As we’ve learned, Vedanta is neither a religion nor a philosophy, but a means of knowledge — specifically, self-knowledge. If knowledge is power, self-knowledge is liberation.
The King of Knowledge
Self-knowledge is often called raja vidya, the king of knowledge, because, like a king, it shines by itself and is the highest authority in the land. By knowing the true nature of the Self, you then not only know the essence of all things, but are freed from the endless sorrows of samsara.
No other type of knowledge can make such a claim.
All other types of knowledge pertain only to the world of mithya (the apparently real). Mithya knowledge is always limited in scope, because mithya is by nature limited. It is subject to duality, owing to the strict divide between the knower and the object of knowledge.
Furthermore, there’s no end to mithya knowledge. No matter how much you learn about the objective world, what you do know will always be far outweighed by what you don’t know. Mithya knowledge can only ever be partial because, in mithya, the parts are endless.
However, when it comes to the satya (the independently real), there are no parts at all, for the Self is a partless whole. That’s why it’s impossible to have only partial knowledge of the Self. You either know the Self, or you don’t.
Once you do, and have a clear understanding of satya and mithya—the independent cause and the dependent effect—you gain knowledge of everything, because everything has its existence, its being, in the Self alone.
Why Vedanta is the World’s Best Kept Secret
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna calls this knowledge the ‘greatest of secrets’. You might wonder why this knowledge should be secret.
It’s not that it’s deliberately withheld as part of some elitist Vedantic plot to keep the masses ignorant! This knowledge has always been available. The problem is, most people have little value for it.
The average human being is far too busy seeking happiness, security and freedom through worldly objects and the pursuit of money, power, sex, consumer goods and the never-ending distractions of mundane life.
Our culture values and promotes such pursuits, and we oblige only too happily.
But hardly anyone recognises moksha, or liberation, as a legitimate means of attaining lasting happiness. Unless a person knows what moksha is and has an appropriate value for it, their attention, effort and life energy will be spent elsewhere.
The teaching of Vedanta is freely given, but unless you recognise its value, you won’t be inclined to pursue it.
You’ll keep trying to squeeze whatever drops of happiness you can get out of worldly objects, while continuing to suffer the self-perpetuating frustration and suffering of samsara. For such a person, the teaching of Vedanta sits in the corner of the room like an unopened gift.
If you offer a young child the choice between a bar of chocolate and a bar of gold, the child will almost certainly choose the chocolate. While a bar of gold might indeed buy a lifetime supply of chocolate, if the child doesn’t understand the value of the gold, they simply won’t have a desire for it.
The same holds true with Vedanta. Most people would rather pursue the tantalising yet finite objects of the world, because they fail to see the value of Self-Knowledge.
That’s why this raja vidya, kingly knowledge, remains the greatest of secrets.
Only precious few understand its value. Even for those who are sprititually inclined and seeking enlightenment, Vedanta requires a qualified mind and will not yield fruit without one.
That’s why the first two key steps are to recognise the value of the teaching, and then make sure that your mind is suitably prepared to receive it.
The Beggar Who Was Prince
Ordinarily, the amount of effort it takes to attain an object is proportional to that object. In other words, the greater the object of your desire, the harder you usually have to work to attain it.
That’s why enlightenment can seem an impossibly daunting task.
Chasing finite objects takes enough effort as it is, so you might assume that an infinite accomplishment will require an infinite amount of effort.
The good news, however, is that enlightenment doesn’t require some superhuman effort.
To attain the Self, you simply realise that you are Self.
This isn’t even an ‘attainment’ as such, but an already accomplished fact. All that’s required is knowledge. This knowledge takes the form of a certain vritti, or thought in your mind, which removes your self-ignorance.
There’s an old story that perfectly illustrates how knowledge will change your entire life.
Once upon a time, an ancient kingdom was invaded by barbarian forces and the king slaughtered in battle as he defended his home.
To spare the king’s newborn son, a servant sneaked the child out of the palace and gave him to a peasant family living in a far-off village. The family agreed to raise the boy as their own, and to conceal the child’s royal identity from him for his own safety.
A number of years had passed by the time the king’s men had overthrown the usurpers and recovered the throne. The boy’s adoptive parents had died and he was now a teenager living on the streets. Finding him begging for food, they told him that he was actually prince and that it was time for him to return home to claim his throne.
The boy was understandably astonished. In a split second, he’d gone from being a beggar to being a prince!
This remarkable transformation had required no effort on his part. When the problem is ignorance, the only solution is knowledge. All this boy needed was the knowledge of his true status—that he was actually a prince and heir to the throne. The only thing he needed to do was let go of the notion that he was a pauper.
Swami Dayananda points out:
As far as happiness and fulfilment are concerned, we all think that we are paupers. We always beg for happiness at the altar of life, waiting for the hands of chance to shape a moment of joy. We keep on praying or manipulating so that some situation will become so conducive that we are happy for a moment.
That never works for long, however, because finite objects can only ever deliver finite results.
Furthermore, the problem isn’t that we were ever lacking to begin with. We only assume that we’re lacking owing to our ignorance of our true nature. We think that we’re paupers when we’re actually kings.
The solution isn’t trying to add anything to ourselves; or trying to ‘become’ a better and more successful person.
The solution is Self-knowledge.
Vedanta provides that knowledge. The scriptures make it clear that you are the Self—the totality of all that is. You are already free, because freedom is your very nature. Your sense of bondage is nothing more than an erroneous thought of self-limitation born of ignorance.
It takes little effort on your part to listen to this knowledge. All you must do is prepare your mind to receive the knowledge and have faith in it until you can verify its truth for yourself.
The beggar needed to have faith in what the king’s men were telling him. After all, he might have assumed it was some kind of cruel joke on their part and never travelled to the palace to learn the truth for himself.
If he had lacked faith in what the king’s men were telling him, he’d likely have spent the rest of his life on the streets begging for scraps of food, never knowing the truth of his royal birthright.
Similarly, as an inquirer, you require faith in the initial stages of the teaching.
If you reject it out of hand, the only who who loses out is you—and the loss an infinite one, because the Self is infinite. The ‘gaining’ of the Self is an infinite gain, and its ‘loss’ (through ignorance) is an infinite loss.
Lift Yourself Up By Yourself
Before diving into the teaching, a Vedanta teacher will make it clear that certain qualifications must be in place. After all, in order to build anything, you require a solid foundation.
Human nature being what it is, we’re often quick to point to others, circumstances, the state of the world, or even the hand of fate as the source of our problems, when, in truth, the enemy is always closer to home.
Although we assume that our problems are out there in the world, samsara is not an external struggle. Krishna makes it clear that the battlefield is the human mind, and it’s a war against ignorance:
The mind can be your greatest asset or your worst enemy.
That’s why the key to freedom lies in mastery of the mind.
It’s essential that you learn to make your mind work for rather than against you.
To do this, you must, in Krishna’s words:
Lift yourself up by yourself.
Some spiritual seekers have the unfortunate tendency to look to others for their liberation, perhaps in the form of a charismatic guru or evangelist, or maybe conspiracy theories, a church, a community, or even a cult.
Prone to laziness and magical thinking, the more tamasic seekers don’t want to have to get down in the trenches and put in the hard graft necessary to overcome lifetimes of ignorant thinking. In fact, they don’t want to have to think and discriminate for themselves at all.
Such a person will look for someone else to think for them—anyone confident and charismatic enough will do—and, like a baby secure in its mother’s arms, will depend entirely on that person for their sustenance and liberation.
This never leads liberation, however; only greater bondage.
No one else can set you free. You and you alone must take responsibility for your own liberation. If you fail to gain mastery of your body/mind/ego, you will forever be its hostage.
The real enemy is within, and until the untamed mind is conquered, moksha is impossible.
Karma Yoga is the Foundation
The first step to liberation is ensuring that you have an appropriately qualified mind.
The primary means of achieving this is karma yoga.
It’s no use sitting down to meditate once or twice a day in the vain hopes of getting free. Your entire life must be reoriented, and karma yoga is the means of doing that.
For the samsari, who seeks happiness in external objects and experiences, action is determined by his or her likes and dislikes, and performed with attachment to the results.
The karma yogi, on the other hand, is no longer driven by the desire to achieve specific material ends.
As a karma yogi, your primary goal is moksha; freedom from emotional dependency on objects.
You act not according to your likes and dislikes but according to dharma. You do what is to be done when it is to be done, offering every action to Ishvara withgratitude and devotion.
Recognising Ishvara as the giver of the results of action, you then accept whatever results come as legitimate and proper; taking every outcome as prasada, a divine gift.
When performed in conjunction, dharma and karma yoga relieve stress like nothing else. Grief over the past and anxiety about the future melt away when you cease living your life solely for yourself, but as an offering to Ishvara.
As a seeker of liberation, this is your primary sadhana (spiritual practice).
By performing action in accordance with dharma and the karma yoga mindset, the vasanas are gradually rendered non-binding. This purifies the mind, rendering it fit for liberation through the application of Self-knowledge.
The 3 Stages of Vedanta
Vedanta is the ultimate medicine—the remedy to the sorrows of samsara.
This pramana, or means of knowledge, is essentially a tool for acquiring and assimilating the knowledge, “I am awareness.”
It works in a systematic three stage process.
There’s no skipping any of these stages and each must be taken in sequential order.
- Listening (Sravana). The first stage is called sravana, which means ‘hearing’. Having taken steps to qualify your mind through the practice of karma yoga, your next step is to find a qualified Vedanta teacher and consistently expose your mind to the knowledge. You do this by clearing your mind of preconception and prejudice, and simply listening to the teacher as he or she unfolds the teaching from beginning to end.
- Reflection (Manana). It’s not enough to simply hear the teaching. Even a parrot can listen to and repeat words. For Vedanta to work, you must fully understand and integrate the teaching on all levels. This necessitates working through any doubts, confusion or areas of misunderstanding that might arise, with the help of the teacher.
- Integration (Nididhyasana). Stage one begins with words. Stage two converts those words to knowledge. Stage three converts that knowledge to conviction. Nididhyasana takes the form of sustained contemplation and reflection on the teaching. You now know that the “I” belongs not to the body-mind-ego, but to the awareness in which all forms and experiences arise. For Self-knowledge to translate to moksha, you must own who you are by fully assimilating and internalising the knowledge, “I am awareness”.
The Importance of Vedantic Meditation
Vedantic meditation is the art of reconditioning the mind to identify with the true Self; pure awareness or consciousness. By keeping your attention fixed upon your nature as awareness, you effortlessly reorient the mind to its natural state of peace and wholeness.
In Panchadasi, Vidyaranya Swami says:
One should repeatedly meditate on the idea, “I am awareness”.
In concurrence, the Yoga Vasistha states:
This is the supreme meditation, the supreme worship; the continuous and unbroken awareness of the indwelling presence, inner light, or consciousness.
While you can gain an intellectual understanding of the teaching during the first stage by simply listening to the teacher, there’s a difference between mere understanding and assimilated knowledge.
It’s insufficient simply knowing about the Self.
Until this knowledge is integrated into every aspect of the psyche, your previous emotional and psychological problems will remain.
The fruits of Self-Knowledge rarely ripen immediately. After all, you’re dealing with a mind subject to decades and, indeed, lifetimes of ignorance.
The effects of this ignorance—which manifest as your thoughts of self-limitation and self-rejection, as well as desire, anger, frustration and grief—will not disappear overnight.
Until the knowledge that you are the Self is fully integrated and becomes a living, breathing reality for you, these ‘knots of the heart’ remain.
The Man Who Thought He Was a Worm
There’s a story which perfectly illustrates the importance of nididhyasana.
It’s about a man who thought he was worm.
This otherwise perfectly ordinary fellow went through life believing himself to be inferior to everyone else.
The idea that he was a wriggling worm not only caused terrible self-esteem problems, but also gave him an overwhelming fear of birds. Birds, after all, eat worms.
Whenever he stepped outside, the mere hint of a bird twittering was enough to strike mortal dread into his heart.
One day, a concerned friend decided that enough was enough. He told the man that he couldn’t go on like this, and that he had to get help.
His friend made a few phone calls, pulled some strings, and got the man booked into a highly renowned mental health institution.
There, the man received excellent care.
Every day he met with a skilled psychologist who eventually managed to convince him that he wasn’t a worm—but was, in fact, a human being like everybody else.
It took some time for the man to accept this. After all, he’d spent a lifetime labouring under his delusion.
But as the truth began to sink in, he found himself overcome by a tremendous sense of relief and liberation. If he was really was a human being like everyone else, he had nothing to worry about, and could actually enjoy his life!
The last morning of his stay, he thanked his doctor profusely, a tear of gratitude in his eyes.
He then checked out and stepped outside, ready to take on the world.
Until, that was, he caught sight of a bird sitting in a nearby tree—a big black crow, silently eyeing him.
Overcome by blind panic, he dashed back into the hospital and raced all the way to his psychologists’s office.
He shouted as he banged at the door, his heart racing and his skin covered in a cold sweat.
The doctor came out, astonished. “Whatever is the matter?”
“There’s a bird out there!” The man cried, his entire body trembling. “It—it was looking at me!”
The doctor frowned. “But we’ve been through this again and again. You don’t have to worry about birds now. You’re not a worm—you’re a human!”
“You know that,” the man said, “and I know that—but the bird doesn’t know that!”
The moral of the story is simple.
When you’ve spent your entire life thinking of yourself a certain way, it’s going to take time and effort to shift out of that way of thinking.
Habitual patterns of thought rarely change overnight. Even once you’ve seen an illusion for what it is, the aftereffects of fear and suffering may remain for some time.
Another helpful analogy is our earlier example of the prince who had spent his life as a beggar. When the king’s men eventually find him and tell him who he really is, he suddenly goes from being a penniless beggar to the richest man in the land.
Although his outer circumstances had changed in the blink of an eye, it may still take him some time to overcome his old ways of thinking. Inwardly, he may still see himself as a beggar; as a lacking person who has to worry about where the next meal is coming from.
To overcome this sense of limitation, he must own his new status by meditating on himself as a prince and not a beggar.
The same is true when it comes to Self-knowledge.
Unless your mind is highly qualified prior to sravana, the first stage of teaching, you won’t immediately enjoy the full benefits of Self-knowledge.
In all likelihood, you’ll still have certain blocks and obstructions preventing you from enjoying your nature as limitless, ever-free awareness.
Owing to your past thinking, you may still feel beggarly when, in fact, Self-Knowledge reveals you to be the king of all kings or queen or all queens.
How to Practise Nididhyasana
For this reason, nididhyasana is a vital step that cannot be skipped.
While the first two stages of teaching have a certain duration, either months or years depending on the student, the final stage, assimilating and integrating the teaching, has no set timespan.
In fact, nididhyasana should be practised for the rest of your life.
This prevents old habitual thought patterns from reasserting themselves and obscuring the knowledge that you are sat-chit-ananda: existence, consciousness and the bliss of fullness.
The first aspect of nididhyasana is learning to evaluate your life in the light of Self-knowledge.
Your old habits, thought patterns, values, relationships, activities, and ways of relating to others and the world must be re-evaluated in the light of Truth.
Anything that no longer serves you or which is incongruous with your identity as the Self—including adharmic habits that cause unnecessary agitation to your mind, body, or senses—should be weeded out.
The way that you live should be as close a reflection of who you truly are as possible.
When you realise your identity as the Self, you may notice that a lot of what was previously important to you—such as prior ambitions, goals, and the compulsive need to attain and acquire—simply falls away of its own accord.
Why would you continue seeking fullness in the world when you have finally found fullness in yourself? A jnani is one who feels happy in him or herself not because of external factors, but in spite of them.
The second component of nididhyasna is practicing Vedantic meditation, or contemplation upon the knowledge, ‘I am awareness’. Swami Paramarthananda calls this ‘self-opinion revision meditation’.
You came to Vedanta feeling like a lowly, inadequate jiva subject to the compulsions and sufferings of samsara.
Vedanta reveals this to be but a superimposition—an erroneous assumption caused by maya, which masks your true identity as the limitless, eternal Self.
Over time, you experience a shift of identity.
Whereas before you identified with the limited body-mind-ego, now you know yourself to be pure awareness; eternal and ever free from the limitations of name and form.
As we’ve established, however, it will likely take time until this reorientation of your identity becomes as natural to you as rattling off your name when someone asks who you are.
Until it does, you must consciously apply self-inquiry to any self-limiting thought, negative self-opinion or misplaced identification as and when they arise in the mind.
Any time you find yourself identifying as a jiva, as a wanting, grasping ego, you must get to the root of that ignorance and substitute it with a thought of truth; a thought of the Self.
Vedantic meditation focuses your attention on the object of meditation—your own Self.
You fix your mind on the teaching over and over again until Self-knowledge becomes firm conviction.
Continued and sustained reflection on your identity as the Self, as the field of awareness in which all objects and experiences arise, will in time shift your identity from the finite jiva to the infinite Self.
The articles in this Essence of Vedanta series are excerpts from my commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, which systematically unfolds the entire teaching of Advaita Vedanta. Be sure to get your copy and enjoy the series and much more in its entirety. “Bhagavad Gita – The Divine Song” by Rory B Mackay is available on the Unbrokenself shop here, and also on Amazon and all other good booksellers.
Other articles in this series
Limitation, The Quest for Liberation and the Four Human Pursuits
Samsara and How to Escape the Wheel of Suffering
Who Are You? How to Practice Vedantic Self-Inquiry
What is the Self? Vedanta and the Power of Self-Knowledge
Vedanta, Spiritual Practice and the Necessity of a Qualified Mind
