In this class Acaryadeva answers Arci’s question in regards to the nature self-realization

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Summary:

Everyone is the center of their self-realization. Where we are trying to go and what we perceive as the goal of liberation will depend on our attitude towards ourselves.

Today our self-understanding alters very quickly with certain experiences (we have the expression “to identify with something”).  It is very fluid in the present age. Life has become so fast that it is difficult to think deeply (intellectual hydroplaning). People look for quick processes for self-realization.

The effect of law on consciousness: There is a powerful connection psychologically between the rule of law and how we think about reality. People tend to identify the legal state of affairs with reality. The government is more powerful than any of us individually. The psychological effect of that alters people's sense of reality. Legal relativism has led to philosophical relativism and to solipsism (which means that there is no reality outside of my own mind).

Religious fanaticism (which led to war and violence) has caused PTDO (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in our society. However, there are other parts of the world like India where there hasn’t been so much violence in the name of religion. People shared a general culture and had different views.  Indian religion was what Acaryadeva calls “principled inclusivism”. (Inclusive in the sense that it was taken for granted that anyone who claimed to be worshipping God was actually worshipping God). Even in the earliest scripture, the Rig Veda, we can see a generosity of spirit, recognizing God in many places. This culture is inclusive because it doesn’t reject anyone, it tries to bring reasonable principles in the evaluation of competing claims rather than insisting a priori and dogmatically on absolute metaphysical relativism.

We have different concepts of liberation. If we look at the religions in the world there is a great divide between how we might exist forever: impersonalism and personalism. Impersonalism is so contradictory that it is difficult to talk about it, because if there is no self, then who is in illusion and who becomes enlightened? Why would something impersonal create something personal? The more beings evolve, the more consciousness and personal awareness there is. The way the universe (and the law of karma) is made requires an infinite personal consciousness.

Personalism: It is wonderful to be a person, but the problem is that we have misunderstood ourselves.  The two basic movements in life are giving and taking. When we give, we are ourselves, when we take we forget ourselves.  We identify ourselves with the wrong thing, the body. There is nothing wrong with the body, but we have to understand what it is. We animate the body which is alive because of our presence in it.

Parmenides was a philosopher who lived 2500 years ago and had a lot of influence on Plato. He was a contempory of Buddha. He made that point that the word something and nothing are both words, but something refers to something, whereas nothing doesn’t. If we say that something came from nothing – there is no nothing to come from. Grammatically we can say it, but there is not such thing as nothing. Paramenides says that whatever exists has always existed. Aristotle further explains that there is a substance or energy which cannot be created or destroyed. Bhagavad-gita also says that the energy always exists, but it can be transformed into something else. There is a real self which cannot be transformed. We can be covered but the self cannot be transformed, it can never become anything else. Spiritual energy never diminishes. The problem is that we identify ourselves with material energy which is not alive and not conscious.

We exist above material time. There a sense of past because something is lost (such as youth). The sense of future is resting on the fact that there is a new material configuration of the universe which isn’t here yet. So the past doesn’t exist because it is gone, the future doesn’t exist because it hasn’t yet come. On the spiritual plane nothing is ever lost and nothing is there to gain because you have everything. So we exist above our conception of past, present and future.

God is infinitely attractive and the source of all pleasure (Krishna). There is a male and female aspect. Pure masculinity and femininity exist in the Absolute truth. All the good things that exist here exist in the spiritual world in perfection. We have to remove from ourselves everything which is not eternal and which is not pure and just have to realize how wonderful it is to be a person. There is no limit for the soul.

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