The Source of Ignorance and Separation.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
I’ve studied your teachings and your explanation of Vedanta using quantum physics and modern spirituality has made nearly flawless sense with me. But there are just a few questions I have that I haven’t been able to find the answers in so far through your work, or through my researching Indian philosophy. I would greatly appreciate your help in answering these. I understand we are all on this journey from misunderstanding/ignorance or separation back to the wholeness of our source. I understand the soul (jiva/atman) is Brahman. I understand that suffering is rampant and what we need to do to escape suffering. I’ve traced it back thusly: Suffering comes from identification with ego which comes from losing touch of source which comes from believing the material world is all there is, which comes from separation… so my first question is: How and why did we come to this separation in the first place? If Brahman/Source is all, then what is the reasoning for souls? What is the purpose of the separation? My last questions come from the opposite end of the existence spectrum: After we become liberated from separation back to unity and away from suffering… then what? There’s the indication that like viewing the photon going into the event horizon that this state of wholeness and bliss is then just experienced forever, but you’ve said everything comes from nothing and returns to nothing. It’s my understanding that everything is cyclical so then once everything returns to the nothing, would it not then emerge again? Do we finish the journey Home to just come back again to repeat it again? I feel these are the most important questions (to me anyways) and would really appreciate some help.
Thank you.
Response:
First let’s clarify your point on suffering, identification and separation. There is no fundamental separation between our core existence and the existence of others or anything else in creation. That is the basic reality of unified existence. Our individual spark of consciousness has choice or free will in how it perceives itself with respect to the world at large. When it is fully awake to its true nature, it sees that unity with everything else as its dominant reality and the diversity of experience is understood in the context of that wholeness. When individuality is not awake to its essential truth, then it sees itself as separate and isolated from the world around it. Seeing the world as “other,” awareness identifies itself with the object of perception. This lack of self-awareness is the ignorance of its true self, and that misunderstanding gives rise to the perception of separation, not real separation. There’s no purpose to the separation, because it’s not an actual separation, it’s misperception of unity. This ignorance, and feeling of separation is what causes fear and suffering.
And so this leads to your real question, why would we use our free will to choose isolated individuality over universality? I cannot answer this with any real understanding, but I will share what I have heard from an enlightened teacher. He said it is the need or desire to feel special or unique that is the basis for that initial impetus to misperceive it’s true nature. Another answer that may be related to this is that when our selfhood is in its earliest stages of awakening, its will and awareness are also metaphorically in their infancy. So even though a baby has a will and a sense of awareness, it is quite different at that stage of life than the will and awareness she will have as an adult. And the “mistakes” the baby makes about perception, language and understanding are not really mistakes, they are the necessary developmental stages they need to grow through to eventually become fully functioning adults. In this analogy, our “ignorance” of our true self is only the early stages of our growth to fully awakened beings.
Your last question is whether fully awakened enlightened souls must restart from scratch at the beginning of each cycle of the infinite cycles of creation. What Vedanta teaches is that what is gained in self-awareness is never lost, even in the emergence and dissolution of time itself in the endless cycles of creation. One is free to participate in creation however one chooses.
Love,
Deepak
Very good day Mr. Chopra, I wanted to make you a question as to his view as to the persons performing healings as hinn benny. You already have many years experience in what the healing source, divinity, actually people who faint, and cry, this really would be an act of reconnection to the source? I realize this question because I heard a story of people who have done similar actions to those of hinn benny and there was a story that taken aback because a policeman found a pastor who performed these healings in their church in a van dressed as woman in the night, and actually I always see people inventing things, but this story was checked, ie I could not be connected to the source if this man is caught in the illusion of the material world or am I wrong ? Namaste.
Through someone you taught, and a hug, I was able to see the beauty of existence. I have found myself through her, and it has led me to you. I thank you for allowing me to see my unconditional love. I can never repay you except to live every day showing my love to others. Thank you.
@Mat Hritz: And that is the adventure of life in which everything has only value in the eye of the beholder and the world is as that beholder sees it. The first comment on this thread :)