Äpnoti iti ätmä
---That which includes all
All spiritual endeavors are concerned with only one question. Who am I?. Take any scripture , any
religion any philosophy and you will see this question asked again and again. For a common man, this question is not a problem as he has no doubts regarding this. In fact the question itself has never arisen in his life. So we need to ask is there any scope for this question?. Isn't it obvious ?. Why do we require thick books , discourses, temples, monuments , great saints, satsangs and so on to find out answer to this question?.
There are two types of answers to this question. One is something that is in conformance with what we think about ourselves and another which is not at all obvious , but seem to fit the greater picture. The first and simple answer is "I am nothing but this body-mind system". I seem to perceive and interact in this world based on this limited feeling localized in my body-mind. So the world is apart from me and was created by an all pervasive being and i need to surrender to that power and live accordingly. The set of principles i need to follow is given to me by a religion or dharma. Most common people would be very comfortable with this interpretation.
The second and non obvious answer as given by vedanta is that , You are not what you think you are. You and the supreme reality are one and the same. There are no two things or reality is non-dual. This seems to fly at the face of logic initially. But on close inspection can be seen to be better explaining the phenomenon of consciousness.
Vedanta tells us that in order to understand what we really are , we need to understand what we are not first. This would help us to remove the hindrances to right knowledge.
For the purpose of analysis, let us divide all into two categories. Objects are different from us and
we become knowledgeable about them.Objects are either animate or inanimate. Everything that we have known earlier is also object of our knowledge.What is knowing them is the subject. So the question now comes What is the subject?.
The first immediate perception about what is perceiving objects is the body. This is because outside the body , there is no "I-ness". So the hand is mine , the leg is mine, but outside the body when i see an object , i get the feeling that it is not me. A pain when it arises in my hand or leg is mine ,while a similar pain when it arises in another body is not mine. All the properties of the body is given to this "I". I am tall or beautiful , i have pain in my leg and i am currently walking etc.Where the body is "I am" also there. Whatever the body does i do and so on. We do have a relation with the body , but is the body "I"? is the great question. In order to know this let us a simple logic. When i perceive an object , i know that i am not that. When i look at an apple, i know that i am not an apple.So since i perceive the body just like the apple , i cannot be the body. we are the knower of the body. We are in fact knowing that the body is tall, just like knowing the apple is sweet. So this confusion arises because we have mixed up the knower with the known. The body is a known. It is hardly a knower. So we see that I is not the body, and the body is only one of the objects that we know.
Maybe we are the sense organs?. We see, we hear and we taste and we usually say "I see" , "I hear " etc. This conclusion is also not correct. I know the conditions of my sense organs, i say my eye is vague today, my nose is blocked and so on. So since it is an object of knowledge it cannot be "I".Maybe i am my mind. My mind seems to know all objects of perception. So it could be the "I". but even that seems incorrect sometimes. I do know the state of my mind sometimes. I come and report to someone "I am agitated". I am happy and so on. So if i was not perceiving the mind how could i do that ?.So the mind too seems to be an object of knowledge to me. So the mind is not me. All the thoughts , emotions and perceptions are knowable to me , that is why i can analyse them or talk about them.
If i am not anything who am I?. Am i just a non entity? A great void of nothingness. This too seems to be erroneous. This is because if i was not aware then who is doing this self enquiry , who is finding that i am not all these. So there is something which is apart from all these objects and still knowing
all of them. Only thing is the real I have been incorrectly understood.
Let us see what is left. In this process what is seen is the following
"I am aware that i am not this body"
"I am aware that i am not the senses"
"I am aware that i am not the mind".
So something is knowing all these and is common. It is the fact that is "I am aware".
Maybe i am an awarer. A person who is aware of everything. Now this too is wrong. Since the awareness would immediately perceive the person who is aware. So the state of awareness has to be without an object like a person. If you remove all the objects from the process of becoming aware , what is left is awareness which is a state of being and it is not an object. That is why we say awareness is impersonal and formless.
If you look at thought, you can see that awareness is knowing that. Otherwise you would not know you are thinking. At the same time when there is an absence of thought, awareness knows that too. So awareness has to be there all the time. When i speak, awareness knows i am speaking , but it also knows when i dont speak .So whether speaking is there or not, awareness is always present.Presence or absence of anything is known by awareness. So it has to be independent of those objects.
Another property of awareness seems to be that there is no distance between the object that is known and awareness itself. For e.g. when i see my hand, i see that my hand is known in awareness and here is no gap of knowing that hand. There is no portion of hand that is not known. When i look at a star there is a space between the star and body. However the awareness knows the space also. There is nothing in between the star and awareness that it doesn't know. Nothing can be outside awareness. So
star is in awareness. An absence of something has also to be asserted by awareness , so it has to be there to do the assertion.
The concept of time also is in awareness since we are aware of time it should be inside it. No attribute of time is outside awareness.
It seems that nothing can escape awareness. Everything seems to be in it. So it is indeed the proper subject or "I". Actually it is not very proper to call it "I", since there is nothing personal about awareness. It is more like a cosmic I.
From experience we come to the conclusion that, awareness which we truly are is the all pervasive supreme absolute reality in which all objects seem to reside in conformance with what vedanta says.
Its pervasiveness is like sun light illumining everything. You can see that all objects are illumined by sun , nothing is outside sunlight . Illumining is not part of objects, but is a quality of light. Light can exist without objects. Objects can never be seen without light. Similarly all objects are lighted up by consciousness. Without consciousness nothing would be known. But consciousness itself can exist without any objects. This absolute nature of consciousness is what makes it the basic substratum of all existence and that is what we truly are.
---That which includes all
All spiritual endeavors are concerned with only one question. Who am I?. Take any scripture , any
religion any philosophy and you will see this question asked again and again. For a common man, this question is not a problem as he has no doubts regarding this. In fact the question itself has never arisen in his life. So we need to ask is there any scope for this question?. Isn't it obvious ?. Why do we require thick books , discourses, temples, monuments , great saints, satsangs and so on to find out answer to this question?.
There are two types of answers to this question. One is something that is in conformance with what we think about ourselves and another which is not at all obvious , but seem to fit the greater picture. The first and simple answer is "I am nothing but this body-mind system". I seem to perceive and interact in this world based on this limited feeling localized in my body-mind. So the world is apart from me and was created by an all pervasive being and i need to surrender to that power and live accordingly. The set of principles i need to follow is given to me by a religion or dharma. Most common people would be very comfortable with this interpretation.
The second and non obvious answer as given by vedanta is that , You are not what you think you are. You and the supreme reality are one and the same. There are no two things or reality is non-dual. This seems to fly at the face of logic initially. But on close inspection can be seen to be better explaining the phenomenon of consciousness.
Vedanta tells us that in order to understand what we really are , we need to understand what we are not first. This would help us to remove the hindrances to right knowledge.
For the purpose of analysis, let us divide all into two categories. Objects are different from us and
we become knowledgeable about them.Objects are either animate or inanimate. Everything that we have known earlier is also object of our knowledge.What is knowing them is the subject. So the question now comes What is the subject?.
The first immediate perception about what is perceiving objects is the body. This is because outside the body , there is no "I-ness". So the hand is mine , the leg is mine, but outside the body when i see an object , i get the feeling that it is not me. A pain when it arises in my hand or leg is mine ,while a similar pain when it arises in another body is not mine. All the properties of the body is given to this "I". I am tall or beautiful , i have pain in my leg and i am currently walking etc.Where the body is "I am" also there. Whatever the body does i do and so on. We do have a relation with the body , but is the body "I"? is the great question. In order to know this let us a simple logic. When i perceive an object , i know that i am not that. When i look at an apple, i know that i am not an apple.So since i perceive the body just like the apple , i cannot be the body. we are the knower of the body. We are in fact knowing that the body is tall, just like knowing the apple is sweet. So this confusion arises because we have mixed up the knower with the known. The body is a known. It is hardly a knower. So we see that I is not the body, and the body is only one of the objects that we know.
Maybe we are the sense organs?. We see, we hear and we taste and we usually say "I see" , "I hear " etc. This conclusion is also not correct. I know the conditions of my sense organs, i say my eye is vague today, my nose is blocked and so on. So since it is an object of knowledge it cannot be "I".Maybe i am my mind. My mind seems to know all objects of perception. So it could be the "I". but even that seems incorrect sometimes. I do know the state of my mind sometimes. I come and report to someone "I am agitated". I am happy and so on. So if i was not perceiving the mind how could i do that ?.So the mind too seems to be an object of knowledge to me. So the mind is not me. All the thoughts , emotions and perceptions are knowable to me , that is why i can analyse them or talk about them.
If i am not anything who am I?. Am i just a non entity? A great void of nothingness. This too seems to be erroneous. This is because if i was not aware then who is doing this self enquiry , who is finding that i am not all these. So there is something which is apart from all these objects and still knowing
all of them. Only thing is the real I have been incorrectly understood.
Let us see what is left. In this process what is seen is the following
"I am aware that i am not this body"
"I am aware that i am not the senses"
"I am aware that i am not the mind".
So something is knowing all these and is common. It is the fact that is "I am aware".
Maybe i am an awarer. A person who is aware of everything. Now this too is wrong. Since the awareness would immediately perceive the person who is aware. So the state of awareness has to be without an object like a person. If you remove all the objects from the process of becoming aware , what is left is awareness which is a state of being and it is not an object. That is why we say awareness is impersonal and formless.
If you look at thought, you can see that awareness is knowing that. Otherwise you would not know you are thinking. At the same time when there is an absence of thought, awareness knows that too. So awareness has to be there all the time. When i speak, awareness knows i am speaking , but it also knows when i dont speak .So whether speaking is there or not, awareness is always present.Presence or absence of anything is known by awareness. So it has to be independent of those objects.
Another property of awareness seems to be that there is no distance between the object that is known and awareness itself. For e.g. when i see my hand, i see that my hand is known in awareness and here is no gap of knowing that hand. There is no portion of hand that is not known. When i look at a star there is a space between the star and body. However the awareness knows the space also. There is nothing in between the star and awareness that it doesn't know. Nothing can be outside awareness. So
star is in awareness. An absence of something has also to be asserted by awareness , so it has to be there to do the assertion.
The concept of time also is in awareness since we are aware of time it should be inside it. No attribute of time is outside awareness.
It seems that nothing can escape awareness. Everything seems to be in it. So it is indeed the proper subject or "I". Actually it is not very proper to call it "I", since there is nothing personal about awareness. It is more like a cosmic I.
From experience we come to the conclusion that, awareness which we truly are is the all pervasive supreme absolute reality in which all objects seem to reside in conformance with what vedanta says.
Its pervasiveness is like sun light illumining everything. You can see that all objects are illumined by sun , nothing is outside sunlight . Illumining is not part of objects, but is a quality of light. Light can exist without objects. Objects can never be seen without light. Similarly all objects are lighted up by consciousness. Without consciousness nothing would be known. But consciousness itself can exist without any objects. This absolute nature of consciousness is what makes it the basic substratum of all existence and that is what we truly are.
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