Tag Archives: person

Q.536 Experience of death

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Q: My Guru, Nisargadatta, often leads me to believe that when we die, we bring absolutely nothing with us. We will have no form, no color, no memory of our past life. And yet, thousands of people over history have claimed to enter heaven and see relatives, and see their luminous bodies as well as landscapes, etc.

Near death experiences seem to clearly oppose what the Guru teaches, and yet thousands have said how vivid, unforgettable and undeniable these experiences are. According to Nisargadatta, it seems I will only hang in space as Unknowingness and Nothingness for all eternity. I find this quite fear-producing, disturbing and wonder what feed-back you might give.

A: Advaita is a teaching that has various ‘interim’ explanations, which are given to seekers at different ‘levels’. Ideally you would ally yourself with a living, traditional teacher who would take you from the ‘beginner’ level to the ‘advanced’, probably over many years.

The final truth is that there is only Brahman (Consciousness). The world and all of the people – past, present and future – are not real in themselves; they are simply name and form of Brahman. A ‘person’ appears to exist as a separate entity because Consciousness ‘animates’ the inert body-mind. Who-you-really-are is that Consciousness and NOT the body-mind. Now and always, you are that Consciousness. It is an interim teaching that speak about karma and reincarnation.

(Note that Nisargadatta, Ramana and Vivekananda, as well as all the modern ‘satsang’ teachers who travel around giving short talks and Q&A session are not traditional teachers. They often have some good and helpful things to say but unfortunately also frequently cause confusion. You should also note that Nisargadatta uses the word ‘awareness’, when practically all other teachers use ‘Consciousness’. That, alone causes much confusion! Also, you should pay no credence to so-called NDEs. Modern science has far more reasonable explanations for them, such as flood of neurotransmitters as the brain functions fail.)

The brain and consciousness

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Original questioner, a Doctor, training in psychiatry: What does the brain do after we die, how long does it stay conscious?

A (Marcus Geduld, Shakespearean director, computer programmer, teacher, writer, likes dinosaurs.) Answered Nov 24, 2014 : Nothing happens to it. It’s dead. ‘Switched off.’ That’s basically the definition of death—when your brain totally stops functioning. This question is kind of like asking how long a radio keeps on playing when it’s switched off.

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Moksha and the ‘person’

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Kratu Nanadan, a knowledgeable friend I met in Bangalore through another friend, has made some lucid comments in all aspects of Indian philosophy, including the Puranas, which he shared with me and others. The following is an example:

When a ‘person’ reaches mokṣa, there is no more that ‘person’; there was no person, to begin with. The whole thing, including reaching mokṣa was a story that never happened. It was not even a story, and it was nobody’s story. As the well-known analogy puts it, it is like picking up a handful of ocean water and finding that the ocean’s blueness is absent in it. There is no karma, and all that is is the nondual Ātman-Brahman.

The words of the Taittarīyopaniṣat echo such a realization in many ways, one of them being: “He is not agitated as ‘why did I not do good deeds; why did I do bad deeds’. Having thus known (the Ātman), he elates/invigorates himself, and verily sees both (bad and good karma) as (Param) ātman. Thus, the upaniṣat.”—Taittarīyopaniṣat, Ānandavallī, VI, ii.

——Karma goes absent with the dawn of Ātman.

Q.510 Direct Path vs Traditional – Pt. 3

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Part 3 – Free-will (continued)

Q: I reflected a bit more about the logic I used in my previous email. In one sentence I said: “the person has no free will, because there is no person.” Rephrasing it, the logic goes: There is no person -> therefore, the person has no free will. I looked at it a bit more, and I realized that if the person truly doesn’t exist, then it doesn’t make sense to talk about ANY qualities about something non-existent, not just free will. So I think a more accurate and targeted line of questioning would be: ‘okay so the person is non-existent, but I am very obviously present, aware, and seeing these words right here and right now, so let me investigate the nature of myself.’ So this would lead to some form of self-inquiry. I guess in a way this is the essence of the direct path, to take a stand as awareness, and investigate your beliefs against the data of direct experience (in this case, the belief that I am a separate consciousness).

Nowhere in that line of questioning does free will come up!

I also found these quotations from Rupert Spira and Greg Goode about the topic of free will, maybe you’ll find them interesting:

“The idea that we have the freedom to choose whether or not to become entangled with thoughts and feelings is a concession to the separate self we believe and feel ourself to be. From the separate self’s point of view, it has choice, freedom. If we think we are a separate self, then by definition we feel that we are making choices.

For this reason the teaching says, ‘You have the choice. You have consented to limit yourself. You can choose not to. Choose to disentangle yourself. Make that your first choice in life, to disentangle yourself from the body and the mind and to know yourself as you truly are.’“

– Rupert Spira [https://rupertspira.com/non-duality/blog/philosophy/the_disentanglement_of_the_self]

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Q.509 Direct Path vs Traditional – Pt. 2

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Part 2 – Free Will

Q: We talked earlier about the difference between the direct path and the traditional path.

I was looking through the free will section in your book Back to the Truth and I found this quotation by Franics Lucille:

We are entirely conditioned; therefore, there is no free will. It appears as though we exercise free choice, but in fact we are only reacting like automatons, running through the same patterns of our bio-sociological heritage without respite, leading invariably to the same old reactions, like a vending machine dispensing soft drinks in a train station. As individuals, our freedom is illusory, with the exception of the freedom which is ours at each moment to stop taking ourselves for separate individuals and thus putting an end to our ignorance and our suffering.

On the other hand, at the level of our deepest being, everything flows out of our freedom. Every thought, every perception takes birth because we want it to. We cannot understand this at the level of thought, but we can experience it. When we are totally open to the unknown, the personal entity is absent; then we realize that the tangible and intelligible universe arises out of this openness in the eternal present. We want, create and are at every moment everything in the unity of awareness. (Ref. 8)

[Waite, Dennis. Back To The Truth: 5000 Years Of Advaita (p. 76). NBN_Mobi_Kindle. Kindle Edition.]

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Q.496 Karma and subtle body

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Q:

1. If upon the death of a jivan-mukta person, the subtle body dissolves and the person does not have go through the cycle of birth and death, this would imply that my sole motivation for attaining enlightenment should be the liberation of the subtle body that resides inside this gross body (since that is what suffers from one birth to another). Does this not in some way refute the idea of realising myself as the supreme consciousness bliss?

2. How is it that law of karma stops to act only on an enlightened being when in essence we are all liberated from the beginning?

3. On living while following the path of karma yoga, how do I decide what actually is the right thing to do in one’s life assuming I don’t have any desires? What Arjuna did in those days was the traditional work assigned to kshatriyas but in present day, since there is no acceptance of the traditional caste system, how do I come to decide what I should do? As a karma yogi has no desires, does all for the Lord, but the problem is coming to know what is to be done and that too, without any desire or attachment. What occupation should be taken or should one retire as a monk?

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Q.491 Individuality and the world

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Q: Does individuality survive enlightenment? In other words, putting aside any genetic differences, age, etc., would 50 realized people act the same in the same environment? Would they have the same preference for food, clothes, etc?

If not, why not? It seems that If the ego is completely destroyed, and a soul does not exist, and a person is in a permanent state of enlightenment, there wouldn’t be any difference between any of them. (My definition of an ego includes all past experiences.)

In addition, people often say something like, “I always wanted to do that,” or “Deep inside I always knew I would be a doctor or a scientist,” etc. What is that? Where does this “knowing” come from? Is it just an ego playing its games? 

Thank you, I appreciate your help. Your books are really great. I’ve enjoyed reading them.

A: Good questions! But, before I answer them, you have to always bear in mind that questions like these refer to the appearance, not the reality; vyavahAra, not paramArtha. In reality, no one has ever been born; there is no ‘creation’; there is only Brahman. (I’m assuming from what you say that you have read ‘A-U-M’, in which case you will be happy with this!) So the answers are academic, in line with traditional Advaita, but are all mithyA in reality.  Continue reading →

Q. 482 What happens after videha mukti?

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Q: When the jIva removes the ignorance of his real nature, and realizes Atman is his Real unchanging Self, if the body dissolves, what happens afterwards?

If there is no further birth, do we then remain as Absolute, without name and form, without knowing anything other than pure Self? Is it like space all being uniform without any form? Is there nothing that is known? Surely it doesn’t remain In an absolute ‘stateless state’ of no Knowing?

A: There have been a couple of questions around this before – see http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/q_and_a/q_and_a44.htm#q263 for example.

Your question is based on a misunderstanding. At the empirical level, there is indeed a ‘person’ who may or may not become enlightened. If he/she does gain Self-knowledge, then clearly the outlook of the person for the remainder of his/her ‘life’ is going to be different.

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pratibandha-s – part 8 of 10

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Read Part 7

Yogic Advaita

This is a term, which I had not encountered before, coined by Fort in Ref. 200. He uses it to refer to those teachers and texts that incorporate elements of sAMkhya and yoga philosophy into their supposedly Advaitic teaching. This applies to texts such as yogavAsiShTha and jIvanmukti viveka, as was already indicated in the discussion on vidyAraNya above. There are also 20 of the later, minor Upanishads that relate to Yoga (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_Upanishads) and there is a danger of referring to these to support ideas that are actually alien to traditional Advaita. These ideas are characterized by the notion that Self-knowledge gained through the usual route has to be supplemented by something else before liberation is achieved. Typically, this might be samAdhi or destruction of ego/mind, as discussed above (and below) but even ideas from other traditions might be incorporated. The yogavAsiShTha also has much emphasis on the ‘illusory’ nature of the world. The j~nAnI acts or does not act without any attachment, according to circumstances.

Rather than prArabdha, yogic Advaita tends to refer to vAsanA-s as being the key ‘obstruction’ to mokSha. While we have them, we are bound to the body; once they are purified, we are freed from saMsAra. When destroyed, we gain videha mukti. Continue reading →

pratibandha-s – part 6 of 10

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Read Part 5

The ‘mixture of Atman and mind’

While the body-mind remains alive (i.e. continues to be animated by Consciousness), the person is a mixture, as it were, of both. If I am enlightened, I know that I am really the original Consciousness, Brahman, but I cannot escape the fact that I am also still a jIvAtman, with that same Consciousness reflecting in the intellect. If I am unenlightened, I either do not know about paramAtman or do not believe that this is who I really am. Instead, I identify with body, mind, attributes or functions. I mistakenly superimpose (adhyAsa) the properties of the mithyA body-mind onto the paramAtman.

The same applies even to ‘knowing’. When we say ‘I know’, whether or not we are enlightened, it has to be the reflected ‘I’ that is speaking. Shankara says in his bhAShya on Bhagavad Gita 2.21:

“ …the Self, though verily immutable, is imagined through ignorance to be the perceiver of objects like sound etc. presented by the intellect etc.; in this very way, the Self, which in reality is immutable, is said to be the ‘knower’ because of Its association with the knowledge of the distinction between the Self and non-Self, which (knowledge) is a modification of the intellect and is unreal by nature.” (Ref. 6)

Thus, it can be seen, that this provides an explanation for the fact that I may be enlightened and yet the mind can still be affected by pratibandha-s. It there are none, because the mind was purified prior to enlightenment, then I am a jIvanmukta, enjoying all of the benefits of a mind unsullied by negative emotions. Otherwise, I must continue to perform those sAdhana-s that will eliminate such tendencies before I can reap the ‘fruits’ of enlightenment, j~nAna phalam. Whilst both are still inevitably a ‘mixture’, the one with pratibandha-s still says ‘I’ with a significant element of jIvAtman; the one who has purified the mind says ‘I’ with a predominant element of paramAtman. Continue reading →