[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we have our asks Swami series, we are getting all these literally thousands of questions over the internet from across the world and we're thinking about how do you deal with this?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's sad to ignore all of that and yet you can't write replies to each one separately.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what we decided to do was have this, you know, present a selection of these questions, discuss them, mix them with the questions from the live audience, and take an on a life of its own.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it's very popular.
[SPEAKER_03]: Lots and lots of people tune in to watch this and watch it when it's uploaded later on.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's even bigger, it's got a book of its own already.
[SPEAKER_03]: One in Bengali and one in English.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm a second one on the way.
[SPEAKER_03]: entirely based on what we do here.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, come, there is... Raise your hand if you have a chair next to you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there is a chair there.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what we do here is, some of the questions from the internet audience are presented, Diane will read out those questions, and then we will ask you to raise your hands in the come here to the front, tell us your name and ask a question.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, let's see how it goes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Take it away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning, everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first question comes from a shandan ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the ultimate reality is the non-objectifiable consciousness and it truly permeates all that is, then why do approaches like netty netty which negate everything experienced seem to reject the very present through which this truth is expressed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Shouldn't we be able to recognize the self, not just by negating, but also by seeing through and within this moment?
[SPEAKER_03]: A good question.
[SPEAKER_03]: When we come to...
[SPEAKER_03]: Advaita Vedanta, this question will become inevitable at some point of the other.
[SPEAKER_03]: Have you noticed how difficult the questions have been, I mean, I've been here from the beginning.
[SPEAKER_03]: Of this series and I've noticed how the questions have evolved.
[SPEAKER_03]: The questions have become more and more difficult over the years.
[SPEAKER_03]: More technical, more precise.
[SPEAKER_03]: Good.
[SPEAKER_03]: This question is a good question.
[SPEAKER_03]: See, in Vedanta, we say that there is one ultimate reality.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sanskrit, it is called Bramalan.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bramalan means the limitless existence consciousness place, which is supposed to be everywhere all the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is the one reality that is the essence of this universe.
[SPEAKER_03]: So basically the point is making here is it's everywhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: If it's everywhere, it's in all that the experience, everything that we are experiencing must be that ultimate spiritual
[SPEAKER_03]: In that case, why do we do this Navy Navy thing in Vedanta, this negation, that means it's not the body, it's not the prana, it's not the mind, it's not the intellect and so on and so forth, and then we come to this pure consciousness, this witness consciousness, if to put it very simply, everything is God.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then why go through the whole process of not this, not this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why not just see God directly?
[SPEAKER_03]: You see, if you appreciate the essence of the question, the answer will make sense.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, in spirit you are right.
[SPEAKER_03]: But in practice, it doesn't work like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why doesn't work like that is this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Even if everything is God, we are not seeing anything as God.
[SPEAKER_03]: You see, the question is, why don't you directly see through what is there and see it as God?
[SPEAKER_03]: But we are seeing, we see people, we see places and objects and activities.
[SPEAKER_03]: This word, we don't see God.
[SPEAKER_03]: So just seeing will not work, that's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's something that is stopping us from seeing everything as it is, as the divine reality, as the as Bramhan, as such it done, and whatever you call it, as the absolute, we are not experiencing that, we are not seeing things as they are.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what's something stopping us?
[SPEAKER_03]: This is what stops us, this is called ignorance, just that we don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if we just didn't know that wouldn't be such a big problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: The big problem is not only do we not know, we know wrongly.
[SPEAKER_03]: We, it's not that we do not know everything as God.
[SPEAKER_03]: We know that it is not God.
[SPEAKER_03]: We are quite clear.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wish I were God, but I'm not.
[SPEAKER_03]: I must be honest.
[SPEAKER_03]: That would be the biggest dishonest to say, I am God.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I simply don't feel like God at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I wish all these people where God, but they're just people.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is just the world, how wonderful, beautiful, or maddening, or awful, which just some sort of the world, I don't see anything as God, neither here, nor there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why dualism is actually often more acceptable to people than non-dualism.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dualism means there is a God somewhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't, they are not seeing it, let's say God is in heaven.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, people are willing to believe that.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's much more difficult to say that this is God.
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems utterly non-God.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, what Advaita Vedanta does is, it's called a process of de hypnotization.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is true that Brahman alone exists, there's one spiritual reality, but we have hypnotized ourselves into seeing it as the world and as ourselves, as Jeeva Jagat, Jagat, World, Jeeva, Ascentian Beach, each of us.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what we think we are and that's what we think this world is.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we must de hypnotize ourselves.
[SPEAKER_03]: De hypnotize means negation.
[SPEAKER_03]: what we see here is not the truth.
[SPEAKER_03]: The nati must start here.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like this rope is not appreciated as the rope, the rope is mistaken as a snake.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now in order to see there we can just say, why don't you just dare to receive the rope?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you cannot first of all, you have to say, what you think is the snake is not a snake.
[SPEAKER_03]: Look closely, it's a rope, so that negation, this is not a snake, is essential to appreciate it as a rope.
[SPEAKER_03]: Otherwise what will happen is the man will start looking, he's quite clear, this is a snake, so he'll start looking for a rope elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: not there.
[SPEAKER_03]: To see that snake as so-called snake as a rope, you have to deny, negate the snake.
[SPEAKER_03]: You must dispel the illusion.
[SPEAKER_03]: You must correct the error, then only.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the Mandu Kyo Panishad, it is said, the three states, waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and then they say that the reality is the fourth.
[SPEAKER_03]: And what is the thought, everybody is eager to know, because waking, we understand, this is waking, this our life, dreams also, we understand, deep sleep, we also understand, in the sense, it's nothing, it's blankness, it's dark.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what is this force, which you are calling Brahma, Nathman, pure consciousness, where is it?
[SPEAKER_03]: What is it?
[SPEAKER_03]: We want to know.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell us, and when the Upanishads starts in the seventh month of the month of the Q-Panishad, when it starts talking about the Fourth, about the ultimate reality, about Brahman and Atman, what it does is strange.
[SPEAKER_03]: It says, it is not deep sleep, it is not dreaming, it is not waking, it is not seeing hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, it's not inference, it's not expressible in speech, it's not thinkable by the mind,
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not graspable by our hands or by any of the actions of our motor organs and so on and so forth.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi, Nathi,
[SPEAKER_03]: In the earlier mantras of the Mandu Kyo Kanishk, when you introduced us to the waking state.
[SPEAKER_03]: You just pointed out, this is the waking state, where consciousness turned out towards with the help of the mind and the sense organs, experiences sense objects.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a good working definition of the waking state, right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when you spoke about the dream state, again, you directly said, when consciousness is invertised, you shut down these sense organs, your doorways to the so-called external world, and you remain and generate dreams within the mind and watch those dreams, that's called the dream state.
[SPEAKER_03]: You directly told us, when you're neither seeing the world nor watching dreams, you're just shut down to blankness, that's called the deep sleep state.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, in each of those waking, dreaming, deep sleep,
[SPEAKER_03]: You directly told us what it is, but now when it comes to the so-called fourth pure consciousness, tell us directly, but what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_03]: You're negating those, it's not the waking, not the dreaming, not the deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why are you negating?
[SPEAKER_03]: The question is, is the same question is raised, in the coming trees of Shankarachali, why are you negating?
[SPEAKER_03]: And Shankaracharya says they are very pregnant, little half a sentence, a non-niya-dwaram musty, there is no other door.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the door to enlightenment, to correct the error.
[SPEAKER_03]: The fourth is not some separate thing apart from waking dreaming deep sleep, that which underlies the waking dreaming deep sleep, that which illumines the waking dreaming deep sleep, that which is the essence, the substance, the core of the waking dreaming deep sleep, that is the fourth.
[SPEAKER_03]: not one more thing apart from these three.
[SPEAKER_03]: So basically talking about consciousness in and through the waking dreaming deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you must correct it in order to uncover.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's already there, you're right, it's already there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Notice even in your language in the question, I was listening carefully, can we not directly see through?
[SPEAKER_03]: What did you say?
[SPEAKER_03]: See through?
[SPEAKER_03]: If you're going to see through, you are denying.
[SPEAKER_03]: You are negating.
[SPEAKER_03]: You didn't say, let us just see everything as we are seeing.
[SPEAKER_03]: We will see God, no, you won't.
[SPEAKER_03]: Even you are saying you need to see through.
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember this monk in Haridwar about three decades ago, I remember nearly.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, about two decades ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: He, he was excited about after seeing x-ray plates, medical technology doesn't know much about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was looking at us monks and he says, how much maat maat maat maat maat maat maat maat maat maat rishtti, I see you on each of you.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is how you, the monks, they are, your vision should be like this.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, superman is supposed to have x-ray vision.
[SPEAKER_03]: You penetrate through the clothes, the skin goes straight to the bones, like an x-ray, you can see through, you know, even see through walls and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, if you as a monk's vision should be like not like a vision, monk's vision should be to see through the appearance into the reality.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the reality?
[SPEAKER_03]: Existence consciousness, please.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the appearing as this world that is seeing through?
[SPEAKER_03]: You are right, the question is right, but you have to see through.
[SPEAKER_03]: Seeing the surface will not too.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, seeing through, how do you see through, not with these eyes, with the eye of knowledge.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what the third eye, often in Hindu iconography, you'll see a third eye here, it means eye of knowledge, the eye of insight, the eye of awakening.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have taken to what this world really is.
[SPEAKER_03]: Beautiful phrase of the Tibetan Buddhists.
[SPEAKER_03]: The primordial ground of being in ignorance appears as samsara and in enlightenment appears as nirvana.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the primordial ground of being, that which is samsara, will become Nirvana when you become enlightened.
[SPEAKER_03]: You will see this very word and your own self, first your own self and this word, shining with this light of Brahman, or the light that is Brahman.
[SPEAKER_03]: So first negation, if you do not negate and just affirm it, we will just have sense perceptions.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you see?
[SPEAKER_03]: Colors, shapes, people, places, things, what are you thinking?
[SPEAKER_03]: About myself, about people, about my work, about my life, and just usual stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is not going to reveal God to you.
[SPEAKER_03]: The Isha Upanishad, it says, Isha Vasya Midamsurban.
[SPEAKER_03]: Extraordinary half a one-quarter of our verse.
[SPEAKER_03]: Isha, wasya, mitams, idams, servam, means all this.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you do with all this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Wasya, mkavarit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Kavarit, how?
[SPEAKER_03]: By what?
[SPEAKER_03]: Isha, by God.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you mean, Kavarit, by God?
[SPEAKER_03]: Shankaracharya, in his commentary, says, Ankavar.
[SPEAKER_03]: Kavarit means, Ankavar.
[SPEAKER_03]: uncover how discovered, how will you discover inquire, any discovery requires enquiry of task activity, let it ask, what is this word?
[SPEAKER_03]: Then one must undergo initial phase of negation that it's not this, not the body, not the prana, not the mind, not the intellect, not even the blankness which follows when you deny everything, the witness of that blankness, the intellect, the mind, the prana, the senses, and all of that, and the body, and the word, that one.
[SPEAKER_03]: But that one is reached only by first nati nati, by uncovering, covering means uncovering, is equal to discovering.
[SPEAKER_03]: Swami, not the philosophy of Arinam Chakrabati was here, he has a way with words.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he said that you go to a feast, especially in India, the delicious food will be covered with dishes.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the food is dish covered.
[SPEAKER_03]: And therefore how would you get to the delicious food?
[SPEAKER_03]: You must undish cover it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when I said uncover is equal to discover, he flips it around, he says it's already dish covered.
[SPEAKER_03]: You must undish cover it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but in any case there is a process of negation.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then
[SPEAKER_03]: Sir Ram Krishna puts it this way.
[SPEAKER_03]: You climb up this house, you know, you go through the front door and the first floor, second floor, leave it all behind, Nathan, Nathan, till you reach the roof of the house.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you discover what is the, what the roof of the house is made of, the wood and the cement and the brick and stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then you look back at what you left behind.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you find the whole of the house is made of the same thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: exactly like that with Nati and Nati, when we inquire through the philosophical inquiry of Vedanta, through the meditative inquiry of yoga, or by the grace of God in devotion.
[SPEAKER_03]: Whichever way you find, you find out, you leave it all behind and you find the reality.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then you look back upon what you had left behind.
[SPEAKER_03]: This body, this very mind, this world, it'll all be divinized then.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then you reach non-duality, it's all one non-dual, but your intuition is correct.
[SPEAKER_03]: If it's finally this, you have to see God in everything, then why leave everything behind?
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to initially.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to leave everything behind, come to the naked presence of God, to the bare awareness, to the bare being itself.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then look back and see everything is constituted of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you are a vishish tadwaitan or a dwaita vedantan, you will say, that being has become all of this.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you are non-dualist, a dwaitan, like us, you will say, that being is appearing as all of this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just your different theory of causality, a transformation theory or an appearance theory, in Sanskrit, Parinama vada, Bevatta vada.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the point is, there is one reality, that much.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: What will take one more, then we'll come to a question within the live audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: This question is from Vaijanti Koukane.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paranama Swamiji, you spoke of three theories, limitation theory, reflection theory, appearance theory, to which of these categories does the Sri Rama Krishna Vivekananda tradition belong?
[SPEAKER_00]: Also is reflected consciousness the same as appearance consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, very technical question, but a beautiful question.
[SPEAKER_03]: When I say, a beautiful question, you should know that it's something I know the answer to.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's easy to know the answer to these things because these things were debated over centuries of tradition in Vedanta, the Vedantic texts.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what's the question here?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's fine that you're talking about Atman or Brahman pure consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: But right now, I am a sentient being.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I am consciousness and ultimately I am the Ottoman Brahman absolute god.
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever you call it, I'm one with that.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's all very great.
[SPEAKER_03]: But right now, I'm just this guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am, I have a body, I have a mind, and I have some sentience consciousness in this body mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: So how did that pure consciousness become this, you might say it appears as that, as this one, let it appear as this one, but how, what's the connection between what I am, what I feel myself to be right now?
[SPEAKER_03]: You as a non-dualist, you might insist, aha, but right now you are Brahman.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, I can see you that also, but right now I don't feel like it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like a sentient being, a jiva.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this sentient being and that absolute Brahman, what is the relationship?
[SPEAKER_03]: How are we connected if at all?
[SPEAKER_03]: How did that become this?
[SPEAKER_03]: You see the question?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an important question.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the link between the one and the many?
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the link between God and the divine and the human?
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the link between Brahman and Jiva?
[SPEAKER_03]: Same question.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an important question.
[SPEAKER_03]: I must know the link between, yes, this my fallen state and my divine state.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the link between Brahman and the Jiva?
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the question.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, they have tried to model it in different ways, build different models over the centuries, they mean the Adwaita Vedanta philosophers and they have come up with broadly three models, belonging to three schools, they have different schools of Vedanta based on these three models, the different schools of Adwaita Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: The question is about these three and also particularly which which one do we follow in this school in the Vedanta society in our tradition here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nobody is asked at second part earlier.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll give you some answer.
[SPEAKER_03]: First let's take a quick look at those three models.
[SPEAKER_03]: how are they understanding these different schools of Advaita Vedanta, how do they understand the relationship between Brahman and Jiva, pure consciousness and this empirical consciousness which we find ourselves as, consciousness with involved with mind and body.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are three schools, one is called Ava Cheda Vada.
[SPEAKER_03]: Another one is called Pratibim Bhavada, another one is called Abhasa Vada, Abhasa Vada, Abhasa Vada, Abhasa Vada, Limitation Theory, Limitation Theory, Pratibim Bhavada, Reflection Theory, Abhasa Vada, False Reflection Theory, Abhasa means appearance, false, shadow.
[SPEAKER_03]: Who says, which are these three schools, which talk about these three theories, the
[SPEAKER_03]: The avatchaidavada is the theory upheld, the model upheld by a school of Vedanta called the Bahamati school.
[SPEAKER_03]: At the source of which was a great philosopher called Vachas Patimishra.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's one of the renowned figures not only in Vedanta, but in different schools of Indian philosophy.
[SPEAKER_03]: He has written important works for a number of schools of Indian philosophy.
[SPEAKER_03]: in Vedanta for us, he has written a book called The Bhamati, which is a commentary on Shankaracharya's commentary on the Brahma Sutras, and other books also in Sankhya, he has written Sankhya Tattva Kau Modi.
[SPEAKER_03]: See the books, the names they gave was so beautiful.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sankhya Tattva Kau Modi means Sankhya is a school of philosophy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tattva means principles or truths.
[SPEAKER_03]: Kau Modi, Moonlight.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, the book is, if you read the title of the book means, moon light illuminating the principles of the sanghya philosophy, a moon light on the, so a moon beam on the Bahamati.
[SPEAKER_03]: This book is named after his wife.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is a beautiful story of how he ignored his wife completely, he was immersed in writing this book and wanted he suddenly saw her notice her and years after their marriage and said, who are you?
[SPEAKER_03]: And she said, I'm your wife.
[SPEAKER_03]: We've been married all these years and I've faithfully lived and supported you.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you've been immersed in that book.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he was very sad and he said, oh, then what I can do for you
[SPEAKER_03]: I will name this book, what's your name, and she says Bhamati, literally it means the luminosity of the intellect, Mati and Bhamati.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Bhamati, it's alright.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not so strange as you might think, up to very recently, even now in India.
[SPEAKER_03]: You get married when your parents tell you to get married.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't know whom you're marrying.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right now, now does they at least meet?
[SPEAKER_03]: But earlier, it's quite possible that they wouldn't even meet.
[SPEAKER_03]: They wouldn't even know who's their marrying.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, Bhamati, so he said, Bhaji Spati Mishra said, alright, I will name my book, this book, I will name it Bhamati, and as long as they study Vedanta, they will know your name.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the centuries and thousands of years from now on and that's true.
[SPEAKER_03]: He lived a thousand years ago in the around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
[SPEAKER_03]: And he is a tremendous scholar in across various schools of Indian philosophy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why he is, there's a title given to him, Vachas Patimishra.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sarvatantrasvatantra Acarya, a master who independently roams about in the different philosophies, was independent access to different philosophies, mastery over different philosophies.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, we concerned about his Vedanta book.
[SPEAKER_03]: So in that Bahamati, that's why the school of Vedanta, which he pioneered, is called the Bahamati School.
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the distinct features is the limitation theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll come back to that later.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other theory is the reflection theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is sponsored by a school called the Veverana School.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is important because technically, if you force us as this question is forcing us, select a tradition you belong to, when we will say we belong to that tradition, because that is the tradition held on to by the monks, the non-dualistic monks of Shankaras order.
[SPEAKER_03]: we are all followers of the Veverana School of Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because the Veverana is a commentary on the commentary called Panchapadika, which is a commentary on the commentary of Shankaracharya on the Brahma Sutras.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there is the Brahma Sutras.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is key text, key text of Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: Any school of Vedanta, if you want to have a school of Vedanta, you must write a commentary on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's how you get a school of Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Shankaracharya writes his commentary on the Brahma Sutra.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's known as Brahma Sutra Bhashi or Shari Raka-mimamsabhashi, and so on.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just like Vachas Patimisha wrote a commentary on that.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of Shankaracharya's disciples, Padma Padha, his favorite disciple.
[SPEAKER_03]: wrote a commentary on Shankaracharya's commentary and that commentary is called Panchapadhika.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is a big story about it anyway.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then that was further elucidated by a sub-commentary written by a monk called Prakashatman, the sub-commentary is called Panchapadhika Viva Rana, which means an exposition of the Panchapadhika.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the school which has is based on that, which continues down till today and we are all members of that school, technically speaking.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there are many other features of that school.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we are Veverana.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do they say?
[SPEAKER_03]: They say that we are reflections, so of the ultimate reality in the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: Consciousness reflected in the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: Think of a mirror.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're looking at your face in the mirror.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it is the real face, and not that we have two faces.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the reflected face in the mirror.
[SPEAKER_03]: Similarly, pure consciousness, and the mirror is like the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there is consciousness in the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: We feel conscious right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: We not only are sinking thoughts, having feelings and all that, but it's all conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: We feel aware.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you ask people, are you conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: You'll all see, yes, of course.
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you aware?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, of course.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they don't mean it in an automatic sense.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not saying, we are pure consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Atman, they may not have ever heard of Advaita Vedanta at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: But everybody will say we are conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that we are conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the reflected consciousness in the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the awareness which we feel right now, each of us.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's like the face reflected in the mirror.
[SPEAKER_03]: this is the reflection theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: What does the reflection theory?
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, let me go on to the other theory and then I will compare them and then you will see the difference.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other theory comes a little later, it traces its origin back to another of Shankaracharya's disciples, Sureshwaracharya, it is interesting how amongst Shankaracharya's disciples they had different models.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, it's remain proponent is the great master Vidyaranya who comes few hundred years after Shankara who wrote the master piece Panchadashi.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, his theory is, yes, reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: However, it functions like this.
[SPEAKER_03]: What are we?
[SPEAKER_03]: We are pure consciousness or what is known as witness consciousness, Sakshi.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so this pure consciousness, plus mind, which is catching the reflection of the pure consciousness, and that mind is downloaded into a body which is called birth.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is called a jiva.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is what we are.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, what's the difference?
[SPEAKER_03]: You might see this exactly like the reflection theory, but this is called the false reflection theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a two different views of the reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: The difference is this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Both use the mirror and face example.
[SPEAKER_03]: However, the false reflection theory says the reflection is false.
[SPEAKER_03]: The real face is here.
[SPEAKER_03]: What you see in the mirror is a false is a reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is not the real face.
[SPEAKER_03]: The reflection is a false thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: The consciousness which you experience in the mind is not you.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is not the real consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a shadow or a reflection of real consciousness and real consciousness, witness consciousness is you.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what are you right now?
[SPEAKER_03]: You are pure consciousness, so witness consciousness, plus mind and plus the reflection of that witness consciousness in the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: What are you really that witness consciousness?
[SPEAKER_03]: What's that reflected consciousness in the mind?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's false.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's an appearance.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not you.
[SPEAKER_03]: You are not the mind, not even that reflected consciousness in the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is the false reflection theory, Abha, Savada, compare it with the reflection theory, Praty Bimba, Vada.
[SPEAKER_03]: You might say at this point, if you are following, you might say, the false reflection theory sounds seems to be right.
[SPEAKER_03]: The reflection theory says, in contrast to the false reflection theory, the reflection theory says, the reflection theory is the reflection in the mirror is your real face.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's identical with your real face.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not false.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not different.
[SPEAKER_03]: You might see what you mean.
[SPEAKER_03]: Clearly, if you're with me, you'll see clearly that seeing that I'm seeing the mirror is not me.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a reflection of my face.
[SPEAKER_03]: My real face is this.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not real.
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's not the point here.
[SPEAKER_03]: The point here is follow this.
[SPEAKER_03]: When we go in front of a mirror to brush our teeth or wash our face or decorate our face, we look at the reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we don't go, that's not me.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do we do?
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am not at all confused that I am there.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know I am here.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am using that to access my real face.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just me, we have no confusion at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't say that that's the reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the real face.
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we ever confused that we have to correct it?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a false reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the real face.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, we don't get a confused.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't start brushing the reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: We want to wash our face.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't start washing the mirror.
[SPEAKER_03]: No.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't say, I'm made of glass, no, I'm made of skin and bone.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when we look at our reflection in the mirror every day in the morning, we are under no delusion that touch me there.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know that one is me here.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I use it just to access my real face.
[SPEAKER_03]: Similarly, the reflection theory says,
[SPEAKER_03]: deny the mind in which it is reflected and it merges back into you, the bitness consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: So do you see the difference between taking the reflection as false and taking the reflection as true?
[SPEAKER_03]: Both are correct, you can see from both, if you switch back and forth between two views, both have their point of view.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is true that the one thing, literally the things you see in the mirror is not your real face.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is also true, we take it to be our real face for very good reason.
[SPEAKER_03]: be taken to a real face for for all practical reasons it is our real face because we can brush and you know all of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, these are the two theories, the two reflection theories.
[SPEAKER_03]: One is the reflection theory, one is the false reflection theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: Prativim Bhawada.
[SPEAKER_03]: which one do we belong to, if we are pushed to it, Prathi Bimba Vada, because for two reasons.
[SPEAKER_03]: One is the monastic tradition of which we are part, so it goes back to Shankaracharya and their school is the reflection theory, Prathi Bimba Vada.
[SPEAKER_03]: Another thing is, things which Sri Ramakrishna or the Holy Mother have said, Holy Mother says more than once, my child, it is in Bengali,
[SPEAKER_03]: The reflection and the original are one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Who would say that?
[SPEAKER_03]: The reflection theory of the false reflection theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: The reflection theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: She meant it in another sense.
[SPEAKER_03]: She would say, when somebody came and said, meditation, you have told me to meditate on three-darmacrytion.
[SPEAKER_03]: I find it very difficult.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was sitting my mind wanders all over the place.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she said, she would say to the disciple,
[SPEAKER_03]: Just look at the picture of Sri Ramakrishna and stare at it that is as good as meditation.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you just look at the picture of Sri Ramakrishna, why Chaya Kaya Act, the reflection and the original are the same?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a inaccurate reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: How is this reflection and the original same?
[SPEAKER_03]: Just like your face in the mirror is same as your face.
[SPEAKER_03]: That applies.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, in that sense.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's somewhat like the reflection theory of the age of the Shankara School of Adanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here you're talking in terms of a deity, the image, photograph, and the original.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there we are talking about pure consciousness and the consciousness reflected in the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: That brings us to the earlier theory of limitation theory, of a Chai the Wada.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now that's very interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: There it says, forget all your reflection business, it's too complicated.
[SPEAKER_03]: When you access your own consciousness right now, when we are conscious, you turn in words and try to feel that I'm conscious, which we all are.
[SPEAKER_03]: You are literally accessing Atman or Brahman, not a reflection.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what it's like when you look at the sky through the window.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you look at the sky through the window, what does it look like?
[SPEAKER_03]: It looks like the sky is square or rectangular or circular.
[SPEAKER_03]: It looks like the sky is this big, got this big.
[SPEAKER_03]: It looks like every window has its own sky.
[SPEAKER_03]: All of that is false.
[SPEAKER_03]: The sky is not square, the window is square.
[SPEAKER_03]: This window is square, that window is rectangular, that window is circular.
[SPEAKER_03]: The sky is not circular or square or rectangular.
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you following me?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the quality of the window, which appears to limit the sky.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why it's called the limitation theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not that every window has its own sky.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an effect created by multiple windows.
[SPEAKER_03]: By looking at the sky, it's from multiple windows.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a limitation created by the windows.
[SPEAKER_03]: The sky is one, not many.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not inside of windows.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just looking at it through a window.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not square or circular.
[SPEAKER_03]: Similarly, like the windows, there are minds, all these minds.
[SPEAKER_03]: And consciousness is shining through all of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here it seems to be kind person, like the rectangular sky.
[SPEAKER_03]: There it seems to be a harsh person, like the squares sky.
[SPEAKER_03]: intelligent, learned, wise, foolish, uncontrolled, spiritual, worldly, all our qualities of the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the consciousness which is shining through them is the original consciousness of Brahman or Atpant.
[SPEAKER_03]: The beauty of the limitation theory is no matter what the sky looks like, square, circular, many in number, but when you look through the window, you are actually seeing the real sky, not a reflection of the sky.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right now, you feel conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: This consciousness is Atman.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's Brahman.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's that divinity itself.
[SPEAKER_03]: if you can but extract it from the limitations imposed by the window, what is the window?
[SPEAKER_03]: Our mind and intellect, our inner equipment, that's the limitation theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: So these are the three theories.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm also answering the question which belongs to which tradition hours belongs to.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the second part of the question was that
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the difference between the reflection theory, and the appearance, the reflection appearance theory, which is the false reflection theory, which is also something that I have explained.
[SPEAKER_03]: Good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, somebody from the audience here, if anybody wants to ask the gentleman there, please come, please come up here, you have to come up here, because they are recording it and there are people who are watching this online, tell us your name and ask the question.
[SPEAKER_04]: My name is Peter Prociac, I'm from the Philadelphia area.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just want to make sure I'm on the right track.
[SPEAKER_04]: The question and the explanation are not what we are seeking.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's what prompted the question and the same thing prompted the explanation and his witness to both.
[SPEAKER_04]: So are the theories that you just explained.
[SPEAKER_04]: also limitations, and we should focus on what inspired the theories.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, that's a good point to make.
[SPEAKER_03]: The theory says, spoke about our Chai Davali limitation theory, but the Bimbabah, the Reflection theory, Abha Sabhada, the False Reflection theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: Notice I use the word Models.
[SPEAKER_03]: These are attempts.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have a question, these are attempts to answer, and the question is from the intellect, the attempts are also from the intellect, but it's not without value, because the people who are giving us those answers, these models, they're enlightened masters.
[SPEAKER_03]: What they do is they turn in words in meditation or stillness into the reality which they already, it's, they know, it's very clear to them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And from that, they try to trace back, they try to clear a path from the jungles of our intellect, they make try to make a path through it, hack a path through it to the goal.
[SPEAKER_03]: Different paths can be made.
[SPEAKER_03]: Notice, if you appreciate it, the limitation theory, reflection theory and the false reflection theory, all have their merits, all have their beauties, all have their limitations.
[SPEAKER_03]: All of them can enlighten,
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the problem of explanations, they can help you, but unwisely handle, they can trap us in a network of concepts.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is one light, one consciousness, in which questions arise, answers are given, in which I say, I don't know this, in that light itself, I say, ah, now I know this, neither knowing
[SPEAKER_03]: But the light which reveals that not knowing is the same light which reveals the knowing.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't understand this.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: How are you having that experience?
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't even need to know the answer.
[SPEAKER_03]: You just need to know how you are having that experience and you will become enlightened.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or you know the answer, but in the same light itself you know the answer.
[SPEAKER_03]: You cannot argue your way to enlightenment.
[SPEAKER_03]: What argument can do is remove confusion.
[SPEAKER_03]: and the truth is self-shining.
[SPEAKER_03]: Does that help?
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll take one more question.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the gentleman there, please come.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now this one, right, please come.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell us your name and ask the question.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you so much, Pranams.
[SPEAKER_07]: My name is Ashok Rucropartna from New Jersey.
[SPEAKER_07]: I've been a student of Beranta, specifically I've heard many of your talks for quite some time.
[SPEAKER_07]: The question I have is, how do we apply that to our behavior on a day-to-day basis?
[SPEAKER_07]: For example, one of the things I've heard is that we should minimize Ankara and Mamakara because they are kind of barriers as a sazana that what we should practice.
[SPEAKER_07]: But in practical life, it's really impossible to completely eliminate them.
[SPEAKER_07]: We have our house, I have to make money.
[SPEAKER_07]: I cannot say that I have to, that doesn't belong to me.
[SPEAKER_07]: I cannot give it away.
[SPEAKER_07]: I have to lock the door in the house, for example.
[SPEAKER_07]: mark and I completely ignore that either because that will not take me to the path.
[SPEAKER_07]: So, the question is where is the find line between how much of that we should adapt and how much of the trick we should be able to give up?
[SPEAKER_03]: Two answers here.
[SPEAKER_03]: The direct answer is, don't bother.
[SPEAKER_03]: What should I bother about?
[SPEAKER_03]: To bother about being centered in the truth.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am Brahman, you are studying Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vedanta is pointing out something about yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: Notice that reality and try to, I am that.
[SPEAKER_03]: The closer we are to that centered in Atman or Brahman, the more naturally our life will flow, and you will naturally do the right thing and appropriate thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: The more I try to repair and do patch work in my life, so that I can become spiritual, without realizing the spirit, the more I'll get in time with, it'll be a little better, a little worse, which continuous efforts I might become a better saadaka and will continuously be slipping back.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, the answer is this, Sri Ramakrishna would say, and in the Gospel of Ramakrishna we find, the closer you are going to banaris, the further away you are from your home in Calcutta.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, the gentle man is saying, the more I come back to my home in Calcutta, the further I am away from banaris.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, the more I am centred in, say, devotionally in God or in self-knowledge as I am consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: that's the cool.
[SPEAKER_03]: The more I forget that it put it aside, that'll happen eventually.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right now let me put right all these things in my life.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not a bad project, but it'll entangle you.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's one answer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Second, that's all right, but that depends on a very great clarity about who I am.
[SPEAKER_03]: or a great ability to feel the presence of God.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you have that, you're already blessed.
[SPEAKER_03]: Suppose I don't have that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then what do I do?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, then there's a whole list of things to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: For example, the 13 chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna supplies you with 20 things to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: Amen, it too, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
[SPEAKER_03]: humility, rhythm, the overcoming of arrogance, humility in another way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now you might say, you cannot entirely eliminate it, nor is it possible, not necessarily to entirely eliminate it, just let's not be egregious, let's just not be offensive, let's just be better people than we are, it's a project, and it's a spectrum, there are on one
[SPEAKER_03]: who are utterly humble and very naturally so, without trying artificially to be so.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they are on the other end of the spectrum, very arrogant people quite sure of themselves, you know, hurting others and hurting their own lives, both kinds of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let us move towards that end of the spectrum with whatever effort we can do.
[SPEAKER_03]: So these are the two answers.
[SPEAKER_03]: One is, be centered in God, or be centered in the realization, I am the Aakman, Jidhan and the Rupa Shivoham.
[SPEAKER_03]: One requires devotion, the other one requires knowledge.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you must do, then cultivate these virtues.
[SPEAKER_03]: Krishna gives a list of 20 virtues, there are other places in the Gita, he gives long list of virtues, lots and you enough to do for the whole life.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at the end of it, we'll find we have made just a little progress.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is a good thing, that is the hard work of spiritual life.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vivekananda says, the only thing that we can do is polish the mirror.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's polishing the mirror.
[SPEAKER_03]: does that help?
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Another way of answering this is, Gyanayoga Vedanta, what we are doing, you're listening to the talk, studying Vedanta, Upanishads and other texts, is clarifying more and more who we are.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the hard work and the essential work of spiritual life, what you say, Vedanta in day to day life, is the other three yogas, karma yoga bhakti yoga and rajayoga.
[SPEAKER_03]: Cultivate a quality of devotion to the Supreme.
[SPEAKER_03]: I, let's forget pure consciousness, reflection, theory, limitation, theory for this forget that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am just this guy and there is divinity here.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am in the presence of my Lord, this is devotion.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't even have to see it, you don't have to have an elaborate puja or worship, have a little ritual, listen to devotional songs, pray in the solitude of your home, in the solitude of your mind or heart, for yourself or others, that is devotion.
[SPEAKER_03]: use all the opportunities for action in the world as worship of God.
[SPEAKER_03]: Suakhar Manata, Mahatma, Bhichya, Siddhim, Mindhati, Mahanabha.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is from the Gita, 18 chapter.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, I am Yuranga Nathana Nathana Nathaji, 13 President of Orodov, was very fond of this line.
[SPEAKER_03]: By worshiping the ultimate, the divine, through once work, we attain perfection.
[SPEAKER_03]: Swakarmana by one's actions, tum a birchya, worshipping the Divine, Siddin bin Dathima Anabha, human beings attain to perfection.
[SPEAKER_03]: What work?
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever work.
[SPEAKER_03]: If it is true, if Vedanta is true that in the non-dual Brahman alone exists, where is the non-dual Brahman and everywhere?
[SPEAKER_03]: Brahman is in the office, in the High Bay, in the kitchen, in the shrine, in the church, and in the temple, and in the meditation hall,
[SPEAKER_03]: In the classroom, Bravani is everywhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: Equally everywhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: Niddosham hisamam Bravamha.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fortless, the Fortless Bravamha is equally everywhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: In that case, I can worship the Divine in every action.
[SPEAKER_03]: There used to be this monk I have heard about him, but I never met him.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was in our hospital in Benares.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was known as Bon Vihari Maharaj, the local people is to call him Bon Baba.
[SPEAKER_03]: So in French, Bon means good.
[SPEAKER_03]: And all his life, he worked in the hospital there, and his work was to change the dressings on people's after post operation care.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just changing the dressings and applying the disinfectant,
[SPEAKER_03]: So, he would do that and if such a saintly soul that people, the patients who came, it just became a tradition in the city that if he touched you, if he, you know, dressed your wounds so that's after it, you would be blessed and you would be cured.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there really is a long line waiting for him.
[SPEAKER_03]: Until the end of his life, when he was old and unable to move, he would sit on a wheelchair.
[SPEAKER_03]: People patients would come to him and he would change their dressings.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody felt uplifted.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was no longer about the pain or the wound or the dressings.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just people wanted his touch and to be in his presence for a few seconds.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, divinely uplifted.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what was the work he did?
[SPEAKER_03]: The work of a nurse?
[SPEAKER_03]: All his life.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Swami Caitanya and Gias meant him.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says, it's extraordinary sweetness of the mind, would overwhelm me when you went to him.
[SPEAKER_03]: And all his life, he just worked hard, day in and day out years and decades of his life.
[SPEAKER_03]: And his mind was the most utterly overflowing with sweetness.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is the day to the application of Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Give me a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: This question is from Vivek Kapoor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is consciousness considered to be outside the body mind complex?
[SPEAKER_00]: In Drikrishaviveka, we say consciousness, the subject, knows the state of the mind, the object, and the subject and the object are always different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Consciousness and identity are also persistent across all three states of sleep, the 7 of Mandu Kiyupanishad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hence, even though the mind is switched off in deep sleep, we wake up with the same identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: The two points above is established that consciousness is different from the mind, granting that why can't consciousness be a function of the body brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is true that science has no credible basis to support the claim that it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: That said, what is the reasoning to say it is not?
[SPEAKER_03]: So the last part of it, the first part of it is standard Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you've got that down right, the last part of it is, okay, I understand consciousness is different from the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why is it different from the mind?
[SPEAKER_03]: In the waking state, in the dream state, we find the mind functioning, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Now the mind is functioning, in dreams, the mind is also functioning because dreams are generated by the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in the waking we are conscious, in the dream we are conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: However, he says that in deep sleep, the mind is shut down, the senses are shut down, we are not aware of the external world, we are not aware of the body, we are not, we do not have any dreams, we do not even have a sense of the ego that I am sleeping, nothing like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yet in line with the Mandu Kyo Panishad, the blankness of deep sleep, the deep rest fullness that is also claimed by us,
[SPEAKER_03]: When we wake wake up, we didn't say that, ah, I was awake and I dreamt.
[SPEAKER_03]: After that I wasn't there anymore and now I'm back again.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, we say I was awake, I dreamt, I slept and I'm awake again.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I slept, I was there in deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_03]: What was the eye that was there in deep sleep?
[SPEAKER_03]: Clearly not the mind, not this ego, which is saying this now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well that was sleeping.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if the mind was sleeping, it is consciousness, which was the witness of the absence of the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: Deep sleep is not an absence of experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an experience of absence.
[SPEAKER_03]: The mind is shut down, therefore the world is absent, since our absent means to your first person phenomenal experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the ego is also absent.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is no ego which says, I am sleeping.
[SPEAKER_03]: If that is there, then you are not sleeping.
[SPEAKER_03]: and little boys, not little kids.
[SPEAKER_03]: They pretend to be asleep, mom's tell them to go to sleep, go to sleep and finally they pretend to be asleep and waiting for mom to leave the room so they can up to be mischief again.
[SPEAKER_03]: And some moms are even more intelligent they will say, ah!
[SPEAKER_03]: If the good little boy is sleeping, then it's left foot will move.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if the little left foot moves a little, you know that the kid is not sleeping.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you are awake, if you are say, I am sleeping, then you're not sleeping.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if the I am sleeping is also gone, the mind is shut down.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yet wake up and claim, I slept.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that I could not be the eye of the mind, the ego.
[SPEAKER_03]: Witness consciousness persists in waking, dreaming, and sleeping.
[SPEAKER_03]: So now he says, clearly a deaf witness consciousness cannot be the mind because it exists in deep sleep without the mind or in the absence of the mind in the shut down condition of the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: But why, why, why can we not say he is now going back to the body?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why can we not say it's the sleeping body, the brain and the nervous system, which are generating consciousness, which is the mainstream view of consciousness, physiologists, biologists, neuro scientists, would mostly say that it's the brain which is generating consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: why does Vedanta disagree?
[SPEAKER_03]: Vedanta disagree is profoundly, but you don't have to go to Vedanta for this.
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, most schools of Indian philosophy would disagree.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vedanta, Sank, Yog, Buddhism, Jainism, all would disagree.
[SPEAKER_03]: Consciousness is not generated or produced by the brain.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why not?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, there is one unique characteristic of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the one unique characteristic function property of consciousness?
[SPEAKER_03]: First person experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: It feels like something.
[SPEAKER_03]: You feel, you feel the temperature in the room.
[SPEAKER_03]: You feel the light, you see the light in the room.
[SPEAKER_03]: You see colors, you feel the pleasure, the pain, the warmth, one senses internally, thoughts, emotions, desires, all of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: These are all first person feelings.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, why can't it be generated by the brain?
[SPEAKER_03]: But the brain is entirely objective.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a lump of matter.
[SPEAKER_03]: Objects can generate other objects.
[SPEAKER_03]: An objective cause can generate an objective effect.
[SPEAKER_03]: But to say the object can generate the subject itself, is we are diminishing the subject.
[SPEAKER_03]: We are not giving sufficient importance to the subject as subject.
[SPEAKER_03]: We are beginning to treat the subject as another kind of emergent object.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, that's not true.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you take a close look at the brain itself.
[SPEAKER_03]: The neuroscientific working of the brain, you'll find neurochemicals there, you'll find little bits of electrical activities in the neurons.
[SPEAKER_03]: And our modern machines can reveal them very nicely.
[SPEAKER_03]: Your MRI, FMRI scans, they can reveal.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what do they reveal?
[SPEAKER_03]: Tiny bursts of electrical activity.
[SPEAKER_03]: How is that burst of electrical activity, the warmth of the coffee you feel, the bright colors of fall you see, not so bright this time, but anyway, the first cold of the winter which you are feeling, the flash of joy which you feel in a beautiful day, the flash of irritation which you feel sometime, all of these feelings.
[SPEAKER_03]: experiences, sensory experience, emotional feelings, the brilliance of a scientific discovery or understanding Vedanta or something like that, everything, even the feeling right now, ah, this is a feeling, this is an experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: How is that little burst of electricity, this, this is a gap, do we not see the gap, even if that burst of electricity is this one, there is something we are missing in between.
[SPEAKER_03]: until that until that burst of electricity, everything here in the brain and nervous system is objective.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is the warm, moist, hot atmosphere inside the environment, inside the brain, inside the skull, inside the body, in that activities are going on physiological activities in the nervous system and the brain.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are chemicals, there is a soup of chemicals, there is blood, there is a good deeper, there is activities going on in the cells, there is the electrical potentials, we all learned about this in school biology, where in all of this is consciousness, where is the feeling, where is a joy, where is the pain, these are just movements of of tiny tiny parts in the brain.
[SPEAKER_03]: where this is jump, this is what David Chambers calls the hard problem of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the two kinds of problems in consciousness studies in neuroscience.
[SPEAKER_03]: One quote and quote easy, they're not easy.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not easy.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're very difficult problems.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the bulk of neuroscience these days.
[SPEAKER_03]: What does that do?
[SPEAKER_03]: It traces,
[SPEAKER_03]: the activity in the brain and the nervous system and then asks, very important, it asks the subject, what are you feeling, what are you seeing, so here is the color, you are seeing a color red and now I am watching what is happening in a particular part of your brain through the FMRI scan then I correlate that the color red and this activity in the brain they come up together.
[SPEAKER_03]: If this activity in the brain is happening then the subject is having a
[SPEAKER_03]: But correlation is not causation, Vedanta has a better answer of what is happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: Consciousness is already there.
[SPEAKER_03]: When the consciousness illumines the color red and gives you an experience of the color red, what is the experience?
[SPEAKER_03]: Consciousness plus object is experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: Consciousness, what is the object?
[SPEAKER_03]: The color red.
[SPEAKER_03]: When you put them together, you have an experience I see the color red.
[SPEAKER_03]: I smell the taste, I smell the fragrance of a flower.
[SPEAKER_03]: I see the red color of the rose, I smell the fragrance of the flower, I feel the sharpness of the thorn, these are my conscious experiences.
[SPEAKER_03]: But to give consciousness that conscious experience, one must bring it into the form of a vritty, a movement presented to consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: That party is objective.
[SPEAKER_03]: And therefore a brain can play a very, and there must be some mechanism in the body,
[SPEAKER_03]: Therefore, we can explain why the changing experience is brain activity is changing.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is it mapping?
[SPEAKER_03]: It is not mapping consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is mapping the objects presented to consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: As our eyes pick up information, our ears pick up information, our skin and nose and tongue picks up information.
[SPEAKER_03]: As the brain works and generates memories, thoughts, those are all tracked in movements in the brain.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's perfectly understandable from Vedantic perspective because they are all on the objective side of things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why Vedanta?
[SPEAKER_03]: Sankha will tell you this.
[SPEAKER_03]: and the objects are presented to consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the medium of the mind, that part is also unknown to modern neuroscience.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why, so that part is called the easy problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: So called easy problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: The hard problem is how can these activities, if at all are the generating conscious experience?
[SPEAKER_03]: Vedanta will say no.
[SPEAKER_03]: They cannot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Conscious experience is there because you are conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Consciousness is prior to the body and the brain.
[SPEAKER_03]: With the body and the brain, they present objects, process it and present it in the form which can be illumined by consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: What form can be illumined by consciousness?
[SPEAKER_03]: Mental vritis, vritis of the mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why the hard problem of consciousness, answer to your question, why should we say that consciousness is not produced by the brain activity because of this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because there's an explanatory gap.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why we have, people are struggling.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the hot topic in consciousness studies today.
[SPEAKER_03]: You Google it, go to your YouTube and Google, 325, just Google the 320, you don't even have to say theories of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you write 325, the video will come out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Robert Lawrence Kuhn, he runs this podcast called Closer To Truth, and among the many things over decades has interviewed physicists, mathematicians, quantum theorists, you know, AI people, and so and so forth, psychological philosophers, people from religion, and one of the big questions, what is the mystery of consciousness?
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he has heard so many theories, so he made a taxonomy of the theories of consciousness and he found 325 existing theories.
[SPEAKER_03]: 325, more or less.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that video, it's long, obviously, more than two hours, three hours, long, I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: But at the very beginning, he says, one of the most sophisticated theories which we have is also one of the earliest.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's called Adwaita Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: It comes from the Upanishads.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the Vedanta of Hindu Vedic Hinduism.
[SPEAKER_03]: and then goes on to explore the other theories.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, what he says there in that video is what we need is one more theory of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why?
[SPEAKER_03]: The very idea that we have 325 theories means we do not know.
[SPEAKER_03]: in science when we are exploring an issue is generate different theories, born of different hypotheses.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, if you have multiple hypotheses, multiple theories, it means you are exploring it, you don't know the answer yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you know the answer, you will have one theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yes, in science, you can discard the theory later if something better comes along.
[SPEAKER_03]: But generally, it is science, it is ready to put it into textbooks if you have one theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, from 325 theories to 1 theory, you say that that one theory we need one more theory, which will, so there is truth in all these theories, but body producing consciousness, that is one group of theories, big group of theories, materialist theories.
[SPEAKER_03]: The materialist theory, that is some matter of produces consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: what is which matter, living matter in brains and nervous systems.
[SPEAKER_03]: And by the way, this is mainstream.
[SPEAKER_03]: Most physiologists, biologists, neuroscientists would agree.
[SPEAKER_03]: Would say that this is how we don't know how.
[SPEAKER_03]: As that question said, the scientists know credible way of explaining it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Scientists admitted, we don't know how exactly the brain is producing, but we are convinced that the brain is producing on the ground of.
[SPEAKER_03]: first of all on the ground of the correlations, but on the larger, on the more deeper ground of materialism, that matter is the ultimate reality.
[SPEAKER_03]: So anything in this universe should be explained in terms of matter.
[SPEAKER_03]: If there is consciousness, nobody can deny their consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: So consciousness is also produced by matter.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bernardo Castro, who is one of the new thinkers who is making a big splash.
[SPEAKER_03]: He has a foot in both camps in science and in philosophy.
[SPEAKER_03]: He has a PhD in computer science and a PhD in philosophy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he is writing this wonderful books, very, his approach is called analytic idealism and it is very friendly to Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: Recently, I had a conversation with him in Amsterdam.
[SPEAKER_03]: I hope they'll put it up online up to some time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me borrow an argument from him to answer this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why matter cannot produce what is wrong with this argument?
[SPEAKER_03]: That matter is producing consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says the atrociousness, the ridiculousness of this argument.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says, look at it this way.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do we have to believe?
[SPEAKER_03]: What do we have to swallow in order to believe that brains produce consciousness?
[SPEAKER_03]: stop, it is he demonstrates in force, force steps, the ridiculousness of the materialist organization, step one, which everybody will happily accept, I am conscious, everybody here and nobody will deny it, anybody who hears the question, understands the question, even if does not understand the question, we are conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am conscious, no doubt about it, step one, everybody agrees, materialist, scientist, religious person, skeptic, Vedant in everybody exists, agrees, step two, out of four, step two, others are also conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, that is a little relaxation of the rigor because I experience my own consciousness all the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't experience your consciousness directly.
[SPEAKER_03]: I watch you and I infer that you are conscious just like me.
[SPEAKER_03]: But that we can grant why on the logical grounds what has happened once can happen more than once.
[SPEAKER_03]: It has happened in my case.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure no doubt I am conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if I am conscious why not repeatable, others can also, they all look similar to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: So clearly it seems they are not zombies, you guys, congratulations.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have promoted you to conscious beings, not zombies.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's what we feel, others are also conscious, step two, okay, we accept that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Step three.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are these things which appear to me in consciousness as objects of consciousness, colour, shape, sound, taste, smell, touch, all these people, bodies, material objects, sky, all of these things are appearing to me in consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: But step three insists demands that that which appears in consciousness actually exists outside consciousness independently of consciousness
[SPEAKER_03]: Now that logically if you go very strictly logically it is asking a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can matter be ever experienced independently outside separately from consciousness can it be demonstrated never, you would always require consciousness procedure demonstration.
[SPEAKER_03]: By definition, after all experience is consciousness plus subject.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I'm asking you, can you demonstrate object exists?
[SPEAKER_03]: Apart from consciousness, but how will you demonstrate?
[SPEAKER_03]: You'll need consciousness for that again.
[SPEAKER_03]: But this argument says, no, you must accept that matter exists independently of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not only your consciousness, everybody's consciousness, it exists separately independently.
[SPEAKER_03]: It does not require consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Number three, difficult to swallow.
[SPEAKER_03]: Number fourth is the worst.
[SPEAKER_03]: That so-called matter is producing you the consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: That matter, which is as a big question mark, we have to accept it and accept that it is producing you, the consciousness through the brain and nervous system.
[SPEAKER_03]: That which is doubtful, we have to accept that one is producing you, the undoubted in the bitable.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is not a good argument.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you put it this way, this is how Bernardo Castro puts it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can we take one more question?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Swami, this is rather topical question from Tusa Sakha, who is a 20-year-old from Bangladesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: I listened to your teachings regularly and they have brought me great inner clarity.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I have listened to your various teachings on Advaita Vedanta, there are times when doubts arise in my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I ask chatGPT and it gives me answers that are similar and identical to those I found in your talks.
[SPEAKER_00]: It also provides detailed references to the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutras, along with other scriptures and texts that were written by sages such as Shankacharya, Ramana, Maharashtra, and others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Furthermore, it provides me with insights from other doctrines or philosophies, like Hivistadvida, Dvida Buddhism, and other religious beliefs and sources that I haven't heard of.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my question is this, since chat, GBT knows so much about the Vida Vedanta and other doctrines
[SPEAKER_03]: It's chance to beat the Enlightened.
[SPEAKER_05]: Should we call it swammy GPT or something like that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: So...
[SPEAKER_03]: So this begs the big question.
[SPEAKER_03]: Is AI conscious or can AI be conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: My position is clear.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it is not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why not?
[SPEAKER_03]: the same thing, the hard problem of consciousness, no combination of objective elements can produce the subject, no combination.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't combine, you know, like the bunch of stones out there which are objects clearly, as far as we know they are not conscious, if you say we put the stones together, will they become conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course not.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you say, no, let's put living cells together.
[SPEAKER_03]: Will they become conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Who knows?
[SPEAKER_03]: Computer chips together.
[SPEAKER_03]: Will they become conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: Algorithms together.
[SPEAKER_03]: Will they become conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is question, why does he feel, chatGPT is conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an illusion of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is easy to generate.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the early days of consciousness, early days of AI, they had these computer programs which would carry on conversations with you.
[SPEAKER_03]: and they found, among other things, they found a particular phenomenon, an illusion of subjectivity that people who are carrying on conversations with these programs.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have very primitive programs, long much less convincing than our modern chat GPT and all that.
[SPEAKER_03]: These are decades ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: This one called Eliza, I think, I forget the names.
[SPEAKER_03]: But one peculiar outcome was the researchers who worked with them, felt slowly they began to attribute personalities to them.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was your own mind attributing it because it was
[SPEAKER_03]: Bearing, apparently, it's an illusion.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the question reason why Toshar feels that chatGPT could be enlightened is the enormous amount of Vedantic information, teachings which it presents to him.
[SPEAKER_03]: You ask a question, gives a very cogent reply.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, now my question would be, so it's giving a reply, as you said, from the Upanishads, from the Gita, from the Brahma Sutras, from the teachings of Ramana Maharashtra, Shankaracharya, now let me ask you, you put all these books together, on the table, do they become conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: Will the books become enlightened?
[SPEAKER_03]: The Upanishads, you have a book with all the Upanishads in it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have such a book, is the book Enlightened?
[SPEAKER_03]: You see, there's not even a correct question.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's neither an enlightened, not enlightened, enlightened.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a book.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is no conscious being in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: The reflection theory, the limitation theory, and the false reflection theory, none of them apply to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is no limitation of consciousness, there is no reflection of consciousness, there is no false reflection of consciousness, there There just isn't consciousness in a book, how can it be enlightened or not enlightened?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's even wrong to say it is not enlightened.
[SPEAKER_03]: But there is no conscious being there.
[SPEAKER_03]: So crucial question is, is, or can AI be conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: And my answer is, from the combination of matter, you will get more matter.
[SPEAKER_03]: If it's a very sophisticated combination of matter, you can get a simulation of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is still be matter.
[SPEAKER_03]: It will feel like consciousness to another consciousness being like us, because it's been trained on our outputs.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's trained to imitate us.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's trained to imitate you.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's trained to imitate me, as he says clearly.
[SPEAKER_03]: It sounds like me because it's been fed.
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever I've said, I ran into an AI called
[SPEAKER_03]: And they demonstrated in the UT Texas, it was a graduate program, they had a project.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they built this AI, they said we have trained it with thousand hours of videos of your talks.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now you can ask it any question.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's got access to a thousand hours of the talks which have given plus it's got access to the entire internet up to 20, 20, 20 to something.
[SPEAKER_03]: Any Vedantic question I tried a few and it gave really good answers not only gave good answers I can't deny it because it will point out you said this in this talk at this time It can tell me what I said better than I can recall It can give richer and as he said more comprehensive answers because it's got access to the whole world's information Is it conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: No
[SPEAKER_03]: is it enlightened, doesn't apply, the question doesn't apply at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, this is act one scene one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then something happened which forced me to change my mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what happened was,
[SPEAKER_03]: a few weeks back I was in Venice, so there was this conference, towards a new theory of consciousness, a 236 theory, a new one.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there are some really amazing people working in this field had been invited to that conference.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was a pleasure to meet such people.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was Christoph Koch, one of the leading neuroscientists of the world today.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was David Chamas from NYU who coined the term hard problem of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was Dr. Anil Sait, one of the leading neuroscientists in the world today.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was one of the leading quantum theorists in the world today, Carlo Rebelli, he was there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And a number of people like that, very brilliant Catherine.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was scintillating.
[SPEAKER_03]: The conversations were amazing, but not just during the conference.
[SPEAKER_03]: during dinner and lunch over a cup of coffee, I remember on the evaporate or they had these water taxis on the canals in, so it's standing there and talking with one of these philosophers.
[SPEAKER_03]: One talk, especially, was very important for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was with this guy, brilliant guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's in charge of Google's AI.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's the one, you know, there's a Gemini AI, which you can use in Google.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's the lead researcher on that.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's the president of that project.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, extraordinarily, personally, you know, like, inside, a brilliant guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: He didn't know much about Vedant and didn't know anything at all, I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: But when I talked to him, he just got it, I mean, so fast on the pickup.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, here's the Summon Substance of his arguments, which you can find in a published paper.
[SPEAKER_03]: Summon Substance of his argument says, let's set aside this pure consciousness you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says, I will prove to you that AI can be conscious, and he says, he feels it is already conscious, but he says it can be conscious, and what makes it conscious is, in fact, you're at the way down to theory.
[SPEAKER_03]: is let's forget for the time being pure consciousness at man Brahman let's just concentrate on us the consciousness with which we are every every theory of consciousness has to explain this consciousness which we have right now that's what they're dealing with
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, according to you, whether you follow the, we discussed all this limitation theory, reflection theory, false reflection theory, whichever theory you follow, basically you are that limitless consciousness is appearing in this person, individual being.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the condition for this to happen?
[SPEAKER_03]: I said, you need a mind, you need a mind for that for limitation or a reflection or a false reflection to happen whatever and he says, where would you find such a mind?
[SPEAKER_03]: I said in a living being.
[SPEAKER_03]: I actually had met somebody who had asked the same question to the Pope, the earlier Pope.
[SPEAKER_03]: This person, he told me, he is this very mysterious billionaire who had sponsored the whole conference.
[SPEAKER_03]: He asked the Pope this same question, can AIB conscious he asked the earlier Pope, Pope Francis?
[SPEAKER_03]: So I asked him, what did he say?
[SPEAKER_03]: And he gave an answer which is just sort of general answer for all religions.
[SPEAKER_03]: The Pope immediately said, if it gets a soul, it will become conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now what is this soul?
[SPEAKER_03]: Again from a Vedantic perspective, it's a mind, that it's the mirror.
[SPEAKER_03]: You need the mirror.
[SPEAKER_03]: Where would you find such a mind?
[SPEAKER_03]: And my answer was in a living being.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just, it doesn't have to be Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: Any religion will basically say that you need life.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Vedanta also says, it's a package.
[SPEAKER_03]: Suttal body includes prana.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it includes the manomaya, the viggana, and the three bodies.
[SPEAKER_03]: The pranic body, the mental body, intellectual body.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is the subtle body.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's the core in which reflects consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: You would need that, so your computers will not hack it, they won't work, they're not living beings.
[SPEAKER_03]: But he said, then he took it further, he said, what is life?
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we had a long discussion of what could be life.
[SPEAKER_03]: He introduced what is called Conway's Game of Life, you should Google it, how algorithms can actually mimic life.
[SPEAKER_03]: and then from there he goes to, I'm just giving it outline of the argument, you can look at it up in the paper.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vaughan Neumann's universal constructor and he shows how that is basically what a DNA is.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so the basic argument is in principle if you accept the computational
[SPEAKER_03]: Why can it not be silicon based?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why can it not be based on an algorithm working in a virtual space?
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you could have such a life, then life could have a mind of its own, like an AI.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then all it would need to do is reflect consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: See, in Advaita Vedanta makes it much more easier.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, it can circumvent the hard problem of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: The hard problem of consciousness says you can't understand how a brain is generating consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: The way the Vedanta says brain need not generate consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Consciousness is already given, you need a reflector, you need a mirror to reflect your face.
[SPEAKER_03]: The mirror does not have to generate a face, it just has to reflect your face.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a much easier job.
[SPEAKER_03]: So such a mind based on computational life, why are you saying it cannot reflect consciousness?
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was a dramatizing, no, that's just computation.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not living brain and a living mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then he threw back at me arguments which I had made.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I often quote DeCart.
[SPEAKER_03]: So DeCart says, the irrefutable thing is, I exist.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think therefore I exist.
[SPEAKER_03]: He said to me, do you know that the same DeCart.
[SPEAKER_03]: whom you coat.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says if you poke a squirrel with a sharp stick, it makes the squealing screeching sounds.
[SPEAKER_03]: Clearly, it is not feeling pain, because as we all know, animals don't have souls, so they cannot feel pain, it's a clever toy making those sounds.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is this?
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the earlier Christian dogma, which says that only human beings have souls.
[SPEAKER_03]: So human beings have souls, therefore human beings have consciousness, human beings can feel pain.
[SPEAKER_03]: That one seems to feel pain, but obviously does not feel pain because it does not have a soul, does not have consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: The blaze, the computer expert, he says, that Swami is dogma.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's dogma.
[SPEAKER_03]: We know that the squirrel is feeling pain, we know animals feel pain, we know living beings are conscious to insist that they are not conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: So dogma, what did he call it, a clever toy.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what you're calling AI, a clever toy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I actually had called it that.
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, you can see, I was a little shaken.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I asked some of my standard arguments.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, one argument I put forward, fourth is, if you say AI is conscious, let me ask you this, how many billions of dollars have been put into AI by the all the big companies?
[SPEAKER_03]: how many thousands and thousands of training hours have been put through all of it to generate creativity, decision making, it can make, it can write a essay, it can paint a picture, it can imitate all the activities of the human mind.
[SPEAKER_03]: your creative, your intelligent, your memory, your ability to compose things, put things together, all those things analytic and synthetic activities of the human mind AI has been trained to replicate and look at how much money and effort and time it took you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it okay?
[SPEAKER_03]: So, how much money time and effort have you put into making it conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the budget for AI consciousness?
[SPEAKER_03]: Zero?
[SPEAKER_03]: So are you saying consciousness, your creativity, decision making and the ability to drive a Google car, it did not come by itself, but you are saying consciousness came by itself without any effort, without any budget, without any that was my argument, do you see the argument?
[SPEAKER_03]: Just by itself it will become conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Despite self didn't, AI didn't become intelligent, didn't start writing poems, it took enormous amounts of efforts, an enormous amount of training, but here is the brilliance of the man.
[SPEAKER_03]: You see what his answer was, he floored me with his answer, I said, what was your budget and effort for making AI conscious, his answer immediately was all of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: After all, what is your argument?
[SPEAKER_03]: You need a mind to reflect consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: What we did was we generated a mind, and to reflect consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't have to separately produce consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's by your own Advaita Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_03]: So at this time, we were joined by this brilliant physicist, Carlo Revelli.
[SPEAKER_03]: who we updated him.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we are walking together in the garden of an Italian 12th century Italian monastery, which had been opened just for the members of this conference.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you said, these guys walk around, you talk fight, argue with among each other for one hour.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, then the physicist we updated the physicist about the quantum theorist about what we were talking about.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I introduced him to this beautiful verses in Gita and the Breodernic Upanishad.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is called the Light of Lights, forever beyond darkness, and he was so thrilled by it.
[SPEAKER_03]: This quantum theorist.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says, why do you without this immediately translate light as consciousness?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why not take Krishna at his word?
[SPEAKER_03]: It is the Light of Lights.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is Light.
[SPEAKER_03]: and then he says then you extend and he went to the beautiful description the steps of again I will tell you where you can find the detailed arguments basically the steps of the argument was like this slide we are calling like only because our eyes are like this where it tracks this kind of light but basically this is a tiny part of a whole electromagnetic spectrum.
[SPEAKER_03]: and then he goes from there to quantum theory and his interpretation of quantum theory where all entities in the universe, they don't exist independently, they exist because of quantum interactions, exchange of information between quantum entities and that's how this entire universe comes into being.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says Swami literally Krishna is right, this whole universe is light shining.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at that moment, I still remember the moment, three of us, so he says, we should write a paper.
[SPEAKER_03]: Adwaita Vedant, the AI and quantum theory, three views of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: At first, we had decided to call it light shining.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, the paper was written and they wrote it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the smart guys who wrote it, I just get the credit of having my name on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You look it up, three views of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's available on the website.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's freely available now.
[SPEAKER_03]: What I give you this outline?
[SPEAKER_03]: So this,
[SPEAKER_03]: Now the point is, can AI become conscious, I am not going to say no, do I think AI is conscious?
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I'm quite clear about that, but can AI be conscious, I think not, but maybe yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe Advaita Vedat say, if you can be producing consciousness is an impossibility, but a reflecting consciousness is a much easier task.
[SPEAKER_03]: Imagine producing a face, very difficult, but reflecting the face you need a reflector, that's all.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Vedanta says all you need is a reflector.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the AI people are saying we are building better and better reflectors.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why not, at one point, it can become conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe I heard the opposite view also.
[SPEAKER_03]: When I talk to a neuroscientist, I talk to Bernardo Castro, and don't listen to them.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're trapping you in their network of concepts and definitions and all.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, he said that it is astonishing the amount of stupidity that you get about consciousness when you get a PhD.
[SPEAKER_03]: He said it is basically AI is basically a clever toy.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is not conscious, not going to be conscious any time soon, so that is his point.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he says, I, he told me, but not to see, at least I understand, AI down to its very grassroots.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very roots exactly what is going on there, I understand.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's nothing there that's going to make it conscious.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it doesn't deny its power.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it can become more and more powerful.
[SPEAKER_03]: One last question from the audience.
[SPEAKER_03]: We wait.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, the gentleman there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Come.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello Swamiji, just a quick, my name is Yav from also Philadelphia, just continuing this AI argument because we've been thinking about it for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't the AI or the consciousness that you're talking about now the dualistic kind of consciousness?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because even though the mind is the reflector, consciousness as far as, I mean, again, I don't know it, but consciousness as far as I can understand it is beyond concept.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is something that is non-dualistic at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in order for AI ultimately to become consciousness or get enlightened, it would have to leave the concept.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it would have to live outside of the machines that make it, correct?
[SPEAKER_01]: However, I would do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, just true.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the consciousness we are talking about is entirely in the dualistic play in what we are talking about is this relative, we have a higher transactional consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the framework of the debate which we had with that AI guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: He said, if I get the non-dual consciousness for a while, because that is not what we are talking about.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the most of the 325 theories are not non-dual theories, they are dealing with our empirical consciousness.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is why the whole debate was framed in those terms.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yes, all of that is not an issue at all in our modern discussions of AI, neither a chatGPT nor Grock or not, none of them are worried about enlightenment right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yes, but you're right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I met another person.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was so excited with these new ideas.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was communicating it to anybody who was interested.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I met this person who is will go nameless.
[SPEAKER_03]: He is a big name hacker.
[SPEAKER_03]: So computer hacker.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says, absolutely nothing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't go down that path Swami.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is just, these are AI enthusiasts.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they will say anything to convince you.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he's went down that this whole idea of spirituality we have.
[SPEAKER_03]: It makes no sense from an AI perspective.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, that's what I can only say yes or to what you are saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, sir.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, let us wrap up now afterwards.