00:00The next question is by Meghraat Singh Thakur and he wants to know the relationship,
00:09essentially the relationship between the material world and consciousness.
00:14Whether, what his question was, does, is the body, you know, just like, what do you say,
00:23putting together a few chemicals and does conscious, how does consciousness come from
00:28an unconscious body? Or is it other way wrong?
00:33Yeah, obviously that cannot happen. That cannot happen.
00:38Asat cannot give rise to Asat, obviously.
00:42So Vedanta answers that in a beautiful way, very beautiful way.
00:46And when you will ponder over it, you will find it to be so obvious.
00:50Vedanta says there is no duality. Therefore, no watertight distinction between the unconscious and the conscious.
01:08This Jad-Chetan duality is refuted by Vedanta.
01:17Vedanta in its essence is non-dualistic, as we had said a while back.
01:21So this duality, Jad and Chetan, unconscious and conscious, or as in man being conscious and the world being unconscious,
01:30or I being conscious and this pen being Jad or just material, this is not accepted by Vedanta.
01:37This is there in Sankhya Yoga. The duality between Purusha and Prakriti. There is Prakriti and there is Purusha and these two are somewhat at odds with each other
01:51because the Purusha often gets corrupted by Prakriti and such things.
01:54Vedanta takes the Sankhya concept to a greater and more refined height. It says these two are one.
02:08These two are one. They appear different. They appear different.
02:13The consciousness that is the Perceiver is also the Perceived Object.
02:25It says that the Perceiver is an illusion. Therefore, he thinks of the Perceived Object as an objective thing, an objective truth, an objective fact in itself.
02:36Therefore, Advaita Vat is also called as Maya Vat. We just talked of Illusion.
02:43Maya. These two are not distinct at all. That what you are seeing is nothing but you.
02:53Therefore, that which you are seeing has never been created at all. It is only being projected.
02:59In Vedanta, there is nothing called creation or creator. No creation, no creator. Just projection.
03:09Nobody created the world.
03:10No creation, no creation.
03:14Vyvartavad
03:14Brahmar appears as this myriad world because of Maya.
03:23There is just vivartan. No creation.
03:29So, this is all in unity. All distinctions that we see are really false and those distinctions
03:40that we see outside are fundamentally the distinctions within the perceiver. Because
03:49the mind is fragmented, because the mind is conditioned by several influences, therefore
03:55we see the same kind of diversity outside of ourselves. And hence one characteristic of
04:08the Brahmavid or the Jnani, the realized one, is that differences stop mattering to him.
04:17This physical apparatus called the eyes do see differences. They will see black as black
04:22and white as white. But black and white will stop being meaningful or material to the Brahmavid,
04:32the knower of Brahma or the Brahmali, the one who is one with Brahma.
04:39These distinctions stop mattering. This is a thing of great importance if you go into it.
04:49Because our world is reeling under the tyranny of diversity. All diversity is conflict because
04:57all diversity is fundamentally division. You are different from me, A is different from
05:02B and if A is different from B, A and B fight. And today we have more and more means to fight
05:10each other. Therefore, we need something that tells us that all these distinctions are fundamentally
05:19false. They will keep appearing. I know Maya is very formidable. Redoubtable Maya is not
05:29going to leave you free so easily. So you will continue seeing differences, obviously. But at
05:40least the punch in the importance that these differences carry for you would have gone. Somewhere you would
05:52realize that identifying yourself with a splinter does not make much sense. It therefore does not make
06:04much sense to commit yourself, put your life and all your energy into something that is fundamentally false.
06:14false. Then you will not want to fight the other because he carries a different or opposite identity
06:21or ideology. And this kind of a thing comes only from Vedanta where the false is not the opposite
06:31of the truth, but a projection of the truth. Maya is not against Brahm. In some sense, Maya is the daughter of Brahm.
06:47You don't have a satan here who is fighting God. You have a mischievous Brahm here who comes up with Maya.
06:59Maya again is not evil. Maya is worshipped. We had Navadurga, which is an entire celebration of Maya.
07:09Maya Mahamaya. She is being respected, loved. Because she is not only the one who keeps you in illusion,
07:18she is also the one who will lead you to liberation and redemption. And this is a much more
07:28simple, solid, authentic model of reality than anything else, at least I know of.
