The phenomenon of "I" - the Supreme Self

Reproduced from
https://tomajjavidtash.com/2015/03/12/the-immortal-one/

Two simple propositions, taken from Vedantic philosophy, summarize the whole of truth and the way to attain it. One is from the verse 2:16 of Bhagavad Gita and the other is from Upanishads:

1) The Real cannot not be; the unreal cannot be.

2) That which begins must end.

We needed nothing more if we were intuitive rather than discursive and fond of intellectual currencies, beliefs. All religions and mythologies express the same thing, and all philosophies and sciences strive to grasp it.

These two statements, complementary in nature, must be realized. To go a little in depth we can add the following:

If the Real cannot not be, then all things that begin and end are unreal though apparent. And that which is unreal does not exist whether it is apparent or not; it can exist only as appearance.

Reflecting on things that begin and end we see that there is nothing that is excluded except the one for whom things begin and end. Standing here I see that my body is totally different from the body with which I was born; all those cells have already died and these too will die. Thus, I cannot be the body; because if I were I could not possibly say that I am the body! Change is meaningful only against an unchanging background. Change which means distinction and differentiation is possible only for an agent who remains the same throughout these changes so to be able to perceive them as change as such. I can see two different things if and only if the eye that sees the first is the same eye that sees the second so to establish their difference.

Also I cannot be the mind since all the contents, thoughts and emotions, change overtime, more so overnight; they begin and end while I subsist. I am the same “I” that I was when I was 5 while nothing about it, including body mind, emotions and personality, remains the same; they all begin and end while the “I” remains the “I.” This enduing I has no personality, because personality, the collection of thoughts and emotions and inclinations, changes, it begins and ends, while the “I” subsists. The “I” is the bearer of personality, the substratum upon which personality is superimposed. Thus, personality too cannot be real; it is an artifact of the impermanent flux we call the world.

Everything begins and ends except the “I” for whom things begin and end, the witness “I” or the I-witness if you will. The “I” cannot not be. When I, as this I, say that I die I really mean the personality and its ego, its thoughts and emotions and body; but these were not real to begin with since they always began and ended even while this “I” is said to be living. The “I” still remains in the world but only perceived as this I or that I, as you or someone else. It is essentially the I in all of us that is the Real component, for it cannot not be. Notice that if I say “but there was a time when no one was but the world was” it is because I first am. This world that I claim to exist without me is the world known in and through the I; it is the world in I and not I in the world. It is the world in the eye of the I. Without the “I” I cannot posit the independent existence of the world, hence I must not only precede the world but also subsist in it. Notice that whenever and wherever the “I” is, the world too is; and whenever and wherever the “I” is not, the world too is not.

The subsisting “I” is the Real and also inexpressible One. To say anything about it is to hide it because all sayings and thoughts begin and end; they cannot be Real. The “I” is that which expresses; it cannot be pronounced, for it is He who must do the pronouncing. The Immortal One is the Inexpressible.

My friend, this “I” who is the immortal One and no one’s I is nothing but the I of God which is the same as the eye of God, for God is pure seeing, pure Being, pure bliss. Realize this and be free of all conditioning: You were never born; how can you ever die? How can you not be!

Swami arathi

Essence of advaitha vedantam

God became man so that he could 'know' Himself

reproduced from

https://tomajjavidtash.com/2015/04/09/time-consciousness/

Time is nothing but the ecstasy of consciousness, that is consciousness experiencing itself as conditioned and partitioned. It is this partitioned and fragmented consciousness that appears to us as diverse experiencing subjects. In reality there is only one subject, but this subject cannot experience itself unless it objectifies itself into the manifold of its own infinite possibilities. Each person is one possibility for the being of one and the same consciousness.

Consciousness undergoes the same self-objectification into multitudes in the case of dream experience: In a dream one and the same consciousness, that of the dreaming subject, projects itself into a world of diverse objects and experiencing subjects. All the conscious agents that appear in our dreams are the possibilities inherent within the dreaming consciousness. It belongs to the nature of consciousness to project itself outwardly in such a way that it appears to itself as something fragmented and embedded inside a world as if it were only a part of that world. In our dream we appear as a person among others inside an infinitely extended world of objects, but all persons and objects are one and the same consciousness, only appearing to itself as if it were outside itself. Consciousness inside itself is the dreamless sleep, but consciousness outside itself is the world. It is in this sense that I see the world as the ecstasy of consciousness.

Creation is an expression of God in an attempt to 'know' Himself

Reproduced from
https://tomajjavidtash.com/2015/04/20/the-inexpressible-reality/

“We did not come to return; we have come to rise above.”

Man is a deep well connecting the oblivion of Godhead to the personified God. He is not something suspended in the abyss; he is the abyss itself. He seeks God, not knowing he is the very ground upon which God stands. The Absolute is void, and man fills this void by relative utterances of hopes and desires. Man seeks to be enlightened, not knowing that he is the light of the world.

Know thyself?! What is to be known, and who is to know it?

Ask yourself: Who is in there? Who is looking out into this world of empty appearances? And who is looking in? No “I” is to be found. Why? Because the “I” is the one always looking. How can anything be found where the only thing that is is seeking?

God became man so to find Himself as God, and yet in this becoming He lost himself in the midst of himself. He was a whole that has become a part. Dear, don’t give too much thought to this, for to think is to make apart. You have become too partitioned; your way back is to accept you are but a paradox.

God is never known if He doesn’t fall into pieces that can reflect His face. God remained unknown even to himself unless He becomes the other, the not-God, man.  He becomes whole precisely through becoming partitioned. Man isn’t the fallen Adam; man is the fallen God.

Sit back, relax; this world has never come into being, neither did your beloved personhood. Look again deep into your own eyes and see the bottomless well that you are. Don’t be the ocean wave seeking its own source; the wave and the ocean are never apart; it is all water. Zoom in and you see only the wave, the separation; zoom out and you see only the ocean. This god of yours and its creation are akin to the ocean and its waves. How can one be without the other? They are one and the same.

You are crucified by your own beliefs. You are bound by your own bonds. Use this body only to surf this life. The surfer who thinks he is surfing the wave little knows that waves too are surfing him. Surfers don’t last; waves never cease to be. You are that wave and not the surfing body; you are the ocean itself.

These words too are nothing but waves; don’t dwell in them, for they too shall be forgotten. Words need meaning but meaning doesn’t need words. You too need no words, for you are that which is meant throughout all empty appearances. You are the inexpressible Reality.

Zero and infinity - two sides of the same coin

Reproduced from
https://tomajjavidtash.com/2015/04/09/wholes-parts/

The whole is always infinitely greater than the sum total of its parts. Thus, the content of the whole, God, becomes both immanent and transcendent with regard to the manifested content.

One such example is the real line in mathematics. We know from Real Analysis that the interval between numbers 0 and 1 has the same size as the interval between 0 and 1000 or the interval between 0 and infinity! For our purpose we can pick the interval from 0 to 1. Every number between 0 and 1 is a finite number; in fact they are all smaller than 1. But as the length of the interval is infinite, any amount of addition among the numbers within the interval is always infinitely smaller than the length of the interval. Still fascinating is that despite the essential inadequacy of the parts in reconstructing the whole, the size of the interval between any two numbers within a larger interval is always the same size as the larger interval itself. For instance, there are the same amount of numbers existing between 0 and 0.00001 as there are between 1 and 10000.

In number theory we see that the distance between any two infinitely close numbers is always infinitely large, no matter how close the numbers become to one another. Number being itself something finite can never fill the gap between itself and another number. In light of this, every atom is essentially infinitely big as every universe is infinitely small. In terms of size, an atom and the universe are of the same size. Yes then, size matters; but it is either zero or infinite. But we also know that zero and infinity are the two sides of the same coin; one doesn’t exist without the other. Nothingness is God’s back. The choice is ours: Live in His face or die behind His back.

The One Remains, the Many Change..

https://mahaperiyavaa.wordpress.com/2016/08/25/the-one-remains-the-many-change/

There was a discussion with Swamigal about how famous English poets like Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson had expressed the principles of Vedanta in many places! I showed Swamigal an example of how Keats, though considered to be a Romantic poet, had spoken about Adwaita.

Swamigal replied: “Keats and Shelley should not be dubbed solely as ‘Sensual Poets’ (phrase used by Him). You gave an example of Keats. Has Shelley also spoken about Adwaita?”

I started to think but could not recollect.

Swamigal gave me a clue, “How about Shelley’s work in the poem Elegy?”

I still could not recall!

Swamigal Himelf continued, enjoying the beauty of Shelley’s words:

“The One remains, the Many change
Heaven’s Light forever Shines, Earth’s shadows Fly
… Life like a dome of many-coloured Glass
Stains the White Radiance of Eternity!”

“Is there a better way to explain the Adwaitha’ Oneness and the Illusion of Dwaitha’s Divisions?!”, said Swamigal.

*****

Narrated by the Supremely Blessed, Ra Ganapathi Anna.

224th birthday of that famous poet Percy Shelley who was born on August 4th in the year 1792 in England.

Shankara.