Ken: Hi, Rory.
I enjoy the material on your website a lot. Can you please answer a few questions that are bothering me?
If I as atman am present in all jivas, basically, if my consciousness is everyone’s consciousness, if this jiva of mine gets liberated while others do not, what is the point of liberation, because samsara is guaranteed to those others who are not liberated and it is, again, me who will experience their lives?
Rory: I read over your questions a number of times to try to get to the root of the confusion. The first red flag was the use of “my” consciousness and “this jiva of mine.” I think you may be mixing up satya and mithya, the real and the apparently real, which is a common mistake.
To answer this question we need to clarify the nature of the Self and the jiva and the relationship between them, insofar as there is a relationship.
The Self, or awareness/consciousness/existence, is present in all jivas as you say. The jiva, the body-mind-sense complex, is essentially a reflecting medium for the Self, much as a mirror facing the sky is a reflecting medium for the sun. The Self illumines the jiva’s otherwise inert body and mind, granting it light and life, much as the sun illumines the mirror.
This is an important distinction. Just as the sun is the original light and the mirror is the reflected light, the Self is the “original consciousness,” and the jiva is the “reflected consciousness.” We call this reflected consciousness chidabhasa.
While it’s the same original consciousness illumining all the jivas, the reflection is different depending upon the quality of the reflecting medium (in other words, the countless different gross and subtle bodies). This explains the differences found in all the jivas and why, although they ultimately share the same (original) consciousness, we don’t experience things from the perspective of other jivas. It’s the same consciousness but appearing in different reflecting mediums, different subtle bodies.
When the Ken-jiva attains liberation, at the death of the gross body, the subtle body will resolve back into the causal body like a wave folding into the ocean. No further rebirth is necessary, as the karma has been neutralised by knowledge and the eradication of the notion of doership/ownership. You’ve recognised your nature as the ever-free Self – for which samsara never actually happened. If samsara had happened, there would have been a time when the Self was bound, which is impossible, as this would mean the Self was subject to limitation and modification, and were that the case, there could be no such thing as liberation.
Samsara is nothing but a thought; a misapprehension or false superimposition in the mind – in other words, a mind, subject to ignorance, mistakenly seeing a snake when there’s only a rope. As a power in awareness, maya is beginningless and without end, so the karmic cylce continues for all the other jivas in samsara, but it’ll be “game over” for the Ken-jiva (in the best possible way!).
You don’t and won’t experience the lives of other jivas in samsara, because your experiences are restricted to one particular subtle body. That would be like a light bulb thinking it might experience the toaster when it gets switched off because they both share the same electricity. Again, it’s the same original consciousness, but different instruments. When a particular reflecting instrument is no longer there, the reflection is gone, but nothing is actually lost, because the sun was neither contained nor affected by the mirror in the first place. It’s the same when a particular electrical appliance breaks. The light bulb may be fused, but the electricity powering it is still there and remains unaffected because, although it brought the light bulb to life, the electricity never BECAME the light bulb. It was simply that which allowed the light bulb to shine for a limited time.
Ken: For example, I was Shankara, Buddha, Jesus, etc. yet here I am in samsara again regardless. It seems to me that it doesn’t matter if this jiva gets liberated; samsara will continue and atman will be in it (therefore I will be in it).
Rory: Who is the “I” you’re referring to?
Again, I think the source of your confusion may be the ego, ahamkara, claiming to be the Self, i.e. the reflected consciousness claiming to be the original consciousness; or the sunlight reflected in the mirror claiming to be the sun. It is, yet it isn’t, and that’s where the potential for confusion arises. This is a subtle topic!
One of the statements that needs close examination is when you say “here I am in samsara regardless.”
The jiva exists in samsara, but not the Self. The Self is not in the Creation, nor is it subject to modification in any way. The Self is the non-experiencing witness, the light in which all things happen, and yet is unchanged and untouched by anything that seemingly happens. Again, the mirror analogy is helpful. The sun is never in the mirror. It seems to be, and this reflected light can illumine the whole room and allow all things to take place, but the sun was never actually there and nor is it affected by anything that might happen to the mirror. The mirror can be covered in dust and grime or it can be broken, but the sun will never be affected in any way by it.
Ken: If this whole world is appearance in (my) consciousness, how come there are simultaneously other minds with whom I can interact, but to them I am the object and they are the subject?
Rory: Again, there’s no “my” when it comes to consciousness. There’s just consciousness, completely impersonal. The danger with saying “my consciousness” is that it’s the jiva’s ego doing the claiming, the reflected consciousness mistaking itself as the original consciousness. I think this may be the source of much of the confusion. The reflected is the personal, and the original is the impersonal totality, the self-shining and changeless light in which this whole Creation seemingly appears.
Hopefully the answer to the first question has answered this one too. There are different minds in mayabecause there are different reflecting mediums for consciousness. Although it’s the same light being reflected, the reflection differs according to the medium.
Ken: How come this world of samsara is shared between others, like a server of an online multiplayer game, but at the same time it is only an appearance that arises in my consciousness? How come samsarahas properties everyone can agree on and they seem to be an objective truth?
Rory: The reason for this is that the empirical universe is what we call Isvara sristi: the creation of Isvara. Isvara is consciousness + maya at the macrocosmic level; in other words, the Self associated with the totality, all the bodies and minds. The jiva is consciousness + maya at the microcosmic level, i.e. the Self associated with a single body and mind. The jiva is part of Isvara, and both Isvara and jiva are brought to life by the same consciousness.
This objective, empirical order of reality is called vyavaharika satyam. Again, as we’ve said, although this whole Creation appears in the Self courtesy of maya, the Self is completely unaffected by the Creation. At the absolute order of reality, which we call paramartika satyam, the Self is limitless, formless, eternal and without modification of any kind. The Self doesn’t undergo any change to become the world of form. The change is appearance alone and is limited to the empirical world of vyavaharika, the realm of objects, form and experience. I have copied and pasted a brief overview of the orders of reality at the end of this email. Have a careful read, as it may be helpful in resolving this query.
Ken: Should I regard others like dream characters, not actually real?
Rory: Others are just as “real” as your jiva. Ultimately nothing in maya is real (our definition of real is “that which is changeless and doesn’t depend upon anything else for its existence”). Maya is mithya, a dependent reality, borrowing its existence from satya, the Self, or consciousness/awareness. In that regard, all the jivas are just names and forms, with no inherent exsitence of their own. But each jiva is enlivened by chidabhasa, the reflected consciousness of the Self. In that respect, you should regard others as essentially the same as you, for it is one Self, one light, shining in countless different forms.
Ken: Thank you.
Rory: You’re welcome. Take some time to reflect on what I’ve said and the passage below. If you have further questions, please let me know. If you do, it would be helpful to know briefly your background with regard to Vedanta, i.e. how much you’ve read, studied, etc. That helps me pitch the answer. Another thing to bear in mind is that Vedanta requires a teacher and going all the way from beginning to end in sequence. The latter stages of the teaching (specifically, “everything is consciousness alone”) only make complete sense when the foundation stages (understanding Isvara and the jiva) have been put in place.
