Universal Understanding – In Gita Verse 11.54 My dear Arjuna, only by undivided devotional service can I be understood as I am, standing before you, and can thus be seen directly. Only in this way can you enter into the mysteries of My understanding.
What Krishna says – Awareness cannot exist with duality, and mind cannot exist without duality. Awareness is non-dual, and the mind is dual.
The first layer is called the objective and the second layer is called the subjective. But beyond both there is a witness which can watch both the body and the mind, the material and the nonmaterial. This witness, this consciousness, this awareness, is beyond both. It is neither material, nor nonmaterial, because it is beyond both. And you cannot go beyond it. You cannot witness it. You have come to the very end of the rope, you have come to the very bottom of existence. This awareness is called the transcendental, because it transcends the duality of body-mind. And to be centered in it, you have come home, because there is no way beyond it. Here ends the road.
These are the two planes of humanity: duality, the plane of duality, what Hindus call DWAITA, the plane of two; and non-duality, the plane of one, the plane of the non-dual. When you are divided you are in this world; when you are undivided, you have transcended – you are no longer here, you have penetrated into the Beyond. Then boundaries meet and the boundaries meet in you. So the whole effort is how to become undivided, how to become one.
All duality is a mind creation, all duality is created by the clinging and attached mind. When there is no attachment there is no duality. When you want something to happen according to you, and it doesn’t happen, duality arises. When you are ready to relax with everything as it happens, where is the duality? Somebody insults you and you say thank you. Your woman leaves you and you go and give her a good send-off. Where is the duality? Richness comes and you enjoy it. And one day you are poor and you enjoy poverty. Where is the duality? If you can enjoy all that happens, if you can enjoy the roses that are always there and you don’t count the thorns, then where is the duality? Then the mind becomes non-dual. Then all fragments disappear, then a great oneness arises in you. But it cannot be called ‘oneness’.
REMEMBER, when we use the word ‘oneness’, that too is part of duality. If there is no duality how can there be oneness? That’s why Hindus never use ‘oneness’. If you ask Shankara, “What is the nature of existence?” he says, “Non-dual, ADVAITA, not two.” He will never say one, because how can you say one? If there is only one, how can you say one? One needs two to be meaningful. If there is no possibility of the second, of the two, then what is the use of saying that it is one? Shankara says, “At the most, I can say not two, but I cannot say one positively. I can say what the reality is not: it is not two. I cannot say what it is, because meaning, words, all become useless.”
Language creates duality, language exists through duality. It cannot indicate the non-dual. If I say ‘day’, immediately I create night. If I say ‘life’, immediately I create death. If I say ‘good’, immediately bad is created. If I say ‘no’, just by the side of the no, yes is existing. Language can exist only through the opposite. That’s why we see life as always divided – God and devil. Drop language, drop this linguistic pattern. Once language is no more on your mind and you look directly into reality, day IS night. Suddenly you will start laughing at why you missed it so long! Day, every day turns into night; night turns into day every morning again, and you have been missing. Life is always turning into death, death always turns again into life, and you have been missing. They are not two, they are one whole. This is the non-dual, ADWAITA. This is the most essential religion.
Krishna says – Really, any authentic religious mind lives in a non-duality, not in a duality. For really authentic religion there is no duality between consciousness and body, no duality between the divine and the world, no duality between mind and matter; the duality is just a mental construct. Duality exists nowhere, the whole is one. If we take it as two, or if it appears to us as two, it is because of our way of looking, not because it is so. Through senses it appears to us as matter, and through a non-sensuous approach it appears as mind, as consciousness. But it is one! Matter is just a very deeply asleep consciousness; consciousness is just awakened matter. Matter becomes conscious. So a stone by your side is just in a deep sleep, a very deep sleep of a mind. It may take millennia for it to be awake, but it is. Even in a stone, deep down a soul is asleep, a possible consciousness is there, a potential consciousness is there. And even in you, it has come only to an awakening – it is there. Matter and mind are two states of one thing, of one phenomenon: asleep it is matter, awakened it is mind.
Only a non-dual mind can enter into the mysteries of My understanding, Universal Understanding.
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