Please take a look

[Guest guest]

Benjamin Root is from NRL and has a home page - He just joined the

advaitin list.

http://www.geocities.com/orion777ben/Philosophy/page.html

I was pleasantly surprised to study the contents of his home page and

some of the discussions were parallell to the discussions I had

recently with Shree Nanda Chandran in the list.

 

From his home page recent addition:

 

Benjamin wrote:

 

28 Aug 2001 I just had a talk about Advaita here at NRL

with Dr. K. Sadananda, and I now realize how

much I do not understand. It all seemed pretty clear before,

but now I have been humbled. (By the way,

Sadananda is a key participant in the Advaitin mailing list

mentioned above.)

 

The Advaitin Page summarizes the Advaita philosophy as

follows (words between brackets are my

translation):

 

Advaita is based on the ancient Vedic Scriptures, the

Upanishads, the

Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahmasutras. According to

Shankara, Brahman,

the infinite consciousness, is the sole reality.

Shankara establishes the

essential identity between Atman [the 'I'] and

Brahman [God]. Advaita

Vedanta holds that all that exists is only Brahman.

The plurality of living

and nonliving beings of the entire universe is indeed

nothing but

Brahman. The ignorance and misapprehension of this

astonishingly

simple truth leads to samsaara [present painful

life]. The Atman of the

individual jeeva [soul] is not different from

Brahman, and realization of this

Truth is Moksha [liberation].

 

Clearly, there are major points of agreement with the

philosophy that I have been developing, in

particular, the idea that consciousness is everything and

that there is really only one underlying

consciousness, which we may call 'God' (for lack of a better name).

 

However, the last point that I discussed with Sadananda has

left me perplexed. He says that when we

finally realize to the fullest that we are One with that

Universal Consciousness, then our karma is

dissolved or finished and we return to the Universal

Consciousness. (Karma is the law that keeps us in a

finite body due to our ignorance of our true nature as one

with the Universal Consciousness.) We then

cease to be reborn in any body and simply become one with

the 'I am', which is our innermost essence.

 

My problem is that I have trouble understanding what

consciousness means without 'objects' (such as

trees, mountains, flowers and other living beings). (I agree

that 'subject' and 'object' are an erroneous

distinction that is swallowed up in consciousness, but I

still want to 'see' something.) And for this, it

seems to me that we need some kind of body, not necessarily

in a biological sense, but in the sense that

we need some particular perspective, some point of view.

Sadananda says that we do not vanish but

become 'one with everything', one with the Universal

Consciousness that is everything. This all seems

quite logical, but I can't get one question out of my mind:

What does it look like? For this, we need

some kind of perspective don't we? Can we see everything at

once from every possible perspective? Can

others see us? How can we communicate with and love others?

It is a bit puzzling.

 

Sada: Benjamin - there is not much of a puzzle here. I am the total

consciousness - that is my intrinsic nature - in Sanskrit it is

called swaruupa lakshaNa. - Consciousness takes the role of

subject-object duality when I am conscious of (object) - Just as when

we say - I have headache and I know that I have headache.

 

What does it looks like when I realize I am total consciousness?

It is just like what does Ocean think when it sees the waves - the

waves are in me - I pervade all the waves - every wave is nothing but

me - yet I am not the wave in the sense that the birth, growth,

suffering and disease and death of a wave does not belong to me. It

is as superficial as the existence of the wave. All the waves exist

in me but the sufferings of individual waves do not constitute my

suffering. It is my glory or majesty that I have the capacity to

exit in the variety of wave forms- Similarly the gold - what does it

look like from the gold point when it sees the world of all golden

ornaments- rings, bangles etc. Rings and bangles etc are not

different from Gold yet they are not gold. Gold can exist in all

forms of the gold yet it will not have the mistaken notions that I am

only a ring or bangle etc. The vision becomes a universal vision -

That is exactly the vision of Lord Krishna when he says - I pervade

everything in an unmanifested form, all beings are in me but I am not

in them (Ch.9-4). Nothing can be seen without His presence. No

communication can occur without His presence. Now you are asking

about love and communications with others- where are the others to

communicate when everything is in me and I am in everything including

the love-hate - communications - everything - since nothing or no

'thing' can exist separate from me.

 

Benjamin:

Of course, this how we normally imagine God to be (say in

Christianity), namely, omniscient,

omnipresent, and so forth. That is, we do not imagine God to

be in any particular place, to have any

particular body, or any particular point of view. Rather he

must be everywhere simultaneously. So if we

return to God and become just like him, then this all makes sense.

 

Sada: The concept of God has meaning only with reference to a

creation. When one realizes that there is no creation separate from

the creator - the cause and effect merge into one. There is no

return to God - since there was never a 'true' creation to start

with. It is the identity not 'becoming' one which involves merging

of the two. It is one appearing currently as two and mistaking that

appearance is real.

 

Benjamin:

But what does it look like? And can

we ever love (e.g. embrace) another person ever again? (I

guess by becoming one with everything, we

participate in every act of love everywhere. But then, do we

also participate in every act of hate? There is

much to think about here...)

 

Sada: Benjamin - can you hate yourself! - People some times make the

statement - " I hate myself" but actually they love themselves so

much even to make such ignorant statements - What they hate may be

not themselves but their actions, or their presumed shortcomings etc.

In the very 'becoming' of totality all the notions that contribute to

these divisions cease. In love there is becoming one - in hate there

there is division. I love my wife only because I love myself - What

I love is that which pleases me - hence what I love is the pleased

state of mind - If you think deeply you will realize that when one

says - 'I hate something' that only means 'he loves himself!' -

what I hate is my unpleasant condition caused by my presumed wrong

attachment to a thing - I do not want to be disturbed from my

pleasant condition - since I love myself!

 

When I am the totality - I cannot but love - rather my supreme

fulfilled nature cannot but express as outpouring love to everything

- That is what meant by 'Love is God' in all scriptures.

 

Benjamin - I took the liberty to posting this to advaitin list so

that others also can enjoy the discussion. See you this Saturday at

the Open House of Chinmaya Mission.

 

Hari OM!

Sadananda

 

 

--

K. Sadananda

Code 6323

Naval Research Laboratory

Washington D.C. 20375

Voice (202)767-2117

Fax:(202)767-2623

[Guest guest]

Thank you so much for your comments, Sri Sadananda!

Hopefully, by replying from within , the text won't wrap,

which must make peoples' eyes crossed! (The unwrap button

didn't work for me.)

 

One thing that fascinates me is how 'logical' what you say

seems, even if it is somewhat of a challenge to intuition. At least

you have one of the chief virtues of a good scientific theory,

namely, consistency. Yes, I guess that if subject and object are

indeed banished in the one unitary phenomenon called

'consciousness' then it would indeed be as you say: the ocean

contains all of the waves but is not limited to any one of them.

 

Still, I can have some sympathy for those NON-advaitin

Vedantins who say, 'I want to taste the sugar, not BE the sugar!'

And I still can't IMAGINE what you said, but then I am not realized

yet either! In this case, logic would seem to enable us to peer

into the mind of God without actually being (or rather 'realizing')

that we are God. How powerful is logic, then! However, I am by

nature somewhat skeptical of logic and prefer what I call

'intuition', which must however be tempered by logic.

 

By the way, the 'universal vision' of Krishna that you mention

helps me understand a fascinating Buddhist text called the

Avatamsaka (or Flower Garland or Hua Yen) Sutra. This

voluminous scripture has fantastic graphical accounts of how

Reality appears to the enlightened mind. It's key theme is that

everything interpenetrates, everything is contained in everything.

Although a challenge to common sense, it is really very much in

line with non-dualistic thinking, if you think about it. Arjuna's

vision of Lord Krishna in the Bagavad Gita was also fantastic,

including tusks! These are all graphical ways to help us

understand something that is inconceivable to logic. (And yet I

just said that you were very logical! I'd better stop here.)

[Guest guest]

Benjamin Root wrote:

>

> Still, I can have some sympathy for those NON-advaitin

>Vedantins who say, 'I want to taste the sugar, not BE the sugar!'

>

 

There is no problem until I run out of sugar to taste! - If the

sugar and taster of the sugar both merge into myself, I can taste

when I want and close my mouth when I donot want.

 

The problem in that very analogy is, my dependence on something

other than myself for me to be happy. I need to depend on that sugar

for me to be a happy taster! Moksha or liberation is freedom from

all limitations including dependence on sugar, particularly when one

is diabetic!.

 

Hari Om!

Sadananda

 

 

>just said that you were very logical! I'd better stop here.)

>

--

K. Sadananda

Code 6323

Naval Research Laboratory

Washington D.C. 20375

Voice (202)767-2117

Fax:(202)767-2623