The Journey

Science has been searching for the basic building blocks of the universe for hundreds of years in an attempt to explain everything observable in the material universe. As part of particle physics, it has been trying to identify the most fundamental or elementary particles that cannot be divided into smaller, simpler particles. The earliest significant discovery came in 1803 and it was prematurely named atom, which means uncuttable or indivisible. But as the capability of instruments increased, the indivisible got divided and more fundamental particles got discovered. The tally currently stands at 29 particles, classified at a high level as 24 fermions i.e. 12 matter particles and corresponding antimatter particles, and 5 bosons or force particles. This won’t be the final list though as the constituents of these particles will be identified in future once the instruments become even more sophisticated. Since there are many phenomena observed in the universe that are still inexplicable by these particles, the search is far from over. These unexplained phenomena are not just rare exceptions but constitute almost 95% of the universe in the form of dark matter and dark energy. Even for the 5% of the universe that the current particle model tries to explain, it still cannot explain gravity which is one of the most observable phenomena across the universe. Various alternate theories, such as string theory, have been proposed in an attempt to address these deficiencies and more. But even these theories are trying to identify, in one form or the other, the most fundamental building blocks i.e. tiny entities not made of smaller constituents or parts. Even though there is a simple reason why such finite partless entities cannot exist, science has overlooked it and is stuck in this futile unending quest. Let’s understand why it is impossible for such entities to exist.

Any entity which is finite, no matter how big or small, is bound to have a particular shape or form, irrespective of how nondescript that might be. This is because a finite entity always has a limit or a boundary that determines its finitude, and boundaries give rise to a form. And since anything with a form has different sides to it, it can come in contact with another entity from one side while its other sides remain untouched. Moreover, with a suitable instrument, an entity with a form can be observed from one side while its other sides remain unobserved, which means that only those particles or waves that are reflected or emitted by a part of the entity that is facing one side reach the observer. Therefore, since it is possible to contact or observe only one side or only a part of such an entity, it has to be made of parts and cannot be partless, otherwise how would it be possible to contact or observe only a part of it if it does not have any parts. So, finite entities, irrespective of their shape or size, have to be made of parts, and any part of such an entity must itself be finite and have a form and hence be made of smaller parts, which themselves must be made of even smaller parts and so on ad infinitum, making it impossible to come across any fundamental building block that is finite and also partless, no matter how small it might be. In fact, since it is not possible for such an endless depth of smaller and smaller entities to actually exist, no finite entity of any shape or size can really exist. But the universe seems to be full of finite entities with all sorts of shapes and sizes, so how to explain that?

It is important to understand that what meets the eye is not always the truth and sometimes requires a deeper investigation, like in this case. It is safe to say that since the universe is being experienced, something definitely exists because if absolutely nothing existed then the experience of a universe would not have been possible at all. So, if something exists and if it cannot be finite, the only other possibility is that it has to be infinite and that too in every possible dimension. Because if it is limited even in one dimension, it will have a boundary and a form, thereby encountering the same problem as described previously for finite entities with form. Moreover, the infinite entity has to be partless, because if it has parts and even if the parts are themselves infinite (as finite entities cannot exist), they will still have to be limited in at least one dimension in order to accommodate the other parts, thereby encountering the same problem of having a boundary and a form. And, if the entity is partless and infinite in every possible dimension, only one such entity can actually exist as there is no room for any other entity to exist. Hence, an infinite partless formless entity has to be the one and only nondual reality that actually exists, and a universe that seems to be full of finite entities must only be a false appearance within this infinite partless nondual reality.

It is important to note that the nondual reality is not something like energy that science talks about. That energy is not partless, as parts of it can be converted into mass or other forms of energy while the rest of it remains as is. Moreover, that energy is insentient and there is no possibility of a conscious experience within an insentient entity, whereas it is undeniable that we have a conscious experience of a universe. This is only possible if sentiency or consciousness is inherent in the nondual reality, because consciousness cannot be added to it from outside as there is nothing outside the infinite nondual reality. And it is this infinite consciousness that knows itself as a false universe. It only appears as a false universe and does not transform to become the universe because it is changeless, as change can either be induced externally by something else from outside, or induced internally by one part on another, neither of which are possible in the case of infinite partless nondual reality.

An immediate corollary to this is that we are also none other than the infinite nondual consciousness. We only take ourselves to be a living being because when consciousness knows itself, it basically knows itself as a false mind in which there is an appearance of a false body that is somewhat controllable by the mind, and a false world. It is very much like a virtual reality simulation or a dream in which we take ourselves to be a particular being living in the dream experiencing a dream world that seems to be separate from us. We take it to be real while we are in the dream but after waking up we know that it was all a false appearance within us. Similarly, we take the universe that we experience in the waking state and the living being we take ourselves to be as real but after awakening to our real nature, we realize that it is all just a false appearance within the real us, the infinite nondual consciousness. It is very hard to believe as this dream-like virtual reality appearing within the infinite reality is itself infinitely intricate with a lot of apparent systematism and structure that we keep discovering which makes it appear very real and keeps us engaged in endless pursuits.

This is not a farfetched theory. It is a well-established fact that has been known for thousands of years. The ultimate reality of the universe has been revealed and thoroughly expounded as infinite nondual consciousness in the most ancient scriptures called Upanishads and many more subsequent scriptures on the basis of logic, reasoning and experience. This reality is referred to as Brahman (which means the Vast) and is known to be identical with Atman (which means our real Self). Countless sages and saints from various traditions have realized and attested this truth through the centuries and millennia and continue to do so even now.

Spirituality and philosophy have known for thousands of years what science can only hope to discover. But science has not been able to get to it so far and it doesn’t even seem likely that it will ever be able to, because science relies on observing something directly as an object whereas the infinite partless reality can not be known directly as an object either entirely (because it is infinite and anything that can be known entirely has to be finite) or partly (because it doesn’t have parts). In fact, even the infinite consciousness cannot know itself directly as an object and that is why it knows itself as a false universe because if it cannot know itself as a real finite object, it ends up knowing itself as fake finite objects. Since there are infinite possibilities of the type of fake finite things that the infinite can be known as, every possible imaginable and unimaginable fake finite thing is known.

Now that doesn’t mean infinite consciousness cannot be known directly at all though. It can be known directly but only as the knower i.e. the one which is knowing. At this very moment, irrespective of what you are knowing, be rest assured that you are the infinite consciousness only that is knowing itself as whatever it is that you are knowing. Just to repeat as it is very important to get this: at this very moment… irrespective of what you are knowing, which should basically be a set of things you are seeing, hearing, sensing, thinking, etc… you are the infinite consciousness that is knowing itself as whatever it is that you are knowing, all of it — the mind, the body, the world, everything — it is all you and you alone being known by yourself in so many different ways. This is exactly how you know yourself… directly, naturally, effortlessly.

This is not something you just learn and understand intellectually. That is the first step but then you need to assimilate this truth and live life accordingly as this truth is about you and your ultimate reality. This is your real nature so every thought, word and action of yours should be based on this truth, just like it is currently based on the wrong notion that you are a finite individual. This truth has to be assimilated so deeply that this wrong notion is completely replaced with the right fact that you are the infinite nondual consciousness and there is nothing else apart from you. This Self-realization is accompanied with immense unshakeable bliss as it dissolves all problems of life born out of the wrong identification with a limited individual and its conflicts with other things that it assumed to be separate from itself.

A few questions might arise like isn’t it the mind or the brain that produces consciousness which enables it to know other things? And don’t different brains know different things? You can find answers to these questions and more in the video titled “It is Impossible for the Brain to Know or Experience anything. Consciousness cannot be a product of the Brain.”

Most people take themselves to be a body — an entity with various organs such as the brain, heart, limbs, etc. that come together coherently to function as a whole. They consider their personality to be a combination of genetics that form the body, and the state of the brain based on whatever they have experienced and learnt throughout life. Some people add a mind into the mix, but most consider the mind to be a phenomenon of the brain and not an independent entity. Some even add a soul into the mix and consider themselves to be an embodied soul but their identification with the body still remains. This identification is so instinctive that most living beings, irrespective of where they are in the evolutionary process, take themselves to be a body and live accordingly. Most of their actions are optimized towards the well-being of their body, which includes the brain and the mind. What is the cause of this innate identification with the body?

Let’s analyze our experience to understand the cause. At any given time, our experience consists of three different types of things: sights, sounds and sensations. Sights include things we see, sounds include things we hear, and sensations include touch, taste and smell. Tastes and smells are included within sensations as they are just a special form of touch. An object touching the tongue produces a taste sensation and very tiny fragments of an object entering the nose and touching the insides of it produce a smell sensation. Moreover, both external and internal forms of touch are included within sensations i.e. sensations produced by something touching the skin externally and the sensations produced by our organs internally like joint pain, heartburn, headache, etc.

Along with the sense perceptions, the other important part of our experience is thoughts and emotions, and they are also in the form of sights, sounds and sensations. Thoughts are in the form of imaginary sights of things we are thinking about, or the imaginary sound of a commentary going on within the brain, or both. Emotions are special thoughts that are accompanied with sensations in the body. For instance, anger is a series of violent thoughts accompanied with sensations of a heated-up brain, strained muscles, palpitation, heavy breathing, etc. Love is a series of beautiful thoughts accompanied with nice sensations throughout the body. Such is the case with all emotions and, since they are accompanied with the feeling of various sensations, they are also called feelings.

So, in a nutshell, our experience is nothing but a permutation and combination of different sights, sounds and sensations, or of their absence during sleep. And out of all the objects we experience, the one and only object we get identified with is our body. The only difference between our experience of our body and the other objects, including other bodies, is that we experience the sensations of our body but not of other objects. That is to say, even though we experience the sights and sounds of many objects including our body in a similar way, we experience the sensations of only one object i.e. our body. Even when another object is touching our body, we only experience the sensations produced in our body due to the touch and not of the touching object. This fundamental difference in our experience is the cause of our identification with our body and not with anything else. Furthermore, since sensations are of two types, pleasant and unpleasant, most of our actions and reactions get optimized towards wanting to experience pleasant sensations and not wanting to experience unpleasant sensations in our body. We develop likes and dislikes towards things that are instrumental in us experiencing pleasant and unpleasant sensations, respectively. And then certain sights and sounds, including both thoughts and sense perceptions, automatically lead us to experiencing pleasant and unpleasant sensations because of the way we feel about those things based on our past experiences with them or things similar to them. As a result, we start leading a very reactive life without much control over how we feel and act, and our exclusive experience and care for the sensations of our body is the cause of all of this.

Imagine what would have happened if we had been experiencing the sensations of other bodies too. We would have gotten identified with those bodies as well. Now imagine what would have happened if we had not been experiencing the sensations of any body, not even the body we call ours. We would not have identified with anything at all and would have experienced a sense of total freedom as well as equanimity towards all. So, even though we cannot stop experiencing the sensations of the body, if we only stop caring for them so much, we can still experience the freedom and equanimity. We are currently living at the mercy of these sensations and are bound to them. We need to break free through a sense of dispassion towards the different sensations and through dedicated practice of maintaining peace and equanimity that is not disturbed by the different sensations. Pleasant sensations should not be able to excite us and unpleasant sensations should not be able to depress us. We should just be able to calmly watch them come and go. Of course, if the sensation is due to an injury or a health issue or a potential danger to the body (like the burning sensation of a fire) or a survival need (like the sensation of hunger), we can pay heed to it and do the needful, but without losing peace and equanimity.

It is actually important to note that the sensations are not a problem in themselves as they have been designed by nature for the preservation and propagation of life. Anything that is conducive to these factors generally produces a pleasant sensation otherwise it produces an unpleasant one. For instance, fresh natural food is good for the body so it has a pleasant smell and taste whereas rotten food does not, or a burn from a fire is not good for the body so it feels unpleasant whereas pouring cold water on a burn feels pleasant, and so on. Things only turn problematic when we start letting the sensations govern our actions. Instead of just using them as one of the inputs to be taken into consideration while deciding our actions diligently on the basis of what is righteous or not, we start acting and reacting primarily on the basis of what is pleasant or not without considering the ramifications. It is important to notice this behavior of ours and to break out of it.

It is also helpful to note that, of all the sensations we experience, we seem to primarily care for sensations within the head region i.e. the sensations in the brain and the surrounding muscles and tissues. If we pay close attention, we will notice that a desire or craving for a pleasant sensation like wanting to engage in some sort of sense pleasure starts with an unpleasant sensation in the brain, like a strain or a heaviness. If we are successful in fulfilling the desire, the strain is temporarily removed through the release of certain feel-good hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. The pleasant sensation of this strain-free, light and relaxed state of the brain is what we call happiness, which only lasts for a short time as it is soon replaced by the strain of another desire. We are even willing to experience unpleasant sensations in the rest of the body as long as we experience pleasant sensations in the brain, like experiencing the bitter and unpleasant taste of alcohol because it generates pleasant sensations in the brain. Sometimes unpleasant sensations in the body can be inevitable, like falling sick or getting injured, but they generally make up only a part of the problem. A bigger part of the problem is our reaction to the problem in the form of negative emotions, like worry, anxiety, irritation, etc., and the accompanying unpleasant sensations in the brain.

So how to maintain peace and equanimity through various types of sensations? The answer lies within an important observation that we are not actually identified with the body. We only get attached to the body (and other things associated with it) for the sake of the sensations, as the body is the only object in the whole universe whose sensations we experience. In fact, if it somehow becomes possible, we will gladly replace the body with a better one that can make us experience more pleasant sensations more often without any of the unpleasant sensations, which shows that we don’t particularly care for this specific body. Moreover, as long as the sensations are pleasant, or at least not unpleasant, we don’t particularly care for any specific sensation either. What we really care for is the one that is experiencing these sensations as that is what we actually are. We are none of the objects that are being experienced (including the body), we are not even the experience of these objects i.e. the various sights, sounds and sensations, but we are the experiencer of these experiences. And the only thing we care for is that the experiencer, which is what we really are, experiences pleasant sensations and does not experience unpleasant sensations.

Who or what is this experiencer? Since we seem to primarily care for the sensations in the brain region, it is easy to jump to a conclusion that the brain is the experiencer. That is what most people think anyways as the general assumption is that the brain somehow produces consciousness that enables it to know and experience things by the way of thoughts and sense perceptions. An alternate assumption is that we are an embodied individual soul which is conscious and is the experiencer. But both of these assumptions are wrong. The real experiencer is actually consciousness itself and that is what we really are. Even though consciousness experiences various sights, sounds and sensations, it is never affected by any of them and always remains unattached. Just like light reveals the clean and unclean equally without getting affected or attached to any of it, consciousness reveals the pleasant and unpleasant equally without getting affected or attached. After realizing this truth about our real nature as everpure, unattached and unchanging consciousness, the brain (or the mind) is also able to maintain peace and equanimity under different circumstances more easily because it doesn’t worry about the body so much anymore. It continues to do what is needed for the maintenance of the body, but doesn’t run amok trying to experience pleasant sensations and avoiding unpleasant sensations, thereby maintaining its peace and equanimity.

You can learn more about why the aforementioned assumptions about the experiencer being the brain or an embodied soul are wrong and what is the true nature of consciousness — the real experiencer and the real you — in the video titled “It is Impossible for the Brain to Know or Experience anything”.

Many humans ponder the question of what is the ultimate underlying reality of the universe. The current mainstream theory is that the universe is a vast dynamic spacetime continuum filled with energy and matter. But there are still a lot of open questions like, where did all this come from?, how far does it extend?, when did it all come into existence?, how long will it last?, and so on. There are hypotheses around all of these but no definitive answers which indicates a lack of understanding of the underlying reality. Let’s take a step back and see how the ultimate reality of the universe can actually be discovered through straightforward logic using a simple step-by-step process:

The first point to understand is that something cannot come into existence out of absolute nothingness nor can it dissolve into absolute nothingness (the term absolute nothingness here means that there is absolutely nothing, not even empty space as space is also something). Even the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This means that energy or something like that must have always existed and will continue to exist forever in some form or the other. Things might get transformed from one thing into another, but there must always be something or the other existing. This implies that existence cannot be time-bound and must be eternal i.e. without a beginning or an end.

The second point to understand is that it doesn’t make sense for things to exist only within a certain boundary with absolute nothingness beyond that boundary. A boundary separates one thing from another, but if there is absolutely nothing, i.e. not even empty space, beyond the boundary, then a boundary doesn’t make any sense. In other words, a boundary around existence can only separate it from something different from existence i.e. non-existence, but non-existence by definition is non-existent and hence such a boundary is meaningless. This implies that existence cannot be bounded by space either and must be infinite.

So far it is clear that something or the other must always be existing everywhere and existence must be extending through infinity in terms of both time and space. Now let’s figure out how many things can exist at any given time.

First let’s determine how many types of things can coexist. If two different types of things, say T1 and T2 coexist separately from each other, a third type T3 that is different from both T1 and T2 is needed between them, because there cannot be absolute nothingness in-between, as we have already determined that existence must be everywhere. Moreover, there cannot be a sudden transmutation from one type to another without a break in-between, hence the need for a third type. A fourth type T4 is then needed to separate T1 and T3, and T5 to separate T3 and T2, and so on ad infinitum. Another possibility is that T3 separates T1 and T2, T2 separates T1 and T3, and T1 separates T3 and T2. But even this kind of interleaving will go on ad infinitum. These are implausible scenarios as, even if they were possible, the complexity would be too enormous to last long. So it is not feasible for multiple types of things to coexist and hence only one type of thing can exist at any given time.

But can multiple things of the same type coexist? If there are multiple things of the same type, what will separate them from each other? A thing cannot separate two more things of the same type, as otherwise how will the boundaries get defined for such a separation? So it is not feasible for multiple things of the same type to coexist either and hence only one thing can exist at any given time.

This one thing cannot have any parts either, as otherwise the same problem of what separates these parts from each other would arise, so it has to be a continuous homogeneous entity not made up of parts or particles (which are just tiny parts). It would also be safe to claim that this entity cannot change, because change can either be caused externally by another thing, or internally by one part on another, and both of these scenarios have gotten ruled out.

Hence, our conclusion so far is that there is one and only one entity that actually exists which is infinite, eternal, continuous, homogeneous, partless and unchanging; and that must be the ultimate underlying reality of the universe. This implies that the multiplicity, variety and change observed across the universe doesn’t actually exist, and that the underlying reality falsely appears as the universe. One clear indication of this is that the underpinnings of the universe are becoming vaguer and vaguer as science is trying to peer deeper and deeper which is evident from the probabilistic theory and uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics — just like an illusion becomes vaguer and vaguer when looked at closer and closer, whereas a real thing becomes clearer and clearer.

So, instead of trying to explain the false appearance, it is better to find out more about the nature of the underlying reality. In general, whenever something falsely appears as something else, the appearance maintains certain characteristics of the real thing. For example, when a rope lying in a semi-dark room appears as a snake, certain characteristics of the rope like the length, thickness, orientation, etc. are maintained in the snake-appearance. Such is true with all appearances. This means that even the universe must be maintaining certain characteristics of the underlying reality. Since the reality is homogeneous throughout, any characteristic that consistently appears across the universe can be attributed to the underlying reality.

The most obvious characteristic is that things appear across the universe, which is a direct indication of the existence nature of the underlying reality because it not just exists itself but can also make things appear to exist.

Another universal characteristic is that nothing appears in isolation and everything, no matter how small or big, interacts with its surroundings in one way or the other — particles interact to form atoms, atoms interact to form molecules, molecules interact to form larger objects, which in turn interact to form groups of objects, and so on. A prerequisite for anything to interact with its surroundings is that it should somehow be aware of its surroundings first. This sense of awareness is quite evident in the case of living beings. But even in the case of nonliving things, a certain sense of awareness manifests in the form of fields around them that enable them to be aware of the presence of other things within their vicinity that they can interact with. These fields include the electromagnetic field, weak nuclear field, strong nuclear field, and the gravitational field. From the smallest of the particles to the largest of the galaxies, from the tiniest unicellular organisms to the most evolved ones, everything exhibits this characteristic of being aware of its surroundings. This is a strong indication that awareness or consciousness must belong to the underlying reality. Another simple reason why awareness or consciousness must belong to the underlying reality is that the reality would otherwise be unconscious, and it is not possible for an unconscious thing to appear as something conscious all by itself.

One more prerequisite for anything to interact with its surroundings is that there should be an underlying reason for the interaction — a motivation or a driving force. Without this factor the universe would just be a huge cloud of static particles that are only aware of other particles around them but not interacting with them. That is not the case though. Instead, interactions are universal and so there must be a factor belonging to the underlying reality responsible for these universal interactions; and the factor can be discovered by investigating these interactions. There are generally two types of interactions exhibited by anything in the universe irrespective of whether it is living or nonliving: attraction and repulsion. A thing either goes towards something in case of an attraction or goes away from something in case of a repulsion — both of which are indicative of a drive towards less conflict and more harmony, so this underlying factor is akin to bliss. These fundamental interactions also give rise to various laws that everything adheres to whenever the respective conditions are met. Adherence to these laws and always going with the flow and never against it brings systematism and orderliness in the universe, which is also indicative of the underlying bliss factor. In fact, in the case of living beings, experiencing bliss or happiness is always the motive behind all interactions.

Hence, through a purely objective analysis, we have deduced the nature of the underlying infinite reality of the universe to be existence-consciousness-bliss. The appear-aware-adhere formula can be easily applied to notice the existence-consciousness-bliss nature of the reality anytime anywhere. You only need to ask a simple question about anything: Does it appear and does it adhere to appropriate laws as per the surrounding conditions and thereby also aware of the surroundings? The answer will always be “yes” if you are attentive enough.

Also, it is important to note that the one reality is not appearing as many to something else but to itself, as nothing else exists apart from the nondual reality, and we are also none other than this ultimate reality of the universe — inseparably one with all. In fact, there is no all, there is only The One!

You can learn more about why the universe appears within the ultimate reality in the video titled “It is Impossible for the Brain to Know or Experience anything”.

Everyone wants to be happy. Irrespective of gender, age, lifestyle, profession, country, culture, belief, background, or any other differentiating factor, anyone who has ever been born, is currently alive or will ever be born wants one and only one thing: to be happy. It is not just one of the wants but it is THE want. Every other want or need is only a means to happiness, with the goal always set to happiness. Whether one engages in sense enjoyment by the way of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching nice things, or one engages in mental enjoyment by thinking about nice things, or any type of intellectual engagement or emotional engagement or even spiritual engagement — it is all for experiencing happiness, although different flavors and degrees of happiness but still happiness. One is even willing to take pain if it can bring happiness, like bearing a child. Even the basic needs of survival are only a means, as one wants to survive only to be able to experience happiness. In fact, people tend to end their lives if they only see sadness in the foreseeable future.

As a result, in the case of most people, the whole life is spent chasing things that seem to bring happiness and avoiding things that seem to do the opposite, so much so that one starts spending more and more time in the chase, trying to be happy rather than actually being happy, and taking on a lot of stress and worry in the process. And if a chase somehow pays off and the time to be happy finally comes, it is very short lived and is quickly overtaken by the next chase. This is the life of most people in a nutshell because they don’t understand the science of happiness. Seeking happiness without knowing how it works is like groping in the dark searching for something and constantly getting hit in the head. Such a blind chase inevitably leads to more miseries and sufferings than happiness itself.

So, let’s take a step back and try to understand the mechanics of happiness and find out if there is a better way to be more and more happy with less and less effort:

We generally experience happiness when we successfully get something we like or avoid something we don’t like. Basically, we all have certain likes and dislikes depending on our mental temperament that give rise to desires in the form of wanting what we like and not wanting what we don’t like. These desires lead to corresponding actions (mental, verbal or physical) of trying to get or avoid things. And if a desire is fulfilled we experience happiness otherwise we experience otherwise. These actions and experiences leave impressions on the mind that can modify our temperament resulting in either generating new likes and dislikes or strengthening/weakening already existing ones. This again leads to desires and then actions, and the cycle goes on and on and on. Although we are born with a certain mental temperament that can be attributed to either our genes or our past lives if one believes in that, the temperament itself keeps evolving as we repeat this cycle throughout life.

All this is fine as nature has designed it to be this way. But the problem is that most people turn this cycle into a vicious one. They act in such a way that they keep deepening their likes and dislikes thereby making their desires stronger and stronger and hence harder and harder to fulfill. And then they spend a lot of time and effort trying to fulfill these desires which brings along all the stress and worry. Many other negativities also arise like greed for more when a desire gets fulfilled, anger when a desire is not getting fulfilled, jealousy when someone else’s similar desire gets fulfilled, arrogance when one’s desire gets fulfilled but someone else’s doesn’t, and so on. All these negativities take people further and further away from happiness rather than towards it, and the situation keeps worsening over time through a snowball effect.

On the contrary, a much better way to more happiness is to make this cycle a virtuous one that constantly keeps attenuating the likes and dislikes over time by adopting appropriate means. Because the less powerful our likes and dislikes are, the easier it is to remain equanimous and accept the current situation and stay happy. And even when desires arise in such a scenario, they are not that strong and can be easily fulfilled or dropped, either way leading to continued happiness. This virtuous process is known as the purification of the mind and it is the key to experiencing more and more happiness with less and less effort. It is based on the fact that our innate state is to be happy. One evidence of this is that we find babies to be mostly happy unless something specific makes them unhappy like a physical discomfort of hunger, getting hurt, etc., whereas adults are mostly unhappy unless something specific makes them happy like a fulfilled desire, a sense-pleasure, etc. It is so because the impurities of the mind such as likes, dislikes, desires, etc. are much stronger in adults than in babies, and in their absence babies are innately happy. Another evidence is that everyone is innately happy when the mind and its impurities subside for a while, like during sleep or meditation, but not so much when they are otherwise active. Basically, just like clouds prevent the light of the sun from shining brightly in the surroundings, the clouds of impurities prevent the innate happiness from shining brightly in the mind. Hence, it makes a lot of sense to purify the mind by shifting the cycle from vicious to virtuous so that our innate happiness can easily shine forth more and more brightly in the mind and we can experience it at most times.

But how to actually shift the cycle? If we look at the different parts of this cycle carefully, we will notice that most of it is not under our direct conscious control. Our mental temperament, the resulting likes and dislikes, the bubbling up of desires from them, and how we experience the different outcomes are mostly not in our direct control. But one thing we can control directly and consciously are the actions, and these actions determine whether the cycle turns vicious or virtuous. As long as a desire remains in the mind, it keeps us in the chase mode and prevents us from being happy so we should remove it at the earliest. Since it is always best to nip a problem in the bud, as soon as a desire sprouts and we become aware of it, we should make a conscious effort of determining whether the desire is worth fulfilling or should it just be dropped, as these are the only two ways of removing a desire. More often than not, dropping a desire is the most effective way, but if it is not happening for some reason, we should at least try to reduce the intensity of the desire. This conscious self-control can be difficult in the beginning but through perseverance it becomes easier and soon we notice that the frequency and intensity of the desires start reducing and the likes and dislikes that give rise to these desires also start attenuating, and we are on our way to a purer mind. A purer mind is naturally happier so our focus should be on this purification and happiness will automatically come along as a side-effect.

Now, a very important point. We need to be clear that this purification and self-control is not about forceful suppression but about thoughtful regulation of desires. Such a thoughtful regulation is only possible with the power of knowledge. For instance, the knowledge about how happiness works itself can be helpful in motivating you to begin this virtuous process. And you could also gather more psychological know-how to learn better ways of regulating desires. Although quite helpful, all of this knowledge is still at the same level as the problem. Whereas, it is always better to tackle a problem from a level deeper or higher, and that is where knowledge about a deeper or higher truth can be extremely beneficial. For example, every religion of this world, whether it be Hinduism or Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or any other religion, primarily focuses on the purification of the mind. They have various practices such as meditation, devotion, prayer, chanting, service, moral values, etc. that might look different on the surface but they are all very harmonious and complementary and never in conflict with each other, as they all have a common goal of purification. But another thing they all have in common is that they all talk about a higher truth which also might look different on the surface but is exactly the same. They might talk about it variously but they are all pointing to the same truth just like different trails leading to the same mountain top. And the power of the knowledge of this higher truth makes it easier for sincere practitioners to tackle the problem of the purification of the mind. Every saint that any religion ever produced infallibly had a pure mind and the knowledge of the truth.

It is a personal decision whether one wants to take on a religion or not, but the purification of the mind and the higher truth are not tied to any particular religion. The truth is always available to be known by anyone who tries diligently through either religious or secular means. And the truth is that you are not this limited mind-body complex that you take yourself to be which seems to separate you from others. This misidentification and sense of separation is the root cause of developing likes and dislikes towards seemingly other things. Instead, you are the infinite consciousness, the one and only reality that actually exists, in which the whole universe is appearing. There is no question of liking or disliking something, as everyone and everything is appearing within you and is one with you. This is the reason why your innate state is to be happy as there is a natural inkling of this infinitude and oneness. The knowledge of this truth is a silver bullet to attenuate and even transcend all your likes and dislikes and to remain established in supreme happiness and unconditional love. If you are not convinced about this truth, please check out the video titled “It is Impossible for the Brain to Know or Experience anything” as it takes you through a meticulous process of discovering this truth purely based on logic and experience. May the power of the knowledge of this truth be with you, and you relish the innate happiness shining forth brightly in a pure mind!

The universe is a dynamic place that is constantly changing, but what determines the state of anything in the universe at any given moment? Only its state in the previous moment and the laws of nature. That’s all. Let’s say you are able to take a snapshot of the current moment of the entire universe along with all its constituents — all matter, all energy, physical, non-physical, everything. The current state of everything in this snapshot is a result of whatever state everything was in the previous moment and the laws of nature acting on that state.

For instance, the four fundamental physical forces i.e. gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces, are constantly exerted on an entity (like an object or a particle) by other entities that are close enough, and the state of an entity in the current moment is determined by the state of that entity in the previous moment and the resultant cumulative force acting on it. For example, the position and velocity of earth in the current moment is largely determined by its position and velocity in the previous moment and the gravitational force of sun acting on it, or the coordinates and movement of a charged particle in the current moment is determined by the coordinates and movement of that particle in the previous moment and the electromagnetic forces exerted on it by other nearby charged particles. In the same way, the various physical and non-physical laws of nature, such as the laws of motion, thermodynamics, conservation, quantum mechanics, mathematics, etc. act on the relevant entities across the entire universe to determine their current state based on their state in the previous moment.

So, the current moment is the effect of the previous moment which itself is an effect of the moment prior to it and so on. Similarly, the current moment is the cause of the next moment which itself will be a cause of the moment after it and so on. This can be extended in both directions indefinitely resulting in a beginningless and endless chain of cause and effect. The universe could have started with a big bang and might end in a big crunch but whatever was before the big bang and will be there after the big crunch also follows the chain of causality resulting in countless cyclical bangs and crunches.

Now, let’s see if there is any room for free will to exist in this infinite deterministic chain. Free will is defined as the ability to think and act voluntarily at one’s own discretion. We all know that thinking is nothing but some material activity in the brain which is just a blob of physical matter that also follows the laws of nature as the rest of the universe. Even if we believe in a mind separate from the brain, that is also a blob of matter only, although subtler matter that obeys certain subtler laws, but still very much within the domain of matter and hence the following analysis is perfectly applicable to the mind too.

So, as we were analyzing, thinking is nothing but some material activity in the brain. Any thought that arises in the current moment is based on the state of the brain in the previous moment combined with certain stimuli triggered via sense perceptions, which are also nothing but material activities in the brain. The brain is a highly complex organ and even though we are consciously aware of some of its activities, most of them we are not aware of. So even if we claim we thought of something voluntarily in the current moment, it only means that we are not aware of what state most of our brain was in in the previous moment and what stimuli might have acted on it to give rise to that thought. The cause of every thought can only be evident if we had the ability to know the state of the entire brain in the previous moment and all the activities going on within it due to various internal and external stimuli that change the state of the brain. The current state of the brain is only a function of a deterministic chain of cause and effect spanning over countless moments and it is our lack of awareness of the brain in totality that gives rise to this apparent feeling of “free will”. So if someone has to decide whether to do something or not at any given time, know for sure that the choice will be determined by whatever state the brain is in at that time as a result of all the past activities, and what information related to that thing is active in the brain at that time. No matter how much thinking takes place, the eventual decision will only be an effect of a series of state changes in the brain, most of which the person will not be aware of. And if the person makes a different decision at a different time about doing the same thing or not, that will only be because either the state of the brain is different and/or the information is different at that time. In either case, no claims of free will can be made.

One might argue that this could lead to people not being accountable for any wrongful actions they do. But that cannot happen due to an inherent contradiction. Wrongful actions are based on selfishness, and selfish people are not capable of embracing the truth about not having a free will, because the idea of free will is based on self-importance that is rooted in egotism. And if someone is able to embrace this truth genuinely, they have already reached a certain level of unselfishness and it is highly unlikely for them to engage in wrongful actions.

So does this mean we should not try to do anything deliberately? You might be able to guess what will determine the eventual answer to this question for each person (hint: it is not free will), but a sensible approach would be to continue to do whatever you have been doing combined with this underlying understanding about the absence of free will. Some replace it with the divine will, others call it the unfolding of the universe, or just nature doing its thing, but irrespective of how you label it, being free of the notion of free will is actually quite freeing!

We experience things all the time, by the way of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking, and we safely assume that our brain somehow does all of it. We take our brain to be a complex-enough organ capable of knowing and experiencing things. For instance, we describe seeing as a process of light bouncing off various objects, entering our eyes, falling on our retinas, getting converted into neural signals, traveling through the optic nerves, stirring certain neural activity in the brain, and voila we see the objects. But when probed, we are unable to explain this “voila”. It is an assumed miracle that the brain somehow regenerates an image of the objects and perceives it. A similar process is assumed for all other sense perceptions too (i.e. hearing, smelling, tasting and touching), as well as for the thoughts and emotions which are also considered as neural activity in the brain known by the brain. Even while scientists are struggling to find a full explanation for this, a quick and simple investigation can reveal that it is actually impossible for the brain to know anything. Let’s understand why:

What exactly is the brain or, technically speaking, the central nervous system? It is just a collection of neurons or nerve cells, nothing more nothing less. (Continuing with the example of seeing described earlier), when information reaches a subset of the brain’s nerve cells through the neural signals, each cell only gets a fraction of the total information, as per the capacity of that cell to process. And, even though the cells are interconnected, there is no single cell that has access to all the information required to regenerate and see the whole image. Even if we assume that another part of the brain gathers all the information from these cells, that part will itself be a collection of cells, each of which will again get only a part of the total information. The same problem will continue to occur even if we consider a subpart of this part, and so on. And even if a single cell somehow manages to gather all the information, we know that a cell itself is made up of smaller and smaller parts — molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and so on — and the information will always remain dispersed across various parts and particles, lost into oblivion and never able to come together.

It can be argued that it is not required for a single cell to have all the information. Instead, the collection of interconnected cells produces something that enables us to see the whole image. But anything that is produced by a collection of parts will also be made up of parts, as each part of the source will contribute to a part of the product, and the same problem of information being dispersed across parts will continue. One could further argue that it is not necessary for all the information to be accessed simultaneously and that it can be accessed in parts but so fast that it gives the impression of being simultaneous. But even in that case, at least some amount of information has to be available simultaneously to form one unit of seeing. And no matter how little this information may be, it will continue to be dispersed across parts and particles and will not be able to come together coherently to enable even one unit of seeing (or any other way of knowing for that matter).

Hence, it is simply not possible for the brain (or any other part of the body), to see or know or experience anything. The only way anything can ever be known is if the entity that is knowing is not made up of parts (i.e. it is partless) and all the information required for that knowing is contained within this partless entity. And since it is an undeniable fact that we know and experience things, such a partless entity actually exists and that is what consciousness really is.

What exactly is this partless consciousness like? Since it cannot be compared to anything in this universe as everything is made up of parts and particles, we have no objective way of describing what a partless entity is like. But some subtle thinking can reveal it:

If an entity is partless, it must also be formless. Because even if it has the most nondescript form (like a spherical object), it will have different sides to it. And when something is in contact with one side of the entity, it can only be in contact with that side and not with another side. In other words, it can only be in contact with a part of the entity leaving the other parts untouched, which implies that an entity that has a form will also have parts. So, an entity that is partless must be formless too.

And if an entity is formless, it has to be limitless in every possible dimension. Because if it is limited even in one dimension, that will result in a boundary, and boundaries define a form. For example, an infinite line is limitless only in one dimension but limited in other dimensions and hence still possesses the form of a line. Similarly, an infinite plane is limitless in two dimensions but limited in the third dimension and hence still possesses the form of a plane. Hence, anything which is limited even in one dimension will possess a form imposed by that dimension. So, an entity that is formless must also be limitless or infinite.

Based on this reasoning, we can conclude that partless consciousness must be formless and limitless. This means that nothing can exist outside of consciousness because anything existing outside would impose a limit where consciousness ends and the other entity begins. Hence, there can be only one infinite consciousness and the whole universe (and anything else that exists) must all be within that one consciousness. Moreover, since consciousness is partless and the universe is made up of parts, the universe cannot be real as nothing made up of parts can really exist within a partless entity. At the same time, the universe cannot be completely non-existent as it is being experienced; and anything that doesn’t actually exist but seems to exist is called a virtual reality. So, the universe is a virtual reality seeming to appear within consciousness. It is important to note that consciousness is also eternally unchanging because change is either external, induced by something else from outside, or internal, induced by one part on another, neither of which are possible in the case of infinite partless consciousness.

Why does a virtual reality appear in consciousness at all though? It is because the very nature of consciousness is to be conscious or to know, and since there is nothing else to be known, it just knows itself. In fact, an entity can know only itself. Whenever we talk about an entity knowing anything outside of itself, we are basically talking about information coming from outside and reaching the entity and then the entity knowing only that much information about outside that gets inside it. But, as we have already seen, nothing can exist outside of the infinite consciousness, and so there is no question of any external information reaching it. Moreover, it is impossible for external information to get inside an entity that is partless. Hence, consciousness only knows itself as it is intrinsically.

But since it is limitless, it cannot know itself in entirety, because anything that can be known in entirety must have a limit. It cannot know itself in bits and pieces either because it is partless. But when the infinite tries to know something it will definitely know at least something. And so, if infinite consciousness cannot know itself as it is in reality, it ends up knowing itself as it is not i.e. as a virtual reality full of fake finite knowable things. Since there are infinite possibilities of the type of fake finite things that can appear within the infinite, every possible imaginable and unimaginable finite thing is actually appearing.

This universe is just one such set of things. It can be described as a set of virtual dream-like simulations, with each simulation representing a mind passing through a series of thoughts and sense perceptions corresponding to the body of a living being along with a world teeming with other beings and things that this body seems to be interacting with — all within a paradigm of time, space and causation, very much like a dream. The infinite consciousness knows each simulation or mind individually and separately from each other, because if it would have known multiple of them together, it would have become a hodge-podge, with too many overlapping thoughts and sense perceptions, not making much sense at all. All these simulations are still interconnected though, as they are all appearing within one consciousness, so they share common objects and events giving rise to the feeling of one coherent universe. Each of these simulations has such a structure that it makes the mind feel attached to the body appearing within it (just like it happens during a dream), but consciousness itself always remains unattached, untouched and unaffected by any of these fake simulations. Also, interestingly, there is no limit to the number of simulations that can represent a universe, or even to the number of such universes that could be appearing within consciousness, because it is infinite.

In conclusion, since infinite consciousness cannot be known as it really is, even by itself, it can never be available for direct investigation making it impossible to fully describe its nature in entirety. As a result, the complete mechanics of how this virtual reality seems to appear within consciousness cannot be explained, but we can still draw a few inferences, like we just did, based on our experience of this infinitude. In the process, it becomes obvious that since life appears within consciousness in its attempt to know itself, the sole purpose of life is to know itself as consciousness. It is an open secret and the choice is always available whether you want to take yourself to be this infinite consciousness, the one and only eternal unchanging reality that actually exists, or you want to take yourself to be an infinitesimally small mind-body complex, which is nothing but a fake simulation seeming to appear within consciousness and known by consciousness. Hope you pick that which is real.

Axiom 1: A thing can only know itself directly

Any simple example can make this clear. Let’s say a storage drive. It can only “know” what is stored within it. It cannot know anything outside of itself directly. The only way the drive can know anything outside of itself is when information about that thing reaches the drive and gets stored within it, and the only thing the drive can know about the outside thing is that information stored within it — nothing more nothing less. (The word “know” has been used for a non-living thing only symbolically and represents what information that thing has access to).

Same thing holds true for a processor. It can only know and process information that gets inside it. In order for anything outside to get processed, it has to get inside the processor and that is all the processor can know and process.

In fact, it holds true for any random example. For instance, take a self-driving car. The car only knows what is within it. An outside object is known by the car only when information about that object enters the car’s systems through its various sensors. That information is what the car knows and not the object directly.

So, to generalize: X can only know X directly. If X knows anything about Y which is outside X, it is only because some information about Y has entered X, and that is all what X knows about Y. X cannot know Y directly unless Y itself enters into X.

This can be applied to absolutely anything in this universe (and beyond). And it makes complete sense as it cannot be any other way.

Corollary 1: You only know yourself directly

Now apply this to yourself and what you know. Seeing is one way of knowing. What does the eye see? Does it see the objects outside directly? Do the objects enter the eye directly? Not quite. The eye only sees light that reflects off these objects, enters the eye, gets absorbed at the retina and becomes internal to the eye. Same thing applies to hearing, touching, tasting and smelling (the only other ways you know something). Information (air waves, etc.) travels to the respective sense organs (ears, etc.) and gets absorbed, and the sense organ only knows that which is within it.

Even the brain (or the central nervous system) only knows itself and the activities within it. Some of this activity is caused by information that reaches the brain through the peripheral nervous system. For example, the light that gets absorbed at the retina is converted into neuro-signals that travel to the brain through the optic nerves, reach the vision center and stir certain neural activity there. Same thing applies to all other sense perceptions (sound, touch, taste and smell). Respective neuro-signals get generated at the different sense organs, travel to the respective centers in the brain and stir different neural activities. The brain also has some of its own internal neural activity (known as thoughts, etc.). And that’s all the brain ever knows — itself and the activities within it.

But does that explain what you actually know or experience? If the buck stopped at the brain and that is all what you knew, you would have known yourself as a slushy gray matter with neurons firing left, right and center. But that’s not the case. Your experience is something very different, something very vivid — a world full of sights, sounds and sensations, with some part of it more tangible (sense perceptions) and some less tangible (thoughts, etc.).

This entity which is knowing such a vivid world within itself is called consciousness, and this consciousness is what you actually are. That is because you only ever know what is within consciousness and never anything outside of consciousness directly. And since you can only know what is within yourself directly, you must be the consciousness itself, knowing a vivid world within yourself. You, the consciousness, are neither the brain nor even a part or product of the brain but something completely different, which will become clearer with the next axiom.

Axiom 2: The whole cannot be known by parts

If something is made up of parts, each part just knows itself directly (as per axiom 1), independent of other parts. There is no way for this conglomeration of parts to directly know the sum total of what is known by all its individual parts.

Consider the example of a distributed system consisting of many computers. Each computer that is a part of the distributed system only knows what is within itself directly. Computers may exchange information with each other over the network but at any given point in time each computer only knows what is within itself directly. There is no way for the whole distributed system to directly know the sum total of what is known by all its individual computers. Whenever information is accessed from the distributed system it only comes from one or more of its individual computers that have that information.

Same thing applies to everything made up of parts. And guess what? Everything in this universe is made up of parts because the universe is nothing but a conglomeration of smaller and smaller particles (quarks, leptons, bosons, strings, etc.) coming together to form larger and larger structures and systems. So, even when we said that the eye knows itself directly, it only meant that the individual cells that make up the eye know themselves directly. Each cell functions independently by processing information that reaches it and passing it on to the next set of cells. That’s why the eye doesn’t really “see” anything. It’s just a distributed system of cells processing light, converting it into neuro-signals and passing those on to the brain, with no way for the eye to really “see” the sum total of information being processed by all its individual cells. In fact, even the cells are further made up of smaller parts and so no.

Corollary 2: You are partless consciousness

The above axiom is also true of the brain as it’s also nothing but a conglomeration of cells. It’s not possible for the brain to directly know the sum total of all the information and activity within its parts simultaneously as a coherent world of sights, sounds and sensations. Even a part of the brain cannot do that as every part will itself be made up of smaller parts. This is very powerful reasoning why you can neither be the brain nor a part of it. Moreover, you cannot be a product of the brain either, as anything made up of parts can only produce something that is also made up of parts, with a part of the source producing a part of the product. If a product of the brain will also be made up of parts, it will have the same issue of not being able to directly know the sum total of what is known by all its individual parts.

Since you, the consciousness, know a vivid world within yourself as a whole, you cannot be made up of parts. Hence, you are partless consciousness which is neither a part nor a product of the brain (or any other part of the body or the whole body for that matter), You, the partless consciousness, are an entity completely different from the brain and the body.

Axiom 3: Partless implies Infinite

So far the analysis was of objects that are part of the world we know and hence easier to understand. But this axiom is going to be very subtle because we have never encountered any object in this world that is partless as they are all made up of smaller and smaller parts and particles. We have no experience of what a partless entity could be like. Some subtle thinking can reveal it though.

If an entity is partless, it must also be formless. Because a form needs different parts to come together in a certain way to build that form. Even the most nondescript form (like a spherical object) has different sides to it (this side, opposite side, inside, outside, etc.). Anything which has sides must have parts too as only different parts can make up the different sides. When something is in contact with one side of an entity, it can only be in contact with a part of the entity and not with the other parts which make up the other sides. Hence, an entity that is partless will also be formless.

If an entity is formless, it has to be limitless or infinite in every dimension. Because if it’s limited in even one dimension, that will result in a boundary, and boundaries define a form. For example, an infinite line is limitless only in one dimension but limited in other dimensions and hence still possess the form of a line. Similarly, an infinite plane is limitless in two dimensions but limited in the third dimension and hence still possess the form of a plane. Hence, anything which is limited in even one dimension will possess a form imposed by that dimension. Hence, an entity that is formless will also be limitless or infinite in every dimension.

Corollary 3: You are Infinite Consciousness, the One and only Reality, and the whole universe is only an appearance within you

As implied by the above axiom, you, the partless consciousness, are also formless and limitless in every possible dimension. Which means nothing else exists outside of you. Because if anything else exists outside of you, it implies a limit where you end and the other entity begins. This means that the whole universe (and anything else) must all be within you. Moreover, since you are partless whereas the universe is made up of parts, it cannot be real and must only be a false appearance within you, as nothing real made up of parts can exist within a partless entity. Hence, you are the one and only Infinite Reality that actually exists. It’s important to note that you are also unchanging as change is only possible from one finite to another finite on at least one dimension whereas you are Infinite in every possible dimension.

Important question: If you are Infinite Consciousness, the One and only Reality, and the whole universe is an appearance within you, then why do you seem to know only a part of it and that too channeled through a brain and a set of sense organs housed within a body?

Here’s an explanation: Since you are Consciousness, your very nature is to know yourself. But since you are Infinite you cannot know yourself directly in entirety, because anything that is known in entirety is limited to that knowing and hence finite. Hence you, the Infinite Reality, cannot know yourself as you actually are but only as you are not i.e. as false finite things. Since there are infinite possibilities of the type of false finite things that can appear within the Infinite, every possible imaginable and unimaginable finite thing is actually appearing within you. One set of such false finite appearances are dream-like virtual reality simulations. Within each simulation, there is an appearance of a brain and a set of sense organs and other organs housed within a body that represents a living being, through which a world teeming with other beings and things seems be known or experienced. You, the Infinite Consciousness, are knowing each simulation individually as all of them are appearing within you. If you would have known multiple simulations together, it would have become a hodge-podge, with too many overlapping sights, sounds and sensations, which would have not made any sense. Hence the best way to know these simulations is to know them individually and separate from each other. All these simulations are still interconnected as they are all appearing within you, the Infinite Consciousness, and hence they share common objects and events. Each of these dream-like simulations have such a structure that you tend to feel identified with a fake body-mind complex appearing within that simulation (just like it happens during a dream), but you are never actually identified and always remain unattached from the simulation. Nothing of the simulation can ever affect or harm you in any way as it’s not real.

“God alone is real, the world is false; and the individual being is none other than God.”

“God misunderstood is the world; the world properly understood is God.”

“It's not that there is one god or many gods, there is only God.”

The term God is widely misunderstood to be referring to a supernatural anthropomorphic being in the heavens. Instead it refers to the one and only Reality that actually exists — the ultimate formless partless unchanging infinite Reality which is the ground of all existence, the most fundamental substratum of this universe, the underlying basis and the very essence of everything, the highest Truth beyond which there is nothing more to be known. The various gods represented in different religions are symbolisms pointing to the same Reality. It is what we all are seeking — knowingly or unknowingly — either through externally-focused science or through internally-focused spirituality or just through life itself. The universe with all its living and non-living constituents is nothing but a virtual reality manifesting within God alone. Hence the universe can very well be termed eGod (as adding the prefix “e” to something “real” refers to its “virtual” incarnation e.g. e + mail = email, e + commerce = ecommerce, and the likes).

Why does God manifest as eGod?

It’s because God gets eGo’d. This is not a play on words. It’s the truth. The reason why God manifests as eGod is because of a false individual ego i.e. a wrong identification with a body-mind complex. This ego segregates the world into "I" and "not I", "mine" and "not mine", "I like” and "I dislike”, “I want” and “I don’t want”, etc. making the one undivided Reality manifest as a world of multiplicity. It’s very much like a dream. The whole dream world is none other than the mind itself but since we assume a false identification with a particular body in the dream, the dream world seems to be divided into multiplicity. The same thing happens in a virtual reality simulation. It’s uncanny how quickly we take ourselves to be a fake body within a simulation and start behaving as if that is what we actually are!

eGod is a collection of countless such dream-like simulations manifesting within God with each simulation representing an individual being with a false ego and a private little world. In other words, God is the “hardware” — the real stuff — and eGod is a bunch of “software” simulations — virtual fluff. The intricate nature of each simulation is such that it’s able to superimpose a false ego on God and also feel very real (just like a dream feels real while we are in the dream). The moment one drops this false ego and knows oneself to be none other than the ultimate Reality, the whole world collapses (not literally but in understanding) into oneness. That is when one starts seeing everything as a virtual manifestation of God alone. It’s like a mind dreaming while also knowing that it’s its own dream.

But don’t mistake this simulation to be a dream of your mind. What you call as “your mind” is just a part of a dream-like simulation manifesting within the underlying Reality. And since the Reality is infinite, the dream-like simulations within it are infinitely more sophisticated, complex and long-lasting than the dreams of our infinitesimally small minds. Moreover, these countless simulations share common objects/events and are so inter-connected that it all seems to be one coherent universe. It’s somewhat like a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) in which the players have a separate simulation going on on their respective computers and they see the game only from their individual perspective but at the same time show up in each other's simulations as well as share common objects/events giving rise to the feeling that it's one coherent virtual reality. The key difference is that in a MMORPG each player is a separate individual where as in eGod, God alone is assuming different identities and playing with Itself!

Each individual simulation turns off and back on every time that individual goes into deep dreamless sleep and comes out of it. The whole eGod virtual reality also shuts down after a while and restarts again later. This cycle of eGod or the universe manifesting and unmanifesting in God is beginningless and endless. Each eGod instance could be different from the previous one and it won’t be a surprise if multiple eGods (i.e. multiple universes) manifest within God simultaneously with each eGod being a separate MMORPG-like virtual reality having it’s own collection of individual simulations.

But why should an eGod be manifesting within God at all?

It’s due to the very nature of God which is existence-consciousness-bliss. The nature of consciousness is to experience, so it tries to experience the one and only Reality that actually exists which is itself. But the Reality is infinite and not experienceable in entirety. When there is an attempt to experience the inexperienceable, an illusion is generated in the form of countless dream-like simulations called eGod. For better clarity, take the case of the eyes as an illustration. The nature of the eyes is to see but when they try to see the sky which is so vast that it cannot be seen by them in entirety, an illusion is generated and the sky looks like a hemispherical dome (which it is not).

Hence, eGod manifests within God due to the very nature of the infinite Reality trying to experience itself. The existence-consciousness-bliss nature of God manifests in all the living and non-living constituents of eGod with varying degrees. The consciousness nature manifests more prominently as countless experiencers, the existence nature manifests more prominently as the various experienced objects, and the bliss nature manifests more prominently as the corresponding experiences. Since existence-consciousness-bliss is one inseparable Reality and not three separate things, the experiencers along with their respective experienced objects and the corresponding experiences are also inseparable. And since infinite consciousness also implies infinite intelligence, these simulations are of very high quality with lot of systematism, complexity and inter-connectedness. All of it is so flawless and intricate that it feels very real.

Please note that God doesn’t do this deliberately. It’s the very nature of God. Just like it’s the nature of fire to burn, water to wet, sun to illumine, etc. Fire cannot be said to be doing anything specifically when it burns something. It burns as that’s its very nature of being hot (there is no such thing as a cold fire). Similarly, God cannot be said to be doing anything specifically. It’s the very nature of God to manifest as eGod.

It’s also important to note that eGod is not a problem in itself. The actual problem begins only when it gets eGo’d. With ego, eGod is full of conflicts; without ego, it’s full of harmony and peace!

Why and how to drop this false ego?

This understanding of the Reality is not just for intellectual entertainment. It is to help us realize that we are actually one infinite undivided Reality and that we are only mistaking ourselves to be little creatures of flesh and blood. All problems in life sprout from this misunderstanding as we keep worrying about the survival and safety of something we are not. It’s ok to continue to play our role in this virtual simulation but there is no point worrying about anything as none of it is actually real. This feels quite liberating as it takes away a huge burden off our shoulders. And it’s only possible when we drop the false ego by knowing that we are not this body-mind complex we mistake ourselves to be. We are the one and only formless partless unchanging infinite Reality which cannot be touched or affected by a virtual simulation in any way. Since there is nothing else apart from the Reality there is no conflict of any sorts — just peace and harmony. This realization does not solve all the artificial problems of life, it dissolves them! It’s like we don’t have to solve each and every petty problem in a dream. We just have to know it’s a dream and all the problems lose their grip on us.

In order to drop the false ego, one should systematically learn about the Reality and sincerely contemplate upon it to be convinced. There will be many doubts that have to be resolved through proper reasoning and inquiry into one’s own experience. After intellectual conviction, one can start assimilating it in the mind by living life accordingly. Even though it might take time for it to stabilize, the practice gets validated and starts benefiting every step of the way by dissolving more and more problems of life and bringing more and more peace and joy as one progresses. The final realization will only come by God’s grace though as it’s God’s nature that gives rise to eGod and the false ego. The puny little mind cannot overcome God’s natural power. But the practice will surely prepare the mind to receive and recognize the grace when it comes. The best place to start is to explore the teachings of Advaita (Nondual) Vedanta which is the highest and deepest exposition of the Reality. My recent articles are also on this subject. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions (npabuwal gmail).

Once the realization dawns, life could be like watching a movie. You can enjoy the movie through its good parts and whenever it gets ugly, like if you get too scared or sad, you can simply remind yourself that you are falsely identifying with a character in the movie and you are actually unscathed. You can just relax by sinking back into your real nature of being God, smile, and then jump back in when ready. Moreover, your life will be full of love for everyone as you will know you are not just one of the characters in the movie but the whole movie along with all its characters is within God — the real you — and you alone are manifesting as everything. That’s why love, grace, compassion, kindness, mercy, and all the wonderful qualities come very naturally to God as there is nothing apart from God. And remember, this realization is also at the level of the mind and part of the simulation itself. As God, you were, are and will always be free!

"The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me."

“We are not human beings trying to have a spiritual experience. We are a spiritual Being having human experiences”

I feel I am a conscious entity in which a simulation, constituting of gross and subtle objects/things, is appearing. The gross (aka physical) objects include a body and a world entering through the sense organs, in the form of gross sights, sounds and sensations. The subtle objects include thoughts and emotions (that are also just thoughts loaded with feelings) in the form of subtle sights, sounds and sensations. These objects are appearing directly in me, otherwise I would not have been able to know/experience them. It’s important to note that even though I experience a body and a world directly, I do not experience a so-called mind (which is actually a composite term used for the mind-intellect-memory-ego combo) directly. The mind-composite is only implied by the type of thoughts that appear in me. To clarify, I do not experience any specific object that I can point to and say that is the mind or the intellect or the memory or the ego. The mind is implied due to some of the thoughts being reactionary and habitual, the intellect is implied due to some of the thoughts being intelligent and analytical, the memory is implied due to some of the thoughts being of past remembrances, and the ego is implied due to some of the thoughts containing an “I” or “my” identity. I only experience these thoughts directly, along with the corresponding parts of the brain that feel active or affected during those thoughts, and never the mind-composite directly.

I further feel that the simulation that is appearing in me is just that - an appearance. I am actually untouched and unaffected by it. Even though I experience certain sensations that can be labeled as pleasant or unpleasant, they are just gross objects appearing in me but they do not affect me. Certain sensations are felt in the body like the feelings of hunger, thirst, itch, ache, etc.. And what we call mental feelings are also nothing but physical sensations felt in the brain tissues. E.g. the feeling of stress is just some brain tissues getting overly strained due to lot of thinking and the feeling of anger is just some brain tissues getting overly heated. So all mental feelings are nothing but physical sensations of brain tissues which are also sometimes accompanied with certain bodily sensations like palpitations, sweating, shallow/rapid breathing, etc. All these sensations just appear in me as gross objects and I am untouched by them. I am just a witness of them. I am like a screen that is unaffected by the movie playing on it, irrespective of how pleasant or unpleasant the movie might be.

When the objective appearances vanish and the simulation stops in deep absorption, I experience my real nature as pure existence-consciousness-bliss (sat-chit-ananda). I do not feel any limitation of time, space, object, etc. in that state. This makes me believe that I am actually unlimited and formless but the simulation imposes an artificial feeling of being contained within a body form with all corresponding limitations. Other people also report similar simulatory experiences, but these simulations are not completely independent. They seem to share common gross objects and events which leads to the conclusion there is just one underlying reality. You, I and others are actually that one reality and not separate entities.

So, even though I am one infinite partless reality, I somehow seem to experience countless parallel simulations simultaneously as separate individuals - each forming a different viewpoint of one big simulation called the universe. It seems like the universe is one gigantic stream of events flowing constantly from one moment to another, and that I know everything that is to be known in this universe from different viewpoints. The individual simulations seem to represent different cross-sections of the universe as experienced from the viewpoints of different individuals. Or maybe there are only these individual simulations and the feeling of one universe is only incidental as these simulations seem to be interconnected sharing common gross objects and events. In either case, I am one reality of the nature of existence-consciousness-bliss with an uncanny ability of generating and focusing at countless simulations and experiencing them simultaneously and separately.

But why should I be doing this? Why can I not just remain as pure existence-consciousness-bliss without generating and experiencing these simulations within me?

Here’s the best explanation I have found:

Take the case of the eyes as an illustration. Their nature is to see. Now consider the sky. It’s so vast it cannot be seen in entirety by these tiny eyes. But when you turn your head upwards, the eyes try to see that which cannot be seen in entirety. The result is an error and the sky looks like a hemispherical dome (which it is not) to the eyes. In the same way, the nature of consciousness is to experience, so it tries to experience the one and only reality that actually exists which is itself. But the reality is infinite and not experiencable in entirety. When there is an attempt to experience the inexperiencable, an error is generated in the form of countless interconnected simulations - each with an experiencer, various experienced objects and their corresponding experiences. The consciousness aspect of the reality appears more prominently as the experiencers, the existence aspect appears more prominently as the experienced objects, and the bliss aspect appears more prominently as the corresponding experiences. So all these countless simulations are just an error produced by the very nature of the infinite reality trying to experience itself. These simulations manifest the infinite reality in a finite way so the consciousness of the experiencers, the existence of the experienced objects, and the bliss in the experiences are all finite, of varying degrees and transient instead of being infinite and permanent. Moreover, since infinite consciousness also implies infinite intelligence, these simulations are of very high quality following various types of laws both at micro and macro cosmic levels with lot of systematism and interconnectedness. They are so flawless and well-structured that they appear to be very real. But it's important to note that these simulations are absolutely harmless as they are not actually real and are just appearances in the one unblemished reality that I am (and everyone is)!

Another question that might arise is that once this understanding of being the one infinite reality dawns upon a particular individual, what makes him/her continue to experience the simulation and act through a body?

The answer is quite simple. The appearance of experience and action is just part of the simulation and going on of its own accord. The infinite reality is not actually doing anything deliberately. The simulations simply appear in it by its very nature and keep going, irrespective of whether the understanding of being the one underlying reality has dawned upon a particular individual or not. The only difference it would make is that the actions of an individual after this understanding has dawned would appear to be in accordance with that understanding.

You can never know anything outside of yourself directly. Even when you think you know something outside, you really just know an interpretation of it within yourself. You gather information from outside and it gets interpreted within you and the only thing you ever know about the outside world is that internal interpretation.

For instance, when you are seeing something and you know its there, you are not actually seeing it directly. Light waves reflect off different objects, enter your eyes, get converted into neuro-signals that travel to your brain through the nerves, and get interpreted as images full of colors, brightness, etc. And the only thing you ever see are these interpreted images within you. You never see any of the objects outside of you directly. Because if you were able to see them directly, you would have probably seen a vast of ocean of particles and waves and not colors, etc. These colors don’t really exist. They are just internal interpretation of different wavelengths of light falling on your retina. If your eyes had the capability of detecting a different spectrum of light (like some animals do), you would have seen something quite different. Same thing happens when you are hearing or touching or smelling or tasting something. Information just enters through your various sense organs, get converted into neuro-signals according to the capability of these organs, travel to your brain and get interpreted variously. The sounds and sensations you experience don't really exist. They are just internal interpretations of different neuro-signals generated by your eardrums, skin, nose, tongue, etc. The only thing you ever know about the outside world is this interpreted information within.

There are two important implications of this:

You can know yourself and the interpreted information within yourself directly. You don't need a way of gathering information about yourself and interpreting it to know yourself. Because, otherwise, such a process would go ad-infinitum and you would never be able to know anything.

If a mechanism is required to gather information about something in order for you to know it, that something cannot be you. Because if it was you, you would have known it directly.

Let’s apply this understanding:

Since you need a way to gather information about the outside world and interpret it within yourself, you cannot be the outside world. This is easy to agree with. But now consider your own body. Information about your body is gathered through the peripheral nervous system and delivered to the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). All the pains, aches, itches, temperature and pressure sensations, etc. of the body that you feel are nothing but interpretation of information that reaches the central nervous system. Whatever you know about your body is through this information. If you were the body, you would have known it directly and there would have been no need for a mechanism to gather information in order to know it. Moreover, If you were the body, you would have known each and every little part and function of it directly. But that’s not the case either as you do not know things that are out of reach of the peripheral nervous system like the flowing blood, insides of your bones and many of the organs, etc. (unless of course you cut open the body and actually see them or touch them, which again is information gathered through the peripheral nervous system). This clearly indicates that you cannot be the body.

So are you the central nervous system? If you were the central nervous system i.e. the brain and spinal cord, you would have known yourself as slushy gray matter through which bio-electro-chemical signals keep whizzing from time to time. But that’s not the case. What you experience is a crisp clear world full for sights, sounds and sensations. Some of the experiences are gross and more tangible, and some are subtle and less tangible. The information gathered from the body and the outside world tends to result in a more gross experience and certain activities of the brain like thoughts, emotions, etc. tend to be more subtle. This indicates that you are not the central nervous system but something quite different.

You are actually that crisp clear part-less unbroken entity within which all the information gathered at the central nervous system gets interpreted. The term for it is consciousness. This consciousness and all the interpreted information within it, or the absence of interpretations while you are in deep sleep or in a state of trance, is all that you ever know directly. You do not know anything else directly.

Many people mistake it for the mind. The mind is a collection of thoughts, emotions, memories, desires, tendencies, etc. These are activities of the brain that are interpreted within consciousness as subtle sights, sounds and sensations. You are not anything that is being interpreted, you are that within which all of this is being interpreted and that is consciousness. The only thing you ever know directly is consciousness and within it you experience the various interpretations of information gathered from outside (brain, body and the world).

A very important point to note here is that its not your consciousness, you are the consciousness. Because if consciousness was something that was yours but it wasn’t you, you would have needed another way of gathering information from your consciousness and interpreting it within yourself - just like you have to gather information about your body and your brain. And this chain would have continued endlessly. But thankfully thats not the case and the buck stops at consciousness and that is what you actually are.

So what really is this consciousness? Where does it come from? Is it generated by the brain or is it something independent? How does information gathered by the brain appear within consciousness? If I am consciousness, why does it feel like I am a body-mind complex? Why does the consciousness seem to be attached to the body and mind? Does consciousness continue to exist after the body perishes? What benefit is it to me by knowing that I am consciousness?

If these and more such questions are occurring to you, you are on the right track to knowing what you really are. These questions are very important and there are very clear answers to all of them. My recent articles have dealt with some of them and can provide a good overall understanding. Please feel free to reach out to me (npabuwal at gmail) if you would like to know more. I ll gladly share further insights and references.

Vedanta is the best thing that has happened to me in this life. Here’s a short clip in which I have shared what it means to me.

I strongly strongly recommend, nay, I beg you out of pure love and care: please familiarize yourself with Vedanta (Advaita or Non-Dual Vedanta to be precise). If it doesn’t appeal to you now, no worries. Hopefully it will some day. But if it does appeal to you, please continue to follow this auspicious sign and dive deep into the vast ocean of nectar called Vedanta!

Although you can learn about Vedanta from various sources, its easy to feel lost. I would suggest you watch this excellent 17-min talk to get an initial feel of it and then tread ahead: youtu.be/8qA9x0JyUis

Many of us have pondered over this question as to what is the ultimate underlying reality of this universe. Mainstream thought is that this universe is a vast ocean of space, time, particles, fields, strings, energy, etc. arranged in a particular fashion. But there are still lot of open questions like, where did all this come from, how far does it extend, when did it all come into existence, how long will it last, and so on. There are theories around all of these questions but no definitive answers which indicates a lack of understanding of the underlying reality. Let’s take a step back and see how we can actually derive the ultimate reality of this universe through straightforward logic and sensibility using a simple step-by-step process:

First point to understand is that something cannot come into existence out of absolute nothingness and then dissolve back into absolute nothingness (absolute nothingness means that there is absolutely nothing i.e. not even empty space). This means that something or things must have always existed and should continue to exist forever. Things might get transformed from one thing into another, but there must always be something or the other existing. This implies that existence cannot be time-bound and must be eternal.

Next point to understand is that it doesn’t make sense for something or things to exist only within certain boundaries with absolute nothingness beyond those boundaries. Absolute nothingness, by definition, means that there is absolutely nothing so what will impose a boundary? A thing will never limit itself unless there is something else imposing a limit. And if there is something else, then that is also a thing that exists and part of the overall existence. This can be extended through infinity, which implies that existence cannot be bounded and must be infinite. This can be applied to both space and time.

The question that arises now is how many things actually exist and what are they like. Let’s first figure out how many types of things might be existing. If there exist more than one type, what is keeping two types of things, say T1 and T2, separate from each other? We need a third type, say T3, to keep T1 and T2 separate. We then need T4 to keep T1 and T3 separate, and T5 to keep T3 and T2 separate, and so on ad infinitum. Another possibility is that T3 separates T1 and T2, T2 separates T1 and T3, and T1 separates T3 and T2. But even this kind of inter-leaving will go on to infinite levels. These are implausible scenarios as, even if they were possible, the complexity would be too enormous to last long. So its not feasible for multiple types of things to co-exist together. If only one type of thing can exist at any given time, the next question that arises is whether there co-exists only one thing of that type or multiple things of the same type. If there are multiple things of the same type, what keeps them separate from each other? A thing cannot separate two other things of the same type, as how will the boundaries be defined? Moreover, there cannot be absolutely nothing in-between. So its not feasible for multiple things of the same type to co-exist together, and hence only one thing must exist. This one thing must not have any parts either, otherwise the same problem of what separates these parts from each other would come up. For this reason, it has to be a continuous homogeneous whole and cannot be made of parts or particles (which are just tiny parts). We can also safely say that this one thing that exists would not change over time, as change in a thing is caused only by another thing, but there is nothing else that exists to cause a change. Hence, our conclusion so far is that there must be one and only one thing that exists which is infinite, eternal, continuous, homogeneous, part-less and unchanging.

If our above conclusion is correct, the multiplicity, variety and change that we observe in this universe must be just an appearance and not real. This is only possible if the one thing that exists has an innate capability of appearing as many without having to divide itself into parts. Please note that its not as if this one thing is appearing as many to something else. There is nothing else apart from this one thing, so this appearance of many has to be within itself. There is only one such thing we know of that has this capability - consciousness. Consider the individual consciousness that each one of us feels within our respective minds. Even though our consciousness is a single whole and not segmented into parts, we still see a world of many things - people, objects, places, events, etc. - in a dream. Its not as if all these things have somehow physically entered into our head during the dream. They are just an appearance within our consciousness and seem quite vivid and aware of each other, and behave just like we behave in the world when we are awake. So much so that, while we are dreaming, we are absolutely unaware that we are in a dream-world and not in a waking-world. Exactly like our respective dream-worlds are appearances within our individual consciousness, this whole universe is a dream-like appearance within the underlying reality that is none other than consciousness. Since this universal consciousness is infinite and must have infinite capability, the universe appears to be very real with all its vastness and intricate details. Even the perception of space, time, matter, etc. that we have in the waking-world is exactly like we have such perceptions in a dream-world which seem to be quite real while we are in the dream. Its important to note that the universe is not a dream in your or mine or anyone else's individual consciousness, but its a dream in the universal consciousness. And the body-mind complex that you consider yourself to be is nothing but an appearance in this universal dream just like other objects. This universal consciousness alone appears as individual consciousness within all living beings too. Here’s another way to see how this one and only thing that exists is actually consciousness. Whenever we see an something appearing as something else, the appearance maintains certain characteristics of the actual thing. E.g. when a rope lying in a semi-dark room appears as a snake, certain characteristics of the rope like the length, thickness, orientation, etc. are maintained in the snake appearance. Such is true with all appearances. This means that even the universe, although appearing as many with all its variety, must be maintaining certain characteristics of the real thing. Since the real thing is the same throughout, any characteristic that appears universally can most probably be attributed to the real thing. Keeping this in mind, when we observe different things in this universe - no matter how small or big - one characteristic we definitely notice is that everything has a field around it which makes it “aware” of other things within its vicinity. These fields include the electro-magnetic field, weak and strong nuclear field, gravitational field, etc. From the smallest of the particles to the largest of the galaxies, all exhibit this characteristic. This is a strong indication that awareness or consciousness belongs to the underlying reality. Moreover, the underlying reality must be consciousness itself and not a thing which is conscious as that would need two types of things - consciousness and the thing which is conscious - but we have already ruled out existence of more than one type of thing. Another simple reason why the ultimate reality must be consciousness is that if its not consciousness, it would be something dead and inert. And we cannot expect something dead and inert to generate such a sophisticated appearance within itself which even includes conscious living beings.

One more characteristic that is observed universally is that every part and particle of this universe is not just “aware” of other things within its vicinity, but is also “interacting" with them. If the underlying reality would have been just plain consciousness, the universe could have been just a huge cloud of particles that only had awareness of each other without any interaction amongst them. But we notice that things either attract each other or repel each other and, overall, things seem to continuously move towards a more stable, more positive state, as is evident from how the universe has arranged itself over time. The fact that we observe such interaction universally indicates that the reality also has a positivity associated with it, called bliss. This bliss is the driving factor behind all types of interaction amidst all living and non-living things. The term “bliss" will be clearer when we consider that everything we ever do is so that we can feel good. All feelings like happiness, joy, peace, serenity, delight, ecstasy, etc. fall under the category of feeling good and the highest order of feeling good is called bliss, which is what we all are striving for. Its the underlying driving factor behind all our actions.

Based on the above analysis, we can conclude that the ultimate Reality of this universe ought to be One, Infinite, Eternal, Continuous, Homogeneous, Part-less, Unchanging Existence-Consciousness-Bliss in which the whole universe appears and disappears in cycles, just like dreams appear and disappear in us. Moreover, there doesn’t have to be only one universe. There can be any number of universes co-existing simultaneously since they are all just appearances in a reality that is infinite.

If you ask yourself who you are, the answer might sound like: I am this person reading this article whose name is XYZ, who is a male or a female, who looks like the image in the mirror, living in ABC city, working as blah-blah, child/parent/spouse of so-and-so, having such-and-such thoughts, feelings, experiences, knowledge, skills, capabilities, memories, tendencies, and so on so forth. All these answers pertain to what can be called in a nutshell - a body-mind complex. There are high chances that this is what you take yourself to be.

Now consider this: You are a fully grown adult now, but you were once a little baby, a small boy/girl and a young teenager. Research suggests that, sparing few types of cells, most cells in the body die within few years and get constantly replaced with new ones. So, physiologically speaking, most of your current body cells were not present ten or twenty or thirty years ago which means you had materially different bodies back then. Even the state of your mind as a baby/child/teenager was very different than what you have now. So, if you are just a body-mind complex, you must have been someone else in the past as your body and mind have been very different at different stages of your life, and you will yet again turn into someone else as you grow older. But that’s not how you feel about yourself. You think you are one and the same entity throughout your life whose body and mind changes over time. So, if you are always the same entity, how can you be the body-mind complex which is constantly changing?

Here’s another way to look at it: Let’s say its possible for you to take-up an entirely new body which is everything you always wanted - healthier, stronger, better looking, more functional, and without any of the pains, aches and problems of your current body. And let’s say you don't lose any of the advantages of your current body and people around you somehow continue to recognize you as before. Chances are you would want to sign-up for this offer. You would be willing to swap your mind too if you are offered a different mind with a more positive personality, stronger intellect, sharper memory, better knowledge and skills and capabilities, and much lesser issues compared to your current mind say in terms of anger, fear, lust, shame, hatred, etc., while still making sure that you don’t lose any of the advantages of your current mind. These are clear indications that you are neither the body nor the mind, because if you were really those, you would have never considered swapping them out as it would have meant the end of your current existence and birth of someone else.

Yet another way to arrive at the same conclusion: Let’s say you think you are fat and want to reduce your weight by half. It basically means that you would lose half your body. Or, for some reason, you lose a limb or two like a leg or an arm, or maybe more which makes-up a large part of your body. Would you think that you are only a part of what you were earlier or would you still consider yourself to be the same whole person? It applies to the mind too. Even if you lose a part of it like your memory or knowledge or intellect or any such thing, which happens a lot with age, you would still think you are the same person. These are again clear indications that you are neither the body nor the mind.

Let me re-iterate. If you were really just the body-mind complex and nothing more, any substantial change in the body and/or the mind would have meant that you have turned into someone else. But that’s not how you feel about yourself. You always feel that you are the same person throughout your life even though your personality might be undergoing various changes. Think about it. Contemplate on it. Re-read if you need to and you will begin to get it. If you are still not getting it, its primarily because of your natural attachment to the body and mind which is preventing you from believing that you are not them. Its not easy to get rid of this attachment and takes time.

Lets try to further understand what’s going on. Consider a house that you are familiar with. As time goes, you change the furniture, appliances, fittings, color scheme, and many such things. You may even remodel it and add/remove/change sections over time. So much so that the house might look very different from what it looked say thirty years ago - both from inside and outside. But you would still consider it to be the same house. In fact, as long as you don’t completely demolish the house and re-construct a new one, you would continue to call it the same house irrespective of the extent of change it undergoes. This is because what you refer to as the house is not really the material building itself but a concept of the house in your mind. As time passes and the house keeps changing materially, the concept keeps adapting to the change and you keep referring to it as the house. The same thing applies to your own body-mind. What you refer to as yourself is not the body-mind complex directly but a concept of it in your mind that remains one but keeps pointing to the changed body-mind.

Now the killer: Do you think you are really that concept in the mind you are referring to as yourself, or are you the one who is referring to that concept?

You have come a long way in trying to understand who or what you really are - all the way from thinking you are just a body-mind complex to thinking you are some entity that is referring to a concept of your body-mind as yourself. Its difficult to go beyond this understanding just through intellectual analysis, reasoning or normal experience. So it helps to seek guidance from those who have been successful in knowing their real self, learn from what they have to say about it, and then validate it for yourself. There have been many such through the millenniums who have left their invaluable and timeless teachings. If we study their teachings, we will find one thing in common - they all say that who or what we really are is indescribable in words. There is good reason for that. Its impossible to communicate even a normal day-to-day experience in words (like the experience of eating an ice-cream or listening to a piece of music or looking at a beautiful scenery) to someone else and make them come even close to how you feel. They have to experience it for themselves. If such is the case for a normal experience, what to say of our real self which is far subtler. Even then, for others benefit, these teachers atleast indicate what our real self is like and describe practices to know and experience it internally.

The best term used to indicate the real self (aka Self), as found in the teachings in Upanishads and other Indian scriptures, is Sat-Chit-Ananda which means Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. These are not three words but one word represented by a conjunction of three words as there is no single word that can express the meaning fully. What it means is that the essence of the Self is pure and absolute Existence, Consciousness and Bliss. Pure and absolute Existence implies that its not existence of a particular thing or existence dependent on something, but Existence in itself which is the ground for existence of all things. Pure and absolute Consciousness implies that its not a particular conscious being or consciousness of a particular thing, but Consciousness in itself which is the ground for all types of conscious activities. Pure and absolute Bliss implies that its not a particular type of nice feeling, but Bliss in itself which is the ground for all types of positive feelings (like happiness, joy, peace, etc.). Moreover, all three i.e. Existence, Consciousness and Bliss, go together at all times and are not disjoint.

So, your real Self is not a particular entity that is existing, conscious and blissful, but is Existence-Consciousness-Bliss itself in its purest and absolute sense.

If this sounds vague to you, you are not alone. As mentioned above, who or what you really are is indescribable in words, so these words are only indicative in nature. You need to experience your true Self internally and then only will you really know who you are. But here’s why it atleast makes sense for the Self to be Existence-Consciousness-Bliss:

Let’s take up Consciousness first. Existence and Bliss will follow through. Consider any day-to-day experience, like looking at something. The light reflected from an object enters your eyes and falls on your retina that generates neuro-signals which travel through your optical nerves and result in some bio-electro-chemical activity in your brain that is somehow interpreted as a visual scene within your consciousness. What you see is not the sub-atomic particles that make-up the object, nor the light particles, nor the neuro-signals, nor the bio-electro-chemical activities in the brain, but something quite different from the materials involved in the whole process - a 3D image with different colors and brightness. Same thing happens when you are listening to something - the surround sound that you experience is quite different from the materials involved in the hearing process. In fact, your experience of anything - whether its physical or mental - is always of a construct in your consciousness and never of the matter involved directly. Actually matter and consciousness are so intrinsically different that its impossible for them to interact with each other. Hence, what we think of as matter is also nothing but a construct in consciousness that just seems to have matter-like properties. Even the concept of your own body-mind that you refer to as yourself is also nothing but a construct in consciousness.

If you are having a problem in understanding what consciousness means, try this: Say someone creates a robot, an android, that is designed to look and behave exactly like you. Its been programmed to act, speak and even think like you. The way you talk/walk/sit/stand, your skin, your hair, your features, your expressions, everything being exactly the same. So much so that no one will ever be able to tell apart any difference between the android and you. Even after all this there will still be one key difference between the android and you - the inner subjective experience of being you. Its only present in you and will be absent in the robot. This is consciousness.

Its important to note that this is not “your” consciousness as by “your” you mean your body-mind, and its not that consciousness is within the body-mind but the body-mind is appearing within consciousness. What you call as “your” consciousness is only a “reflection" of this consciousness in your mind, but consciousness itself is not dependent on the existence of yours or anyone else’s mind. This is the pure and absolute Consciousness. Its also pure and absolute Existence since its the only entity that exists and everything - you, others, the whole world, the whole universe - simply seems to appear in it making it the ground of all existence. Its also pure and absolute Bliss as nothing else exists that it would be in any form of conflict with.

This pure and absolute Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, which enlightened people say is also infinite and eternal, is what you and everything really is.

People have many different perspectives on who or what God is. For some, God has a specific form, for some God has many forms, and for some God is formless. Some believe in multiple Gods and some in One. Some believe their notion of God alone to be correct and all else to be wrong, while some believe their notion of God to be inclusive of all other beliefs. And then there are some who think there is no such entity as God.

Among all these perspectives, the term “God” refers to a Higher Power or a Higher Reality than the world we live in. Some pray to the Higher Power in the hope of making things better for themselves in this world and/or beyond. Some have true unconditional love and devotion towards the Higher Reality as they believe its lot more pure and unchanging compared to anything else in this world and hence much more worthy of love. Some think this world is the only reality and don’t believe in any other Higher Reality.

People who fall in the last category are usually being rational/logical/intellectual about what they believe to be real. They only go by what science has to say about reality, and since science hasn't proven the existence of a Higher Reality, they don’t believe in it. Before you congratulate yourself for being in this category, let me mention that those who have true unconditional love and devotion for God are much more peaceful and happy in life than those who don’t. I can vouch for this as I have personally experienced all these categories myself up-close. So the intellect could actually be blocking you from experiencing something really wonderful. As Mark Twain said: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that it just ain't so.”

Instead of letting the intellect be a blocker, it can be used as a tool to explore if the existence of a Higher Reality atleast makes logical sense. Lets see how it actually does:

Say you are taking a walk downtown amidst many shops, malls, etc. and the place is bustling with people, some of them with pets, and there is probably also a small park on the side. You marvel at the tremendous variety of apparel, art pieces, gadgets, devices, etc. on display, admire the architecture of the buildings, and maybe also notice the different types of vehicles moving about. You think to yourself how advanced human intelligence is to have created all these sophisticated things. And then you look at the different humans, animals, trees, plants, etc. that are way more sophisticated than the most advanced machinery ever created by human intelligence. Would you think that all of them were just created by chance without requiring any intelligent cause?

We take for granted a human-like intelligence to be the cause of even a simple piece of pottery, what to say of the magnificent array of galaxies, stars, planets, moons and other celestial objects spread across the entire universe. One may believe that all of these came into existence after a big explosion (as a popular science theory tells us), but it doesn’t take too deep a thinking to wonder if it really appeared just by chance out of nothingness. And even if it somehow did, how come all the “stuff" coming out of this explosion arranged itself so elegantly? One may argue that those are just the different fields, forces and other laws of nature in action. But why do these laws even exist in the first place? By chance? And then how come dead non-living matter suddenly became alive and started sustaining itself and producing more of its kind? Again by chance? And those single living cells just started evolving into complex organisms by chance too? And eventually, just by chance, we have human beings who are capable of looking back at the universe and ponder upon its and their own existence!?

If left to chance, each of the above events would have an extremely low probability of happening, and a long series of them occurring one after the other would be surely considered impossible. In fact, if such events can happen by chance, pretty much anything can happen, e.g. all the water on the planet might dry up instantly or a new moon might appear in the sky suddenly or you might start growing another head this moment or pretty much any such random thing that seems to be impossible. But such things don’t happen and the universe appears to work in a very systematic and lawful manner. All of these indicate the presence of an intelligent cause, making it a way more logical and sensible option than the absence of it. Having an intelligent cause in-turn points to the existence of a Higher Reality that we seem to be unable to perceive, understand or even imagine.

This would all be just plain theory if there weren't countless people through the ages across different parts of the world who have actually experienced a Higher Reality. These people are not bluffing. A bluff would not last more than a few years or a few decades at max, but we still see majority of the world trusting various scriptures written many thousands of years ago. This is only because the Truths revealed in these scriptures have been repeatedly validated and re-validated over the centuries and millenniums through real experiences of innumerable people. Moreover, the teachings in these scriptures cannot have any underlying selfish motive as they do not benefit anyone else except the student.

Its true that the experiences people have had are very diverse, as is clear from the variety of descriptions of the Higher Reality across different religions and sects. The reason for this diversity is that the Higher Reality is vast (has to be if its the intelligent cause behind this entire universe and more) and the human mind is tiny. So, in most cases, the mind is only able to experience the Reality partially. Hence, people’s accounts of it vary depending on which aspect of Reality they personally experienced. Moreover, different minds have different temperaments and have an inclination towards a certain aspect of Reality, which also results in them having different experiences. Even if there are differences in people’s experiences, they are all inherently consistent. Upanishads, the ancient scriptures of India, are the most comprehensive account of the Higher Reality as they are based on the experiences of hundreds of realized sages and saints as compared to just one (which is the case in most other scriptures of the world). Here is an immaculate talk on the nature of the Higher Reality as per the Upanishads: Defining God

One of the reasons why intellectually-oriented people are put-off by the notion of a Higher Reality is because it usually gets portrayed as God(s) in superhuman-like forms located somewhere within or beyond the universe. Its important to note that these forms are much more effective than something formless in terms of vividly expressing the pure and perfect qualities pertaining to the Higher Reality. They help stimulate tremendous love and devotion within an individual, which is a proven path (called Bhakti Yoga) to directly experience the Higher Reality. But one doesn’t have to blindly believe in these forms as there is another path to directly know the Higher Reality completely based on intellect and knowledge (called Jnana Yoga). The talk I linked above is especially beneficial for this path.

Lot of highly intelligent people in an intellectually-oriented field (like science, technology, engineering, etc.) tend to be atheists i.e. they don’t believe in the existence of God. This is primarily because their understanding of the term “God" is usually limited to some super-natural being(s) sitting in the heavens controlling the universe - as portrayed in many religions. Any person of reasonable intelligence might question the validity of such an entity without any proof, so their disbelief is quite understandable.

One huge mistake they commit though is to equate spirituality with religion. Spirituality is about discovering the absolute Truth or Reality that underlies everything and answering some of the most fundamental questions regarding life and existence, like who am I?, what is the purpose of life?, where did this whole universe come from?, how can I experience enduring and lasting happiness?, etc. Its very inquisitive and experiential in nature. Religion on the other hand is generally a belief system built upon spiritual truths and evolved in a way that makes it easier for the masses to practice. Spirituality serves as the foundation for many major religions in the world like Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Jainism, etc. It usually starts with someone - like the great ancient saints of India, Vyasa, Buddha, Jesus, Sankara, Mahavir, etc. - discovering and experiencing the Reality through meticulous spiritual practices. They then, out of their unconditional love and compassion, share how others may also discover the Reality for themselves and experience unlimited peace and bliss that gets rid of all miseries and sufferings in life forever. Large number of people tend to follow the philosophy and teachings of these enlightened beings closely for some time and lot of them are able to realize the Truth. But as time passes, with the original teacher long gone, it turns into a religion of blind faith completely hiding, and sometimes even forgetting, its underlying spiritual core. And, since many people don’t dive deep enough to learn the spiritual basis of religion, they take religion to be baseless and stop believing in it and leave spirituality also behind in the process. What a terrible loss!

Spirituality is the science and technology of our internal world, the world of our mind (our thoughts, feelings, experiences, memories, intelligence, ego, desires, aversions, tendencies, etc.). Even if you are an atheist, you are surely looking for one and only one thing in life - happiness. If you think about it, everything that you ever do is so that you can feel happy. And happiness exists in one and only one place - the mind. Just like we use mainstream science and technology to better understand and manage the external material world, we need to use spiritual science and technology to systematically understand and manage the internal world of our mind. Without that, its like groping in the dark searching for happiness in the external world and quite often getting hit in the head with various miseries and sufferings in the process. Its quite a pathetic state to be in.

Another common mistake is to equate mind and brain. Brain is a part of the physical body, an organ, that enables the mind to operate. But the mind is something subtle. We may cut open the head and monitor the brain as deeply as we like but we will not be able to tell a single thought, feeling, experience, memory, etc. of the person. We will only be able to correlate activities of the mind with activities in the brain. Hence the science of brain doesn’t serve as a science of mind. The latter needs a very subjective approach which is what spirituality provides.

One might raise a question as to why spirituality and not psychology? Various reasons. Psychology is primarily focused on curing mental illness (like depression, stress, emotional imbalance, etc.) and not on improving the well-being of a normal mind. A new branch of psychology called positive psychology has started exploring that front but its still in its infancy, whereas spirituality has been developed and practiced over thousands of years by innumerable people with incredible results. Moreover, psychology, like any other science, tries to understand the mind in an objective manner whereas there is a lot going on in the mind that is highly subjective in nature which cannot be objectified.

Although there are many spiritual philosophies and most of them can be quite effective, the best I have found is Advaita Vedanta. Its one of the most rational and comprehensive spiritual philosophies. Even some of the cutting-edge science like quantum mechanics, para-psychology, etc. is getting more and more aligned with what Vedanta has already been saying for thousands of years.

Here are few excellent videos that I highly recommend you watch to learn more about Vedanta and Spirituality in general. They shall be worth every minute of your time!

Spiritualizing the Whole Life

Who Am I?

Purposeful Living with Vedanta

What is Life?

A humble explanation of one of many lovely parables of Sri Ramakrishna. This one has been picked from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. It beautifully portrays different types of people in this world and how they tend to live.