwards I always report: it all seemed so bad, but now everything is all right again. Of course, because I have been identified for a lifetime, this knowledge will not work overnight, and I will have to practice it intensely over a longer period of time.
Self-realization is first of all a cognitive shift in the mind
So what has to “happen” for freedom? It is a shift in self-perception from experiencing that I am my thoughts, my feelings or my body, to knowing (!) that I am free consciousness. And how consciousness relates to all phenomena. And when I know, I am, and experience everything as that. I am already consciousness, so that is not the problem. What is needed for self-realization is a cognitive shift in the mind. What is the shift? Shifting from the identification of the person with a body and mind to the identification with free, infinite consciousness. For that, I will first have to know all sorts of things. What consciousness is. What the world is. What a living being is with its karma (and how my psyche and conditioning may or may not get in my way). And how these things relate to each other. Hence, you really need to know something before freedom “takes place. This is because we also know all sorts of things now, but that is at its core, I am sorry to write this, based on ignorance. So the panorama of reality must be unfolded again to me. And that is exactly what Vedanta does. Rebuilding a reality, only to ignore it as relatively true, not really true. At first it is patching up this knowledge. But if knowledge really takes place in the mind that is ready for it, then one day, ignorance will disappear like snow. That is knowledge. Then knowledge is also released, and I live in a non-dual vision. Then I am what I am. The “happening,” the “shift in the mind” and “the taking place and letting go of knowledge,” then appear to have been apparent, not real, but absolutely necessary to see your freedom.
Am I that knowledge, then? No, after all, I was free consciousness. Even the mind is only seemingly real, but that is where the problem was. If in the mind ignorance has passed into knowledge, I know the status of both, and I am simply what I am, consciousness. Ignorance I had already lost, now I can also let go of knowledge. Self-realization is a cognitive shift in the mind. Everything then continues to appear in the same way, but I know the status of it (myself, consciousness) and know that I am that which makes everything possible. Then everything becomes feathery. A game in which the person plays lovingly and cheerfully.
The function of tradition
Hardly anyone can figure this out on their own. So I can join a tradition that explains the knowledge to me. Vedanta is pre-eminently the source of knowledge of this view. It is historically traceable that much modern non-dual knowledge harkens back to it. Often even without speakers being aware of this. There are of course more regions of the world where people understood this. Wisdom and freedom are universal. This, of course, is because it is consciousness itself that strikes the infinite bell of truthfulness. Wisdom will always resurface in the infinite wheel of history. For time is cyclical, and with it manifestation is also cyclical (more on that later). But nowhere in our present world history has such a unique and complete methodology been revealed as in the Ancient India of the Ganges and Indus valleys. Why THERE no one knows. What we can say is that there were times, even before agriculture, when people lived harmoniously with their environment. People did some hunting, some picking. There was just little stress. It is no coincidence that the mind of man in those times (satya yuga) was receptive to truth.
This wisdom was passed on orally by seers for a long time, and then, it is believed, in the period 1000-500 b.c.e., came to be fixed in an oral fixed form in the Brahman culture and finally written down in the period after 500 b.c.e. These are the Vedas. The Upanisads have a special place in the Vedas. Most of the Vedas is preparation for the non-dual means of knowledge, which is often cryptic, written down in the Upanisads. Vedanta is this means of knowledge, later expanded and clarified in texts like the Bhagavad Gita, and systematized in texts by sages like Shankara into a methodology that efficiently, sufficiently and thoroughly guides the human mind toward freedom. Why the word Vedanta? It means l eteral: the end or conclusion (anta) of the Veda (knowledge). If I know my true nature, and am thereby, I need no more knowledge.
Buddha (600-500 B.C.) came after most of the Upanisads, breaking away from the Vedic tradition. The fixer of the grammar of Classical Sanskrit Panini (600-400 B.C.) came later. Patanjali’s yoga also came later. Not surprisingly, much of the practice in the modern spiritual world focuses on India.
Art of Living
The first, largest part of the Vedas is about art of living. I tune in with the divine laws of good living. We can find Ayurveda in that, for example. Actually the Vedas are one big instruction manual, how a human being relates to the divine. The ingenious thing is that this is a very layered model from duality to non-duality.
First as a human being to be in devotional relationship with god. The Vedas are full of instructions on rituals and sacrifices to arouse love and to let love flow. This volume also contains instructions on how to act well, action, karma yoga. With what attitude do I act to dissolve myself in god. I dedicate all my actions, thoughts and feelings to god, and do not attach to the result of my action that provides the field, the world to serve the whole. Thus I come to live in a divine altar, and contribute, and see that everything, including my person is divine. This first major section of the Vedas focuses on: ‘What can I do? Why is this important? For my mind to be ready to truly understand the non-dual knowledge of the Upanisads, my mind must be calm, sincere, balanced, neutral, and thus crisp. This is a great challenge for modern man in the desiring, complex, material age (Kali Yuga).
The concept of God
At this point we bring a concept into the lessons, which I can use well. God. A difficult word for many contemporary people. Advaita Vedanta understands that. The scriptures also frequently make fun of the dual religion of institutions.
Therefore, Vedanta has a completely idiosyncratic concept of God called Ishvara. It is actually a concept: Namely simply ‘That which has control over everything in apparent reality.’ Or: ‘That which controls everything’. You could also say, “Everything is God. Why can I put such a concept to good use? Remember, we were free consciousness. But as a person, I think I am responsibility and have control over life. But that life was just, what I was not. Therefore there is a factor in consciousness, called god or Ishvara, who controls it all for the person. Just now we were talking about the potential force in consciousness Maya. Well: god (Ishvara) is consciousness with this potential force Maya in full operation. We also call this “consciousness with manifestations. Or: ‘Consciousness with properties’. Maya is only the bare potentiality in consciousness to apparent properties, that is, a concept. Ishvara is consciousness plus all apparent properties. A person is consciousness plus all limited properties. So as the truth consciousness-existence-infinity I am equal to god. In the story I as void person with limited properties differ from god, all properties.
It is my job to give my hassles all back to where they belong. Let God run the world, then I can be free of it. What a relief!
Karma Yoga, the art of surrender
How on earth do I do that? We call this Karma Yoga in everyday life or Upasana Yoga in meditation. Everything I do and think, I dedicate to the divine Ishvara. I perform an action in the best possible way (dharma) and do not attach myself to the results I get back from the field. This is surrender pure and simple. Why is surrender so wonderful? I give all my (mind) stuff and actions back to where they belong: the whole apparent (world) event. Everyone knows that the entire cosmos and global culture are one big event over which I have no influence. Everything is connected to everything else. Why? It is one divine system, called Ishvara. Advantage: I am only responsible for the conscious choices I make. For this, I use Ishvara’s intelligence. I perform my choice to the best of my ability, practicing a cheerfulness, knowing that I may live in a wonderful world. Thus I let much responsibility slip from my shoulders. And if the result seems less good for the whole picture, I see what can be learned.
See, now I am already becoming less separated. I understand that I am also fully connected as a person, and that I am already included in the whole, as a small part of everything. That I was always already doing my part. I don’t escape it. But maybe before, I was disturbing divine harmony with my behavior. Now I also pay attention to feelings like guilt or insecurity. Those are unnecessary. All I have to do is learn from what the situation and my feelings tell me, adjust my attitude, and hup, practice fun in life again. Henceforth, I am still part of the whole, but now with an attitude of gratitude and loving expression and contribution. This is what we call the dharma, the totality of all laws as it is meant to be. Is my life flowing nicely? Then I am connected to the dharma, simple as that. It is important, however, to be honest with myself, especially about subtle nagging feelings. Mostly it comes down to making an adjustment in my attitude to life, and practicing a healthier self-image. That I exist as a person is for a reason. We are all part of the divine play.
Again, what then is the beneficial technique of Karma Yoga? I lovingly, and with my best intentions deploy my actions according to the laws of the good life (dharma), and always take the results for granted, because they are out of my control. In doing so, I keep in mind that everything depends on everything, and that that is Ishvara. The promise is immense. If you live this attitude consistently, which is hard enough, life goes like a rocket, and your mind becomes purer and purer, and your likes and dislikes milder and less binding. You begin to see that all of life comes naturally. And that love grows. You begin to see “others” as divine, and your self-awareness and self-confidence grows. This is the power of devotion. You become lighter and lighter from it.
It is also helpful to meditate on the same magnificent theme at regular intervals right on with karma yoga. In the quiet of a sitting posture, it is easier to focus on the divine (to myself) than in the heat of the daily struggle.
Karma yoga is discharge of worry and stress
What happens when I practice karma yoga correctly? I sacrifice my feelings, thoughts and actions (place them with discernment and inner distance where they belong), and discover that I have no responsibility for the course of things and other people’s happiness. The last responsibility I have is to use intelligence correctly. And so I try to contribute (not with unsolicited advice, but through subtle availability and attention) to the whole. I see no point in controlling life around me, much less other people’s thoughts. I can, however, try to contribute to it. It releases and discharges me from worry and stress. Particularly if I intensify karma yoga and meditation, by also sacrificing ego thought on the altar of daily life. How do I do that? I simply look at how I can contribute to a situation, keeping in the back of my mind the thought that I am contributing to a Divine field. What do I get in return? Inner space, happiness and peace. That’s all (what I want). People don’t realize that the ego is a severe narrowing and diminution of existence (that you are).
True and sincere practice is as good as enlightenment
Try karma yoga for a while, and see what happens. By practicing values as accommodation of others, I slowly discover that when I serve another, I am serving myself. Only then am I ready to see that I am both that other and myself. Then I qualify for the knowledge that reality is non-dual. Now I can see that as a personhood I have very limited influence over how things go in apparent reality, and that as pure consciousness I have no influence at all over how things appear. By giving my person back to the apparent world of interaction, I am left, full as consciousness, free of hassle. I can use God/Ishvara for that. I just sit and watch first row, in the sacred theater of life. The self-realized one enjoys this special “position. All this knower (Jnani) does, as a matter of course, is to contribute. Because she or he knows that reality is the infinitely radiant self, which is always good and makes everything possible, he is always contributing to himself, the non-dual reality. And she or he has fun that the whole apparent thing is a neutral order of apparent laws, into which people project preferences and aversions, fears and values, and from there make affirming, but mostly disruptive choices from ignorance.
In all honesty, it is the great step of active devotion (karma yoga) that is missed in Modern Spirituality. Generally, people do not realize that all modern spiritual practice like yoga, meditation, tantra, shamanism you name it is in the service of the individual to develop. If I want to be free of the person I cannot skip the God or Dharma factor. Indeed, that is where that person we are accustomed to serve with our thoughts and actions belongs. The movement is from serving my personal interest, to serving the greatest, only interest. Not to get something from God, because there you go again, but to finally understand how I am like god, and how also especially not. Everything is already given, in the sense of everything appears to me. Do I want to shrink and make myself as void as a temporary mortal person, or w il I understand reality (Vedanta is masterful at that) and be. If I want the latter, I will first have to get the picture of reality straight, and what the divine whole is, and the place of the world and the individual in it.
Reality is neutral
What about all that suffering then? Suffering comes from the mistake of thinking that I am this separated person who has to hold on in a threatening world. We explained earlier that this only seems so. One consciousness makes many beings appear to it, playing a great energetic game with each other. Even a feeling is a subtle energetic-material wave, and a thought is an even more subtle energetic-material wave of meaning, no more and no less. The thought of being a me, attached to a mind and body, is called the doer, the enjoyer, the sufferer or the ego. We suffer so much for that. The writer of this piece vaguely remembers a period of depression. Everything was spinning around this I-unit. Everything that happened was projected onto this ego, which only put additional pressure on him, and made him carry mountains of irrational responsibility over his life, totally paralyzing him. A period of intense surrender to the knowledge of Vedanta brought a great reversal. Starting with the view that the totality of laws, called Ishvara, bears the responsibility. That enlightens the person. And allows the person to play her or his role of loving contribution, with verve. Trusting in this is the art, which can only succeed when the knowledge of this is fixed.
Vedanta tells you that this miraculous order is neither bad nor good. The cosmos and life in it is set down in a certain way. These are the laws of dharma. These do not change, always work in the same way, and are consistently cause and effect. What are these laws? Well, just the laws that we work with every day. Every situation, every object, every relationship of objects behaves very consistently. These are the laws of psychology (we especially suffer from projections and self-judgments, preferences and aversions, desires and fears), biology, physics, ethics, you name it. Those who live in line with how life is meant to be have a wonderful life, and do not value life from preferences and aversions, but value life non-dually, in one-pointed awe of the divine play. Important to realize that it is all-inclusive. The world does not satisfy my personal desires. In apparent reality, there are as many nice things as not nice things, and every advantage has its disadvantage and vice versa. Neutral. James Swartz very aptly calls this “the zero sum nature reality. I spend my whole life trying to achieve all sorts of things, and end up with zero. Smart people see this as a reason to rest inwardly on their laurels, and not try to win in the world. In particular, what I need to do is get my attitude towards life and knowledge in order. Then I can act correctly in the moment.
Aligning with the good life
So why then is the human world a mess anyway? Because people, with their opinions, projections and value judgments, violate the laws of good living and therefore have to deal with the consequences of their (collective) karma. We only have to look at the political tensions, the domestic violence or the polluted environment, to see that we are not living in line with how the world is projected. To do that, it’s good to look at my pattern of values. Do I feel bad about something, am I hurting another human being, are things going wrong in my life all the time? Then that is something to examine, and deserves correction. I write deservedly here, because working on yourself is the greatest thing there is, and will bring a lot of self-esteem. Usually it comes down to not thinking in a healthy way. The beauty of the Vedanta teaching is that there is a lot of focus on this as well. The mind is trained to healthy thinking in a calm, relatively happy inner atmosphere. That is the beauty of Vedanta. It couples wholesome self-help with a true vision of reality. Ready are you! There is so much focus on mental health and maturity because freedom can only be achieved through a stable, calm mind. An extroverted mind with an excess of binding preferences and aversions, will not readily recognize the brilliance of neutral non-dual reality. This mental training is not offered as clearly and completely in the context of many modern programs that teach non-duality. Work to be done, then.
So Ishvara, the course of things is a neutral force, which cannot do anything about the fact that people live in chronic indignation. It simply gives the results that go with an action. Vedanta embraces science in this respect. Human knowledge, especially the laws of your own psyche and dharmic knowledge is a great thing. Remember? Reality consists of nothing more than laws? No more and no less. People reasonably take into account the laws studied by science. What people generally do not understand well, and what people generally do not take into account is the law of karma. I always get what is rightfully mine. Life is a learning model when I see how it works. If I try to circumvent the laws of karma and dharma, I cut my own fingers.
Outward enrichment gives inner poverty
That’s where it goes wrong. People don’t realize that if, out of (sexual) desire, greed, lust for power, hunger for experiences, they do actions to enrich themselves unlawfully or disproportionately, they will get the lid somewhere. We really need not envy people who are materially successful. Everyone gets what is due him. That is the unwritten law of karma. Not that there is a human jury for that. No, we can rely on dharmic reality, no problem. Just leave it to reality, it controls everything. Every plus has a minus, and every minus has a plus, is the law of relative life. In the end, as far as happiness is concerned, we arrive at zero. After all, happiness is yourself. That is salutary seeing of being itself. Not something to be achieved by striving. Not going to succeed. All I have to do is join the laws of that reality, and play with it wisely and in love. Self-enrichment of the individual, whether it’s an excess of experiences, or an excess of possessions, or an excess of what I’m supposedly entitled to all of the above, just happens to have a commensurate opposite side in duality. This is usually in the form of a continuous disturbance of inner peace through irritation and guilt and desire, which is the result of a selfish attitude and corresponding behavior. It can also be through threatening actions from outside, causing the one who is enriched to be restless all the time to preserve and protect the accumulated. People usually don’t even realize it.
Life is a learning model
Until they figure it out. Those people are blessed. Those people will examine what there is to learn in every situation. What can be learned about my well-being, especially when it comes to unpleasant feelings and unpleasant situations. Hence the power of being in love and wanting the best for everything from a servant’s attitude. Why? Especially because life is a gift, and is meant to contribute to the whole. This is the least stressful approach, leads to inner peace, does not cause problems, and also has a positive effect on your environment. Only from this relative inner peace can you take the next step towards freedom.
Free will and wisdom
People have a sense of choice and a sense of free will, and they can use this when taking action. This sounds paradoxical, given that Ishvara, the whole, controls everything. But we have been given the illusion of free will, and we had better make use of it. This theme is nuanced, very profound, and appeals to our wisdom. Since it certainly seems as if I have a choice, I can use my sense of free will to make the right choices. It has everything to do with the programming in a human being to be a doer, an ego, a pleasure-seeker, and that a human being lives in existential doubt. This is all built in, everything has a reason. The paradox that there is no free will, but it feels like there is, has a reason. Why? Because doubt initiates our quest for knowledge and freedom. This is the grace that I would do well to make full use of, especially to keep my mind healthy. A problem has been created for humans, and a way out. That is the tragedy, the joke and the game. We would do well to listen to feelings that things might not be as they seem.
There is another aspect to free will. Free will has everything to do, with the reflective capacity of a human being, and the possibility of wisdom. This ability to choose is God’s blessing. Choosing and wanting has everything to do with ignorance and knowledge. I can make right choices, for example lifestyle changes that accommodate my path, just as long as I discover how, through this knowledge, I can choose freedom. The beneficial movement is this: To sublimate the will to accumulate objects into a will to be free. The truth, freedom itself is choice-less, and so for the self-realized there is no longer any free will of an individual at all. Which is what it is: Full existence, shining as consciousness. But until then, I had better make proper use of my “perception” of free will, or make proper choices for my growth. Those further along the path will notice how this works, and that it will be more spontaneous and spontaneous. At some point you no longer feel like a doer, nor is there anything to choose. It all just happens. So yes, there is no free will, but I would not call that out too quickly. First use Ishvara’s grace to become an emotionally independent, objective, calm and clear individual.
So the mind, so the world
People do not always align themselves with the laws of good living (dharma) in a spiritually healthy way. Generally, this comes down to the feeling of being separated, compensated with a desire for worldly things, or fear of them. People also suffer from rampant world news through the media. In both areas, the rule is “less is more. The world is irrationally perceived as threatening. But I only have to deal with what comes before me. All the dynamics that take place on a global scale also play out in miniature in my mind and in my immediate environment. The whole (war) setting of the Bhagavad Gita is a metaphor for the duality in my own mind. And what do I do? I project my fear onto the neutral world. The suffering is not in the world, the suffering are thoughts and feelings in my mind. So let me first put my own affairs in order, be happy, have a good life, and stand as a light in this world. That will radiate to my surroundings etc. And I will look at the world very differently, namely as something that functions miraculously. Especially insight about how life works helps with this. And of course we can help each other in this. But that is a tricky one. Because who wants to hear that certain habits she or he is attached to are getting in the way of her or him growing as a human being? Who wants to hear that it is time to become emotionally mature? Those who do want that can turn to a teaching tradition like Vedanta.
What is the purpose of the teaching tradition? To see that everything is brahman, equal pure consciousness, equal me. Back to non-duality. The one who knows this, and has internalized this knowledge, judges the worldsingularly . The one reality is seen as itself. The world is not magnificent because things in themselves are always just so magnificent. The world is so magnificent because it is nothing but an ocean of light, with a dance of names and forms, coming and going. In that way dares Vedanta to state that the world is a brilliant, wonderful, radiant whole of ingenious, neutral laws, which are a reflection of the one divine light, which is yourself. Vedanta also dares to state that the world seems a mess, due to ignorance of this. This ignorance triggers a will, which continues to create a world in the first place, and then messes up this world because this will is projected into a will to perfect and immortalize the person in that world.
A great love game
This manifests itself in external things like offspring, which is a wrong way to immortalize myself, when we are already infinite as consciousness. In itself nothing wrong with having children of course, but we misunderstand the drive behind it. It is not understood that the love that flows from the parent to the child, and from the child to the parent is one and the same love. There is not a my-love and you-love. The same goes for sexual love relationships, for all relationships actually. The love that you are flows out through attention to all kinds of objects. We all tap from the same keg. It is all one big love play, but because it gets cut up in our dual mind, and scattered in all kinds of so-called difficult stories, I cannot see that it is all non-dual existence, consciousness, bliss, love.
Because I think I first have to achieve and accumulate everything, this love and attention becomes willpower. In addition to a desire for offspring, this will manifests itself in greed and a longing for recognition, attention, love and power, all of which are compensation for feeling small and insignificant, leading to exploitation of the world. Vedanta says that when I see that I am already completely okay, I am that forever. Finally, the will can also be projected religiously, to want to be with some God in some heaven or something, or in a next life, which are also wrong ways to achieve salvation or immortality. Our full divine nature is already here and now, if you know how.
I am ok
So I do not see that I should be grateful to have been born as a human being, in order to see that I am ok as a person, and that as the light of consciousness I am already totally ok. To understand, that I am ok, and to understand my true nature it makes sense at most, to qualify my mind for wisdom. That I can be grateful to be able to work with this divine material. To see how incredibly subtle and ingenious the apparent creation is. How a flower grows, how a mind can develop according to subtle logic and ingenuity. How the laws of karma work, how brilliantly everything interacts. D he human being with his capacity for reflection and his complex body is a great miracle. And there is nothing wrong with man. Indeed, man is an extraordinary being, capable of intense evil, and capable of intense good. This is because somewhere a human being senses that she or he is boundless. Then what do some people do? They project that onto the world and start exercising limitless power and desire. So that is where it goes wrong. If the sensing and desire for boundlessness comes in contact with right knowledge, then it can lead to salvation from suffering, and then it can lead to freedom.
Being human is not easy. But it is an incredibly exciting challenge. And true self-inquiry is the greatest adventure you can take. Vedanta says that the karmic invitation of being human is to be free, and that we can focus the strong feeling of wanting “everything,” on freedom. Not for nothing in our human world do we know conquerors, tyrants and prefer to want control over anything that comes into our field of vision. Behind that is the fact that I am full and whole. In several places in the Upanisads and in the Bhagavad Gita it says, that the one who sees himself as full, complete, infinite consciousness is all (potential for) desire. To live in that vision is mindblowing. ‘Striving’ becomes sullen and the subject of cheerful self-mockery for such a free person. Why humans? Because we are thinking beings, the only beings who can apply true self-knowledge. Everyone has been busy all along trying to get out of the feeling of unfreedom. The emptiness, the loneliness, the feeling of separation one tries to compensate with material and relational things, to perfect oneself. Vedanta says: You are already free, only you don’t see how, and your strategy to fulfill and be satisfied is not the right one. Then Vedanta offers the knowledge and strategy that leads to freedom. And with that, Vedanta also dares to state: Suffering is not necessary.
Being human is a challenge, an opportunity and a blessing
Of course, there is suffering, pollution and aggression in the world, but so this comes from ignorance and unethical thinking patterns. Generally the thinking pattern is: How can I enrich myself, gain power, seek attention or experience pleasure to feel better? While this teaching says: You are already fully ok, but just don’t understand how. A life focused on outward pleasure and influence, only takes you further from (the) home (of self). Let me explore this especially with myself. And then when I feel bad, I might ask myself, “What is there to learn here? What is there to explore? Perhaps I have a self-judgment. What binding desires am I stuck in? Maybe I am suffering from restless urges because I have strong habits. Am I thinking correctly about the situation, etc.? What fallacy have I made that I feel so bad about myself? The writer of this piece has personally experienced firsthand in a period of anxiety, panic and depression what ignorance can do to a person. The writer of this piece has also personally experienced that you can come out of that completely, and go through an immense development in one human life. So being human is a very special challenge. A human being is capable of deep suffering, and a human being is capable of attaining enlightenment. A human being is capable of the bad, and of the good. Once you get to the point where you see that you have a choice, you can make that choice.
Freedom is happiness
Whether it is nice or not, it remains a miracle, that such a silly world and such a silly person appear in me. Vedanta explains the oneness of it. But Vedanta also shows you how to make the person live in awe, wonder, joy and freedom. Certainly, I am not the person. But we cannot deny that a person and a world appear. And that apparent person still wants to participate in that wonder, still wants to contribute in that wonder, still wants to play in that wonder. ‘Freedom happy,’ is the expression. Freedom and participating out of compassion and empathy in the life that is now seemingly started need not bite each other.
What a blessing! After consistent application of all kinds of tools, the mind will be calm and reassured, ready for the central message of the Upanishads, and having ignorance removed by knowledge. At this point, we can actually see that the mind is not something that belongs to me. It is a wonderful tool that I can use to achieve understanding. This objectification is of great value because again, reality is completely neutral, and we humans project values and judgments onto it. Through karma yoga and incisive Vedantic psychology, you gain relative knowledge, which prepares you for not being the doer. First, h he field (god) what happens and should happen, not the person. Secondly, consciousness does nothing. And is only radiant presence, the essence of everything. You are. This knowing is absolute knowledge. The knowledge we are talking about in Vedanta.
Lore of Knowledge
The second part of the Vedas, called the Upanishads, reveal this divine essence of myself and reality. These texts are generally written quite compactly and cryptically. Hence, over the centuries, great minds have made the means of knowledge Vedanta comprehensible in all kinds of texts. Among them you come across the name of Shankara, a great mind (Mahatma) who wrote brilliant workbooks. His texts are still widely used today as teaching materials by Vedanta teachers. The logic contained in the first part of this article I learned from my teacher, who in turn learned it from his teacher. And this lineage of teachers goes back to Shankara. And what does Shankara say? I am just a link in the tradition starting from the Upanishads. And what does it say in the Upanishads? That this knowledge does not come from human beings, but comes through the seers from Ishvara. This is logical, because Ishvara is the whole system of all phenomena, so Ishvara is the problem, and also the solution, the means of knowledge. Let Ishvara to figure it all out, then I can be free. Notice: Ishvara is not some divine living being somewhere, Ishvara is consciousness with an appearing world in it. It’s a win-win situation. Your person’s love can flow there freely. How do you do that? By loving everything because you know its divine nature. This is the relative main prize. The real main prize is that you learn that you as consciousness pure, infinite love, bliss are.
The teaching Krishna gives to Arjuna in the famous Bhagavad Gita is a kind of summary of the Upanishads, and connoisseurs recognize in the verses, derivatives of Upanishad verses.
Puzzle pieces come together
But now it comes! Just pretending for a moment that we are enlightened. We are pure, immaculate consciousness, and we know that the divine appearances in the form of the cosmos come and go in us, and that the same god foreshadows the knowledge to see this through. Then surely the whole scheme of reality is one big joke! After all, that deity is also just a manifestation of ourselves, consciousness. That is the non-dual fun and cheerfulness of the sages.
Now what else can we conclude? The true nature of god is the same as my true nature, which is free consciousness, full infinity. A person is consciousness plus appearances. God is consciousness plus seemingly all phenomena. Subtract the person and all phenomena, which is possible, because both the person and the world are manifestations of our true nature consciousness, then as consciousness we are equal to god.
As a person, of course, we are not equal god. Our little person is not at all separate in itself, but is a tiny particle of the divine system Ishvara. This makes us humble again, after the great claims of a moment ago. Fortunately. As a person, we should not walk outside our shoes. The whole world is an appearance of, in and to consciousness, and so this fact is not a fact in the world itself! Before we can completely alone and independently experience the joke of existence as consciousness, we had better let our personhood look at everything in full reverence. Otherwise we get into trouble. Then our ego appropriates non-dual insights. This is a famous projection called the advaita shuffle or enlightenment disease. The sequence is important. First the invitation to mature as a human being, which is already quite an enrichment. In that process we learn to love like crazy, especially also to develop understanding and compassion for the impulses of our own so-called “inner self,” and Vedanta guides us to a reasonable state of happiness. Only when our minds are emotionally mature, balanced and sharp are we ready to realize the truth of ourselves. First grow as human beings, then see ourselves through.
Giving up the person first means surrendering the person
This requires honesty to ourselves. If we feel limited and small, we would do well to surrender to the ‘great’ divine first. If we feel small and limited and we only practice the knowledge “I am full and whole,” this will have a limited effect. This is because our conditioning is deeply embedded in areas we are not aware of. Deep-rooted obstacles will keep rearing their heads. Vedanta offers very sensible exercises and meditations to remove these. Karma yoga, surrender to the field of life (Ishvara) is the key. We cannot take a by-pass around a concept of god, around dharma. They are very subtle processes. Every seeker knows that. Therefore, Vedanta requires a refined mind, which we will gradually acquire through our karma yoga and meditation, and the practice of knowledge of values and qualifications. Surrender of the person, with an attitude of devotion toward all aspects of life is a requirement. The person we want to surrender will have to surrender first.
Surrender is and/and or win/win
Don’t worry. This is just meant to get rid of your worries. After complete self-knowledge, the person remains. In the sense of “standing out in life. The person I first thought I was, and was attached to, continues to appear. Only all the tension, the worries, the fears, that come with the identity of being a separated personality disappear. Giving up the personality is an and/and, a win/win. We have to give the benefits of this knowledge. It is a triple gain: First you make your person relatively happy and light with the right practice for qualification, then self-knowledge sets you free from the person, and the apparent person will be free from suffering (consciousness, the self, of course, was already free from it). First freedom from the person (and the world), then freedom for the person, and a completely blissful and neutral world. This is why people who know what they are are generally cheerful and happy. They enjoy the brilliance and laws of life, and understand the joke of reality. In general, many modern nondual teachings do not offer the full, logical teaching and knowledge tools for this.
Misunderstandings
The child
In much modern spirituality, is the child thrown out with the bathwater. What is the child? The (devotional) love that makes the seeker, the person, who needs all kinds of things, grow into a person, who is able to understand the non-dual nature of reality and therefore himself. And so we have an I shvara, need a god, because god stands for everything and everyone that and whom you can love. Letting your love flow is a great power to purify yourself from irritation, frustration and hatred. A concept like god can help tremendously with that. How does that work? Once I have assumed, that everything is god, I can also worship everything. It is easy to be selective, worshipping only the nice things, but I actually want to get rid of strong preferences and aversions, because they will get in the way of me seeing non-dually. So the intermediate step is to lump all objects together, open my heart and love wherever I can. Why is this an intermediate step? The next step is non-dual devotion. This means loving everything as myself, and that will be much easier if I have practiced on a concept of God, you really have to rely on that. Everything is myself, that’s what non-duality means. So if I hate anything, I hate myself. And vice versa: Only when I love everything, I love myself completely. Non-duality does not mean, “I am not there. No it means: ‘I am only there,’ or ‘God is only there,’ no matter how you say it. Playing with the nuances of this in daily life is called playing love.
The bathwater
What is the bathwater? Institutional religion, which tries to keep people small, far away from their non-dual divine nature. Many people have rightly left monotheistic religions, because of the hierarchical structures. Religious institutions generally do not have a fine history. Spiritual seekers have found that god is kept away from them, as something unattainable that you can only access in an afterlife. Sincere seekers have determined, correctly, that it is strange to worship a god who is elsewhere. But there is no elsewhere or later. The here and now matters. Here and now is where I want to know. Vedanta agrees. Vedanta comes up with a very different, precise concept of god. Vedanta says as an intermediate step: Worship everything as god! Your inner self (the contents of your mind), and your outer self (the body and the world). Even if you do not believe in god, you will find, that an attitude of devotion to everything, makes your character soft and loving.
Devotion, love makes one happy
Only a gentle, sharp mind can understand the truth of oneself. Devotion helps immensely in becoming emotionally mature. So God is not the child we have lost in renouncing religion. What have we lost? Our love, our devotion we have lost. God is, as it were, the label for that love. That is the secret of India (whether it is diluting there now is another question). On every street corner is devotion. Every stone is seen as an altar to worship. At least that is what we can learn from India. God is the supreme tool that makes me grow spiritually. Both love toward the nice, and love toward the not so nice, it doesn’t matter. If your goal is to grow from a dual experience to a non-dual experience, then we cannot simply exclude “the less nice. Reality is not about what I want or don’t want. Try it! Go for a really one day see everything as Divine, and see that everything interacts according to miraculously consistent laws. Appreciate it, adore it, love it! Then you will also begin to see that your own contribution is divine, intended as it is. If you manage to look this way, you will notice the effect within you.
I only suffer from my own ego
We will have to take this step first. What is the step? Making our likes and dislikes milder, neutralizing them with karma yoga. Karma yoga is devotion in action. Then we join the divine world, qualifying ourselves to understand and live the non-dual nature of reality. Many modern seekers immediately want the grand prize, enlightenment, but it doesn’t work that way. Even if the person is not what it appears to be, we do have to work on this person first in apparent reality. This makes Vedanta difficult for many. But that is not what Vedanta is about. It is a sincere program, where we don’t sugarcoat things. Going through a transformation hurts the ego a little bit. But it is precisely this ego that we always suffer from. As long as a body appears, there will be a form of ego, but you can perceive it, and therefore you can be free of it. The ego during the transformation will neutralize and soften into an objective function in the mind to allow the body to live and live a good life. Becoming milder and neutralizing all phenomena within yourself is a wonderful process. Vedanta is for sincere self-investigators, who are willing to look themselves honestly in the eye. And this also makes Vedanta eminently a complete program, and an unparalleled invitation to psychic and spiritual growth.
Not the world, but my attitude toward the world
Many spiritual seekers do not work enough on the emotional maturity of their person. They haven’t practiced something like the divine tool of karma yoga. And then they get stuck, and they run into themselves. The people who understand that it is not the world that is going to make them happy, but the attitude toward the world, come to Vedanta. Realizing your true nature, requires a certain degree of emotional maturity. Obtaining an objective, neutral mind is not a sine cure. And yet it requires understanding “god’s” 100% consistent laws of cause-effect (though apparent). This is just how it is designed, and this explains people’s religious need. And what does loving Ishvara mean? That I love everything, and therefore deploy actions with a conscious pattern of values. Vedanta shows, that I do not need love, but can awaken my own love, an infinite supply. It may be clear that the one who is truly in love is already quite a long way on the way to discover that he is that love itself.
Advaita shuffle
Otherwise we get the confusion of seekers, who are stuck in their process, or think they are somewhere, but fall back into suffering. That confusion is twofold. Either my personality thinks he is enlightened. That one confuses “Consciousness with all attributes or so god” with “Pure Consciousness,” and starts acting great, holy or pretentious. A person is holy because he understands the holiness of reality. But appropriation of holiness and greatness as a person is called spiritual ego, or spiritual arrogance. In such a person the ego, claims a special status. This is the advaita shuffle or enlightenment disease. We are just all one and the same consciousness, that’s all. The only difference is, one person knows and the other does not. And if you know, that is not something to be proud of. After all, pure consciousness is not proud.
Inferiority
The other, most common, understandable confusion that self-examiners, after hearing the knowledge, have is, ‘How can that be true for me that everything is me, that I am free, that I am the whole? How then? This is the inner conflict between my limiting belief of myself, and the truth of being existence itself. After a lifetime of thinking and living in a certain way, of course this is quite understandable. Hence in Vedanta you are extensively guided in the practice of knowledge. There are meditations to gradually realize the knowledge. After the researcher has understood it to some extent, she or he is invited, to take the complete knowledge as a buddy in every situation in life. Then self-confidence will slowly grow. Especially in situations that trigger her or him, or when she or he feels lonely or towards. That is true self-examination. Daring to look honestly in the mirror, and truly examining her or his own experience. This is called contemplation. The teacher will explain it all.
Absolute truth, I am what I seek
Again, it is already a fact that we are the free, blissful, infinite ocean of consciousness, the only reality that is real. It is already a fact that we are the light, which makes everything appear to itself. Only we don’t see it that way, because the mind is furnished with insignificance. Null thoughts about myself and the world, appear to me, the silent consciousness, without any property. We are this shining presence, ever present, even as it shines on our destructive, divisive thoughts. The light of consciousness is free, no matter what. This apparent contradiction need not be a problem. It is important to make the distinction between free consciousness without attributes, and the mind, full of moving thoughts, feelings and images. The mind is something different from consciousness. The mind is a totally different order of reality than consciousness. The mind is the non-real order, consciousness is the real order that pervades the mind and is the supporting substrate of the mind.
But first, let us quietly work on ourselves. Arranging our minds lovingly, taking good care of our bodies, making our day a divine day, and the world an altar in which we live. Let’s start with the tool of tools, karma yoga, and other exercises that bring us into inner and outer harmony. All magnificent work in themselves.
Only then can I move toward the final shift in vision. At first I thought I was a body and a mind. This is called ignorance. Now I am told that my body and mind are also simply expressions of myself: free, pure consciousness. This is called knowledge. Eventually I let go of ignorance and knowledge, and I am what I am.
Necessary assimilation of knowledge
Time and again, ‘putting it nicely’ proves insufficient. Because we are deeply conditioned by mind-stuff, particularly by identifying with a personality that feels compelled to accomplish everything in life, a specific methodology is required to explain this in order to become whole. It all starts with us having an existential sense of foreboding. If you feel that something is not right in your life, you are on the right track. We are searching for the meaning of life, and that meaning is to be whole. Why? Because you are magnificent as infinite consciousness. And that reflects on our intuition that things could be different, and that I should be happy. This is correct; you are the happiness of complete bliss. We do not see correctly, and that is why we suffer. This is very normal, very natural.
Vedanta analyzes all these aspects of existence very precisely in the light of truth. Thus there are many pitfalls and misconceptions of what freedom is, what self-realization is, and what non-duality is. Ignorance runs deep, and has many forms. Vedanta texts and the teachings of Vedanta teachers illuminate every facet of the mosaic of reality in an incomparably complete way.
Something about the methodology
There is so much more to say about the nuances in this story. It is truly festive. I have studied Western philosophy for many years and practised all kinds of spiritual methods. But as I explored Vedanta, I was amazed. I talk to many people who had the same experience when they were introduced to the teachings of Vedanta. Time and again, you think: ‘It’s so logical, why didn’t I think of that myself, why didn’t many great philosophers think of that?’ What is the solution? That you are the truth itself, instead of something you seek outside yourself. Why? There is no outside yourself. That is how you come to stand in wonder.
Vedanta breaks down erroneous concepts, but does so quite ingeniously. How? It takes the practitioner from his ignorance, through a number of levels of knowledge to the right meaning. These thinking steps are necessary, in order to proceed to the next level. One level is explained first. Then the listener’s mind is rearranged, and ready for the next thinking step. Then the previous thinking step is released. From coarse to subtle. Important note: Knowledge has levels, but the reality underlying it has no levels. For now, just roughly in three steps: First giving away my stuff to the apparent reality (manifested god), then distinguishing myself as the silent witness of everything. Then it explains why everything is nothing but an appearance of this silent witness, myself consciousness. The last step expresses non-duality. It is helpful if I have a sophisticated mind, to be able to follow this. Along the process of listening, reflecting and contemplating, I will develop this mind anyway. From subtle to non-dual. Many modern spiritual teachings have no accurate means of knowledge, no tried and tested methodology, going through a certain sequence. That is the problem.
Such genius cannot come from humans, because the very thought of being a human being involves ignorance. We are not human beings, we are infinite self-existent pure free consciousness to which humans appear. So the human experience, with all its karma, is the problem. That karma must be placed, as it were, where it belongs in the apparent reality, not in the real reality, which is pure and free. Seekers with an ardent desire for freedom, confidence in the means of knowledge, and a refined mind (the capacity for self-reflection and self-awareness), can make this shift toward truth. Therefore, an emotionally mature, refined, objective, not easily distracted mind is needed. This can be trained. Self-knowledge, enlightenment is immediate, for sure. But until then you can work hard at it and get the mind ready.
Thoughts are concepts
Ignorance, the thought that I am a puny human being, is a concept in the mind. The mind is a concept in consciousness. Vedanta breaks down concepts with other concepts until they are all gone. Even the means of knowledge is just a concept. Even god, Ishvara is a concept. Self-knowledge is also a concept, not a fixed knowledge, but a means of being the free self. How is this possible? Consciousness is infinitely pure intelligence. It cannot be interpreted, known or expressed. Because it is infinite, it is THE only power, holding ‘all’ apparent possibilities. ‘All’ only expresses boundlessness, infinity. Consciousness can make even our deranged, crazy, funny human world appear to itself, which is also nothing but this pure consciousness itself. That’s how simple non-duality is.
The silly basic problem is that what we seek is simply being. Existence-consciousness itself. Just give it a name: The Self or God or Brahman. If you are it, it doesn’t matter what you call it.
Not of people, but "of" the Self
It is good to realize that what a person knows has always come to the mind from outside the mind. Every learning process works this way, including the learning process underlying personal development and spiritual growth. A child learns from her or his immediate environment, a learning field that expands throughout life. If a person grows up in an ignorant environment, the person will be ignorant himself. We cannot simply step outside our own frame of reference. So what we need is knowledge from outside. Those who are smart seek affiliation with an authority that knows better. A difficult issue for the stubborn species of homo sapiens.
Yet we want to manifest in life. And so people go in search of knowledge, life knowledge, knowledge to have fun, or wisdom. There is a desire to survive. For that, I need worldly knowledge. But from a deep doubt about existence, there is also a desire to know how things are. The seers of ancient India must have had this too, and in such a sincere way that knowledge came to them.
Every problem carries its own solution
As long as ignorance is passed on, it is impossible for beings to free themselves from their own blind spot. So the knowledge of Vedanta cannot come from humans, but had to be already potentially (unconsciously) present, as knowledge in the grand plan. In what does it have to be present? In Maya, which holds duality in potentiality. And where there is ignorance, knowledge must also be available. A little like a problem, carries the solution in itself. What is Maya? The apparent force in consciousness, which is nothing but consciousness. So what are all life’s problems? Consciousness. What is the solution of all life’s problems? Consciousness. And what is consciousness? That is yourself. So where does knowledge come from? Not from your personal self, but from yourself as free consciousness, which has the ability to seemingly manifest a world with all its knowledge. This apparent process of problems arising, and problems being solved is an infinite cyclic wheel. Because our mind thinks in sequences (thoughts come in turn, one thought at a time, that is), a human being lives in time. And so history, as we can remember it, started somewhere. A tradition has to start somewhere. Where did tradition begin? It never began, because it begins with the infinite Ishvara. And Ishvara is consciousness with or without Maya, manifested or not manifested. And so Ishvara is also the law of karma.
Not a view, but insight
Referring back for a moment. When I think I live “in” the world, I seem to be trapped “in” it. That is the hallmark of ignorance. Somewhere, somehow, a way out will be offered. And that’s not by sending space shuttles into space as far as I can, dreaming of an endless horizon, or running away from my life. Believe me, reality is already blissful. I have to learn how to see this. Knowledge is offered by consciousness as a means to get us out of the matrix of duality. Surely, we can all see, that duality does pervade. It is completely illogical, that my body and mind, being “in the dual world,” can make a way out of it, by acting, fighting, or fleeing. Only wisdom and understanding how the reality of myself is constructed can set me free. All we have to do is recognize its value and be grateful for it. How does this gratitude manifest itself? First by requesting the knowledge. With karma yoga, devotion and love to make our minds calm, neutral and balanced. And meditation to learn to focus. What do we focus on? First on the means of self-knowledge, and then on being the free reality itself. A world like ours, and especially the world as people experience it among themselves is going through lightning-fast, sometimes dizzying developments. It is a blessing if you find in it the means to knowledge, to extract yourself from it. It may be that complexity, distraction, fear and desire dilute such means of knowledge. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to keep the right tradition alive, and to awaken the knowledge within yourself. It is all the game of consciousness, or the game of god if you will. Let’s take that position, and enjoy the show.
Fear and desire, liking and disliking
Where there is fear, protective and avoidant behavior is exhibited, where there is desire, desire is satisfied or not satisfied, resulting in a feeling of happiness or frustration. Where there is liking, liking is confirmed by thinking and actions, where there is disliking, disliking is confirmed by actions and thinking. That is the law. That is how samsara is maintained. Only an individual can get out of this with knowledge. All humanity cannot be redeemed because the apparent duality is going on now, without ever having started. It was no fun in ancient and medieval times either. That insight alone should explain the raging of the world and make it milder. It just is what it is. The only thing a person can have control over is making good choices to contribute and to grow toward freedom from the whole thing. Because truth is infinite, because consciousness is infinite, things just go the way they go.
Not knowing the truth, but being the truth
See how exactly Vedanta describes the panorama of reality. Note, just to be free. It is a means to freedom that works. Vedanta does not claim to be the truth. It is unknowable because it is pure and free from any attribute. The mind is an apparent attribute and will never know what consciousness is. The main thing is to know what is the relationship between truth and apparent reality. And the place of the person and your true nature in it. Everyone is truth. The knowledge is that you know this: I am the infinite truth, I am not my mind and body, is the knowledge. That is the only difference. I don’t know what consciousness is, I don’t know what truth is, but the knowledge took place: ‘I am the free, infinite existence, radiant as consciousness.’
Time will also consume this person, so why not now
For Ishvara there is no time, but Ishvara Ãs people’s sense of time. Ishvara Ãs the time that eats up everything. From a starting point to an ending point. Through this sense of time we make life stories, but this does not conform to the cyclic unity of the God system. Consciousness is stationary yet infinite, and therefore eternal and infinite cycles of manifestation and potential are “seemingly” possible. With infinite possibilities, to infinite universes. No problem.
Because the cycles of creation, preservation and destruction continue seemingly indefinitely, evolutionary thinking is perfectly fine. Ishvara as dharma is “all the laws” of existence, and thus also the law of survival, adaptation and development of organisms. It is very celebratory to discover the laws underlying existence and to discover the laws underlying the functioning of happy beings. Because it goes on infinitely, there is also the infinite series of opportunities to see that you are not really in these cycles, in this wheel of Samsara. Why not seize this opportunity now?
Thinking is problematic or beneficial
Anyway, it has produced homo sapiens. And we cannot deny that there is something special about the case of man. For man is capable of reproducing and understanding this kind of knowledge. This requires intelligence, thinking ability and reflective and contemplative ability. The intellect can be a sparkling function, or a dark force (again, duality). The intellect does not have to go away. It needs to be used in the right way. Thinking is the problem (for example, if I feel sorry for myself), but it is also the solution for a human being. It is really that simple. Happy people think healthy. Unhappy people think unhealthy. I can see that so keenly in all periods of my own life. And I can also see so keenly the role my teachers and wisdom traditions have played in this. With the apotheosis being a way of thinking that demonstrates that and how I am free. With that, Vedanta is a very positive, joyful message.
Why?
Why people? Why suffering? Why ignorance? Why Vedanta? The “why” question is never in place, again arguing that because the course of everything is infinite, things just go the way they go, and have gone the way they have gone. Laws, remember? Objectivity, remember? Logic, which works, remember? I always hear everyone rightly say, when accepting problems, “oh well, it’s the way it is. But that applies not only to problems, but also to solutions. The fact is that only knowledge leads to freedom. The fact is that, coincidentally or not, as far as we know, only the case of man, because of the ability to understand and apply knowledge, is able to see through himself and reality. You will only get an answer to the question ‘whether this is true for you too,’ if you surrender to a methodology that shows this. Otherwise, you will continue to deny “impossible! If you want to be free, somewhere, at some point you have to see the value of this, otherwise there is no point.
So the seers then, so we now
The seers in ancient times must have had a sincere desire to understand reality. And the seers in ancient times must have had sincere visions of doing everything for that, especially “questioning identity with their personality. That was the key then, and is the key now. Then Ishvara give you the knowledge that sets you free. What is needed first for that? A surrender of my biases as a person. This applied to us, this applied to the seers. This is necessary. It’s up to you, but it’s the only way. Why? If you claim and want everything in life as a person, you will not be able to let go of the person mentally. Why should I do that, let go of the person mentally? Because that is in accordance with the truth, and because it relieves the person of their burden and hassle. You are not a person, but free consciousness. Is it game over after that? No, the game continues to play out, the person can appear and play in all their glory, only you are not really involved with self-knowledge. The tension is out of the system, relaxation. That is freedom.
Through intense contemplation on the truth of themselves, the seers must have opened their clear, qualified minds, in which were planted seeds of wisdom that came to maturity in an oral tradition. In the spiritual field, too, where there is a will, there is a way. First the doubt of existence, then the doubtless surrender to tested wisdom. Consciousness seemingly manifests self-knowledge in minds that are ready for it. You might call that “unfolding” or “revelation. It is potentially already there, and like a tree, the conditions must be right for the seed to develop. The knowledge has come to the one who has seen it. That is what we call the third eye, seeing something in the mind, understanding something with the mind. The knowledge has been passed from seer to seer. A lineage of knowledge is born. So you can become seer yourself.
Unrest and confusion
But see the influence of a long history confusion. It began already with the complexization of language, the specialization of the economy (agriculture, urbanization), and thereby the development of psychic complexes and increasing greed in people’s minds. As our minds have become restless, projecting, neurotic, desiring and extroverted, we need the intervention and guidance of a teacher who has already gone through the process.
Roughly speaking, you could call the apparent manifesting capacity of consciousness, Ishvara. They are just names. The question here now is: where does and did the knowledge come from? In an infinite cyclic wheel of apparent manifestation of worlds and disappearance of worlds, there must be a ‘deeper’ principle that ‘carries’ everything and to which or in which a person appears. This ‘deeper principle’ can be called god (Ishvara, brahman), consciousness, existence, or the self (atman), it does not matter. Truth is unknowable and indescribable because, and this is all that matters, you are it. Because you are it, it cannot be objectified, and every appearance in itself is false, and nothing but yourself, consciousness. Any representation the mind makes of it is not it. Hence the Divine is every moment here and now, the only full thing that is. Hence non-dual God. Hence non-dual. But by first surrendering (handing over and unmasking) the person, we can put the person back where he belongs. In the wholesome whole of the Divine.
Modern nondual teaching traced back to Vedanta knowledge
So for the person it is convenient to surrender to this deeper, subtler, infinite principle Ishvara. Then you can request the knowledge that is unmanifested ready by desiring it and entering into it with confidence in a tradition where the knowledge is passed from teacher to student to teacher. This is the major difference from many modern non-dual teachings. The modern Satsang world have borrowed much from Vedanta in terms of teaching. But an individual today cannot assume that she or he is “the chosen” seer, who has received a complete means of knowledge to be free, without being properly taught. Consequence, in many modern, non-dual exchanges and therapies, the means of knowledge is incomplete and colored by personal bias. Vedanta knows that the language in modern meetings on non-duality are derivatives of Vedanta/the Upanishads. Terms such as Witness-consciousness, consciousness as in-ground and the term non-duality (advaita) itself, are examples.
Integrity
Vedanta is honest. Scandals and abuses are rare. Why? Firstly, because Vedanta knows that you can only be free from the person if the mind of that person purely reflects the self. Essentially because it teaches that hurting ‘another’ is hurting ‘yourself’. This is the non-dualistic point of view. Secondly, the teaching also consciously trains values. These values are a reflection of the dharma, and before I can be free, my mind must be a reflection of this dharma. Thirdly, because it is prescribed in the tradition that the relationship between the teacher and the student is a friendly one. As individuals, there is no hierarchical relationship. The teacher’s authority is knowledge. The reference point is Vedanta, a well-defined body of knowledge of reality. For this reason, a student approaches the teacher with devotion and respect. The devotion is a devotion to the teacher’s knowledge. In order for this to function, a mature attitude is required of both teacher and student. Fourthly, the teacher will never tell you what to do. The teacher is not interested in personal stories. The application of the teaching in your life is entirely up to you. Fifth, the knowledge tool is so thorough that a student already gets a deep and broad picture of all the nuances of knowledge transfer in the lessons. The student is taught extensively about the pitfalls, and learns very precisely the place of the ego and the doer in the whole. The learner will learn that she or he is not the ego and the doer. Furthermore, a well-trained student will know that happiness, the happiness “of being full” and that there is nothing you can do for it. There is a lot to do, but it just happens and is seeming. Finally, a student knows that a teacher teaches from abundance, not because she or he needs it. Actually, in the vedanta tradition, you don’t easily see that someone assumes the role of teacher when in fact she or he should still be playing the role of student. And if that does happen at all, it is usually adjusted fairly quickly by the context.
The teacher’s passion is the wisdom, which freed her or him to pass on.
On your own feet
The teacher sees that everyone is busy getting out of her or his sense of pettiness and separateness. That is why we are so busy looking outward, under the illusion that we complement ourselves with it. Actually, we are so er g dependent for our happiness on objects and other living beings. But no happiness comes “from” objects, says the teacher. This only seems so. Happiness can only come from yourself. You are that total happiness. The right teacher knows that everyone actually wants to be free of this discomfort. The teacher knows that everyone wants to be independent. Freedom is defined by James Swartz as “freedom from dependence on objects. The teacher knows that this is possible. He teaches out of love, not interest. He is ok, and wishes the same for “others. His interest is to show that suffering is unnecessary. His interest is that the student is fully on his own feet in the truth as soon as possible. There is nothing more beautiful than inner independence. This manifests non-dually in a confidence in the world because you trust in yourself and are content with how things are. Again James Swartz sometimes answers the question “What do you want?” with “I want what I have.
To be honest: I will have to work on myself
Vedanta is also honest. The freedom of self-realization does not come out of the blue. You don’t do this on the side. In fact, it concerns every aspect of existence. Complete devotion is prescribed, not because you have to, but because complete devotion is the only thing that works. It is only what you want. To be free and full, or to muddle through as a separated person who has to shape life endlessly. You may have noticed that the word “consistently” came up a few times. If I skip a certain stage, if I don’t work out certain obstacles properly, they get parked in the subconscious (called causal body in Vedanta) and problematic feelings will bubble up when triggered in life. This is often overlooked, or skipped out of convenience, especially the fact that it is the actions in life that determine your conditioning, your personality, your karma. To get the mindset, which makes enlightenment possible, a supportive, calm, good (dharmic) life must be led, especially the sensory temptations and cravings will have to be made somewhat milder (not binding). But what spiritual seeker doesn’t want that. To avoid frustration, it is sincerely said, trace all aspects of your being, bring them to light, and get clear what the problem is. At least the teacher, but also fellow students in the vedanta sangha, can certainly help you with that.
Dedication and discipline
Freedom requires long-term dedication and discipline. This is why they say “grace is earned. First I must live a good, quiet, balanced, emotionally mature, neutral life, be able to observe and control my mind, and have a healthy inner distance from the churning of the world. But the work is beneficial and magnificent in itself. All in all, preparation for freedom and knowledge go hand in hand. It is a wonderful process.
Before I qualify, I will already have to have a calm, cheerful, neutral mind. Otherwise I cannot listen clearly, reflect, contemplate. The beauty of this practice is that all the phases in themselves are very very enriching. You will find that each level and each phase will be enlightening. That absolute freedom is rare is because few are willing to consistently enter into the whole program, simple as that. Even those who have understood in some way, and realize the self from time to time, will blink on and off, overcome by the perception that they are an individual (ignorance). Freedom is only for the one who gives himself totally. Even if it is over many lifetimes, what does it matter. Usually the problem is that aspirants still think, “First I have to do this and this and this in life,” or “Yes, but if I do this and that first, then… That’s not how this works. Once you understand the noble path you are walking, your mind will appreciate it tremendously. The mind wants to have something noble to do. There is a growing shortage of noble views worldwide today that lift people out of their daily boredom and stress. This expresses the existential emptiness of modern humanity.
Qualifying the mind
So before the aspirant can see that she or he is free of doer-ism, there is a lot of work to be done. One will have to qualify in some way. Vedanta describes a range of qualifications, such as the fine grinding of discernment, the training of a objective outlook, control over the mind, inner calm, a healthy set of values, including tolerance, an ardent desire for freedom and trust in the preferred means of knowledge. Vedanta offers tools to practice this. Again, the road to immediate self-insight is paved with brilliant work. Before I “see through” impermanent, dependent, changeable reality, and renounce it as being “not real,” but like me, consciousness, I will first make the mind peaceful and relatively happy. Who wouldn’t want that? This is also where additional spiritual practice can help, such as Karma Yoga, Astanga Yoga culminating in Raja Yoga, but also Mindfulness or other forms of Buddhist meditation. Vedanta embraces everything and thus personal growth with an all-encompassing vision. It is all-inclusive. How could it be otherwise? Vedanta refers immediately to the non-dual reality of yourself.
Getting inspired
Teachers in this tradition base their teaching on the means of knowledge that has exempted many sincere seekers over thousands of years. If you take it seriously, confidence and self-confidence will gradually grow. This is because you will find more and more connection to the palette of reality. There are many videos of Vedanta teachers on the Internet, especially You Tube. It is advisable to choose a live teacher for several reasons. A teacher helps you to be disciplined and committed to yourself. A teacher is a living example, how to examine yourself. A teacher encourages you to look at yourself differently. A teacher can help you examine very precisely what your pitfalls and obstacles are. Nowadays, seminars can also be taken through Zoom.
Complete knowledge
While modern nondual education focuses primarily on the recognition that reality is nothing but nondual consciousness, Vedanta thoroughly explores what it takes to make this recognition real and permanent. As a result, you also learn much about the depth psychology of man, what ignorance is, and the manifest and potential universe. Knowing and applying this leads to a fuller picture of how we as humans are put together and function, our place as humans in the universe, and the universe’s relationship to us. The knowledge that removes ignorance is like a diamond with many facets. This is because ignorance has many facets. But truth has neither facets nor aspects. Truth is pure, free and simple.
If you have any questions as a result of the above, feel free to ask them below.