Episode Details

Speaker A [00:00:00]:

How can we understand the nature of reality, and how can we understand that we are awareness or consciousness and not our bodies and our minds? In the last episode, we talked about the concept of God. We looked at what God is, and we also talked about the nature of self. And we came to an understanding that we are pure awareness or consciousness, and we are not our bodies and our minds. So in this episode. Let us take this a step further, and let us investigate on this topic. Let us look at a method through which we can come to an understanding and a realization that we are that pure awareness and not this body and mind. The concepts that I'm going to talk about today comes from an ancient text called Drk Drishya Viveka. This is a small yet profound text which gives us a method to look at our own experience and to come to a realization about the nature of reality and to find out who we are.

Speaker A [00:01:11]:

Con let us step by step look at this teaching, and let us examine our experiences to come to an understanding of the nature of reality. Now this has to be listened to when you are alone and when there are no disturbances. But if you are driving or if you are within any activity, you can pause this episode here. Con talks about denying the scene. First of all, what we need to understand is the difference between a subject and an object. A subject is something which is experiencing, con and an object is something which is being experienced. This is basic grammar, and everyone understands this. And we also need to understand that a subject can never be an object, and an object can never be a subject.

Speaker A [00:02:07]:

Con these 2 are fundamentally different things. Now with this basic framework and understanding, let us look at how we can understand the nature of self. For this, I will step by step walk you through what you need to do, and you need to start doing this as we go along? Step 1, pick up an object. It can be anything. It can be a pen or a book or whatever, and just hold it in your hands and start looking at it. Now let's say you have picked up a book and you are holding it, and you are looking at the book. Now your eyes are seeing the book, which means that the book is an object and your eyes are the subject. This is level 1.

Speaker A [00:02:54]:

In level 2, your eyes will send the signals and impulses to the brain, and you will brain will process that information. In this case, your brain is the subject con and your eyes are the object. And since the subject and an object cannot be a same thing, in this case, your eyes are the object and your brain is the subject. Now let's go to level 3. Your brain itself is being experienced by the mind, and your mind is that which is experiencing the brain. Now in this level, your mind is the subject, and your brain is the object. Until now, it was simple, and most of us can understand this. Now let us go to level 5.

Speaker A [00:03:45]:

Here, you need to go a little bit deeper, and you need to look at your experiences carefully. What we need to understand here is that our mind is being witnessed. We are not our minds because our minds will change. The mind that we had when we were young is no longer the mind that we have right now, and this mind will change in the future. But I who is experiencing this mind, that witness, always remains constant, and it will always remain in the background untouched by the mind. So what we need to understand is that there is something which is behind the mind, which is beyond the mind, and it is witnessing the mind. It is being aware of the mind. This witness, peace, consciousness, or pure awareness.

Speaker A [00:04:39]:

This is who we truly are, and our mind itself, along with the body and everything else is being experienced or witnessed in that awareness. Con now here in level 5, that pure awareness or consciousness w