Where does Vedanta point us to? It points to the main subject on our channel, Spiritual Enlightenment – some people call it the Realization of God.
Vedanta is the Vision of the Truth about who You are. So, Vedanta is the last part of the Vedas. We have, in this last part of the Vedas, Advaita Vedanta, the Vision of Non-Duality, the Vision of your Being, which represents the answer to the question “who am I?”
But notice: this is not the intellectual study of the Upanishads, Vedas, and Vedanta; here it is about the experience of your Essential Nature. So, we have, in Vedanta, the importance of Yoga.
Yoga is something much bigger than physical exercises or physical postures called asanas and pranayamas, breathing techniques. This is something that can bring you great physical well-being, however, our interest here is to discover the Transcendent Truth, the Truth that transcends body and mind, the Truth of your Being, which is this Non-Duality – This is Spiritual Enlightenment.
You can access the Truth of your Being directly – This is the True Yoga. So, it’s not about physical exercises, like asanas, or breathing exercises, like pranayama, but about Real Yoga, the Real practice of Self-Awareness, the investigation of the Truth about who You are.
Here, we are dealing with you and showing you what the True Yoga is. Ramana called it Jnana Yoga, the Yoga of Knowledge. The very word Vedanta means “Pure Knowledge,” “The Final Knowledge,” “The Final Understanding,” and “the True Knowledge.”
That True Knowledge is not in the intellect, but rather in the transcendence of that egoic sense, at the end to that sense of duality, of separation; it is present in Advaita. That’s why we have the expression “Advaita Vedanta” within Vedanta – your contact with the Truth of your Being, your direct contact with the Reality of your Essential Nature.
In general, we are very enthusiastic and attached to books, to studies. Thus, intellectually, you can acquire a great collection, and have great culture, great knowledge, but none of this represents a direct experience of your Essential Nature. This is only at the intellectual level, the verbal level, and the level of words, which, in fact, also constitutes another form of escape. I don't know if you've noticed how much we enjoy reading. This pleasure is linked to the sense of a temporary escape from some form of psychological pain present.
When you're stressed and you pick up a book and start reading, there’s a certain tranquility, certain relaxation. We have different ways of escaping from this existential pain – here, I refer to the pain of the existence of the “I…” of the “me.” This “I” carries this pain, which is the pain of separateness.
For your information, all the unhappiness present in a human being is because of this pain of separateness.
Maybe you've never heard what I'm going to say here and now for you, but this is a fact, a reality. Psychological unhappiness is a divine invitation, it is an invitation from God to Self-recognition. So, anxiety... People sometimes ask “what can I do? I have anxiety attacks, how to control them? How to control anxiety attacks? I have an anxiety attack every day!” They don't know: every day, Life is inviting them to the Recognition of the Truth about who they are.
This goes for depressive states, these different pathological frames: insomnia, panic, the various fears present in us, the fear you feel of your wife, children, and family, the fear you feel of bad news, that tension when your cell phone rings, this negative expectation about future problems – this is fear, this is anxiety.
What we don't know and need to be told, and here I’m putting it to you... all of this is a divine invitation for you to realize the Truth about who You are, the Truth of your Being, the Truth of your Essential Nature, which, essentially, doesn’t separate from Life, from the Whole, and therefore, doesn’t carry this unhappiness.
Your Being, your Divine Nature – and the Awareness of your Divine Nature – is in that View of Non-Duality, which is Advaita. The word Advaita means “the one without the second.” The Nature of God, which is the Nature of Being, the Nature of Consciousness, your True Nature, doesn’t carry frames of unhappiness, the pathological frames of psychological pain. There’s no room in your Being, in What is Consciousness, God, for this sense of separateness, and therefore, there’s no room for depression, anxiety, fear in its many forms, diverse fears, for the pain of loneliness, the pain of existential emptiness.
Your Natural State is the State of Love, Beauty, Peace, and Happiness. These diverse frames of unhappiness are present in the egoic sense, the sense “I,” in this sense of separateness – this is not the Truth about who You are.
Enlightenment, your Natural State, is present in the one who Realized the Truth. This State, which is You in your Being, is Wisdom, Intelligence, Goodness, and Compassion, it is the Perfect Knowledge.
You can spend your entire life intellectually occupied with reading. By the way, these readings are distractions, they are forms of entertainment, and they are also forms of self-forgetfulness from psychological pain. So, I want to repeat: this is part of this whole escape movement. You need to put an end to this escape from psychological pain. We don't realize that this psychological pain is an invitation to this Realization of God.
One day Ramana Maharshi was asked about suffering, and Ramana replied, “Suffering is the presence of God,” the person didn’t understand this well; “it is the presence of God revealing Itself,” and the person didn’t understand this. Ramana said to the person, “When you have a comfortable dream, you don't wake up, you go on until the end of the dream and only then you wake up. But at night, when you have an uncomfortable dream, when you are faced with a nightmare, there comes a time when you can't stand it and you wake up. So, this is suffering.” Suffering is a nightmare to wake you up.
Ramana even said that the greatest blessing is man having to face suffering. When you are faced with suffering, you have the possibility to Wake up, to Awaken, to Recognize the Divine Truth, to Recognize the Truth of God, What You are. So, we must stop escaping.
Human beings have been escaping for millennia… escaping from themselves, escaping from the Realization of the innate Happiness, the Reality of their Being. The various forms of escape haven’t helped us. We need to Awaken, to Awaken from this nightmare, which is psychological suffering, the sense of “I,” the sense of the ego. It is this sense of separateness that sustains suffering.
“How can I get rid of suffering?” By discovering the Truth of Your Being. This requires Self-Awareness. So, contact with the Revelation of Wisdom isn’t the contact with books, or external studies, but rather with this “studying yourself,” “looking at yourself,” “observing yourself,” and “knowing yourself.”
It’s in this sense that we also use the word Self-Awareness. It’s not in the philosophical or psychological sense or any other sense. We put it exclusively in this sense: in the sense of self-observation – “who am I?”
Ramana called Atma Vichara the observation of the movement of the “I” … observing the mind here and now, observing your reactions, observing in you the presence of all this social, cultural, educational, psychological conditioning, seeing in yourself, being able to perceive all this programming of acting in an envious, ambitious, fearful, egocentric way... This distance created by this background of psychological conditioning, this distance between you and others, you and life, you and God, all this needs to be seen. And only when there is Self-Awareness can it be seen, be acknowledged, not when you escape. You escape to the theater, to music, sex, and drinking, you escape to the various therapeutic meditation practices.
Vedanta doesn’t address these therapeutic meditation practices. This is something introduced in the history of humanity in recent times, especially in the West. We have created various meditation techniques and practices. They work as escape mechanisms. So, you manage to relieve stress, anxiety, and depression, and relieve these frames of unhappiness, but this is not solved, because the sense of “I” is present, and the sense of ego is present.
Realize what we are saying here to you. You need to go beyond this sense of “I,” and it’s possible! This is in the Realization of What is You here and now. So, the basis is Self-Awareness – looking and seeing what is happening without escaping. Feelings arise, you look; a thought arises, you look; a sensation arises, a perception arises, and you look, just look, become aware, and give Full Attention to it.
This Full Attention happens naturally. It’s not concentration. You won't resist, you won't fight against something to focus here on this thing. This is what people call concentration – your interest is elsewhere and at the same time, you are forced to focus here. No! When this happens, there is conflict and contradiction. That’s concentration. So, I'm not dealing with concentration, I'm dealing with Attention.
Your inner interest here is in looking at your reactions, thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions, and sensations… just looking. It’s not criticizing what you look at, what you see in yourself, it’s not judging, not comparing, not rejecting, it’s not identifying with it either. That’s how the ego perpetuates itself, how it stays alive: when we reject the experience or when we identify with it without Attention, without Presence, without Consciousness – and here Presence, Attention, and Consciousness are the same thing.
This is the basis of Self-Awareness. This brings you closer to What I have called here on our channel and in face-to-face meetings – you are also invited to get to know it… face-to-face meetings, including the retreats we have. We have retreats and face-to-face meetings, as well as online meetings.
So, we work it out together. We are showing you what the True Practical Meditation, True Meditation is within Vedanta. The question is, “Who am I? What is the Truth of my Real Nature?”
Only this Meditation, this True Meditation, is the True Yoga, the True Practice of Yoga. The Real Contact with the approach of Yoga, the approach of your Being, the Contact with the Divine Truth You are, here and now, is within this True Practical Meditation. Then, it’s possible to have a Revelation of the Truth of your Being. This is the appearance or emergence of Wisdom, of Enlightenment; This is the Encounter with Happiness.
You are an Ocean of Love, Happiness, and Peace. That is You… when the ego is not present, when the sense of separateness is not present, when that psychological conditioning, that psychological insanity common in humanity, disappears within you – it disappears with Kundalini Awakening.
One thing also important here is the Awakening of this Energy, this Presence. In the Upanishads, it is very clear. Ramana himself states: “The human being, without the Realization of God, without this Spiritual Enlightenment, is nothing but an animal, just an animal.” And Ramana goes so far as to say “an animal in worse condition.”
Everything present in the animal is also in the human being, but the human being has the possibility of realizing God in this life. The human being is born, grows, procreates, grows old, gets sick, and dies – and sometimes it doesn’t even go in this order – and he doesn’t realize God.
Most people know nothing, absolutely nothing about this Beauty, this Truth we’re discussing here. And even the knowledge they have is merely intellectual. Here, we’re talking about the experience of the Awakening of Spiritual Enlightenment. Thus, Kundalini Awakening is actually the Presence of God revealing himself here and now, the Presence of the Divine Reality here and now, when there’s no longer this sense of “I,” of ego, this sense of separateness. Ok?
If this is something that makes sense to you, leave your “like” there, subscribe to the channel… Reminding you once again: we have online meetings, face-to-face meetings, and even retreats. If that makes sense, let’s work it out together. Ok?
Thanks for the meeting and see you next time.
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