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00:00Acharyaji, my question to you is the concept of Maya or the idea that the whole universe
00:09is an illusion is at its core in Advaita Vedanta. However, Maya as a concept is unfathomable
00:16to many of us. So, how can your book help the general audience without having the deep
00:22knowledge of Vedanta, understand this concept and are there any major learnings especially
00:27for students like us from this book? Namaste everyone. See, you said Maya is the
00:45concept that the universe is an illusion. The concept actually is that there is nothing
00:57called the universe. This universe that you and I perceive is a purely subjective entity.
01:19The subjectivity exists at two levels, at the level of meaning and at the level of the
01:31fact. Take for example, a building that you perceive. This building can be taken as symbolizing
01:51the universe. The universe consists of objects that the building represent them. Now, nobody
02:04looks at a building without assigning meaning to the building and the meanings that we assign
02:14to anything that we see or experience or think of or imagine are purely subjective.
02:26There is nothing absolute about them and that much is obviously very simple to see. Then
02:35comes the more austere part, even the fact that the building is actually subjective.
02:53The three-dimensional shape that the building appears as, the height, the width, the entire
03:07spatial geometry, all that is a function of the way your brain is configured to look at
03:19things. So, it is not as if the building exists objectively or absolutely by itself
03:30independent of the perceiving subject, not at all. If your own personal configuration
03:40changes, the building would no more remain the same. Even among the different subjects
03:52that perceive the same object, we find a great difference in perception. There are sentient
04:05beings that are able to hear particular wavelengths that you and I just cannot experience beyond
04:1820,000 Hertz, let's say, or subsonic beyond less than the 20 Hertz threshold. We won't
04:31just know, for us there would be nothing to perceive, whereas for them there would
04:37exist a reality and that reality they would call as objective, that is the ego. To think
04:49of its own perceptions and projections as absolute, that is ego. To think of one's
04:58own projections and perceptions as absolute. So, when you look at the building, first of
05:06all you attribute a meaning. Nobody looks at a building, I have said I am repeating,
05:13without assigning a meaning. Someone is looking at a building out of jealousy, somebody out
05:18of curiosity, somebody wants to study the building, somebody wants to steal the building,
05:24somebody wants to own the building, somebody wants to rent the building, somebody has just
05:31some kind of a memory associated with that building, somebody might be just scared of
05:38buildings. So, there is that meaning part and that meaning obviously is purely subjective.
05:47Because there is such a heavy component of subjectivity, in fact, because there is 100%
05:53subjectivity, therefore, what Acharya Shankar said was that the world is not how you perceive
06:04it to be. Mithya does not mean non-existent. When he said Jagat is Mithya, he didn't mean
06:13that the world or the universe does not exist at all. What he meant was that it does not
06:21exist in the way you think it does. What is the reality of the universe? That he called
06:30as Brahm and Brahm, you cannot think of, Brahm is truly unfathomable. Therefore, the solution
06:42lies in just negating the subjective part and that subjectivity we said is ego. Maya
06:51is another name for that. So, the more you get rid of Maya, the more you dissolve and
07:02the more what remains is the absolute. You can call that as the Atman or Brahm or truth.
07:12It is an absence of the personal self, the subjective experiencer. So, there is not much
07:26complication in the concept of Maya because we all know that things are not as they appear
07:33to be and the proof of that is our daily frustrations. Have things in your life or my life turned
07:44out as they promised to be? Why do we often feel deceived then? Why do we get setbacks?
07:58Why do we then say that, oh, I misinterpreted? The thing is, it's only sometimes that we
08:07admit that we misinterpreted. Misinterpretation is happening all the time because the interpreter
08:16itself is illusory. The interpreter is called the ego. I am the interpreter, I am the ego
08:24and because I am interpreting, so I am bound to misinterpret. This is Maya. So, Maya really
08:30does not principally or primarily have to do with the world as such. Before we set out
08:43to inquire and negate the external world, it is more important to investigate why we
08:51are first of all in illusion with respect to the external world. It is because Maya
08:57resides within. The experiencer himself is subject to greed, desire, fear and many other
09:09such tendencies due to which his entire perception is skewed, biased, distorted. He sees things
09:21where none exist and that which exists, he definitely fails to see. This is Maya. Maya
09:31is said to have two aspects, avaran and vikshep. The first one is about your failure to see
09:46the reality and the latter is about seeing, projecting, imagining stuff that does not
09:58really exist. It should be obvious by now that this Maya which resides within fundamentally
10:11is at the root of all human misery because if you do not see a pothole where it exists,
10:27you will receive a root jolt, won't you? At the same time, if you are driving down a highway
10:39and you start imagining that a deer has suddenly leaped in front of your car, then again you
10:48will receive a huge jolt. You might actually slam the brakes so hard that you might just
11:03hit your head against the windscreen and you don't require an object outside the car
11:10to hit you. You will hit the car from inside and suffer. That's how we usually suffer.
11:22Hurting and hitting ourselves from the inside when actually there is nothing outside to
11:29hurt us. That's Maya. But I would rather hear from you what you think about it and converse.
11:39Yeah, I mean, thank you for your answer Acharya ji about Maya and about ego. I was saying
11:46that I recently read a quote from you that you mentioned that the madman is the last
11:51to admit that he is a mad person. I think, I mean that quote I think kind of resonates
11:56with what we are speaking about ego and I think that mad person is kind of very close to his
12:01ego which is why he is not admitting that he is mad in that sense. So my question is I think
12:07in two levels, I want to understand how as a human being, how we can kind of
12:14remove the biases or the prejudices that we have and then maybe become less mad and less
12:19closer to the ego and also how do we deal with people who are like this, who are
12:25very prejudiced and who do not change their perception very easily.
12:31The answer to the second part is contained in the first part. In the second part you
12:37asked how do we deal with people who are prejudiced, biased and pretty stubborn about
12:43their perceptions or opinions. If you can deal with yourself first, you will know how to deal
12:53with all such people because every single person including the questioner and this speaker is bound
13:03to be biased and prejudiced. So if we can know how to figure out our own biases and prejudices,
13:12it will become very easy to spot the same things in others and help them out of these.
13:18You see, we have a stake in living in fancies and imaginations
13:32and that stake offers us comforts.
13:40That's the reason most people prefer imaginations over the reality.
13:53We are born deluded.
13:57The newborn has no faculty for clear perception.
14:10Yet the newborn is taken care of in several ways and the newborn has prakritic,
14:22by prakritic I mean physical nature, biology here. The newborn has prakritic
14:30systems in place to help her navigate through the initial months and years and that works.
14:41That works without any deep understanding or consciousness.
14:48Kids of all species manage to live through their initial years and
15:04in a healthy way.
15:04That tendency continues.
15:16In animals, the continuation of that tendency is not a problem
15:21because their consciousness anyway has no urge towards liberation.
15:29But in human beings, there does exist that urge.
15:39But if you have to be liberated of your tendencies,
15:48the same tendencies that are referred to as internal bondages, the same internal bondages
15:55that result in several external bondages, then you have to pay the price for it.
16:03Paying price is a tough choice. Most people do not want to make that choice.
16:10So, you ask me how, I said choose. You ask me how to do it, I said choose to do it.
16:21The answer is so simple. The answer is frustratingly simple.
16:27How to drop your biases? Choose to drop your biases because it's not that you do not know
16:33that you are biased. I'll tell you why it is impossible to not know that you are biased.
16:41Life has no regards for your opinions or fancies.
16:48If you live in imaginations, you will keep struggling and hitting against events
17:03and you will stumble and fall so many times, so many places.
17:09So, life has an inbuilt mechanism to communicate to you that you are not living
17:22in facts, let alone the truth. So, we know, we are being delivered the message again and again
17:34and again. The diagnosis of our condition is not a secret.
17:42It is being displayed to us almost daily.
17:48Even when external situations do not display that, our internal climate is ample proof.
17:56If one were living rightly, why would one be so scared?
18:05Why would one be jealous or insecure or temperamental?
18:14There would be no need, right? So, all these things clearly tell you that you are not living
18:30in a real world. You are living in your head.
18:35But then, as we said, one has to make efforts to break out of the jail and one has to pay the price.
18:49The thing with our biological conditioning is that we are, you know, luxury-loving people.
18:58Inertia applies not only to insentient objects but much more to human beings.
19:15If you have been living in a certain way and you are used to it,
19:20then you grow a thousand inner arguments against challenging the status quo.
19:29So, you do not want to pay the price, then that is all. Ignorance is actually nothing.
19:36Let nobody say that he or she is making the right choices in life because she does not know.
19:45We all know. We prefer to suppress the inner knowledge.
19:51It is an inner conspiracy against ourselves just because we want to continue enjoying
19:57certain privileges in life, certain physical privileges, material privileges, monetary
20:03privileges, right? And, you know, if you want to just test whether people are living in ignorance
20:15or self-deception, there is a simple test. Go and declare something to them
20:32that takes them towards the truth. Declare loudly. Had they just been ignorant,
20:41they would have at least shown curiosity. If not, welcome.
20:53But you will find that the moment you show the mirror to people,
20:57the moment you want to bring the truth to people, they actually actively balk away.
21:05They might even feel offended. What does that tell? They knew very well in advance
21:13that they were living in the false. They knew. That's the reason why the moment the truth shown,
21:23the truth shown, they became scared and defensive.
21:30Right? So, ignorance is just an ugly ploy against oneself.
21:40Nobody is really ignorant. We just don't choose to live rightly, to know the truth,
21:48to drop our biases. We have a stake there. Little, some small petty benefits we keep getting
21:57and those petty benefits are enough to keep making a side with the false, bad.
22:09Thank you for the answer, Acharyaji. So, we also had a question about God from the audience. But
22:16before we move to that question, I had a question pertaining to what we spoke earlier. So, you said
22:22that whatever universe we perceive is our subjective experience. And the only absolute truth
22:28is that is the Atman or the truth. So, and this is at its core in Advaita Vedanta. And however,
22:36if you look at other devotional practices, where you worship a particular deity. So,
22:46you are in essentially you are considering that deity to be higher than yourself. So,
22:52be it in Bhakti Marga or like other practices in Vaishnava. So, is it that in effect,
22:58we are worshipping ourselves when we are worshipping God? So, what are your thoughts on this?
23:04That's obvious. That's obvious as an intelligent young man, it must be obvious to you.
23:14You know, you go to sleep. You go to sleep. Can you still conceptualize a deity? You cannot.
23:25So, the deity is obviously a product of the waking state of your consciousness.
23:30The deity is a product of your thinking mind. The moment your state changes,
23:41the moment your thought changes, all those fancy stories about God and so many other things,
23:49they just vanish. But truth or Atma or Brahm, they are not concepts. They are not products
23:59of imagination. They are not products of mind at all. Therefore,
24:06their very definition is that they are inaccessible to the mind.
24:13So, whatever happens to the mind, the truth remains. But if the mind changes,
24:20then contents in the mind will no longer remain. You have to ask yourself, whether your God
24:28is beyond the mind or within the mind. If your so-called God is within the mind,
24:37then your God is obviously smaller than the mind. Your God is then just a slave to the mind.
24:46A thing cannot be bigger than the vessel it is contained in.
24:52If God is contained in your mind, how will it be bigger than the mind?
24:59Brahm or truth are not really the contents of mind. Therefore, they are not amenable
25:15to a lot of discussion. One approaches them only via the negativa. You negate what is false,
25:28and then slowly the truth shines.