Video Information: 29.11.21, Shastra Kaumudi, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand
Context:
~ How to break our comfort zone?
~ What gives power to change life?
~ What is love?
~ Who dare to take risk in life?
~ What is it the Mind finally wants?
~ "The 15 parts return into their foundations and all the gods pass into their proper godheads, works and the self of knowledge all become one in the supreme and the imperishable."
Mundaka Upanishad (3.2.7)
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Context:
~ How to break our comfort zone?
~ What gives power to change life?
~ What is love?
~ Who dare to take risk in life?
~ What is it the Mind finally wants?
~ "The 15 parts return into their foundations and all the gods pass into their proper godheads, works and the self of knowledge all become one in the supreme and the imperishable."
Mundaka Upanishad (3.2.7)
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00The fifteen parts return into their foundations and all the Gods pass into their proper Godheads.
00:25and the self of knowledge all become one in the supreme and the imperishable.
00:33So what is the context? What are we referring to here? We are referring here to the ultimate
00:51state possible. What is it that the mind finally wants? What is it that happens rather stops
01:16happening once you are out of illusion and bondage?
01:29The fifteen parts pass into the whole. The shloka says Kala, Panchadash Kala, fifteen parts.
01:43Kala in Sanskrit means parts as well.
01:57The Upanishads have to be read in light of their context.
02:08The student has come and the student is in illusion but eager.
02:24He does not know what he wants to inquire.
02:30So there is ignorance but with the spirit to inquire.
02:48There is darkness but with a movement towards illumination.
03:01And all that is being said by the seer is with a view to dispel false knowledge.
03:14We have to remember that the Upanishads do not seek to bring the truth to us.
03:21They proceed via negativa. Their method is of ruthless negation.
03:43They destroy the false.
03:45They expose what is hollow and weak and hence fit to be rejected.
03:57So what is it that gets rejected, destroyed or comes to an end as you progress through
04:09your consciousness in an upward direction? The fifteen parts return to the whole.
04:17Parts gain wholeness. The inner fragmentation
04:27reduces. The number fifteen is not significant.
04:33I could go into where the fifteen kalas come from and all that but that is not significant at all.
04:41It could have been fourteen, it could have been six, it could have been seventy thousand.
04:45It doesn't matter. Only three numbers actually exist in Vedanta.
04:55Zero, one and the rest of them.
05:03Zero, one and the rest of them. So when you are reading the Upanishads or the Bhagavad Gita
05:13and you come across eight or forty two or seven thousand, they all mean the same.
05:23What do they refer to? The manyness evident in our sensory experience.
05:34I'm speaking to you today. Maybe there are 50 of us here today.
05:39This is a session in progress and yesterday there were some 80 of us here and the day before that
05:48300 plus. It's the same. It's the same from the point of view of Vedanta. Vedanta simply says many.
06:02Lao Tzu says the one thousand things.
06:08He dismisses diversity with this one name, the one thousand things.
06:18So you ask him what's there in the mind. He'll either say nothing or he'll say
06:22one thousand things. He won't bother to count. For us eight is very different from eighteen.
06:30For the knower, eight is the same as eighteen. Therefore he does not seek to reduce eighteen to
06:39eight. He seeks to reduce both eighteen and eight to one. What is that one?
06:53That's not the final thing. That's not the ultimate unity.
06:59That one is ego tendency, the mother aham vritti. All things arise from the one
07:12and that one is not Brahma. That one is the mother ego tendency
07:21because nothing arises from Brahma.
07:27Brahma does not give birth or rise to anything. The truth does not father the world.
07:39Because of our ignorance, truth itself appears as the world. The world is not different from the truth
08:01provided we have the eyes to perceive rightly.
08:06So all things boil down to just the one thing. What is that one thing?
08:16The perceiving entity, the ego tendency. I have the tendency to perceive and because I have the
08:23tendency to perceive, sometimes I perceive eight, sometimes eighteen, sometimes eight thousand.
08:28All things are my own experience. All things are to me. Things exist.
08:46Don't believe in the superficial objectivity. Ask who is the subject to whom these things exist.
08:54Something great happened. Immediately ask to whom this exists? For whom? Because nothing
09:03exists in isolation. Nothing exists independently of the perceiver, the seer. To think that something
09:14To think that something exists independent of everything is to give it the status of truth
09:24and that will lead to suffering.
09:28If something exists, it exists for a particular somebody. Otherwise it does not.
09:36Therefore, the same thing is different things to different people
09:43because there is nothing called a thing. There is just the experience of the thing
09:51and there is the mighty experiencer sitting within all of us intent on experiencing diversity.
10:00Experiencing diversity. It cannot experience one thing. If there is just one thing,
10:08there can be no experience. If all is white, can you experience even white? Obviously,
10:14if all is white, you cannot experience red, green, blue, violet.
10:17So that's discounted. But if all is white, can you experience even white?
10:22If all is white, can you experience even white? What is the colour of this background? Brown.
10:32What if I wear brown? What will happen? What will happen? Kamlesh will not like it.
10:40Kamlesh will just not like it if I wear brown on a brown background. Why will he not like it?
10:48What does that mean? To experience, you require at least two. Brown and brown
10:57will lead to obfuscation of experience. You will not be able to experience anything.
11:03On top of that, if my entire face is brown, including the hair,
11:08the audience will actually not see anything. It will only see a certain brownness.
11:14You can see a thing only when its opposite is available as a backdrop.
11:21Otherwise, perception cannot happen. So, if you are the experiencer,
11:27it becomes a compulsion on you to experience diversity. There can be no experience sans diversity.
11:37You cannot experience happiness if you have not tasted sadness.
11:41There is no experience that is not non-dual, that is not dualistic.
11:52In other words, there is no non-dual experience.
11:55Are you getting it? So, the mother ego tendency that says, I exist,
12:07I exist, for its own survival continuation, projects a huge diversity.
12:15And that diversity allows it to remain engaged. That diversity allows time to exist.
12:30Because now you can change your subject. This exists and that exists. Today,
12:37I am related to him. Tomorrow, I am related to her. What has come into being?
12:49Change, hence time. If diversity is not there, time cannot be there.
12:59Time is therefore a compulsion upon the mother experiencer, the one.
13:07Are you getting it?
13:17Wholeness is not oneness.
13:24That is what differentiates Vedanta from the other philosophies. They stop at one.
13:37There has to be somebody at the top. Alright, we can afford diversity at the bottom.
13:48We can have a lot of things on the earth. But let there sit some one particular controller
13:54on the clouds, in the sky. They suffocate without the one. Vedanta dismisses even
14:06the one. Vedanta says even the one is fictitious. Because if all this that you see here is just
14:16dualistic, one thing exists only as a contrast to the other thing,
14:27then the mother of all these things too has to be fiction.
14:32If the 7,000 things are all fictitious,
14:38then the mother of those 7,000 things too is fictitious. Therefore, the one means nothing.
14:47One God, one Eshwar, none of that in Vedanta. No.
14:57Vedanta will never ask you to swear allegiance to the one. No.
15:11Just as you can think of 8 and 18 and 8,000, you can equally think of one, can't you?
15:19So, 8, 18, 8,001, they are all objects in the mind. How can you call a mental object
15:35as beyond the mind? Therefore, the one is to be given no special cred.
15:49Are you getting it? One is same as two. One cannot even exist without the second.
16:12How about zero? Even with zero, there is a bit of a problem. Zero is technically right
16:20if it means nothing at all. But the moment you say nothing, zero, shunya, again you create
16:27a mental image, a fiction rises, a story starts building up. Therefore,
16:40Vedanta says, not many, not one, zero is risky, hence advaita.
16:58Do you get this? Not many because the many
17:12are just figments of my own inner compulsions.
17:21I see differences because I have a stake in differences.
17:25If I do not have a stake in differences, they don't matter much to me.
17:40You must remember that whatever you see or experience
17:45has your own desire at its root.
17:57We just don't see anything. If we are seeing, sensing, hearing, experiencing, perceiving,
18:06there is desire involved. Desire begins not only after the stimulus hits the senses but actually
18:27in a deeper way, desire causes the stimulus.
18:36This much should be obvious that if you look at a nice pair of jeans somewhere,
18:46it can arouse desire. So, this is self-evident that stimulus provokes desire.
18:56But what we must also meditate on is that unless you have a latent desire,
19:05you will not even perceive a pair of jeans. This is more difficult to grasp but stay with this.
19:13You will not come upon anything if it does not hold meaning for you.
19:19It will just not blip in your inner radar even if you factually come upon it.
19:35If something makes its presence felt in your inner world, it is because you were already prepared
19:45to have its presence felt inside you. If you are not prepared, the thing will not even exist for
19:58you. It will just come and leave as nothing. Are you getting it? Now, this has very deep
20:09implications. It means we are responsible. It means we cannot play ever the victim card.
20:19If stuff is happening, it is happening with some kind of a latent consent.
20:31I know we are walking into choppy waters with this because
20:36next we will be asked that if a fellow has a heinous crime committed on him,
20:45did there pre-exist a latent consent? If it did, then how do we have courts of law?
20:59How do we hold somebody guilty? All these questions arise. We will get to them but
21:05please consider this first of all. We are not talking of events here. We are talking
21:10of suffering here and suffering is always subjective. No external event
21:20can provoke a response of suffering from you if you were not prepared for that event.
21:29Prepared not in the sense of readiness, prepared in the sense of vulnerability.
21:39If you were not vulnerable to that one thing,
21:42that one thing couldn't have elicited a response of suffering from you.
21:49It could have caused you damage in the physical sense. Maybe your money is robbed away. Maybe
21:55your arm is hacked off. Those things can happen surely without your consent.
22:04There is so much in the physical world that is just random. Suffering is not random.
22:13Suffering is not random. Vedanta is a darshan of ultimate responsibility, therefore ultimate
22:23empowerment. You have the power to dictate your inner conditions. You are not a hapless
22:37thing being thrown around by random forces of chance. Things don't happen to you.
22:51You are an equal participant. Rather, you are the progenitor and if you are that
23:03then why do you play the weakling?
23:07Why do you ask questions in such servitude?
23:23Why do we believe that we are victims of circumstances?
23:37Right? This was about the number 15.
23:48Be it 15, be it 15,000, they are all in me, through me, from me.
23:57And this me that is projecting this great diversity has to ultimately dissolve into
24:07Advaita. If it remains, the diversity will remain. Diversity will mean false choice.
24:15Now, what does the Rishi mean here when he says that the parts of the universe are not
24:26false choices and that will mean I will never be at rest?
24:40Now, what does the Rishi mean here when he says that the parts all return into the whole?
24:48Being fragmented is our suffering and we all live in fragmented, that is, divided conditions.
25:03We are not one. Just as the world outside is many, we are many.
25:11Not without reason. The manyness of the world creates many imprints on our minds
25:26and those many imprints all operate from their own centers. The many
25:35things outside of us that we perceive become the many masters that rule us.
25:50And each of those masters has a certain province within us. One part of us is controlled
26:00by the urge for profits. One part of us is controlled by the husband or the wife.
26:09One part of us is devoted to a particular ideology. I'm a socialist.
26:18And these parts just cannot agree with each other.
26:23The relationship one has with his occupation just does not sit well with the relationship one has
26:34with his religious inclination.
26:40But they all exist within us. They exist within us and they quarrel with each other.
26:44We are the battleground. We are being slaughtered daily.
26:55We are not the same entity when situations change and are changing
27:07and our changing existence is not an autonomous response to the change in circumstances.
27:26When circumstances change, we are forced into submissive
27:35and corresponding change.
27:40These are two very different things. Circumstances keep changing all the time, right?
27:45One thing is circumstances change and I retain my autonomy. What is that autonomy called?
27:57Atma. That remains. I don't stray too far away from it.
28:04Circumstances change and my response to them is one of freedom. I do change when circumstances
28:14change but it's not as if I'm a slave to circumstances. That is one thing but that's
28:20not the way most of us operate. When circumstances change, they beat us into changing as per their
28:33demand. When in front of the idol in the temple, we are one being. In front of the boss in the
28:45office, we are just another being. It's not as if choice is being exercised. It is a compulsion.
28:55This is called fragmentation. This is what is being referred to in the verse,
29:01the 15 parts. We said it could have been 15,000 because there do exist not 15 but
29:09indeed 15,000 parts within us and those parts are just not good, right?
29:22How do you feel being with the boss in the temple?
29:26Do you see the conflict? It's easy when you are in front of the boss and you are wearing a mask.
29:37It's affordable when you are in front of the deity and wearing another mask. But life loves fun.
29:48Life will create a situation when you are in front of the deity
29:57with the boss. Now which mask will you wear now?
30:01Even if physically such a situation does not arise, internally such a situation always exists
30:08because we have just too many masters commanding us, holding our reins.
30:22They have to all converge into one and when they converge into one,
30:31the one just cannot stand. It dissolves. It goes away.
30:41Do not have multiple masters. Do not be slave to situations.
30:50Do not be thrown around by circumstances. That's the message of Vedanta.
31:01Are you getting it? It's not very skillful or clever of us
31:09to wear a thousand hats at thousand different places. Do we think so?
31:19In front of elders and the family, we live and behave one way.
31:26In front of somebody you are wooing or your wife or your fiance, you are just another personality.
31:36Are you not? And when we do that, we think it's very clever of us. Look how I fooled both of them.
31:44Granny thinks I'm such an obedient and ideal child.
31:53Well behaved, thinking nothing of the bad things in the world.
32:03My girlfriend in front of her, she's just like me.
32:08Right? My girlfriend in front of her,
32:15I'm the sexy stud.
32:24And we think we have been able to manage both of them.
32:31Right? From this kind of thinking arise phrases like work-life balance and such things.
32:38People think that their profession is one thing, their personal life is another thing.
32:45And there is no continuity. And when there is no continuity, there can be no harmony.
32:53One thing I have always advised those who are on the verge of choosing a career,
33:02or even those who are deep into their careers,
33:06let there be no dissonance between who you are and what you do.
33:12Your work is who you are. Do not say that you work just for money and that your real life starts after work.
33:19Or is it possible that you are a very affectionate and soft father to your kids?
33:37And you work in a firm that slaughters kids of animals to sell packaged meat.
33:50No, there would be a bloodbath within.
34:00I'm getting it.
34:05Let the deed
34:09reflect the doer and let the doer
34:16reflect the truth.
34:20In other words, the ego should follow the truth.
34:29The I-sense, the I-identity, should not be deeply attached to anything.
34:39It should simply be an inquirer, a seeker, a lover of truth.
34:44And if you say you love the truth, then let that reflect in your deeds.
34:54Do not assume too many identities and even the ones that you do assume,
35:03let them sit very lightly on your shoulders.
35:06Even the ones that you do assume, let them sit very lightly on your shoulders.
35:15No identity is your real identity.
35:27Have a truthful identity.
35:29And once you have that, if that is how you internally know yourself and think of yourself,
35:35then let that reflect in all that you do.
35:40Do not create fragments.
35:43It's because those fragments hurt us so badly that the Rishi is saying that in the state of
35:50liberation, those fragments disappear.
35:53Had those fragments been good for us, there was no need for them to disappear, but they must go away.
36:04Yeah, the seeker is 30 years old. She's a professor. She's asking,
36:09Sir, the ability to see that we are in the same situation as many others before us,
36:16even though it might appear different,
36:19can save us from committing the same mistake as others.
36:24In this sense, reducing diversity or reducing 8000 to 8 is beneficial.
36:31Then why does Vedanta say that 8 and 8000 are not different?
36:37Because even the 8 are just one. If you want to categorize the 8,
36:45if you want to categorize, why create 8 different categories?
36:54Even the 8 are just one, so straight away come to one.
36:57And being stuck at 8 is just as bad as being stuck at 8000.
37:06How does it matter where you are stuck? You are stuck.
37:08There are all these vehicles on the road. You can neatly classify them into 8 categories, can't you?
37:17All the vehicles on the road can be classified into 8 categories.
37:26Now which of these categories would you want to be run down under?
37:33They are all one. They are all one.
37:38If you are hit by one of those 8000 vehicles, what happens to you?
37:52You are gone.
37:56You classify them into 8 categories.
38:02The result is just the same.
38:03They are one. They are one. And all of them are to be avoided.
38:20Avoided in the sense of not inviting a collision.
38:33See, we are all system makers. In systems we do make.
38:45Having made systems, we think those systems are final. No, they are not final.
38:56You have to go beyond every inner system that you create.
39:03You can say people are of four kinds.
39:05And you can classify the entire 800 crore people of the world into four.
39:16It's clever, but not very useful when it comes to liberation.