The illusion of the Universe || Acharya Prashant

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00Acharyaji, my question to you is the concept of Maya or the idea that the whole universe

00:09is an illusion is at its core in Advaita Vedanta. However, Maya as a concept is unfathomable

00:16to many of us. So, how can your book help the general audience without having the deep

00:22knowledge of Vedanta, understand this concept and are there any major learnings especially

00:27for students like us from this book? Namaste everyone. See, you said Maya is the

00:45concept that the universe is an illusion. The concept actually is that there is nothing

00:57called the universe. This universe that you and I perceive is a purely subjective entity.

01:19The subjectivity exists at two levels, at the level of meaning and at the level of the

01:31fact. Take for example, a building that you perceive. This building can be taken as symbolizing

01:50the universe. The universe consists of objects that the building represent them. Now, nobody

02:04looks at a building without assigning meaning to the building and the meanings that we assign

02:14to anything that we see or experience or think of or imagine are purely subjective.

02:26There is nothing absolute about them and that much is obviously very simple to see. Then

02:35comes the more austere part, even the fact that the building is actually subjective.

02:53The three-dimensional shape that the building appears as, the height, the width, the entire

03:07spatial geometry, all that is a function of the way your brain is configured to look at

03:19things. So, it is not as if the building exists objectively or absolutely by itself

03:30independent of the perceiving subject, not at all. If your own personal configuration

03:40changes, the building would no more remain the same. Even among the different subjects

03:52that perceive the same object, we find a great difference in perception. There are sentient

04:05beings that are able to hear particular wavelengths that you and I just cannot experience beyond

04:1920,000 Hertz, let's say, or subsonic beyond less than the 20 Hertz threshold. We won't

04:31just know, for us there would be nothing to perceive, whereas for them there would

04:37exist a reality and that reality they would call as objective, that is the ego. To think

04:49of its own perceptions and projections as absolute, that is ego. To think of one's

04:59own projections and perceptions as absolute. So, when you look at the building, first of

05:06all you attribute a meaning. Nobody looks at a building, I have said I am repeating,

05:13without assigning a meaning. Someone is looking at a building out of jealousy, somebody out

05:18of curiosity, somebody wants to study the building, somebody wants to steal the building,

05:24somebody wants to own the building, somebody wants to rent the building, somebody has just

05:31some kind of a memory associated with that building, somebody might be just scared of

05:39buildings. So, there is that meaning part and that meaning obviously is purely subjective.

05:47Because there is such a heavy component of subjectivity, in fact, because there is 100%

05:53subjectivity, therefore, what Acharya Shankar said was that the world is not how you perceive

06:04it to be. Mithya does not mean non-existent. When he said Jagat is Mithya, he didn't mean

06:13that the world or the universe does not exist at all. What he meant was that it does not

06:21exist in the way you think it does. What is the reality of the universe? That he called

06:30as Brahm and Brahm, you cannot think of, Brahm is truly unfathomable. Therefore, the solution

06:42lies in just negating the subjective part and that subjectivity we said is ego. Maya

06:51is another name for that. So, the more you get rid of Maya, the more you dissolve and

07:02the more what remains is the absolute. You can call that as the Atman or Brahm or Truth.

07:12It is an absence of the personal self, the subjective experiencer. So, there is not much

07:26complication in the concept of Maya because we all know that things are not as they appear

07:33to be and the proof of that is our daily frustrations. Have things in your life or my life turned

07:44out as they promised to be? Why do we often feel deceived then? Why do we get setbacks?

07:58Why do we then say that, oh, I misinterpreted? The thing is, it's only sometimes that we

08:07admit that we misinterpreted. Misinterpretation is happening all the time because the interpreter

08:16itself is illusory. The interpreter is called the ego. I am the interpreter, I am the ego

08:24and because I am interpreting, so I am bound to misinterpret. This is Maya. So, Maya really

08:30does not principally or primarily have to do with the world as such. Before we set out

08:43to inquire and negate the external world, it is more important to investigate why we

08:52are first of all in illusion with respect to the external world. It is because Maya

08:57resides within. The experiencer himself is subject to greed, desire, fear and many other

09:09such tendencies due to which his entire perception is skewed, biased, distorted. He sees things

09:21where none exist and that which exists, he definitely fails to see. This is Maya. Maya

09:32is said to have two aspects, avaran and vikshep. The first one is about your failure to see

09:46the reality and the latter is about seeing, projecting, imagining stuff that does not

09:58really exist. It should be obvious by now that this Maya which resides within fundamentally

10:11is at the root of all human misery because if you do not see a pothole where it exists,

10:27you will receive a root jolt, won't you? At the same time, if you are driving down a highway

10:39and you start imagining that a deer has suddenly leaped in front of your car, then again you

10:48will receive a huge jolt. You might actually slam the brakes so hard that you might just

11:03hit your head against the windscreen and you don't require an object outside the car

11:10to hit you. You will hit the car from inside and suffer. That's how we usually suffer.

11:22Hurting and hitting ourselves from the inside when actually there is nothing outside to

11:29hurt us. That's Maya. But I would rather hear from you what you think about it and converse.

11:39Yeah, I mean, thank you for your answer Acharya ji about Maya and about ego. I was saying that I

11:46recently read a quote from you that you mentioned that the madman is the last to admit that he is

11:52a mad person. I think, I mean that quote I think kind of resonates with what we are speaking about

11:57ego and I think that mad person is kind of very close to his ego, which is why he is not

12:03admitting that he is mad. So my question is, I think in two levels, I want to

12:10understand how as a human being, how we can kind of remove the biases or the prejudices

12:17that we have and then maybe become less mad and less closer to the ego and also how do we deal

12:23with people who are like this, who are very prejudiced and who do not change their perception

12:29very easily. The answer to the second part is contained in the first part. In the second part

12:37you asked how do we deal with people who are prejudiced, biased and pretty stubborn about their

12:44perceptions or opinions. If you can deal with yourself first, you will know how to deal with

12:54all such people because every single person including the questioner and this speaker

13:03is bound to be biased and prejudiced. So if we can know how to figure out our own biases

13:11and prejudices, it will become very easy to spot the same things in others and help them out of these.

13:20You see, we have a stake in living in fancies and imaginations

13:29and that stake offers us comforts.

13:42That's the reason

13:46most people prefer imaginations over the reality.

13:52We are born deluded, the newborn has no faculty for clear perception.

14:10Yet the newborn is taken care of in several ways

14:18and the newborn has prakritic, by prakritic I mean physical nature, biology here.

14:27The newborn has prakritic systems in place to help her navigate through the initial months and years

14:38and that works, that works without any deep understanding or consciousness.

14:50Kids of all species manage to live through their initial years and

15:01in a healthy way.

15:11That tendency continues.

15:16In animals, the continuation of that tendency is not a problem

15:21because their consciousness anyway has no urge towards liberation.

15:31But in human beings, there does exist that urge.

15:39But if you have to be liberated of your tendencies,

15:48the same tendencies that are referred to as internal bondages,

15:53the same internal bondages that result in several external bondages,

15:58then you have to pay the price for it.

16:03Paying price is a tough choice. Most people do not want to make that choice.

16:10Right, so you ask me how, I said choose.

16:17You ask me how to do it, I said choose to do it. The answer is so simple.

16:23The answer is frustratingly simple.

16:27How to drop your biases? Choose to drop your biases because it's not that you do not know

16:33that you are biased. I'll tell you why it is impossible to not know that you are biased.

16:41Life has no regards for your opinions or fancies. If you live in imaginations,

16:53you will keep struggling and hitting against events and you will stumble and fall

17:07so many times, so many places. Right, so life has an inbuilt mechanism to communicate to you

17:18that you are not living in facts, let alone the truth. Right, so we know,

17:29we know, we are being delivered the message again and again.

17:36The diagnosis of our condition is not a secret.

17:40It is being displayed to us almost daily. Right, even when external situations do not display that,

17:51our internal climate is ample proof. If one were living rightly, why would one be so scared?

18:01Why would one be so scared? Why would one be jealous or insecure or temperamental?

18:19There would be no need. Right, so all these things clearly tell you that you are not living

18:28in a real world. You are living in your head. But then, as we said, one has to make efforts

18:45to break out of the jail and one has to pay the price.

18:49The thing with our biological conditioning is that we are, you know, luxury loving people.

19:03Inertia applies not only to insentient objects but much more to human beings.

19:14If you have been living in a certain way and you are used to it,

19:19then you grow a thousand inner arguments against challenging the status quo.

19:28So you don't want to pay the price, then that's all. Ignorance is actually nothing. Let nobody say

19:36that he or she is making the right choices in life because she does not know.

19:45We all know. We prefer to suppress the inner knowledge. It's an inner conspiracy against

19:53ourselves just because we want to continue enjoying certain privileges in life,

20:00certain physical privileges, material privileges, monetary privileges.

20:04And, you know, if you want to just test whether people are living in ignorance or self-deception,

20:16there is a simple test. Go and declare something to them that takes them towards the truth.

20:34Declare loudly. Had they just been ignorant, they would have at least shown curiosity.

20:50If not, welcome. But you will find that the moment you show the mirror to people,

20:57the moment you want to bring the truth to people, they actually actively bulk away.

21:07They might even feel offended. What does that tell? They knew very well in advance

21:15that they were living in the false. They knew. That's the reason why the moment the truth shown,

21:24they became scared and defensive. So, ignorance is just an ugly ploy against oneself.

21:40Nobody is really ignorant. We just don't choose to live rightly, to know the truth,

21:48to drop our biases. We have a stake there. Little, some small petty benefits we keep getting

21:57and those petty benefits are enough to keep making a side with the false, bad.

22:10Thank you for the answer Acharyaji. So, we also had a question about God from the audience.

22:15But before we move to that question, I had a question pertaining to what we spoke earlier.

22:21So, you said that whatever universe we perceive is our subjective experience and the only absolute

22:28truth is that is the Atman or the truth. So, and this is at its core in Advaita Vedanta.

22:35And however, if you look at other devotional practices where you worship a particular

22:46deity. So, you are in essentially, you are considering that deity to be higher than

22:51yourself. So, be it in Bhakti Marga or like other practices in Vaishnava. So,

22:57is it that in effect we are worshipping ourselves when we are worshipping God?

23:04That's obvious. That's obvious. As an intelligent young man, it must be obvious to you.

23:14You know, you go to sleep. You go to sleep. Can you still conceptualize a deity? You cannot.

23:25So, the deity is obviously a product of the waking state of your consciousness.

23:31The deity is a product of your thinking mind. The moment your state changes,

23:41the moment your thought changes, all those fancy stories about God and so many other things,

23:49they just vanish. But truth or Atma or Brahm, they are not concepts. They are not products

23:59of imagination. They are not products of mind at all. Therefore, their very definition is that

24:08they are inaccessible to the mind. So, whatever happens to the mind, the truth remains.

24:17But if the mind changes, then contents in the mind will no longer remain.

24:23You have to ask yourself whether your God is beyond the mind or within the mind.

24:33If your so-called God is within the mind, then your God is obviously smaller than the mind.

24:41Your God is then just a slave to the mind.

24:46A thing cannot be bigger than the vessel it is contained in.

24:52If God is contained in your mind, how will it be bigger than the mind?

24:57Brahm or truth are not really the contents of mind. Therefore, they are not amenable to a lot

25:08of discussion. One approaches them only via the negativa. You negate what is false and what is

25:19only via the negativa. You negate what is false and then slowly the truth shines.

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