To know what we actually are, we must discard body and world

Sri Ramana Teachings - Sri Ramana Center of Houston

This episode of the Sri Ramana Center of Houston explores the profound teachings of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi on self-inquiry, emphasizing that

Key takeaways

Death of the body is certain, but it does not equate to our own death if we are not the body.
The belief that 'I am this body' is a mistaken awareness that creates suffering and vulnerability.

Main topics

The nature of self beyond the body
The illusion of duality (maya)

Notable quotes

If we are this body, then when the body dies, we die. But if we are not this body, then the death of the body is not our death.

There's no evidence in the waking state that it's anything other than a dream.

Conclusion

True freedom lies not in avoiding death or catastrophe, but in realizing our eternal

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:02) This is a nice reconstruction that Melissa has made of what my question essentially is. So we coexist with constant dangers, such as the destruction of the environment and the loss of life by many means. And Anne Jacobson wrote about this in her recent book, Biological War, People Doing Inhuman Things to Survive. So despite the potential destruction suggested, one is directed internally to seek oneself. So part of the question is how do we reconcile those two perspectives? And also, since most of us are entangled in the state of maya, if a living being dies in an imperfected state, which is likely to happen if there is a biological war, for example, Speaker 5 (1:15) or unperfected state, and the world has been destroyed on different means, but we'll say biological war to keep it simple. How will we be able to disentangle ourselves from Maya and achieve a perfected state? Because the truth of the matter is that we won't be here. if there's actually a biological war, because these are transmuted, genetically transmuted, just like plagues and other things, but it's a combination of things like that. It'll wipe out the whole world, except for people that are, you know, there to rebuild the world. And so that's the basis of the question. Speaker 1 (2:12) Okay. Speaker 1 (2:15) Regarding the first part of the question, it's a fact, the most basic fact of biological life is, I mean, the most certain fact of any biological life is death. Death is going to come to all of us sooner or later. We're all sitting here now in... A hundred years' time, none of us will be here, none of those who are present during this meeting. And there may be a few people alive today who still are alive after a hundred years, but after 120 years, every single living human being... Every single human being who is now alive on this planet is going to be dead. So death is absolutely certain. It may come sooner, it may come later, it may come the next minute. Speaker 1 (3:15) We don't need biological war. We don't need nuclear war. We don't need any of these things. People have been dying by so many means. People have been dying by accidents in wars, by starvation if there's a famine, by the effects of poverty. Still nowadays, there are people living in poverty, and those who live in poverty tend to have shorter lifespan than those who have a more affluent lifestyle. So death is certain in one way or other. Disease, if nothing else gets us beforehand, sooner or later, old age is going to catch up with us. So death is absolutely certain. Death of this body is certain. That is... why this path that Bhagavan has taught us is so relevant. Because people often talk about, debate the question of whether there's life after death. But we can't decide the question of whether there's life after death without knowing what we are now. Speaker 1 (4:34) If we are this body, as many people believe, as materialists, physicalists believe, they believe we are just this body, then when this body dies, we are dead. I mean, that is obviously the case if we are this body. But are we just this body or are we something more than this body? Speaker 1 (4:55) For those who think a little bit more deeply or have a little bit more subtle understanding, it seems clear that though we now experience ourself as I am this body, we are actually something distinct from this body. Because if this body were what we actually are, We couldn't be aware of ourselves without being aware of this body. But it's very clear in dream, for example, we are aware of ourselves, not as this body, but as some other body. So in dream, we're existing with awareness of ourself, but without any awareness of this body at all. So how can this body be what we actually are? So this, this. Speaker 1 (5:51) experience of ours, our experience, I am this body, which is the basis of all our experience in this life, is a false awareness. It's a mistaken awareness. We're aware of ourselves as something other than what we actually are. So it is clear we are definitely not this body. So we have no reason to suppose But with the death of this body, we are also going to die. But there's no use in just saying, OK, I'm something other than this body, without actually knowing what we actually are. So in Vedanta, in Advaita, there's an analysis, various ways of analysing our experience to determine what we actually are. And all these various ways, by all these various means, what are called prakriyas in classical Advaita, things like distinguishing the knower from the known, or what is called drisya viveka, that literally means distinguishing the seer from the seen. But their C is used not just in the sense of visual sight, but it's used in a broader sense of knowledge. So all phenomena are things that appear and disappear in our awareness or in the view of ourself as awareness. Since they appear and disappear in our experience, We are clearly something distinct from them. They may not be distinct from us, but we are distinct from them. So if we analyze in various ways, we can come to the same conclusion. But what we fundamentally are is just awareness. Speaker 1 (7:55) We can determine that we're not this body, we're not the mind, we're not the intellect, not the will, because these are all phenomena that are constantly changing. And whatever undergoes change is something different from us, because we who are aware of these things are unchanging. We remain at the same awareness, whatever appears or disappears. So since we are something distinct from all these things, the death of this body is not our death. But it's fine to analyze all these things and come to a conclusion that what we actually are is just awareness. But that doesn't solve our problem because the experience I am this body remains. We all experience ourselves as if we were this body. And this is the fundamental error we make. And so long as we have a mistaken awareness of ourself, our awareness of other things is all... All suspect, all open to question. Because if we don't even know what we ourselves are, how can we be sure about whatever knowledge we have about other things? For example, if we're not this body, Speaker 8 (9:18) what Speaker 1 (9:21) evidence do we have that what we now take to be the waking state is not a dream? Speaker 1 (9:30) So, if all this, because we just have to consider it very simply, is there anything that we experience in our present state that we could not experience in a dream? Obviously not. Anything that we experience in the waking state, we could also experience in dream. So, there's no evidence from our experience in the waking state that this is anything other than a dream. So if all this is a dream, then we can't know the reality of all these things without first knowing the reality of ourself. Speaker 1 (10:12) If we accept that our experience of ourselves is fundamentally flawed, this is what we need to investigate and find out. There may be a biological war. There may be a nuclear war. There may be a great natural pandemic or accidental pandemic caused by this research on... Speaker 1 (10:41) viruses and bacteria and things. Sometimes while doing research, they may unwittingly bring about a mutation in a virus that produces a deadly virus. So there's so many ways in which it's possible all life on this planet could be wiped out. Speaker 1 (11:02) Even if we don't cause it, there's a possibility that one day a meteor, I mean a huge, what do they call it, comet, could strike this planet and life in this planet would be wiped out. All these are possibilities because life in the embodied existence is intrinsically vulnerable. we're going to definitely die in one way or another. Even if we don't die immediately, we can have accident and be paralysed, we can be in coma. There's so many things that can happen to us. It's just so long as we have this false awareness, I am this body, we are exposed to so many dangers. And even if our bodily life is okay, there's so many... Mental illnesses that people have, depression and all these things. So even if everything is favourable in their life, just their state of mind can make even the most favourable circumstances a hell. So this is the vulnerable state we are in so long as we take ourselves to be this body. Speaker 1 (12:21) Therefore, investigating and knowing what we actually are, if we think about it, it's the most... Speaker 1 (12:31) important thing, more important than any other thing, this is important. Because whatever problems we solve in this world, we're not going to solve the problem of death. And we know the nature of problems in this world. People have been solving problems for thousands of years. You solve one problem, some other problem crops up in its place. So there's no... Speaker 1 (12:59) There's no solution to our problems so long as we continue to take ourselves to be this body. This is why investigating ourself is necessary. You phrased the question, how do we reconcile these perspectives? Speaker 1 (13:22) The two perspectives are, and one perspective is, I am this body, therefore, sooner or later, I'm going to die. That we can understand is a mistaken perspective. It's a distorted perspective. We are not the body that we seem to be. So since we are not this body, but we seem to be this body, we experience ourselves as this body, we need to get rid of this. false awareness, I am this body. And we can get rid of this, because this is a mistaken awareness of ourselves, we can get rid of it only by correct awareness of ourselves, only by being aware of ourselves as we actually are. That is why self-investigation is absolutely necessary. That's the first half of your question. Is that a satisfactory answer to that part of a question? Speaker 5 (14:20) A brief follow-up, and I appreciate everything that you've said to all of us, quite frankly. So my concern, in part, is that If any of these germs, because they're recombined in so many different ways, you know, destroys all Speaker 4 (14:59) of Speaker 5 (14:59) the earth, except for people who are going to rebuild it after things are gone. So. Speaker 5 (15:11) It's two parts. Those of us who know that we're not our body, we're not our mind, Speaker 4 (15:19) absolutely. Speaker 5 (15:23) But our body won't be here if this were to occur. And it's not going to be here anyway, as you're saying, because we all die. But if we've not achieved a perfect state, Speaker 5 (15:45) What do we do? And if we are people who, you know, just believe that we are this body and we die in this catastrophic way, including animals, quite frankly, Speaker 5 (16:03) I mean, what do they do? I mean, that is, that's more my question. I mean, I know that actually I'm Brahmin or Aukman. Yeah. And Speaker 3 (16:17) I can Speaker 5 (16:17) sense that state at times and working on that. And so I'm not afraid of dying myself. Speaker 2 (16:26) But, Speaker 5 (16:27) you know, I'm... I still, you know, I still would die in this unperfected state, more than likely. I'm concerned about that in those two ways. It's like, you Speaker 4 (16:41) know, Speaker 5 (16:41) what happens? Where do you go? What do you do? So that's more or less the question. Speaker 1 (16:57) Two answers to this, because one answer addresses one problem and the other answer addresses the other problem that you're also referring to. So the first thing is, if we die in an unperfected state, what will happen to us? Arjuna asked pretty much the same question, in different words, obviously, to Krishna in the Gita. That is, if one is following this spiritual path, but doesn't reach the goal within this lifetime, what then happens to him? And Krishna gives an assurance that if you've been following this path, you will be born in favourable circumstances to continue this path. That's not exact his words, but that's paraphrasing the idea he expresses. Speaker 1 (17:52) Bhagavan also made it clear what we take with us from one life to the next is our vasanas. Speaker 1 (18:02) So our vasanas are not fixed. That is, particularly, for example, if we're following this spiritual path, we are slowly weaning our mind off its more undesirable vasanas and cultivating more desirable vasanas. Speaker 3 (18:23) The Speaker 1 (18:23) most desirable of all vasanas is what is called satvasana. That is the inclination to be. the inclination to attend to our being and thereby to subside back into our being. But even, I mean, not everyone is following this path of self-investigation. There are so many other spiritual paths that we follow before we finally come to this path. So if supposing a person is following the path of bhakti, devotion to a, bhakti in the sense of devotion to a... a name and form of God. By that devotion, their mind is being purified. The strength of their desires and attachments are being weakened and their love for God is being cultivated. If they die in such a condition, all the purity of mind that they have gained by... following the path of bhakti, they will take that with them. So when they come to another life, the same vasanas will come to the surface again. Again, they won't be so interested in this material life, they'll be more interested in spiritual things. So the spiritual journey is not just a one-lifetime thing. We don't know where we are on the spiritual journey, but it takes... Hundreds of lifetimes, slow, slow progress. Hopefully we're nearing the end of this journey, but we don't really know where we are. So we just, all we know, particularly having come to Bhagavan, we have learned very clearly what is the direction in which we should be going. The direction in which we should be going is inwards. That is the root problem, is the wrong knowledge we have of ourselves, the knowledge I have in this body. We need to know ourselves as we actually are. That we can say from one perspective, from another perspective, from a more devotional perspective, we can say the God we have been worshipping in so many different names and forms, the reality of that God is what is shining in us as our own being. God is infinite being. There is nothing that is other than God. So God is the reality of ourself and hence the reality of all other things. So if we want to truly know God, we need to know ourself. So, if we are following any spiritual path, the progress we make on that path is never lost. Sometimes we may slow down, we may lose our enthusiasm to follow the path for a while, but then the circumstances of life will rekindle in us. the recognition of the unsatisfactory nature of bodily existence. So we will strive to continue. So the progress we make is never lost. That's clearly implied by the reply Krishna gave to... Arjuna and it's also clarified by Bhagavan in regard to what he said about vasanas. What we take with us from one life to the next is the vasanas. So to the extent to which we purify our vasanas in this lifetime, we're starting off in a... where we stop in this life is where we start in the next life on this spiritual journey. But your concern, so that's one part of the answer. Your concern is about supposing all life on this planet Earth were wiped out. Supposing there's biological warfare, or even if there's not biological warfare, there's a pandemic, whether naturally caused or human-created pandemic, whatever it is. Supposing it wipes out all human life. Not only human life, maybe all mammal life, maybe all animal life, maybe even all, if it's a nuclear war or a comet hitting the Earth, it may wipe out all life on this planet. Speaker 1 (22:55) which, anyway, is going to happen sooner or later, maybe not now, but after several billions of years, this planet is going to get pulled into a sun or the sun's going to expand or whatever. All these things are impermanent. But we need not worry about this for two reasons. One is, if we take this world to have an objective reality, Speaker 1 (23:26) Since there's life on this planet, there's very likely to be life on other planets. So even if we destroy everything on this planet, we can be born again on some other planet. That's from a more worldly perspective. But from a deeper perspective, Bhagavan has said, this world is no more real than any world we experience in a dream. So we may experience in this dream, but the whole world is wiped out along with us. And that's the end of this dream. But the next dream, we may dream that the world has not been destroyed. It's still there. That's one thing. Another thing is, just to illustrate this, that is, there was... Speaker 1 (24:22) An incident that appeared in the newspapers during Bhagavan's time, and Bhagavan used this as an example, that is, I don't know, I can't remember the exact details of the story, but a boy, he may have been some, say, six years old. He was travelling with his parents on a train on some route he had never been before. When they came to a certain station, he said, this is my town, this is my town. And he was insistent with his parents that they get off the train at that place. But he said, I've got to see this, I've got to see this, this is my town. And they got off, came out of the station, and then the boy led them and he said... There, just ahead, turning on the left, that's my street. And he went to that street and he came to a particular house and he said, this is my house. So his parents were curious why he's saying this. So they knocked on the door or whatever of that house and two ladies came to the door and he said, these are my wives. Speaker 1 (25:40) He was able to say things, but what those ladies couldn't understand, their husband had passed away only two years before. But this is a six-year-old boy. So how can this boy be the reincarnation of their husband? But he knew so many things that he was able to convince them that he is their husband, reborn in another. So what Bhagavan said, this shows the unreality of time. Bhagavan said there's no reason, just because you're born, say, in the 20th century and you die in the 20th century, that your next life is going to be in the 21st century. Your next life may be in the 15th century. Because all this time is unreal. So we need not, from a point of view of our onward spiritual journey, if we die without, in an imperfected state, as you say, without annihilation of ego, if we die before the ego is annihilated, we will be born again in some circumstances, whether it's in... the past relative to our present condition or in some other planet or whatever it is. So we need not concern ourselves. But ultimately, the world is unreal. That is one thing we need to understand if we want to follow this spiritual path. If we want to know what we actually are, we must be willing to discard body and world. Speaker 1 (27:25) Because the root problem is our identification with this body. And only when we experience ourself as I am this body, do we experience a world corresponding to that body. Now we experience ourself as this body, and consequently we experience this world. In dream, we experience ourself as another body. It seems to be the same body. Until we wake up and find out, oh, that was a different body. But so long as we're dreaming, it seems to be more or less the same body, seems to be more or less the same world. But it's not the same body and world. Because things happen in dream but haven't happened in waking state. So they're clearly different bodies, different worlds. So our experience, we only experience a world when we experience ourself as a body in that world. When we're dreaming, we always experience ourselves as a person in the dream world. We experience the dream from the perspective of the person we seem to be in that dream, just like we're experiencing our present state from the perspective of this person we seem to be. So if our identification with the body is given up, we are giving up not only the body, but also the world. This is why Bhagavan put so much emphasis on the fact of the unreality of this world, that this world is just a mind-created world. Because so long as we are attached to this world, we're not going to be willing to let go of it. And therefore, so long as we're unwilling to... Speaker 1 (29:13) let go of our attachment to this body and world, we cannot know ourself as we actually are. Because we won't... So long as we're attached to our identity as I am Michael, I am David, I am whoever, we are not willing... We will not be willing to... know ourself as we actually are, because knowing ourself as we actually are means giving up this false identity and everything that goes along with this false identity, which includes the whole world. So if we are not willing to discard this body and world, none of us are willing yet. That's why we're still following this path. But we need to... We cannot reach the goal until we become willing to discard body and world. So we shouldn't be... too concerned about these things. Of course, from the mundane perspective, we want to live in a peaceful world. We don't want to live in a world with wars and all these things. We don't want to see people suffering. But it's a fact of life. Since time immemorial, there have been wars. There may be peace in the place where we're living, but in other parts of the world there are wars. There always have been wars. There always have been pandemics, plagues, famines, all sorts of things. This is just the nature of embodied existence. And even now we live in a world of abundance. There's more wealth in the world now than there