From a site visitor: Hello. I’m pretty new to Advaita Vedanta but it seems to have some answers to some things I could not find anywhere else. But I’m confused over two different messages. I’m been reading some talks and the advice was to “stay with the I AM” or “focus on only the I AM.” Then I listened to a tape and the man said something like, “It is the I AM THAT which knows the peace and it is the I AM that knows the discomfort.” I don’t get it. Can you explain?
F.: If not abiding in the I AM (and eventually abiding as the Absolute) many persons finally reach a point where they feel or sense or even say, “I cannot live with myself anymore!” Do you see the duality in that statement? An “I” is speaking about its “self.” Do you see how the false “I” has supposedly been existing side-by-side with that false “self” that it is sensing? Yet even that comment—as steeped in duality as it is—nevertheless evidences a level of discomfort that might move a suffering person into the vicinity of the first step on the “path” to Realization. Though the speaker is not aware of “who” is saying “what” about “what,” at least a voice is being raised in protest over the pain and misery of a relative existence that is being driven by that false “self.” Bill Maher characterized the misery of duality and its impact on the relative existence this way:
"…Life on earth is filled with all sorts of dualities. It's fractured. Everything is fractured. There's man and woman. There's past and present. There's good and bad, heaven and hell, what you have and what you want. Everything [associated with the relative existence of earth] is a duality, and that causes all the tension and pain in life.”
In such a state of duality, persons will suffer from not having Realized the validity of the unicity and from that sense of feeling fractured which Maher references. Persons will then move through the remainder of the manifestation, identifying with one role after another and in the process moving farther and farther away from ever having a clue about Who/What They Truly Are. The resulting sense of discontinuity leaves persons looking one way on the outside (as a result of the images they fabricate and work to sustain) while feeling the opposite on the inside (namely, torn into pieces).
The I AM sense of completion and wholeness and peacefulness that accompanies the understanding of the I AM THAT happens after, and only after, Full Realization. But be forewarned since you report that you’re “pretty new to Advaita”: the light of awareness is so bright that it will divest you of everything that you only thought you had been seeing or understanding in your fictional “world.” Nowadays, I see no one…no thing. If you Realize, You will understand the functioning of the totality and You will know THAT which is real and You’ll also know that everything else which you thought you were perceiving rightly was merely illusion. Afterwards, you can live an AS IF existence, and the duality-induced discomfort or tension or pain and suffering will happen no longer as you enjoy abidance in the I AM and abidance as THAT. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
F.: If not abiding in the I AM (and eventually abiding as the Absolute) many persons finally reach a point where they feel or sense or even say, “I cannot live with myself anymore!” Do you see the duality in that statement? An “I” is speaking about its “self.” Do you see how the false “I” has supposedly been existing side-by-side with that false “self” that it is sensing? Yet even that comment—as steeped in duality as it is—nevertheless evidences a level of discomfort that might move a suffering person into the vicinity of the first step on the “path” to Realization. Though the speaker is not aware of “who” is saying “what” about “what,” at least a voice is being raised in protest over the pain and misery of a relative existence that is being driven by that false “self.” Bill Maher characterized the misery of duality and its impact on the relative existence this way:
"…Life on earth is filled with all sorts of dualities. It's fractured. Everything is fractured. There's man and woman. There's past and present. There's good and bad, heaven and hell, what you have and what you want. Everything [associated with the relative existence of earth] is a duality, and that causes all the tension and pain in life.”
In such a state of duality, persons will suffer from not having Realized the validity of the unicity and from that sense of feeling fractured which Maher references. Persons will then move through the remainder of the manifestation, identifying with one role after another and in the process moving farther and farther away from ever having a clue about Who/What They Truly Are. The resulting sense of discontinuity leaves persons looking one way on the outside (as a result of the images they fabricate and work to sustain) while feeling the opposite on the inside (namely, torn into pieces).
The I AM sense of completion and wholeness and peacefulness that accompanies the understanding of the I AM THAT happens after, and only after, Full Realization. But be forewarned since you report that you’re “pretty new to Advaita”: the light of awareness is so bright that it will divest you of everything that you only thought you had been seeing or understanding in your fictional “world.” Nowadays, I see no one…no thing. If you Realize, You will understand the functioning of the totality and You will know THAT which is real and You’ll also know that everything else which you thought you were perceiving rightly was merely illusion. Afterwards, you can live an AS IF existence, and the duality-induced discomfort or tension or pain and suffering will happen no longer as you enjoy abidance in the I AM and abidance as THAT. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
