VIVEKACHUDAMANI 3

8/14/2019 VIVEKACHUDAMANI 3

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VIVEKA-CHUDAMANI

By: ShankaracharyaCommentary: Swami Ranganathananda

Edited: Swami Shuddhidananda

Summary: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi

Part 3

STEPS TO SELF-REALIZATION (Continued)

All knowledge begins as a subject knowing an object. At the farthest reach of thisprocess, through the entire gamut of acquiring positive knowledge. Vedanta

discovered that the mystery of man and nature could be solved first through aninner penetration to understand the nature of the objective world, followed by adaring investigation into the nature of knowledge itself. Among the experienced,the experiencer, and the experience, Vedanta conducted an enquiry into thenature of ‘experience’ itself. The Sanskrit word for experience is ‘anubhava’,while the word for knowledge is ‘ jnana’. The word for the knower is ‘ jnata’, andthat for the object of knowledge is ‘ jneya’. In Vedanta ‘ jnana’, ‘ jneya’ and ‘ jnata’are designated as ‘triputi ’, the triple group. Vedanta discovered ‘anubhava’ or ‘ jnana’ as the ‘Consciousness-Field’ and all objects ( jneyas) and all subjects( jnatas) as its passing configurations, and this resolved the ‘triputi’ distinction.And according to it the ultimate reality of Atman or Brahman is of the very nature

of Experience (anubhava-svarupa), of the very nature of knowledge ( jnana-svarupa), of the very nature of consciousness (cit-svarupa).

Some of the greatest utterances of the Upanishads convey this Truth:

“Brahman is Pure Consciousness” [Aitareya Upanishad 5.3]

“Brahman is Truth, Consciousness, and Infinity.” [Taittiriya Upanishad 2.1]

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“All this manifested universe is Brahman, this Self is Brahman.” [MandukyaUpanishad 2]

“There is some entity, eternal by nature, the basis of the experience of ego-sense, the witness of the three states (of waking, dream and sleep) and distinct from the five sheaths; which knows everything that happens in the waking state,in dream and in profound sleep; which is aware of the presence or absence of the mind and its functions; and which is the background of the notion of egos.This is That. ”

We read in our schoolbooks that God is omniscient. What does it mean?Vedanta alone answers this question. Yes, here, in this very human system,there is a divine reality, which knows everything, which sees everything, and thatis our true nature, and that is God. That is how God is presented in theUpanishads. That omniscient ‘I’ is the Atman.

Atman is that which is aware of the presence or the absence of the ‘buddhi ’ andits functions. That is the eternally existing ‘I’ watching the buddhi’s functions andalso its disappearance during sleep. The real ‘I’ always exists.

God in Vedanta ceases to be external. He is our own Self. We cannot affirm Him,and also we cannot deny Him. Our affirmation as well as denial does not makeany difference to the ever-existing entity. It is the witness of both our affirmationas well as negation. We can just experience Him. That’s something wonderful.That’s why in Advaita Vedanta there is no fear of God suffering at the hands of rebellious subjects. God in Advaita Vedanta stands on the solid rock of directexperience.

In the Upanishads our sages subjected the God concepts to a thoroughinvestigation, turning it upside down, as it were. The God-concepts could notstand this enquiry at all and vanished one by one. But the real God can never

vanish by such questioning. That questioning turned the vision of our sagesinward. They then discovered the God always available to us directly in our experience as our eternal Self – the Self of all. It is ever the Self and never thenon-Self. It is the centre of the infinite energies pulsating throughout thisuniverse. That is God as given in the Upanishads, and later also in Gita andother Indian books.

Krishna says in the Gita:

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“I am the Self in all people.”

“I am the thread that runs through everything in this universe.”

All beautiful ideas have their root in the great investigations of theUpanishads.

“Which itself sees all, but which no one beholds, which illumines the intellect,etc., but which they cannot illumine. This is That.”

“By which this universe is pervaded, but which nothing pervades, which shining,all this (universe) shines as its reflection. This is That.

“By whose very presence the body, the organs, mind and intellect keep to their respective spheres of action, like servants.”

“By which everything from egoism down to the body, the sense objects and pleasures are known as palpably as a jar – for it is the essence of eternal knowledge.”

When we penetrate into the human system, searching for the true Self, we comeacross many pretenders to selfhood. The body, the senses, the mind, and theintellect – all these are not the Self.

The Upanishads remind us that we are not helpless creatures born to be slavesto gods. We are one with the Supreme, and even gods cannot prevail over onewho realizes this great truth.

Therefore, the Vedantic message to everyone is that of freedom. Be free!Freedom is our birthright. That is our true nature. The body, the senses, themind, the intellect, and even the ego – none of these are free. The only

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source of freedom is the infinite Atman – our true nature. We are the eternalKnower, the Self, the Seer, and not the known, the non-Self, the object.

“This is the innermost Self, the primeval ‘Purusha’ (Being), whose essence is theconstant realization of infinite Bliss, which is ever the same, yet reflecting through the different mental modifications, and commanded by which the organsand ‘Pranas’ perform their functions.”

“In this very body, in the mind full of ‘sattva’, in the secret chamber of intellect, inthe ‘akasha’ known as the un-manifest, the Atman, of charming splendor, shineslike the sun aloft, manifesting this universe through its own effulgence.”

“It is neither born nor dies, It neither grows nor decays, nor does It undergo any change, being eternal. It does not cease to exist when this body is destroyed,like the sky in a jar (after it breaks), for It is independent.”

“By means of a regulated mind and the purified intellect (buddhi), realize directly

thy own Self in the body so as to identify yourself with It; cross the boundlessocean of ‘samsara’ whose waves are birth and death, and firmly established inBrahman as thy essence, be blessed.”

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“Identifying the Self with the non-Self – this is the bondage of man, which is dueto his ignorance and brings in its train the miseries of birth and death. It isthrough this that one considers this evanescent body as real, and identifying oneself with it, nourishes, bathes, and preserves it by means of (agreeable)sense-objects, by which he becomes bound as caterpillar by threads of itscocoon.”

“As layers of clouds generated by the sun’s rays cover the sun and alone appear in the sky, so ‘ego’ generated by the Self, covers the reality of the Self and appears by itself.”

The cloud makes us think that there is no sun in the sky. The cloud then appearsto be the master of the sky. Similarly, the ego, an offshoot of the Atman, hidesthe Atman and rules as if there is no Atman at all.

“This bondage of the non-Self springs from ignorance, is self-caused, and isdescribed as without beginning and end. It subjects one to long train of miseriessuch as birth, death, disease, and decrepitude.”

“This bondage can be destroyed neither by weapons, nor by wind, nor by fire,nor by millions of acts – by nothing except the wonderful sword of knowledgethat comes of discrimination, sharpened by the grace of Lord.”

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“One who is passionately devoted to the authority of the ‘Shrutis’ acquiressteadfastness in his ‘svadharma’, which alone conduces to the purity of his mind.The man of pure mind realizes the Supreme Self, and by this alone ‘samsara’ with its root is destroyed.”

Truth is truth because we can verify it. So when the Upanishads say that we arethe Self, we have to check it for ourselves. And this can be done only with thehelp of discrimination between the Self and the non-Self.

“The stupid man thinks he is the body, the book-learned man identifies himself with the mixture of the body and soul, while the sage possessed of realizationdue to discrimination looks upon the eternal Ataman as his Self, and thinks, ‘ I amBrahman’.”

These are the three levels of consciousness, viz. the body consciousness, thesoul consciousness, and the Brahman or universal consciousness. The tyranny

of the body on the mind and consciousness of man makes for his stagnation inlife. When we are not tied down to the body, we expand. To the extent we areliberated from the thralldom to the body and the genetic system, we expand,attaining more subtler and pervasive levels of awareness. Our awareness thenprogressively grows in largeness and fullness. We grow from a circumscribedvision of ourselves to a universal vision. Such a growth is the outcome of thescientific and moral discipline of detachment. The more we are detached fromour gross personality, the more we expand into the subtler realms.

“O foolish person, cease to identify yourself with this bundle of skin, flesh, fat,bones, and filth, and identify yourself instead with the Absolute Brahman, theSelf of all, and thus attain to Supreme Peace.”

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Vedanta starts the teaching of spirituality with the counsel that we have to detachourselves from the body and the little ego presiding over it. These are not our true identity. We have to treat these as initial data. We need the body for theinvestigations into the truth. We need it for dealing with other people in a happyway. But let us not get stuck up there.

“In dreams, when there is no actual contact with the external world, the mind alone creates the whole universe consisting of the experiences, etc. Similarly, inthe waking state also, there is no difference. Therefore, all this (phenomenal universe) is the projection of the mind.”

This is a bold statement coming from Vedanta. Our mind creates our wakingworld, its value systems, relationships and everything else. It is as much thecreator of our waking universe as it is of our dream universe. Both stand on thesame pedestal. Our waking world is just as real as our dream world.

A wave rises in the ocean of the universal mind. Its condensation is the world weexperience. Our individual minds are just the outposts of the universal mind.

“In dreamless sleep, when the mind is reduced to its causal state, there existsnothing (for the person asleep), as is evident from universal experience. Henceman’s relative existence is simply the creation of his mind, and has no objectivereality.”

“Clouds are brought in by wind and again driven away by the same agency.Similarly, man’s bondage is caused by the mind, and liberation is caused by that alone.”

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“Therefore, the mind is the only cause that brings about man’s bondage or liberation: when tainted by effects of ‘rajas’ it leads to bondage, and when pureand divested of the ‘rajas’ and ‘tamas’ elements it conduces to liberation.”

The present verse is an adaptation from ‘Amritabindu’ Upanishad [2]: “Mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation of man. When the mind is attached to the sensory world, it makes for bondage and when it is free from sensory attachments, it brings freedom.”

“Attaining purity through a preponderance of discrimination and renunciation, themind makes for liberation. Hence the wise seeker after liberation must first strengthen these two.”

“Therefore the seeker after liberation must carefully purify the mind. When this is purified, liberation is as easy as a fruit on the palm of one’s hand.”

Today what goes in the name of education is mere stuffing of the brain and nottraining the mind. And when we talk about training the mind, there in comesdiscrimination. When we do not discriminate between real and unreal, good andbad, right and wrong, we commit blunders and suffer.

For an untrained mind everything in this world seems to be a source of trouble.With a little mental training, everything becomes wonderful, an occasion for our spiritual growth and freedom. An undisciplined mind keeps us bound, whereas atrained and pure mind immediately bestows on us the blessing of freedom.

The ‘Yajur-Veda’ describes man as a huge ocean of desires, always dissatisfiedwith what he has and what he gets. When he gets one desired thing, he wantssomething else. At the root of this is his sense of incompleteness. It makes himseek and be attached to the sense objects.

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“The buddhi with its modifications and the organs of knowledge forms the‘knowledge sheath’ of the agent, having the characteristics which are the cause

of man’s transmigration.”

When our buddhi follows dictates of the mind yoked to the senses, it takes our life’s journey towards bondage, transmigration and suffering. This is typical of anuntrained buddhi and mind. On the contrary, a mind that has been trained to bedetached from the sensory system and be subject to the dictates of the buddhi isthe best guide in our life’s journey. It is a fusion of intelligence, imagination, andpower of will in their purest forms. The impact of this type of buddhi in our life ispowerful and enlightening.

Buddhi is the medium reflecting light of the Atman. The light of the Atmanpercolates into the psychophysical system through buddhi. In Vedanta buddhi iscalled ‘Nedishtham Brahma’, that which is nearest to the Brahman. Just behindthe buddhi is the Atman. In the Atman’s light the buddhi appears to be illumined.

“The self-effulgent Atman, which is Pure Knowledge, shines in the midst of the‘Pranas’, within the heart. Though immutable, It becomes the agent and experiencer owing to Its superimposition, the knowledge sheath.”

“Owing to its connection with the superimpositions, the Supreme Self, eventhough naturally perfect and eternally unchanging, assumes the qualities of thesuperimpositions and appears to act just as they do – like the changeless fireassuming the modifications of the iron which it turns red.”

No object can be undivided. This is the challenge of Vedanta. If there is anything

undivided, it is Pure Consciousness, our Self. The undivided reality appears to bedivided in all beings, says the Gita. Due to the Self’s association with the dividingagents it takes up the features of the later and seems to be limited and divided.Maya seems to split up the One Truth into many. But that Truth never gets split,and that truth is consciousness, which alone remains undivided. Everything elseis divisible.

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“The cessation of that superimposition takes place through perfect knowledge,and by no other means. Perfect knowledge, according to the ‘Shrutis’, consists in

the realization of the identity of the individual soul and the Brahman.”

The ‘Anandamaya Kosha’ (blissful sheath) is that modification of nesciencewhich manifests itself catching a reflection of the Atman which is Bliss Absolute;whose attributes are pleasure and the rest; and which appears in view whensome subject agreeable to oneself presents itself. It makes itself spontaneously

felt by the fortunate during the fruition of their virtuous deeds; from which every corporeal being derives great joy without the least effort.”

Bliss is essentially the nature of the Self. There is no bliss anywhere in theworld. All bliss comes from the Self. The intense bliss experienced in deepsleep is the reflection of the bliss of Self. It is this bliss that is further experienced in lesser degrees and intensity in the dream and waking stateswhen our wished-for sensory appetites get fulfilled.

It is the sleep state from which spring the dream and the waking states. It is theocean in which our relative personality remains submerged and out of which it

emerges. It is full of bliss because of the complete suspension of the cause andeffect processes and the resultant effort seen in other sheaths. In the dream andwaking states the soul experiences fatigue caused by the careless interaction of the ego with objects. Freed from such interactions, and consequently freed fromfatigue and tension, which is otherwise the characteristic of the other two states,this state is marked by an effortless bliss experienced by the soul.

“The ‘blissful sheath’ has its fullest play during profound sleep, while in the

dreaming and waking states it has only a partial manifestation, occasioned by the sight of agreeable objects and so forth.”

Whenever we desire some sensory gratification, the lake of our mindbreaks into waves. When the desire is gratified, the waves of the mindsubside and calm down, allowing the inherent joy of the Self to radiate.Thus every time we desire joy from sensory gratification; the joy actuallycomes not from the sense object but from deep within when the mind

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becomes calm. But in ignorance we think the joy to be coming from theobject. All joy is within the Self. The disturbed state of mind obstructs themanifestation of this joy, and a calm mind allows the inner joy to radiateout. This is the psychology of happiness and joy.

By a process of deep enquiry, we negate the five sheaths one by one, saying, “I am not this ‘physical sheath’, not the ‘sheath of bio-energy’, not the ‘mental sheath’, not the ‘sheath of buddhi’, and not even the ‘sheath of bliss’. I cannot beany of these objects. I am essentially, the Subject, the Self.” This is the methoddescribed in the scriptures as far as realization of the Self is concerned. Thescriptures always describe the Self negatively as ‘not this’, ‘not this’. What theSelf is cannot be stated positively. It cannot be the subject of speech or words. Itis beyond verbal description.

Finally, we have to experience the Self. Scriptures are nothing but theexperiences of the sages who have realized the Self. Their experience is not

ours; we have to realize the Self ourselves. But the method they adopted willhelp and guide us. The three steps are ‘Shruti ’ (listening about the Self fromscriptures), then ‘Yukti ’ (reasoning) and finally ‘ Anubhuti ’ (experiencing).

“This self-effulgent Atman which is distinct from the five sheaths, the Witness of the here states, the Real, the Changeless, the Untainted, the everlasting Bliss –is to be realized by the wise man as his own Self.”

Physics describes energy in two forms: ‘bottled-up energy’ and ‘released energy’.Matter is bottled-up energy. When we break matter, we get released energy.Similarly, we are all bottled-up Self. When we penetrate into ourselves throughthe process of philosophical reasoning, the imprisoned splendor, our Self, isreleased.

God is not an object among objects. It is our Self, the eternal Subject,which is the Self of all.

(To be Continued)

Summary: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi

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VIVEKACHUDAMANI 3

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