This 5,000 Year-Old Secret Will End Your Suffering | Shiva, Science, Moksha | Swami Sarvapriyananda

whatever we are doing in life that's All Because Of Consciousness you are not it you are not that negativity you're not that depression nor are you depressed when death is closed at the point of death Sask grammar is not going to save you worship goind Krishna worship goind worship goind o fool worship goind devotion Namaste everyone today today is a very special day for me because I have on the show um who I consider my Guru Swami San and the g this is our second podcast with him and uh words cannot describe who he is

and I'm sure that when you listen to this podcast you'll be able to learn a lot and overall he's the most humble person ever so I would love to welcome you Swami sand to the show Once Again under the tree thank you so much for taking out your time to be here thank you for having me here once again soami I just completed my education in Consciousness studies and human potential so basically studied everything from bhagat Gita to Hinduism to knowing thyself uh who am I this in this really answering this big question I want

to just start off this podcast with talking to you about for viewers who may not actually know you know who am I because it's something we consider just to be I am Amir or or I am a student or I'm a podcaster or I'm this this what is this question really comprise of and why is it actually necessary for us to know thyself so just the basics if you can start off with right and I'm so glad to know that um you studied um Consciousness that Consciousness studies is is a thing now and it's becoming

more and more popular there are some reasons I'd just like to mention before we go deep into it uh the reasons why right now now at this time in our time uh Consciousness studies has become so important MH um I was seeing uh Oxford University press if you Google it you'll find five great unsolved questions in Philosophy by Oxford University press but if you look at the five questions four of the questions are related to Consciousness right one question is who am I that's one big question in philosophy uh second question is do we have

free will third question is do we know anything at all how do we know anything question of skepticism and knowledge then the fourth question is death what happens at death not the physical side of it that of course is well known but the Consciousness side of it what happens to Consciousness at death and the fifth question was about global justice but four questions you see directly related to Consciousness um another reason why Consciousness studies has suddenly become very important in last 20 25 years is this new technology um there are this technology of scanning the

brain has improved dramatically in the last 20 25 years is they have got something called fmri now functional MRI which they can trace carefully uh Trace very minute activity in the brain different areas of the brain and then they can correlate with our experiences conscious experiences so that has led to sudden boom of interest in consciousness studies another area reason why this Consciousness studies is very important today is uh um is because of this new you know internet um especially AI suddenly these computers are doing things which we thought with the the you know the

area the the province of human beings decision making um like a driving a car r GPT CH GPT especially right now bril it's it's an amazing thing it's writing poems and short stories there are now just before I came somebody in in New York um visitor was demonstrating to me a new AI which will make films for you you just have to Sora I think it's called Uh you just give it a text prompt and it'll make a film for you everything it'll do for you just tell it what to do it'll do it um

there are there is AI which paints pictures there is AI which writes stories and composes poems so creativity creativity in many dimensions so again the question arises what is consciousness then so this rise of AI also has sparked interest in what Consciousness is and finally there's a philosophical question which I'm sure we'll come to the called the hard problem of Consciousness the the inability to explain Consciousness from with just the brain or nervous system so for all these reasons and many more Reasons I'm sure there's a sudden burst of interest in Consciousness and now you

have have subjects amazing and wonderful subjects like Consciousness studies which you have studied um coming to your question about this know thyself there is an ancient interest in Consciousness studies not just this modern Consciousness studies um the philosopher Evan Thompson he WR his book waking dreaming being he starts his book by saying um that Consciousness studies is not a new discipline it started 5,000 years ago in the indog gantic plains in the text called the opans so people were already investigating what Consciousness is um in fact he says he says that these upanishads are so

important in human thought that we should do well to date our history not with AD and BC but before upanishad and after upanishad and can I just ask you when you're talking about upanishads because I would like to ALS also tell the viewers that I I am taking classes for me on the mundu and um I mean if if there's like one sentence I think if I'm not wrong that you have to sum up that specific opition is that if there's one thing you need to know uh that you know everything from is that you

know I I am that I am right right so um for openers how many openers are there and I mean are the core teachings uh kind of similar with with what you're talking about yes so the openads are um are found in the as part of the Holy texts of the Hindus called the vdas so in the vas the final teachings of the vas the highest or the deepest spiritual teachings of the vas are found in these texts called upanishads these are very ancient and there are a large number of them there is a well-known

list of 108 op but there are more than that actually 10 of them arguably 11 are more important than the rest because mainly because about 1200 1300 years ago ADI shankaracharya he selected those 10 or 11 in some accounts to write commentaries so he developed the whole system of vant or non vant vant based on these upanishads and these especially these 10 upanishads there's a nice verse which names these 10 openads so 10 upanishads are named here now the message of all the upanishad to keep it simple I'll stick to nonu vant which is my

home tradition uh the message of all these openads actually is very easy to State it is you are that the ultimate that means the Ultimate Reality of the universe um there is an ultimate reality of the universe and we sentient beings we are that and what is that Ultimate Reality of the universe it is variously expressed as pure existence sat or pure Consciousness chit or pure Bliss Anand this is the conclusion that the upanishads arrive at satand saand existence Consciousness place um it sounds cool it is cool it's the ultimate in coolness um but this

is the essence of the teaching that you are that tasi or I am Brahman the Ultimate Reality this is the essence of the openads but the rest of the text and the commentaries and the sub commentaries and multiple independent texts based on the openads which have been written by great Masters throughout the Millennia of Indian history of Indian civilization they have um built upon these teachings MH and uh I think let's just dive into now what exactly is the hard problem of Consciousness and I know that's a term that was coined by David Charmers um

and he's a I believe he's in a professor at NYU or yeah he's an Australian philosopher philosopher of Mind in fact if you look him up if you look up the 10 greatest living philosophers you have to say living philosophers otherwise you'll get Plato and Aristotle and all but if you say Google 10 greatest living philosophers I would vager that you'll get David Chamas so he's one of the greatest philosophers living today uh he's Australian he is right now he's a philosopher at the New York University they have probably the best analytic philosophy Department in

the world and especially the area which is of interest to us the philosophy of mind that's a part of philosophy philosophy of mind that's where they study mind and Consciousness so he is um so he's the one who coined the term the hard problem of Consciousness now what is the hard problem of consciousness uh to understand it better we can contrast it with the so-called quote unquote easy problem which are not easy which will require a lot of hard work but they're easy in a certain sense what is that behind it all is the idea

that the brain is producing Consciousness now when they study the brain and you find activity in some parts of the brain with your scans and the person whose brain you're s you're studying that person says oh it's there's a pain in my right hand now and you see this part of the brain rights lights up oh I'm remembering um a red rose now and that part of the brain lights up so you now say that this part of the brain is connected with the experience of pain in the right hand that part of the brain

that those bunch of neurons are connected with the memory of a red rose um so this is a science of correlations brain activity correlated with the reported conscious experience of the subject and you can develop you can get a you can sort of map what's going on in the brain get a good idea you can get a good idea uh I guess I'm not a neuroscientist and an actual practicing neuroscientists they told me it's more complicated than that and it's not it's actually quite messy it's not as precise as that but the general principle we

understand so this is one kind of Neuroscience this is one side of the side of Science of Consciousness but the other side the what he calls a hard problem is why should electrical activity in living tissue in one organ of the body cause you to have conscious experiences what is the connection between a burst of electricity here and a pain what is the connection between a burst of electricity somewhere here tiny tiny burst of electricity in some little neurons and Einstein coming to the discovery of e is equal to mc² where is the connection we

are all seeing hearing smelling tasting we have a vivid experience of life like a internal movie This Is the word that David Chamas uses we have like an internal movie which is going on playing in our heads but if you look in the heads there's no movie if you look at if you if you scan the skull of a living person with be your most finest of instruments most sophisticated instruments you will not see sights sound smell taste touch you will not see is equal to MC square you will not see art philosophy religion nothing

you will just see Tiny electrical activity neurochemicals floating around that's all that you will see where is the connection you can't track someone's memories or honestly I think even at this point there's no technology that can like do mind reading right they're trying but the question is deeper why at all physical biological processes are experienced subjectively as our life it's a very big question because Consciousness is our life whatever we are doing in life that's All Because Of Consciousness and yet how is this Consciousness related to the brain how is the brain producing Consciousness that

there is some relationship there's no doubt about it that's the easy problem but how at all can you correlation is not is not causation there's no proof of it's it's not uh it's not an explanation so they calls it an explanatory Gap um so he uses the term qualia qualia means what it what does it feel like have a cup of coffee you feel the warmth of it the flavor of it the aroma of it warmth flavor Aroma none of them are in the brain you can't really describe that either yeah and there's tiny bits

of electrical activity how does that become warmth and flavor and Aroma uh in your experience living experience there is a big gap here somewhere and this is called the hard problem of Consciousness and it it actually exists another philosopher put it nicely um Gallen ston he said there's actually no hard problem of Consciousness we are all conscious there is no doubt about that we are all conscious right now we are aware we conscious now you have made up your mind that somehow brain is producing Consciousness and now you can't explain how brain is producing Consciousness

now you're calling it heart problem but how why are you assuming that brain is producing Consciousness at all it could be that the brain is an instrument it's like people are coming into the room through the door through the door people are coming into the room now all of us we have entered this room through that door now if somebody says oh the door is so powerful It produced so many people it didn't produce people we came in through the door the door was just an instrument an instrument it could be that the brain is

an instrument that Consciousness uses for functionality clearly the brain is related to Consciousness now this is this is a question this is called the heart problem of Consciousness I think I just want to share a little personal experience and maybe you can kind of describe that in the context of Consciousness so for example just a few days ago I was having an argument with my mom and during that uh that conflict I was basically able to W because I have this knowledge now so I was able to witness uh essentially it's like there was a

thought in my mind that okay this is happening I'm able to observe the entire situation observe that this is happening and I'm reacting yes yes so you're able to observe the person Amir yes that's what strange thing was it was like almost if it was another identity and I was able to observe it couldn't and I could stop it afterwards so that was and that one which is observing the person Amir arguing with her mom um that one cannot exactly be the same as the person Amir it's almost like the person Amir is a mask

which you are wearing in fact you know the very word person means mask I was amazed to discover that in ancient Greece they used to have these plays they would stage these plays and each actor would come on stage in that Amphitheater and they would hold these huge masks which represented a character and they would speak through the masks Sona means sound Persona is that mask through which you speak um so person really means a mask you are not the person yeah the person depends on you for its existence you are manifesting the person but

you are not literally the person just as you put a mask on my face I am not the mask mask is not my real face but I operate through the mask you operate through the personam Mira yeah that's a very good um point that you have just raised kind of proof that like the real eye is pure it's pure but the reactions are just either conditionings or some type of uh you know like Behavior from environment or what we've learned from last life that's coming through the real eye is that kind of a way to

explain pure in the sense not in the sense of whether it's good or bad pure or impure not in that sense like the body may be Pure or impure the Mind may be Pure or impure but Consciousness the real eye is pure in the sense that it's only Consciousness it's not mixed with anything else so it's just awareness you can say it just is isness or it just shines its awareness and this sounds abstract it sounds mystical but it doesn't vant will say that it's just a fact it's in fact the most obvious fact of

our Our Lives just as we are all sitting here um but all of this is illumined by one light person might say oh there are chairs there's Amir there's the chair there's the microphones there's Swami but the fact is all of this is just you know light is reflecting of all of this and coming to our eyes and that's why we are able to see so similarly we are this one light in which appears the personality thoughts and emotions and the body and the world and its interactions yeah so it's pure in that sense as

just isness or just awareness just uh on that context in the context of viant also I want to play like a little uh it's like rapid fire where I'm going to give you a situation a real life situation where someone's in and you tell me like If someone knows their true identity or who am I how do they react to that in the best way so they don't suffer so uh for example um I'm a student who is preparing for let's say if you're in India it's like the IAS exams or in in the US

Harvard IV Leakes and I've spent years and years preparing and putting my heart and soul but maybe due to some luck Destiny Karma whatever you call it um I don't get success that causes failure that causes depression Suicidal Thoughts that's the reaction I'm feeling how do I use this knowledge to then solve my issue you immediately see that there is this negative reaction unhappiness a shock misery it appears like a wave it's not that I am shocked or I am in deep misery or I am a failure I am a loser I am uh in

deep depression no I feel that wave of uh negativity arising I am that Limitless awareness like the blue sunlit sky in which a cloud has suddenly suddenly appeared and it's not just being poetic or being rhetorical it's you actually see it like that so this wave of a negative reaction arises the moment you see it as an object an interesting thing happens first of all you see you are not it you are not that negativity you're not that depression nor are you depressed um if there is uh rainfall everything will get wet but space itself

doesn't get wet you know it's also temporary temporary it's temporary and it doesn't affect the space itself it can affect the air it can affect the house or the trees but sky space itself is not affected by heat moisture nothing it just gives space for everything similarly you are like that space completely unaffected then when this arises in the mind this cloud the second thing that will happen is when you see yourself as a dis difference with that that begins to subside much faster you see our negativities affect us much more when we are involved

with it when you're attached to it attached to it we hug it to ourselves it it's strange we hug our unhappiness to ourselves also by identifying I am unhappy this is a fact of my life no it isn't just a moment ago you are not unhappy the same consciousness which saw the um relaxed and pleasant State of Mind Is Now witnessing the absolute turmoil and distress of the mind then the turmoil and distress also go down this is the next thing that will happen and then it will disappear into that Limitless awareness again from which

it arose and you know that you were that Limitless unaffected awareness earlier during the termoil and now also after the turmoil you are fine the more you do this the more the initial reaction also will be less so when a shock comes you see you distance yourself from the negativities but when you keep on doing that the negativities themselves will start be they'll begin to diminish the reactions will become less and less sharp and less and less Troublesome there'll be a general peacefulness General luminosity in the mind all throughout and um just one more situation

now I would like to give you is that let's say there's an individual um if they're for example a married couple and through whatever life experiences they have to go through a divorce maybe it's destined to happen it's karma whatever you call it or if someone faces a heartbreak or betrayal in a in a relationship someone they trust a lot in that situation that's even sometimes worse because it's relationships which you know we know how it it gets very hurtful and and deep so how do you react to that especially when you know you're party

away from someone in that situation um negativities in human relationships of whatever kind um from the perspective of vidanta you know first and foremost you and that other person you are one reality that other person is not different from you the one Consciousness which is there in this body and mind shining forth through this is exactly there in that other person also that other person is not one bit different from you now that person is behaving in that particular way suppose it's behaving in unpleasant way negative way um we can't handle that it's because of

the the mask of the personality of the Mind the conditioning of the mind which here also there's a conditioning of the Mind there also every body mind has its own conditioning um so sometimes those conditionings have accumulated a lot of negativity over lifetimes and that's why the behavior is like that people ask if everybody is that one Atman or if God is in everybody then why is one person evil why is another person lazy other person so good what's how can it all be the same it is it's the same light when it streams through

stained glass windows same light sunlight coming but from inside the the hall you will see different rays of light coming you know red and blue and why it's the same light but it came through those stained glass windows right um so similarly the one Consciousness which you are with that person with whom you are having a conflict that that light coming through that particular mind is behaving in that way so that gives you that gives us a lot of Sympathy for the other understanding Bas understanding lot of sympathy will that solve the problem not necessarily

our conditionings are very strong so if our it's not so easy to change ourselves imagine how difficult it is to change another person but first of all it'll give you a lot of Peace within lot of centeredness within see anger against somebody it is unwise because anger is like a fire and a fire always burns the place where you light it it can burn others but first of all it'll burn the place where you light it if I light the fire of anger in my heart I am foolish because the first person to get burned

by that anger will be I I'm going to get affected first so I will not be angry at anybody or anything and with understanding with sympathy with this feeling of Oneness uh it affects the other person also so in many difficult situations you'll see the situation becomes a little less difficult is it a magic solution for everything no there's no magic solution for everything but it's much better first of all you are the beneficiary when you have this peaceful state of mind and this witness Consciousness you are the first beneficiary but then the other person

and the situation also becomes better notice this is how life is in asakra says um in me the Limitless ocean of Consciousness how wonderful are these sentient beings the Jas arise they play uhti they fight raishan they disappear merge back into Consciousness by their own nature I remember this master who was teaching us this particular verse this is exactly what you referred to this is old Swami in Gango he was saying see look at you around in life um people arise from the born childhood youth kti they play I love you I love youti they

fight I will divorce divorce course what you just said and then they all disappear after some time 30 40 50 100 years later they're all gone more beings arise but you have not come with those beings you are not disappearing with those beings you are this Limitless Consciousness in whom all of these things are appearing and disappearing imagine the calmness the Deep sympathy the Deep peace it gives you even in times of trouble that's a very very good explanation I can say that because personally I've I feel like I'm just been able to actually learn

more towards myself I think for people watching it would actually help them in in real life I think so it's it's people think Vante is philosophical theoretical whatever you said is is just this is reality this is reality it's more real than anything else yeah I think going back to also um the last topic I would like to touch upon is you're talking about ADI shankara you mentioned him a little bit earlier when I think you were talking about the open isit and I think he's an in he was believed to be an incarnation of

of Lord Shiva so um kashir shiism is something I've I've been interested in and just if I know we don't have too much time but if like you can go in a brief description of what that path is and that's I think also falls into the non-dual category but how is it different from the pathway of AD vanta yes um ADI shankaracharya was one of the greatest figures in the history of Indian spirituality he lived about a 13 uh 1300 years ago is born in Kerala but he belonged to all of India because he traveled

across the length and breadth of India more than a thousand years ago Reviving and reforming uh Hinduism U and especially establishing the path of nonuel vant which already existed but um he gave it a firm foundation by writing the commentaries on the essential texts on the upanishads bhagat Gita brahmas sura and so on and multiple other texts but also multiple devotional Traditions there so many beautiful hymns that adish Shankar AAR has written and it was in present day madhya Pradesh in what is called onar iswar ADI Shankar aara as a young boy of 12 he

came and met his Guru goind who was the disciple of a great nist Gada the author of the manduk karika um so I have just come yesterday from bopal um the government of madya Pradesh has got this new project called theat Madam the place of Oneness that's the central message of ADI Shankar AAR and Central message of AD vant Oneness the Oneness of all existence and they have established a 108t statue of Shankar aara in nareshwar and they're establishing a huge Institute in the name of Shankar aara all right um so Oneness a Atma means

oneself it's not just some external Oneness a physicist can talk about Oneness you know the unified theory which explains everything in the universe but they also the physicist as if stands apart from it I'm trying to understand this but vant says this Oneness is you we think I am this body or I'm this mind this person vant says only superficially really speaking you are this underlying Oneness where the entire universe is one this is called Brahman or Atman Aatma oneself now this is also nonu nonu in the sense there is nothing in the universe which

constitutes a separate reality apart from Brahman or Atman you so there's nothing in the universe nobody in the universe uh which is other than you the real you not the person as a body of course there are so many other people as a person also so many other persons but as this being being Consciousness Bliss saand there's nothing other than that everything else you will say what what's all this this is all an appearance in that that reality is appearing in these ways just like a movie screen appears as a movie screen appears as all

kinds of movies um just like your dreaming mind appears as a dream with so many people and events but all the time even when you're experiencing the dream really it's just your mind which is dreaming all that when we experiencing this world is really just existence Consciousness place so that's adant now the that's not the only non-u tradition there are number of non-u traditions in uh Indian spirituality in Indian philosophy the most wellknown is of course ad vant non vant but there is Kashmir Chism which is nonu Chism um there is there are argu ably

at least two streams of Mahayana Buddhism the yogar vavada and the Mad which also are Nel at least they refer to themselves as being nonuel so we have to take it take them at their word these are all non-el Traditions um how are they different especially adant and kashmiris there are some Stark differences so ad V say there is one Limitless existence Consciousness place and the entire universe is an appearance whereas Kashmir Chism doesn't call the universe and appearance it says that there's one Limitless existence Consciousness place which it calls pariva Shiva or pariva are

they devotees of Lord Shiva yes they devotees of Lord sh they think he he's the supreme Supreme Being the devotees but they will say the universe is not false it's not an appearance it's not a dream it's not it's real it's not M it's real then what is the relation then how can it be nonu because you have if you have a Ultimate Reality Brahman or Shiva and a reality called the universe then you have two yeah there's dualist yeah there's a duality to it doesn't have that problem because it says what appears as the

universe it's an appearance appearance and reality you cannot count them together if there's a rope and a snake the Rope is appearing as a snake you don't say there are two things there is one something being mistaken as something else there's a rope which is real and one it's being mistaken as the snake the snake is the Rope is nondual with respect to the snake because snake does not exist as a second thing but moment you say the word is real it exists then how are you going to say it's n how how is Shiva

nonel how is kashir shis Nel well they say um the world is real and it is none other than Shiva Shiva is not appearing as the word Shiva manifests they have a theory of vibrations spanda the Ultimate Reality is pure Consciousness they call it vibration spanda they call it play of Consciousness so Vasa the play of Consciousness the term they uses chid Vasa the play of Consciousness so Consciousness plays as this universe at no time is it anything other than Shiva so all of these are Shiva all of this is one Consciousness but there's no

reason to say it's false so in Kashmir uh Kashmir shiism because like you said they don't consider it that this is my or false is that why you see sometimes that devotees of Lord Shiva um perform like sometimes what you would call uh like tantic rituals or van like vanar or dark side of Hinduism there's different terms for um so Kashmir shiism has a vast range of practices so ad is pretty simple ad Vante you are Brahman you don't know it and and the solution is to know it how do you know something you inquire

into it how do you inquire into it you listen to the teachings you reason it out and then once you have got the understanding you stay with it in meditation until it becomes clear to you that you are Brahman ignorance is the problem that you don't know your Brahman knowledge that you are Brahman is the solution done all other practices are supplementary they are useful they can purify your mind they can concentrate your mind they can clean up your life um d Biana all of these are supplementary but core is Enlightenment knowledge that's ad it's

plain and simple it's very straightforward whereas in Kashmir shiism they have that also what I'm talking about but they have a wide range of other things so they have what is called um four ways of becoming enlightened four broad paths one is called anupa No path path you can just become en enlightened might say that sounds crazy but there is evidence of people spontaneously Awakening even now there are some people you know who is that Power of Now eart if you read his life something like the spontaneous Awakening there are some such people and suffering

was a b of that sometimes Happ and the most classic example of our time is that of Raman Mahari with no effort or almost very little effort he awakened to the reality or some SS like Paran ramakrishna Rishi Nim Baba they were there in light they enl yes but in the case of nimari Baba par and S ramakrishna of course you see tremendous amount of sad being performed it's true that it is for our instruction but they did that sad and then they see they show it as the result of that sad but um so

anai would be no sad you've just become awaken but of course we can't sit around waiting for that to happen so the second thing is called shambhava the way of shambhu or way of Shiva that's very much like adant there are teachings there are Pointers which are given to you and then you contemplate that you realize that you are Shiva you are one with Shiva you are the sh compl gan yog gan y yeah it's exactly like Gan yoga um I'll just add a little bit here like a footnote I consider it like Gan yoga

but there are um actual experts in Kashmir shiism they will say no no no your vant is like the third path but this the way of Shiva is something higher than anyway it doesn't matter I consider it to be like Gan like now suppose that doesn't work then it gets progressively more complicated not because the Shiva is complicated not because Enlightenment is complicated we are complicated we means our minds we have made our lives and mind complicated and that's why we need to need these special methods so the third level is called Shak the way

of shaki or way of the Divine mother so where there is meditation where there is Mantra and then if that is not enough then there's something called an Anu means atom it means the little one or the J us right now us means not as Shiva as we find ourselves right now as limited beings then he said you start there and that is called an they're all rituals devotion what you mentioned various kinds of practices devotional practices tantric practices variety of rituals so this is a very Broad and little oversimplified way of putting it so

you see the very wide range of practices are there compared to uh adant vant is sort of a direct path yeah last question I have to kind of go back in a full circle is because uh I I was studying Consciousness studies um when we talk about the states of Consciousness so like we all know like dreaming uh you know waking um sleeping all these the the three regular stat then there'sa state which I believe is also known as a fourth state or transcendental Consciousness and then um I guess it's a different path like you

know I've heard of for example uh you know then there States Of Consciousness known as Cosmic Consciousness Unity Consciousness God Consciousness people say there's seven or eight paths I just want to get some clarity on exactly how many states are there where we have to achieve in in the field of what what you're talking about um ad vant thankfully is very simple it doesn't use the term States Of Consciousness okay um it goes to T it talks about so states are physical States or mental States state means um something that can change pure Consciousness itself

never changes nothing ever happens there it just shines so it doesn't have any states it is just is good example is gold and ornaments so um you can make the gold into a bracelet you can make it into a into a necklace you can make it into a ring so these are different states of the gold if if you want to call it State these are different ornaments but the gold is the same it's the same gold similarly Consciousness being one and the same um the mind awakes and that's what we call the awaking State

the Mind falls asleep and dreams that's what we call the dream state and then the wine goes into deep sleep that's what we call the Deep Sleep state so these are states of the mind and they are all illumined by one Consciousness which we are with respect to these three waking dreaming and deep sleep we talk about a fourth the real Consciousness which is but the fourth one is not a fourth state it is the one Consciousness shining on these three states so you are this one Limitless awareness and you are shining on your in

and through your waking state in and through the dream state in and through the Deep Sleep State these states belong to the mind and you are the same in all all three that you the real you is called tya tya literally the Sanskrit word means fourth yeah so it's not a fourth state of consciousness it is the reality Consciousness itself it's one and the same in all three states yeah and then you can expand it further God Consciousness would mean two meanings could be there one is God ishwar bhagavan the lord of the universe so

what would be the experience of God as you know the whole Cosmos is my body all minds are my mind that would be God Consciousness or another meaning of God Consciousness would be actually God realization when we sentient beings we realize Shiva or God yeah in this way you can conceive of multiple ways of looking at it but is pretty simple one witness and worst to worst case if um if someone's watching this who maybe feels that Gan yog is not their path right or maybe going in the intellectual way is not something they're too

fond of I think ADI Shankar there was uh some story I think where he found this old man I think he was very old and uh he was trying to read some scripture and he wasn't able to or something like that and then ADI shankara said something along lines of baj goind yes but the very famous maybe the most famous stra him composed by Shankar um he says when death is closed you know at the point of death your Sanskrit grammar that that person was memorizing grammar rules Sanskrit grammar is not going to save you

worship goind Krishna worship goind worship goind o fool worship goind uh so devotion SRI ramakrishna put it this way very beautifully he said as many faiths so many paths to God as all the religions in their different ways will lead you to Enlightenment all the practi practices devotion can you become enlightened without all these ad vant and all of that just suppose someone's devoted to Krishna or to Shiva and by sheer devotion and love can you become enlightened certainly this is the beauty of Sak he says certainly and the proof is that there have been

so many Saints in history uh in our country especially in India but also in other religions and other parts of the world who have attained Enlightenment God realization whatever you call it through devotion and only through devotion can you do it through meditation yes if you take the panjali yoga sutras they they tell you the way to attain Enlightenment Kia they call it U and at no point are they saying that this is supplemental you know as shankara would say and you after this you have to go to shankara and then the direct path no

no no if you see the Pali yoga they say it's a standalone text you become enlightened by following this so by Karma Yoga by B Yoga by D or Raj yoga by Gana yoga by one or more or all of these be free that is the whole of religion spirituality books temples doctrines churches they're all secondary details they are all helps but this attainment of spiritual Freedom this attainment of God whichever way you put it this is the goal I think Sami um I know you're just doing your job as a monk by spreading knowledge

whatever you learned from your uh from your Guru from your lineage but I would just like to end this by saying that you don't know that the reason why millions of people across the world love you so much is because um you you evidently are not fanatic about just for example Eda being right and the only path you know you're not here to say that left to myself I would love to be fanatic about because that's that's my home tradition and is something that I really uh appreciate really love and I'm really uh it's U

it's like close to your yeah it's very close to my heart and however I am a monk of the ramakrishna order and I am devoted to Sri ramak Krishna masar vivanda there is no way of being fanatical because there so Universal and the tradition which stands behind them all of satat dman Hinduism you see over the Millennia it has been so Universal so vast so diverse it's one culture with so much diversity somebody pointed out to me it's wrong to say that in India we have many cultures no we actually have one culture which celebrates

diversity so how can you be fanatical and I think that's what that's what makes you who you are and why people love you so much so I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show you don't know how much this means to me um I was literally begging you to come here and you have a flight to New York tonight because you are I I just can't say in words but this is very very special to me sit under the tree with you again and talk about it yes and when

we're back in New York then we will do another podcast there as well good thank you so much take care everybody Namaste if you guys like this episode please do subscribe for more podcasts coming your way this would really mean a lot to me because you subscribing would mean us getting more guests on the show and having more interesting conversations I really appreciate your support thank you so much