The point of Brahman

One can very well argue that what is the point of knowing the Brahman?

There are human cares and concerns which are more immediate.

Health, survival, reproduction, money.

Indeed these are more pressing concerns.

Then can Brahman, help us with these pursuits?

And indeed since Brahman is all powerful can't he take care of these rather small concerns?

To this it can only be argued that indeed Brahman is the doer of all things.

It is the being in all beings.

However, knowledge of him will not make all beings direct their efforts towards you.

All the knowledge of it can do is this.

Knowledge of it will make you feel truly home in this world.

Just as a home is  a place where you can be yourself, you don't have to fight, you don't have to pretend.

Knowing Brahman you realize that the whole world is same as you and hence you are afraid of nothing.

Knowledge of it can only give peace and oneness with the universe.

The Spirit

The spirit is our connection to the universe.

Call it spirit or Atman or Brahman, or simply just I am.

The current scientific worldview makes us disconnected from the world.

It posits consciousness as a fragile highly complicated mechanism which is but an accident in a lifeless universe.

In reality, it is extremely simple and complicated, that which cannot be simplified further and the most fundamental force in the world.

It is also extremely solid and more stable than anything else in the world.

Realizing the spirit we find that we are not disconnected from the universe.

We are intricately linked with the very core of the world.

We are the very basis of the world. The force that holds it together.

Not an accidental spark in a lifeless world but a wave of a great ocean.

The ocean in which the universe appears and disappears as but a blip.

Neti Neti

Neti-Neti is an advanced meditation technique to discover your essence.

What is known as the self or Atma.

In this technique see everything in and around you.

Anything that you can see or perceive is not you.

Here seeing does not refer to just seeing through the eyes, it refers to all ways of perceiving.

For example emotions can be felt but not seen.

In this way remove all the things that are seen as not you.

After removing all the things that are seen as not you what remains is the real you.

Thus whatever you see is not you, whatever you feel is not you.

It is not an intellectual exercise but something that is done with the whole being, invoking all the senses and ways of perception.

Being and becoming

At our core we are the eternal, changeless now (or consciousness or Brahman)

Since birth we have been told that we should be doing this or doing that.

Strive towards becoming this or that.

However, we are already fully complete as we are.

At our core nothing can change.

Being and becoming are like two ends of the same line with the mind in middle.

When mind hankers after something it struggles in the field of becoming.

When becoming is complete mind comes to the being and relaxes there.

Soon enough however a new becoming attracts the mind and takes it away from being.

In Vedanta, it is said don't be this or that just be.

Be as you are.

The moment of now

The moment of now is the same as Brahman.

In the individual it reflects as being as I am.

All of the activity that takes place does so in the current moment, the moment of now.

Feeling "I am", bring me immediately to the now.

Now is different from past and present. Now is the place where everything happens.

Past and present are in imagination and memory.

Now has the three characteristics attributed to God: Omniscience, Omnipresent and Omnipotent.

Dissecting God

We imagine that god  is a giant entity who is running the show of the universe with his great power.

In reality God is on the same level as us tiny humans.

He is in fact as he is in the puniest of insects.

He exists as is in all living things and is as powerful (or powerless) wise (or stupid) good (or evil) as they are.

Lets see how this mundaneness of God can be reconciled with the all powerful being of mythology.

The characteristics of God are: Omniscient Omnipresent and Omnipotent

This all fits if you consider God as a distributed system.

Your consciousness is part of God, which although being part is also same as the whole.

This means that. the characteristics of consciousness are such that if you add two consciousnesses you still get one consciousness.

Although consciousness is apparently divided among various organisms when all of them are destroyed it will remain as the one it is.

Consciousness is not a material thing.

In the material world 1 + 1 = 2.

In the immaterial world of consciousness it is rather 0 + 0 = 0  (or infinity + infinity = infinity)

And maybe this is why in Buddhism consciousness is refereed to as shunyata (or zeroness).

While in Hinduism it is referred to as Brahman (or the infinite)

Thus god having divided itself into small consciousnesses animates each living being.and is attached to their joys and sorrows.

Seen as a distributed system now the characteristics of God make sense.

Omnipresence: In the absence of consciousness nothing can be.

Omniscient: In the absence of consciousness nothing can happen.

Omnipotent: Without the power of consciousness nothing can happen.

Although seen as three different powers in reality all three powers in fact boil down to one thing.

There is just one living being who has split up into the multitude. Without this being nothing is nothing arises and quite simply there is nothing.

All that happens whether seen as good or evil is as he wills it.

The third eye

The Hindu god Shiva is shown with three eyes.

Two of the eyes are as in normal humans. The third eye is in the middle of the forehead.

Unlike the two eyes which see external objects the third eye sees inward.

The symbolism of this imagery is quite beautiful.

The third eye is present in us humans, however it lies dormant.

The third eye essentially is the power to see your body and thoughts and emotions as an object as any other physical object in the world is seen with the physical eyes.

To be able to observe thought and feeling without getting attached to it.

This seeing is of course not visual, this seeing is more of a feeling.

Vipassana meditation is directed towards observation of thoughts and emotions. Regular practice of it leads to the waking up of the third eye.

When the third eye of Shiva opens the world is destroyed.

What this means is that the third eye is fully awakened then consciousness is separated from the body and from the mind.

When this happens the false world of illusion is destroyed.

A person who can do this unceasingly is said to be enlightened.

Pure and commingled consciousness

The nature of the world we see around us can be explained by the commingling of the consciousness with the objects that appear in it.

In consciousness appear all objects, hence it is the ground of being. It is known as the Brahman in Vedanta, the basis space of all there is.

In Buddhism it is also known as void or emptiness. Much like the concept of space in physics, the emptiness or vacuum is the very ground of things it is in which other objects appear.

Much like the vacuum of physics however the vacuum hardly remains pure i.e. completely empty.

Indeed in physics in a vacuum matter and energy is spontaneously created all the time.

Pure consciousness does not remain pure and gets commingled with the thought forms that arise in it.

This is similar to how elements behave in nature, most elements in nature cannot remain in pure form but get attached to something or the other as soon as they are allowed in contact with them.

More on Attachment

Attachment is one of the most intriguing phenomenons.

Pure awareness without attachment is free and joyous.

However awareness can hardly remain in its pure state.

It has a very strong tendency to attach.

Most live their whole life without even knowing about the possibility of pure awareness without attachment.

The deepest attachment is of course to the body.

Attaching to the body pure awareness becomes a distinct person separate from a hostile universe.

Why does pure awareness which is brahman itself attach so firmly?

Location of the self

It is commonly accepted that I am located inside the body.

However, this is not really true. First there is unattached awareness in which various objects arise and body is one of the objects of awareness.

Thus first awareness exists, then various objects arise in it.

One of them is the body.

In fact awareness can be considered to be like a field with no particular location in space.

However curiously awareness does not exist in pure form for long and soon the process of attachment begins.

As soon as attachment to body begins, the pure field becomes a living being.

As soon as I am the body idea is established, the formless, spaceless, indestructible consciousness now has become a vulnerable creature, located in space and time

Koshas (Or the various bodies)

In Vedanta it is said that a living being has five bodies. As an empirical science anybody can experience these bodies. If you cannot experience these bodies then trust your experience more than the scriptural doctrine.

Lower three bodies.

The physical body (annamaya kosha): This needs no explaining.

The breathing body (pranamaya kosha): Breathing is said to be a separate body in and on itself. By focusing on it carefully we can discern it more clearly.

The mind (manomaya kosha): This is the field that generates thoughts and emotions.

Upper two bodies

Focus body (Vijanmaya kosha):

Now here is the interesting part. This is the ability to focus and perceive things without attachment to them.

Most people cannot perceive thoughts without getting attached to them, why?

Because this requires the use of the focus body.

To observe without attachment is the gist of it.

This body lies withered away in humans like a muscle that has never been used.

All efforts of meditation are directed towards awakening this body.

Once this body is awakened the process of attachment becomes extremely clear.


Bliss body (Anandmaya kosha):

This body is very rarely felt. It is activated in a mystical experience.

Most spiritual seekers chase the Bliss body. They want a permanent high, a state of forever mystic union.

What they should be seeking is the fourth body, the ability to discriminate.

Bliss is temporary but knowledge one gained is permanent

(well as so long as the body lasts. For there is no knowledge in Brahman))

Beyond the five bodies lies Brahman the ocean of consciousness. When the light of brahman is filtered through these five sheaths then a human arises from the Brahman.

In and of itself Brahman does not know its nature since all it knows is "I am". It is only through a functioning Vijanmaya kosha that the Brahman can perceive itself.

Mind

Anything in vedanta refers to something that can be experienced.

Thus mind is something that we experience everyday. 

The mind is the mechanism that generates  thoughts and feelings.

The mind generates thoughts and feelings randomly and incessantly.

I (or consciousness) then attaches to some of these thoughts and feelings by giving them attention.

Fed by the energy of the consciousness these thoughts and feelings then grow larger.

Over time these thoughts and feeling form a personality.

All this is due to the attachment of the consciousness to the thoughts and feelings.

In the final measure consciousness is the power behind all things.

Awakening happens when consciousness realizes its own nature and is able to see this mechanism clearly at any point in time.

Does consciousness realize its own nature with the help of the mind?

Science vs Vedanta

Vedanta much like science is an empirical discipline.

And so we start with experience. The ground of all experience is consciousness of I am.

The first primacy is of consciousness other things then appear in it.

This is my experience this is your experience and this experience is of the scientist.

Consciousness is the basis of everything on which other things arise and dissolve.

When consciousness disappears other things also disappear.

As an empiricist even the dream world is real, since I can experience it.

The reality to anything is given by consciousness, in its absence nothing will appear.

Not atoms not energy not space.

The current prevailing scientific worldview is that the world is made up of atoms and space and energy.

In this worldview life is a random permutation of atoms and so is consciousness.

This is because of one fundamental error, to agree to the empirical method we must agree that there is an experiencer. The primacy of the experiencer  (and of consciousness) must be accepted.

The fundamental nature of universe is thus not atoms or energy but consciousness itself.

Attachment

In pure being there is perfection.

There is no desire nor is anything incomplete.

But this not our state, why?

Because we have become attached, although pure in myself as soon as thoughts and emotions arise I attach to them.

If I attach to negative thoughts negative emotion I become a sad person.

If I attach to positive thoughts and positive emotions I become a happy person.

Attachment to good actions and thoughts leads to being a good person.

Attachment to bad actions and deeds leads to being an evil person.

We are always attached to something or another, and fail to see ourselves for what we are.

Vedanta and empiricism

Vedanta is all about empiricism.

Do not accept anything that you cannot experience for yourself.

It is all about observing all your experience in detail and finding out more about the process of experiencing itself.

Looking in minute detail at the actual process of consciousness and of life is meditation.

Going deeper and deeper till you cannot go any deeper.

When you cannot go any deeper then you reach the self.

The self, brahman, atman, consciounsess, ground of being, all there is.

The multiplicity of I am

In Vedanta it is said that Brahman is one.

How is this possible?

We have the murderers and the saints, the good and the bad.

If we are all really Brahman and Brahman is one why this difference.

Is Brahman the same in Hitler and Gandhi?

Here is what they actually mean by the singularity of I am

In school, I was taught in chemistry class that water is the same whether it is from a pond or from your tap or from a puddle.

On the face of it, it appears to be a ridiculous statement. Water from the tap is clean from the puddle is muddy and water from a pond is green.

Clearly they are as different as different can be.

Well the chemist would answer. Water is the same, the differences are only due to things that are not water.

And so it is. The same water becomes the tap water and the sewage water, despite being the very same substance.

In the purest essence there is not even an atom of difference between Hitler and Gandhi.

I am is the only constant

In the Vedanta there is the changeless contrasted with the transient.

Brahman and Maya.

Shiva and Shakti.

These words have become obscured by time and evoke in our mind images of legendary beings and far away realities.

The reality behind these things is far more immediate and at work constantly in our mundane life.

It is as simple as say the force of gravity that acts on us day in and day out, while we pay little attention to it.

The changeless is I am.

The feeling of I am, the sense of being never changes.

It is the ground of all activity and experience.

The eternal changeless.

The activities and experiences keep on changing, this is the field of Maya.

Shiva is I am.

He is the power that animates all activities.

For indeed without I am no experience can appear, no activity can occur.

Everything else is Shakti, the transient forms they all appear in I am and merge in I am.

Thus Shakti has no existence without the eternal I am.