LOGIC BEHIND "WHO AM I?"
Swami Sarvapriyananda of the Belur Math in India presents the logic of "Who am I?" this way:
To begin with, the knower and the known are different from each other. For example, the eyes and what the eyes see are not the same thing. The eyes look at a pencil. The eyes and the pencil are two different things. This is a fact of experience. The pencil, meantime, is not all the eyes see. The forms are many, the eyes one. The forms, moreover, keep changing. The unchanging eyes see the changing forms.
On the next level, the eyes themselves become the seen. The mind becomes the seer. For instance, when a person needs glasses, it is the mind that is aware of it. The mind, therefore, must be different from the eyes. The mind knows all the senses, and the senses are always changing.
Next, the mind becomes the object of knowledge. Thoughts, emotions, perceptions of the mind are known by a witness that is different from the mind. The witness is one, while the activities of the mind are many. The witness is unchanging, the mind constantly changing.
The knower of the mind is not, nor can it ever be, known. Then again, it is more than known, for it is a person's true self. A person is not his mind but the witness of his mind. In Advaita Vedanta, a person is pure consciousness. How many witnesses are there in the world? Only one. And that one witness is, to give it a name, God.
This God, this witness, this pure consciousness, is, all the while, one reality. When a person has a dream, everyone and everything in his dream is one reality, the reality of his dream.
Swami Sarvapriyananda provides another example. A person driving a car sees a city in his rearview mirror. The mirror contains the city. Everybody and everything in the mirror is one reality, the reality of the mirror. In this way, each of us is everybody and everything else because we are all contained in the one reality of pure consciousness, God.
To begin with, the knower and the known are different from each other. For example, the eyes and what the eyes see are not the same thing. The eyes look at a pencil. The eyes and the pencil are two different things. This is a fact of experience. The pencil, meantime, is not all the eyes see. The forms are many, the eyes one. The forms, moreover, keep changing. The unchanging eyes see the changing forms.
On the next level, the eyes themselves become the seen. The mind becomes the seer. For instance, when a person needs glasses, it is the mind that is aware of it. The mind, therefore, must be different from the eyes. The mind knows all the senses, and the senses are always changing.
Next, the mind becomes the object of knowledge. Thoughts, emotions, perceptions of the mind are known by a witness that is different from the mind. The witness is one, while the activities of the mind are many. The witness is unchanging, the mind constantly changing.
The knower of the mind is not, nor can it ever be, known. Then again, it is more than known, for it is a person's true self. A person is not his mind but the witness of his mind. In Advaita Vedanta, a person is pure consciousness. How many witnesses are there in the world? Only one. And that one witness is, to give it a name, God.
This God, this witness, this pure consciousness, is, all the while, one reality. When a person has a dream, everyone and everything in his dream is one reality, the reality of his dream.
Swami Sarvapriyananda provides another example. A person driving a car sees a city in his rearview mirror. The mirror contains the city. Everybody and everything in the mirror is one reality, the reality of the mirror. In this way, each of us is everybody and everything else because we are all contained in the one reality of pure consciousness, God.
posted by Donald L. Simons at
12:47 PM
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