Non-dualism

[JUSTIFY]Adi Sankara was a pioneer in teaching Advaitam (Non-dualism) to the entire world. His teachings attracted many people inside and outside of India. After this holy soul, there are many divine souls taught/teaching us non-dualism. Many struggle to understand what is non-dualism? In principle, the life started in this world by separating from divinity. Dualism started when life started in our planet. When the Universal Absolute thought of replicating itself, He thought that the only way life can exist in this world is for life to identify itself as an independent entity. The souls who wanted to unite with the Universal Absolute used their discrimination power to understand what would let them reunite with the Universal Absolute and found out that the only way it could be done is to practice non-dualism. If human beings could learn to unite their body and mind with their consciousness, the individual identity would fail to exist making the effort easier for them to merge with the Universal Absolute.

In simple terms, non-dualism is to understand that the origin of every life in this world is Universal Absolute and our body and mind are merely tools that are given to us to understand the divinity inside of us. For us to understand how dualism is created, we need to understand a little bit more about how our mind and senses in our body work. As we know, the senses are gateway of our body. Unfortunately, our senses are focused outwards. That is why we need to learn to control our senses not to over indulge and practice moderation. The senses should be used to build our knowledge to understand our true Self.

The mind has a switch to either to look inwards or outwards. It is very difficult for us to switch our mind to look inwards as it would prevent the mind to be independent. Our ego prevents us from accepting that we are not separate from Self. That is why, the learned people created all kinds of practices such as meditation, repetition of divine names, chants, rituals, sacrifices, etc. These practices will allow the mind to be focused on the Universal Absolute as well as remove ego.

What do we do to achieve union with Universal Absolute? For that we need to understand that our mind goes through three different state of mind during our life. First one is waking state in which we pursue our passions using up our energy. We are dominated by Rajasic Guna during this time. Even though we consider that as consciousness, it is considered as forgetfulness in spiritual parlance. The next is dreaming state in which we dream about a life. During this state of mind time and space restrictions do not exist and we can travel any distance and live for many years in one single dream. We are dominated by Tamosic Guna during this period. The third is known as deep sleep state (Shusupti) in which our mind loses all thoughts and remain peaceful. This is as close as one gets to the Universal Absolute and we enjoy Satwic quality during that period. That is why the best time for us to achieve thoughtlessness is just before we go for a sound sleep or after a sound sleep.

The fourth stage is called meditative state (Turya) state. This is what all of us are trying to accomplish to come out of dualism. During this state, our body, mind and consciousness are all aligned and our body and mind becomes instrument of our consciousness. Whether it is Bhakthi Yoga or Gnana Yoga or Karma Yoga, all lead to the meditative state. When we get to this state of mind, we get liberated and we no longer depend on this world for sustenance. All our desires and attachments disappear. In normal life we talk about freedom or liberty and truly achieving this state of mind is true freedom or liberty. At this stage, we have completely surrendered to the will of the Universal Absolute. At this stage, the Universal Absolute absolves us from all our Karma and liberates us from birth/death cycle. We become Self-realized soul. Understanding how to achieve this is the purpose of life.
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Dear RGS,

Thank you for your nice comment. I will certainly write whatever little I know explaining the differences and how they converge in a subsequent blog.

Viswa

 

Dear Sandhya,

Thank you for your valuable comments. You are very correct about the differences among the teachings. But all roads lead to the same place.

The School of thought by Madhavacharya believed in dualism. His teaching is "Infinite God and finite human are two different entities"

The School of thought by Sankaracharya believed in Monism. His teaching is "Finite and infinite are one and the same"

The School of thought of Ramanujacharya believed in Qualified Monism. His teaching is "Finite God is whole and you are a part of that whole".

I will definite write more in these lines whatever little I know. Thank you for supporting this blog.

Viswa