Student: Do humans have free will?
Teacher: What free will do you have in sleep?
Student: What is the way to self-awakening?
Teacher: What path do you need to reach yourself?
Student: So, we do not need any spiritual practice, sādhanā?
Teacher: Quite the contrary! It is true that enlightenment is an accident. Practice makes you more accident-prone.
Student: So, practice is important?
Teacher: Yes and no!
Student: How so?
Teacher: Practice is necessary to remove the wrong notions about the self. Since there is no separation between the seeker and the sought, except for self-ignorance based on self-misconception, what one needs is self-understanding.
How can you seek yourself? How can an eye see itself, except as a reflection in a mirror?
The teachings of the sages act as a mirror.
Self-discovery is not a journey as many believe, just recognition—from here to here. There is no there!
Strive, therefore, to know thyself! It is the greatest wealth in the creation.
Student: How can Self-knowledge be the greatest wealth in the creation?
Teacher: The whole universe, the billion-galaxies and all, is contained within your awareness. Your “self”— the Conscious “I-principle”— lends existence to the entire world. Endless space and eternal time exist within your consciousness. Your existence as pure awareness does not depend upon the world; their existence depends upon you, your awareness.
This is a case of A = B but B ≠ A. Life has a different calculus than algebra.
Student: Hum! I do not think I understand that. If A equals B, B should equal A.
Teacher: Let’s understand it in this manner: The existence of the world depends upon you (A = B): Pure awareness = world. Your existence as pure awareness does not depend upon the world (B ≠ A): World Pure Awareness, for during deep sleep when the world ceases to exist as such, you as Pure Awareness continue to be.
That is why you are able to say in the morning, “I slept so well last night; it feels so good and refreshing!” Now, it is a law of memory that we have to experience something before we can recall it. So, you as Pure Awareness were there, so to speak, even when the world subsided along with your mind during your deep sleep.
You create the dream world—with its attendant Time and Space—every day!
Even so, during the waking state, you illumine the whole creation with your awareness.
You are the sole cause of the entire creation, my dear. And cause is always grander than the effect. This is how special you are!
Realize your limitlessness, puraṇatvam, and be free.
Once an English scholar asked a traditional Hindu pundit to teach him Upaniṣads—texts dealing with Self-knowledge. The pundit started with the Īśopaniṣad. The Upaniṣad begins with this peace chant, śantipātha— Om pūrṇamadah pūrṇamidaṁ:
ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पुर्णमुदच्यते
पूर्णश्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
Om pūrṇamadah pūrṇamidaṁ pūrṇāt pūrṇamudacyate /
Pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya pūrṇamevāvaśiṣyate //
Om śāntiḥ, śāntiḥ, śāntiḥ
Om! That is Infinite (Brahman), and this (universe) is Infinite.
The Infinite proceeds from the Infinite.
Taking the infinitude of the infinite (universe),
It remains as the infinite (Brahman) alone.
Om! Peace! Peace!! Peace!!!
The three times Peace (शान्ति): is for:
आधिदैविक शान्तिः (Divine Peace)
अधिभौतिक शान्तिः (Physical Peace)
अध्यात्मिक शान्तिः (Spiritual Peace)
ॐ, Om, symbolically, represents the Brahman, the mainstay and substratum of all there is, and is the primordial Sound. The whole creation proceeds from it, has its being in it, and resolves into it.
Translated as such, he could not make any head or tail out of it. The Englishman grew impatient and stopped his study at that point and did not progress any further! He said that the Upaniṣads are the “prattlings of an infantile mind.”
One should not misconstrue the defect in reception to be the defect in transmission.
If the seeker had persisted a bit longer, he would have discovered that this profound verse means completeness is I, the subject; and completeness is all objects comprising creation. Both I and creation are complete because they came from Completeness, the Absolute Brahman (Brahman means limitless). When we take completeness out of completeness, only completeness remains. Infinity plus infinity is infinity and infinity minus infinity is also infinity for there is nothing other than the infinity, the fullness. You cannot add to infinity, much less subtract from it. That fullness is you, Tat Tvam Asi. This is enlightenment, Self-knowledge, awakening to our real nature, svarūpa.
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