From the Perspective of Awareness What Really Happened? - 20th September 2017

The appearance is just an appearance. Nothing actually emerges, you see. So once you see there is no snake, then that which was seen as this thing, you see, as a rule, once you see that you are the Self alone, then all of this, the seeing, is just an appearance. It's not real. So when you say it is not real, then you say something actually emanates? Real actually emanated? It was just seeing an appearance. So it's like, okay, this is a zero. Go seamlessly. Did this thing appear? And it didn't go. So we see this world is an appearance like this. It never really appeared. Nothing really emanated, but you just see the dynamic aspect, as we call it.

Ultimately, we have to say that even all of this Maya, illusion, never really happened. You don't read it out like this in Satsang because then we can get into some sort of a conceptual denial of the appearance. But we are now looking at the last words, saying that if I am truly the unchanging, then can the changing actually ever have happened? Is any of this true? What is the reality of it? This is the distinction between the real and the unreal, the rope and the snake, which is the most popular example or metaphor in Vedanta. Then we start to see, although it might appear to be that all of us are here having this conversation, in reality, only awareness is. So where is the snake when it appears? Where is the water in the mirage that appears? And yet it can be perceived as if it is, but it doesn't have a tangible reality.

So it appears; it is an appearance. But if it is just an appearance, it means what came? Nothing really. An appearance is not real. If something real emanated from me, then I would say, yes, this is how it was, the display of two-ness. Now we go back to this: but if it is just illusion and appearance, what really emanated out of it? It appears to have emanated. You put it like that. The snake really appears to have come, and once you see it, and it's light, you see that there is no snake; there is only a rope.

So from the perspective of awareness, what really happened in the coming of the waking state, in the coming of the sense of existence? What really happened? I think we have which is appearances. If you want to see the non-real appearance seemed to have been perceived, you can see like that. In this, this conversation can only happen in that seeing, yes. But the nature of this as real or unreal or producing... if the definition of real is clear, that the unchanging is here, which we defined right in the beginning, then what would you say about this? So if it is not, can you say what is it? Is it similar to the mother giving birth to a child, or is it similar to the appearance of the snake?

Bringing you to one of the most traditional and oldest debates in tradition: Shankara Ji says that this Maya is neither real nor unreal; it just appears to be so. That's why it is called the unreal. There are the paths when we say that this jiva which appears, this sense of existence, is as much Ram as Brahman itself. So these are two very traditional approaches to this. Now, either are fine, but what appeals to your heart the most? Whatever you feel the most intuitively inclined to is completely fine here.