LIBERATION

“Let go of the past! Let go of the future! Let go of the present and cross over to the farther shore of existence. With your mind wholly liberated, you shall come no more to birth and death.”

Dhammapada.

NEO ADVAITA

Liberation is yet another word that carries many connotations and can mean all sorts of things.

Foe example, I know of one non-dual teacher who said that now he is liberated,  he can buy that Lamborghini he always wanted. Also find a younger girlfriend.

Some say that enlightenment is the event in time when they are no longer seeking.

The problem is,  people ‘end seeking’ for all sorts of reasons, and some may even sincerely believe that they have come to the end of the path.

Others may end their spiritual search because it sets them apart from ‘seekers’.

ADVAITA VEDANTA

Ramakrishna, an Indian sage and a famous mystic of 19th-century India, said that the fundamental obstacle to liberation was lust and gold. His foremost disciple, Swami Vivekananda, brought his teachings to the West, which led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission. Vivekananda is known as a ‘neo Vedantin’ in traditional Advaita Vedanta circles.

They say that the sense of a person is more like a continuous ‘I’ thought that is present at all times. It is a backdrop or a foundation for all new thoughts to build upon and fall back in to. The ego is like the glue that takes the thoughts and binds them together with the fabricated sense of a person. The ego is the conductor of the orchestra. It thinks that it controls the show, but in reality it doesn’t; the subconscious mind does.

According to Vedanta, there is a relative level of ordinary phenomenal physical experience and an ultimate, absolute level of truth. The relative level acknowledges a world of people (you and me), the material world and such things as morality, right and wrong, justice and equality, truth and delusion, and so on.

Vedanta states that this relative world is a dependent reality. It is real, yes, however in relation to the absolute, it is not because it is ephemeral. In contrast, according to traditional Vedanta, the absolute truth is an infinite, eternal, birth-less, deathless, formless, space-less, action-less, and seamless awareness. This level has no physical attributes. That is why they say it is indescribable. To confuse and mix these two levels, the relative and the absolute, is what can cause problems and misunderstandings, like when one communicates from an absolute level when they should be communicating from a relative level.

They say the paradox is that the absolute encompasses the empirical as well as the level of ignorance that cannot know this, and the ignorance of not knowing this is at the very root of the problem, even though it is a part of the whole. So in essence, these two levels are one because they say that ultimate reality is ‘non-dual.’ You have to speak of two levels to avoid confusion, but the reason for this is that there is an inherent veiling produced by ignorance that hinders us from seeing both realities. They say that there is an inherent projecting process that creates the phenomenal illusions (empirical reality) of maya.

Only true self-knowledge can dispel the ignorance and phenomenal illusions. So they say that it always depends on clearly understanding these two levels, but you can only understand it when you realize that you already are this non-dual truth; you are the knowledge itself.

The very essence of truth, in terms of Vedanta, is a simple equation. Vedanta states that Atman (the self) is Brahman (the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world), but to know the truth one must first find out what is false. On an absolute non-dual level, everything is arising in consciousness, including the words you are reading now. But what arises purely in consciousness also goes through a process before it is formed into language and articulated into words whereby ideas, views, opinions, and judgments are formed. Is Vedanta also saying that what is arising is on an empirical, individual, personal level of consciousness? For example, what is arising for me right now is not also arising for you and vice versa?

From the perspective of Advaita Vedanta, on an ordinary and empirical level it would be said that there may be the appearance of two people with separate minds engaging in a conversation. From an absolute perspective, this manifestation of reality of empirical form is real and not real. It is both real on an empirical level and an illusion.

What appears in thought for one person appears to be in a localized space in their head, but it’s not what appears in the other person’s head. One person is conscious of what is emerging in their space but not in the other’s space. However, Vedanta states that this is not the way it is. From the point of awareness, we are simply objects, and awareness makes no distinction between you or I being separate.

In reality, they say it is just awareness having a conversation with itself. All is non-dual awareness, both subject and object. Whatever arises on the absolute level out of pure awareness is out of infinite space and timelessness. The awareness in one person’s head is the same awareness as in the other person’s head. There is only one awareness. This is what they say, but on a relative level it appears as if it is processed through an individual vessel (physical organism and brain) in a localized appearance of space and time. There is only one awareness, and it is all of us and everything.

They say awareness is the same but the mind streams are not. Your mind stream of thoughts is not the same as mine. There is no becoming non-dual. You have always been non-dual. It is the individual’s ignorance of this fact that doesn’t permit one to know this. Each person’s individual world created by his or her individual mind keeps the illusion of separation intact, if one identifies with it, etc  etc  etc.

However, in Vedanta they don’t use the word ‘one’ since it inherently implies there could be two. That’s the reason for the phrase one without a second, or not two (Advaita).

On the ordinary level of awareness, we are not seen as being non-dual, but two or more. In Advaita Vedanta the process of how a thought, a feeling, or an emotion emerges in the separate self is often explained as whatever thought, feeling, instinct, emotion, or sensation appears to emerge on the surface of one’s memory, conscious mind, subconscious mind, or any other mind. It is all always upon the backdrop, the substratum, of awareness. Infinite and eternal awareness feels and appears to be localized, but it isn’t.

They say this awareness, this borderless, infinite, and eternal substratum, is who we are along with anything that is manifested in this. Whatever thought, feeling, instinct, emotion, or sensation that appears can be either witnessed like a passing cloud or intercepted and grabbed hold of like a fish caught in the ocean.

Thoughts, sensations, and emotions can be like mini whirlpools with a vacuum current that suck the person’s attention and focus into it. When this happens, it feels like the person having the thought is restricted, compacted, and localized. Then the thought, sensation, feeling, emotion, and instinct are translated and mediated by the person’s experiences, beliefs, opinions, knowledge, or ignorance and is communicated through the individual vessel (egoic sense of self), such as the appearance of an individual person named Jack to another individual person named Jill. This process happens in the same way that water is poured through a funnel. The purity of the funnel will determine how clear and accurate the translation is of the message that arises. On an absolute level, Jack and Jill are one and the same, because in essence they are the exact same awareness. What happens next is the root of all of the problems because the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that arise in awareness are believed to be real and to belong to the individual.

When this happens, when one believes they are a separate mind, a separate person, they also believe that the thoughts arising belong to them; that they are the author of these thoughts, and thus are cemented to the thoughts like glue. It is like a radio believing it is the singer of the song that is being played on it. It is a false identification. It is wrongfully labeled in the mind as being my thought, my experience, my memory, my emotion, suffering, pain, depression, anxiety, fear, isolation, and so forth. We don’t realize that this thought, feeling, experience, and memory does not belong to anyone at all, no more than the sky or the air that we breathe.

In "liberation", they say that it is understood that there never was a problem, except for the problem of ignorance and delusion, and that there isn’t an ‘us’ or any one person that the memories occur to. These memories are mental karmic images—pictures and impressions that are recorded with emotions associated and built into them. Like a picture with an emotional soundtrack engraved upon it. What happens is that these memories, with their built in emotions, get labeled by the mind as who one is. The mind believes that it is the karmic images, and as such forms an idea of who one is in the present based on these collective memories.

The root cause of the illusion of the personal sense of self is the belief that there is an ‘us’ and an ‘I’ or a ‘me’ in the first place. All of these memories are built on a false belief, a false assumption, and a false foundation; a base that was externally imposed upon us through our society, our education, our conditioning, trance-inducing suggestions, our parents, our DNA, physical genetics, etc. The belief in existing as a separate individual is self-manufactured and created by our imaginations, our beliefs, and our memories, which in reality never existed. Consequently, who we think we are as a separate person is an erroneous imagined thought, a false belief.

They say that this is the original sin—sin meaning ‘mistake’ or ‘missing the mark’ out of ignorance. This is because the mind is the mechanism, the tool and the software by which we create, register, and store these memories (samskaras) in the brain and the body (the hard drive) as the ego self.

There are literal neural pathways created to access these memories with a big capital ‘I’ label. This mind instrument, when operated through the ego, is unreliable as it selectively colors and taints some of these experiences to suit itself. Thus the mind takes snippets of experiences or imprints and stores them for retrieval at another time, assuming that ‘all you are’ is your memories. When this is understood, this sandcastle in the sky known as Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So will over time collapse like a house of cards. The real substratum will be seen for the very first time as who you truly are (not your mind or your body). It will be understood that all other factors and beliefs are false, unreliable, and irrelevant.

What will become more important is the present moment, not the past memories or future imaginations. It may take a long time to make these unbinding, since these psychic imprints and memories are very powerful and have taken years, even lifetimes, to create.

THERAVADA BUDDHISM

As far as non duality is concerned, the Buddha didn't say to seek some sort of divine union with the absolute, as with yoga but said,

“In the seen, there is only the seen,  ^[2].
in the heard, there is only the heard,
in the sensed, there is only the sensed,
in the cognized, there is only the cognized.
Thus you should see that
indeed there is no thing here;
this, Bahiya, is how you should train yourself.
Since, Bahiya, there is for you
in the seen, only the seen,
in the heard, only the heard,
in the sensed, only the sensed,
in the cognized, only the cognized,
and you see that there is no thing here,
you will therefore see that
indeed there is no thing there.
As you see that there is no thing there,
you will see that
you are therefore located neither in the world of this,
nor in the world of that,

nor in any place

betwixt the two.

This alone is the end of suffering."

Continue to Part 11