Brahma Sutras
and related scriptures.
So
let me see what the
sutra translation says today.
अपि च स्मर्यते In perfect meditation
Brahman is experienced.
And from there, the shruti and smriti.
OK. This needs a lot of elaboration. So let's
go through a few things. First of all,
if you believe in matter as the ontological primitive,
which means matter is the fundamental reality,
then
there are a lot of problems in explaining any experience,
any experience, motor or sensory,
raise your hand,
it starts with an intention which presumably is
non material and then everything else here
is material, right? Physical
how does that happen?
No explanation in science.
So the first step in motor activity
is
kind of a mystery.
After the first step, you know, motor cortex gets activated
and then sends an electrical impulse and
all that is
physical presumably.
OK. So
motor activity, first step
is a miracle.
If you believe in matter as the ontological primitive.
Now look at an object or touch an object or
you know, smell a rose or whatever
and
all that's going again to your
brain is an action potential.
That's physical
electro chemistry. In the brain is also physical.
But the experience,
you know, these colors, shapes, forms
sounds,
textures.
How does electrochemistry
create the appearance of the physical body of the physical universe?
Again, last step in sensory experience
is a miracle,
close your eyes and
let me ask you something, close your eyes now. And
I ask you the following question,
what did you eat for dinner last night?
So
let's say it was pizza or whatever you ate? Ok.
As soon as I ask the question,
then
there's an experience, you know, you might remember where you were, the restaurant,
the pizza, what it tasted like,
who you were with, et cetera, et cetera. There's an experience,
mental experience.
How did that happen? Where was that memory before I asked you,
what did you have for dinner last night?
Ok. People say memory is in the brain, but I can
assure you
there's no picture of pizza in the brain nor of the restaurant nor the conversation
that you had
, at the restaurant.
Let's go a little deeper.
, do you remember
any incident from your teenage years?
And suddenly
there's an experience.
Ok.
Where was that memory before I asked you the question
or go even further back? Do you remember an experience from your childhood?
Certainly there is an experience, your mother, your father, the bedroom,
you know, and that experience is images, sensations, feelings, thoughts.
So where was that before I asked you the question
and people
neuroscientists will point to some part of the brain
which is associated with that memory.
But where was the memory before I ask the question
again? A big mystery, right?
So
there's no picture, there are no colors, there's no memory
until you
actually retrieve it.
But where is it before you retrieve it?
And when you retrieve it, there's no picture or sensation or,
or
anything that we can call an experience in your brain.
So what's going on?
Where is memory stored?
Where is stored memory?
This is impossible to answer.
with our current science which believes in an objective world
without
without consciousness.
So the world exists
independently
and the brain is responsible for all motor and sensory activity
and memory is stored in the brain.
But you can see
that everything I asked right now for you to do
was
basically inexplicable as long as you believe
that matter, and brain is considered matter,
is
the ontological primitive, the fundamental realities physical.
So we have to turn it upside down.
If consciousness is the archaeological primitive
and everything is a modified form of consciousness, then there's no problem.
The intention
is a modified form of consciousness,
memories in the form of sensations, images, feelings,
thoughts are modified consciousness,
the body experienced as perceptual and
cognitive activity is modified consciousness.
And so is the world
no problem.
So this leads to a very interesting
interesting
realization
which includes everything,
the mystery of death,
the mystery of
what could be called
reincarnation
or the recycling of memory
and
actually
addresses
existence itself.
So let's say existence is pure consciousness,
infinite possibilities. And what we call shruti,
is that which is heard and
smriti, that which is remembered.
So now close your eyes again
and do nothing
and
you will soon become aware of your internal dialogue,
internal dialogue, you are speaking
to yourself and you can hear a conversation.
And with that conversation, you can also
experience
other sensations, feelings, images
and this conversation is thought, you can hear it, but there is no sound
in the brain.
You can see images but there are no images in the brain.
So
where was the memory before
you had
closed your eyes and did nothing?
What were those memories
and those memories, if you understand
consciousness, is the archaeological primitive,
our past experiences,
our interpretation of past experiences which we call karma,
the memories as they are stored
do not exist in the brain.
They exist in
nonlocal awareness in that particular
wave of nonlocal awareness that we call the individual soul.
But it's a manifestation of the
universal consciousness which is the storehouse of all memories
in the matrix of
inter
being
or the akashic field.
And they're constantly surfacing as our internal dialogue.
The seeds of memory are called
saskara ok?
Like seeds.
But then they sprout into memories
which also
then
turn into desires. If the memory was pleasant,
then you want to repeat the memory, the experience.
If the memory was not pleasant, then you want to avoid it. But that's also a desire.
So Karma memory and desire are the words in Sanskrit
that refer
to the storehouse of memory and experience
that is present nonlocally
in what we might call jivatmal
or soul.
And that is what recycles
as the physical body, the conceptual body,
the Karmic body
and
the memory itself
cannot be destroyed because consciousness cannot be destroyed.
The memory can be transcended, it can be transmuted, it can be,
it can be
transmitted
into another experience,
but it remains part of the
field,
the field.
And
of course, one can
disengage
with
the memory and that
one can
through processes like meditation
also have the insight that
the experience
which is a memory. All experience is a memory.
When you look at me, you recognize me, recognizing me. So you remember
me
and then you reconstruct me
in the moment.
So
recognition, recognition
is
memory
recognition is memory
and every experience is a memory.
And of course, it's also a desire which is also in the same chit or chidakasha
So
what is reincarnation? Reincarnation is the recycling of memory.
That's it,
add all its forms desires, etcetera.
And
when we become aware of this, then there is no hard problem of consciousness
the hard problem is matter
because matter doesn't exist. Matter is a word, a convenient construct
for science
to create technology and all everything that we do.
But
there's no substance called matter. Matter is a human name
given to perceptual cognitive activity, which is ultimately
memory.
So
let me
read a little poem from,
from my childhood days
and I'm trying to find it right now and I think I have it here.
Man, let's see. I have it here.
95.
It's a beautiful poem.
OK. You know that the
let me find it 95. 95.
Poem 95 here.
It's beautiful and summarizes the whole whatever I've said.
So here's the poem
from Rabindranath Tagore
I was not aware of the moment
when I first crossed the threshold of this life.
What was the power that made me open out
into this vast mystery?
Like a bud, like a flower
in the forest? At midnight?
When in the morning, I looked upon the light, I felt in a moment that I was no stranger
this world.
We never feel strangers in this world.
Why? Because there is memory.
When in the morning I looked upon the light,
I felt in a moment that I was no stranger
in this world that the inscrutable without name and form.
What is the inscrutable without name and form
the inscrutable without name and form is pure consciousness
infinite beings,
divine consciousness, universal consciousness.
So I'll repeat the sentence when in the morning,
I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world.
And the inscrutable without name and form had taken me
in its arms in the form of my own mother.
Mother is also
recycling of memory.
Even so in death, the same unknown will appear as ever known to me.
And because I love life because I love this life. I know I shall love death as well.
That is the incubation before the recycling.
The rest
the child cries out.
When from the right breast,
the mother takes it away in the very next moment to find in the left one
its consolation.
So my friends reflect on this because this insight
will give you freedom
from
that which we call death. Birth and death happen.
Every moment, every thought that is born dies instantly,
every perception that is born dies instantly.
But then it recycles, memory and also evolves
into higher levels of creativity.
And this is the soul's journey in cosmic time.