Q.527 Experiencing Brahman

Q: What does this mean: You can’t experience brahman, but everything you experience is brahman?

A (ChatGPT): This statement is an expression of the non-dual nature of reality as understood in Hindu philosophy, particularly in the Advaita Vedanta tradition.

According to this view, Brahman is the ultimate reality that underlies all existence. It is an unchanging, infinite and eternal principle that is beyond all concepts and categories. However, because of the limitations of our minds and senses, we cannot directly experience Brahman as an object or as a concept.

Despite this, everything we experience is seen as an expression or manifestation of Brahman. In other words, all the objects and phenomena we encounter in the world around us are ultimately a reflection of the underlying reality of Brahman. In this sense, everything we experience can be seen as a kind of pointer or signpost that can lead us towards a deeper understanding of the nature of reality.

Thus, the statement “You can’t experience Brahman, but everything you experience is Brahman” is a way of expressing the non-dual nature of reality, in which the ultimate reality is both beyond all experience and yet present in everything we experience. It suggests that while we may not be able to directly experience Brahman as an object, we can still recognize its presence in the world around us and use that recognition as a means of coming to a deeper understanding of the nature of reality.

7 thoughts on “Q.527 Experiencing Brahman

  1. This item was passed on to me by Rick, who thought I might be interested. And I thought others might also like to see it.

    My initial response was: “May as well give up writing books, then! Seriously, though, that is pretty impressive.”

    Reading through more carefully, there are of course some ‘confusions’. “However, because of the limitations of our minds and senses, we cannot directly experience Brahman as an object or as a concept.” This is misleading – it would not matter how ‘unimited’ our mind and senses are, we would still not be able to experience Brahman. I would also challenge the words ‘expression’ and ‘manifestation’ – it is rather our own minds that superimpose name and form on what is actually only Brahman.

    But one has to concede that this comes across as an intelligent, and reasonably informed, answer to the question. My overall observation is that, if it is possible for the answer to include references to the sources from which the answer was compiled, it could be really useful.

  2. Liberation, salvation, kaivalya, mukti (whatever the term used) is not difficult to mimic both in “real life” and in speech. Is there any “teacher” currently employing AI to generate “talks”? My version appears below the text from chatbot.
    ========================================
    “Despite this, everything we experience is seen as an expression or manifestation of Brahman. In other words, all the objects and phenomena we encounter in the world around us are ultimately a reflection of the underlying reality of Brahman. In this sense, everything we experience can be seen as a kind of pointer or signpost that can lead us towards a deeper understanding of the nature of reality.”
    ===========================================================
    Despite this, everything we experience is IMAGINED as an expression or manifestation of Brahman. In other words, all the objects and phenomena we encounter in the world around us are ultimately a reflection of the underlying reality of Brahman. In this sense, everything we experience can be IMAGINED as a kind of pointer or signpost that can lead us towards a deeper understanding of the nature of reality.

  3. Not quite sure what point you are making here, Shishya.

    If it is a semantic one, I think you will find as many positive connotations of the word ‘imagine’ as negative ones. The phrase ‘it can be seen’ is a very common one, rarely intended to be taken literally.

    The point I was making is that, if ChatGPT is able to sift the entire Internet in order to summarize a topic, then a list of the sources that it used would be very useful – one could go to those sources oneself and see what the actual writers/teachers said. This could be far quicker than trying to track down those sources for oneself.

  4. For the record folks, I’m the other Rick, not Rick the item-passer.

    [A (ChatGPT) says]: “everything we experience is seen as an expression or manifestation of Brahman. In other words, all the objects and phenomena we encounter in the world around us are ultimately a reflection of the underlying reality of Brahman.”

    [Dennis says] “I challenge the words ‘expression’ and ‘manifestation’ – it is rather our own minds that superimpose name and form on what is actually only Brahman.”

    In his book “The Advaita Worldview”, Anantanand Rambachan gives his take on the aptness of seeing the world as an expression of Brahman and not merely as a symptom of ignorance:

    “It is unfortunate that some interpreters of the Advaita tradition have used the world’s dependent status to enthusiastically explain it away. Too much energy has been expended in traditional Advaita metaphysics in establishing the so-called unreality, falsity, and deceptive character of the world. Ignorance is a human characteristic because of which one fails to apprehend the non-difference of the world from brahman. Ignorance is overcome when we understand the world to be the indefinable expression of brahman. The world is a celebrative expression of brahman’s fullness, an overflow of brahman’s undiminishing limitlessness. Its value is derived from the fact that it partakes of the nature of brahman even though, as it is a finite process, it can never fully express brahman. The world gains its value from the fact that it is an expression of brahman and ultimately non-different in nature from brahman.”

    For an argument by another contemporary Advaitin, based in part on the philosophy of Plotinus and the Upanishads, in favor of the idea that at the very least for the welfare of our natural environment the world can and should be understood as ‘a sacred place’, a manifestation of the Divine (call it what you will), see M. Vasudevacharya’s (aka Michael Comans) book “The Maker and the Material”.

  5. Hi Rick,

    Interesting points, and I can certainly see how this position can be maintained. I am guided by two key aspects, as you will have realized. In the background, as it were, is the fact that Brahman is changeless, does not create, manifest or transform etc. And the primary teaching of adhyAsa and vAchArambhaNa shruti makes it clear that not seeing the world as Brahman is a mental error.

    As you know from the long discussions on the ‘disappearance of the world’ a couple of years ago, I certainly do not say that the world is an illusion!

    If ChatGPT is winning points against me, I really will have to give up writing! 😉

    Best wishes,
    Dennis

  6. Hi Dennis,

    As Anand points out, Advaita commentators seem to think that having a relationship with the world is problematic without considering the uniqueness of the Brahman-world relationship articulated in the Upanishads.

    One can plausibly argue, I think, that Shankara’s problem of how the eternal and unchanging Self or Brahman can change into passing and transitory things without losing eternality and unchangeability is really a pseudo-problem. If Brahman is the inexhaustible source of whatever there can be, which is what’s meant by saying that Brahman is all, then all change is within Brahman, so to say, and it doesn’t affect Brahman’s reality. Nor does change mean a transformation of Brahman’s essential nature, as such, from one thing to another. This essence is inexhaustible and it’s not at all the case that only a finite quantity of it is available to accomplish a finite number of things. So transformation of a part, speaking metaphorically, of this essence into all things of this world having a variety of qualities and characteristics does not mean that it altogether ceases to be Sat-chit-ananda.

    This was already recognized in the Upanishads. As is said in the Brihadaranyaka (V.1.1), ‘This is full, that is full, from fullness fullness proceeds. If we take away the fullness of fullness even fullness then remains.’ To think that change would mean the transformation of Brahman from one kind of reality to another is to hypostatize Brahman as an entity with definite characteristics, which can be marked off as a thing different from everything else, while the main burden of Upanishadic thought, when it says such things as ‘Brahman is not this, not that’ and ‘Brahman is everything’ seems to me an attempt to wean us away from such habits of thought.

    Cheers

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