Hari OM
'Text-days' are for delving into the
words and theory of Advaita Vedanta.
We are now studying Aatmabodha. As
always, with each week, you are encouraged to review the previous teachings and
spend some time in contemplation of the meanings as the affect your life.
Please do consider purchasing the text. Remember, also, to recite the mangala charana before each study and
review the lessons before each new one.
This
next shloka gives one of the great and classic analogies used to explain
adhyaropa-vada, the erroneous perception of something by superimposition
something else.
Swa[aE
pué;vd-æaNTya k&ta äüi[ jIvta,
jIvSy
taiÅcke êpe tiSmNd&:qe invtRte.45.
Sthaanau
purushavad-bhraantyaa kRtaa brahmani jiivataa,
Jiivasya
taattvike ruupe tasmin-dRshte nivartate ||45||
Just as a post appears to be a ghost, Brahman appears
to be a jiiva because of ignorance. The egocentric individuality is destroyed
when the real nature of the jiiva is realised as the Self.
The
analogy itself is not so difficult to comprehend, perhaps; the concept it
represents is still a slippery customer though! If you have been keeping up
with the reading and the required level of contemplation after each teaching,
then it will not seem quite such a stretch.
In
our current era of 'rationality', the concept of ghost may not be the most
adequate description here. However, it is not so difficult to think about those
moments we get caught out thinking there is someone standing before us in the
dark when walking round a corner to get to the bus stop or the parked car… only
to find it was a signpost or a shrub!
Really?
That hasn't happened to you? What about those nights in winter when you are
putting out the garbage cans and, thinking about other things are distracted, then you turn round and jump from fright at the 'body' behind you.
For a split second you forget that you had pulled the recycling bin out too. In
that briefest of moments, you truly thought there was someone lurking and all
your defences came alive. Are you catching the drift of this? Just about
everybody, at one time or more, experiences this phenomena of thinking there is
a person before them and it turns out to be a hunk of metal or a small tree.
In
delusion alone can we imagine and recognise that item (the 'post') to be
another being (the 'ghost'). Philosophically, the important thing to note now
is that it is the NON-apprehension of the post-item which, however briefly,
causes the MIS-apprehension of there being a person-ghost.
Moving
this concept along we are then asked to understand that Aatman (here called
Brahman), the Single True Self, is the substratum item which we do not
apprehend and therefore, through erroneous projection and ignorance of that
Truth of Existence, apprehend nothing but false existences. As splinters of
that True Self we are aware of other 'selves' and spin and wind them around our
own version of reality, become ever more attached to our bodies and, indeed,
those other 'bodies'. This shloka, then, is describing to us that what we think
of as 'the world' is entirely of our own creation because as the True Self, we
have somehow become distracted and lost sight of our truth.
However,
if we do the work advised to us in philosophy, just as the person-ghost will
drop away as our knowledge of the actual post-item reasserts itself, so too the
world will drift away from our deluded selves and the Truth of our Solitary
Self will at last be revealed. It will be akin to waking from a dream. Whilst
in the dream, we are inclined to take it for real. Only on waking do we know it
to be false. Only by recognising the truth of the post can the deluded one
recover from the angst of seeing the ghost. Only by working to see the Self
Alone can we remove the delusion of plurality. The way to do this is to end the
ego.
