That Which Is Aware of Perception – How Do We Discover

This Ineffable, Unspeakable knowledge—Self-Knowledge—is not just Self-Knowledge about the non- phenomenal, it is Self-Knowledge about the entirety of the manifest as well. And that is why you can surrender to it. I wonder maybe you all need to contemplate this.

So, we come to this discovery of that which is unspeakable and unseeable—let's call it the ineffable. Ineffable means that which is too broad to capture in words, that which is too big to capture in words. So, you come into this discovery, and this is what is traditionally called Atma Gyana, Self-Knowledge. Now, many of us in spirituality feel like we come to this self-knowledge but the Self-Knowledge is only about the non-phenomenal and I still need to augment it with some phenomenal knowledge to make it really function in the world. But that is not true. This Self-Knowledge is the superset of everything that your mind can grasp and hold on to. It is on the basis of this Self-Knowledge that the trees and growing and the flowers are blooming. So, this Self- Knowledge already knows everything even in the manifest. In fact, it is not making a distinction between the manifest and the un-manifest. And it is because it is the All-Knowing that is why we can surrender to it. Why surrender to the Satguru, the Self, whatever term we may use for that, because it is the All- Knowing and All-Pervasive and All-Powerful. So, that is how surrender actually functions. So, your attempt to figure out whether it is worthwhile or not worthwhile is independent of your true Self-Knowledge anyway. So, in your question there are two answers possible, right? One answer is that it is completely important and you need to understand it this way, and the other answer is that it is pointless. Now, really what I want to say is that either of those positions, your true Self-Knowledge is independent of that. But this kind of answer is not usually satisfactory to our intellect, so that continues to struggle and say, ‘But he didn't really give me an answer.’ It can seem like that. But what I am really saying is that whether you end up with this conversation one way, saying it is pointless to really understand in my intellect, or you end up with the understanding that I really need to understand this intellectually, either of those are independent of what your true Self-Knowledge is.

Maybe the transcript of this part. Because to the mind it can just sound blah-blah- blah-blah-what’s happening? [Laughs]

Maybe a simpler way to answer is that the playground of the question and whatever response may come in that playground is not the playground in which your true Self-Knowledge resides. I call it playground because there is no point really to a playground. Maybe to the city planners; they must be thinking this has a point, but when a child goes to play, it is not going because there's a point to it.

A child goes to play and you ask your child why do you want to go and play, he is not going to say, oh, because my muscles will get stronger and these things will happen, it will benefit my body. Just: I want to play. That's why the leela (play) example is very, very good. What is the point of a leela? If the leela had a point then it would be called that point, not be called a leela. But why I’m saying this again and again and may sound circular is because I don't want you to end up with a notion that it is pointless also. To call it pointless is to give it one more point. To call something meaningless is to define the meaning of something as meaningless.

So, neither point nor pointless, or both, whatever you prefer.

Exactly. It is not meant to. But if there is an attempt here, it is to allow the intellect to continue to wobble instead of allowing it to rest on false knowledge. To continue to wobble is the weakening of it. To feed it false knowledge even though it sounds spiritual is to just construct a new prison for you.

So, there is a beautiful thing I came across the other day. In Western philosophy, from the times of Plato and Aristotle—maybe Aristotle codified it in this way, actually. He said that a claim can either be true or it can be false. These were the two corners of Western philosophy, Western logic. In India, both with the Buddhists and the Vedantins, there used to be four corners, which was: a claim can be true, it can be false, it can be both true or false, it can be neither true nor false. And these four were enough to shake up most intellects. But the Buddha on many occasions referred to a fifth and the sages like Nagarjuna referred to a fifth. Now, this fifth we cannot define in words because you’ve defined true, you’ve defined false, you’ve defined both true and false, you’ve defined neither true nor false. That fifth corner is where true Self-Knowledge lies. So, if I say it has a point, it is in the corner of true. If I say it doesn’t have a point, it is in the corner of false. If I say it's both true and false, it is in the third corner. If I say it's neither true nor false, it is in the fourth corner. But the truth resides in the fifth corner and our intellect cannot go there.

Correct. And the only it is describable is this way—in negation. Even to say it is indescribable is an attempt at a description of it, isn't it? S But that is the best description, I guess. No?

The only way to possibly come close to pointing to it is in the negative, which is un-this, un-born, un- dying, un-everything.

Exactly. Your answer is in the fifth. Which is so far out from the typical Western way of thinking which all of us—we might call it Western but all of us have grown up in that, in the Western way of education and all of that, that we get confused between true and false. Just two corners we can’t handle. The thing has to be either true or false for us to claim. And that is the limit of our intellect right now.

Yes. You don't know which corner I am taking about. Sometime I say it is true, sometime I say it is false, sometime I say it is both, sometime I say it is neither. But these are four corners of the intellect. I wanted your intellect to wobble enough so that it falls into the fifth.

That is the whole game of spirituality. That is the transcendence of the mind. I feel like that is a beautiful note to end on today, at least the sharing part.

Thank you, my love.