Know who you are, no matter what
Since my adolescence, I felt it but it only got confirmed later when I expelled myself from being a successful money making machine to convert to a monk with a ‘Who am I’ quest. Relationships could be so much better and help the growth of each other as well if people could speak the truth to one another. I went out for a date after a long time.
And this guy was trying to convince me. Going over the top to make me believe something he knew wasn’t true and he knew that I knew it wasn’t true, but he still put in so much effort to convince me. I got bored and left. I ended up going out alone, and people wondered why I am out alone. I still had fun. Decades have passed since I have done that. Dance alone wildly, letting go of tension in my body. Something like what the Sufis and the Whirling Dervishes practice.
Hear the truth. Speak the truth. See the truth. While this Gandhian doctrine is a well-known one, the Buddhists, Jains, Confucianists, Maoists, Islamists, Hindus and so on have had their interpretation of it. The search for the truth is as old as the Big Bang theory when we humans came to be. Centuries ago there existed contradictory interpretations of what the truth inherently was—the Advaita philosophy and the Dvaita.
Advaita is a school of Hindu philosophy also known as Advaita Vedanta. It is a Hindu tradition of textual exegesis, philosophy and a sadhana or disciplined spiritual practice, a path of spiritual discipline and experience to find the truth. Eventually. Liberation is linked to the same philosophy.
According to Advaita philosophy, only atman, the brahman or the infinite, the universal consciousness is true—brahman Satyam. While the whole experienced universe is only an illusion, which exists due to maya—jagat mithya. The individual consciousness or the atman, loosely speaking, the soul, is identical to the brahman. So is it true that God exists? Advaita Vedanta has never spoken of anything else as supreme other than what religious doctrines popularly branded as God. You are That.
‘Eeshavasyam idam sarvam yatkinchya jagatyam jagat’ is the first mantra of Isa Upanishad or Ishavasyoupanishad. It means, “All this is nothing but God. God pervades the manifest cosmos.” But on the same hand, it exhorts humankind to know thyself. This is what is needed so that God is realised. In other words, God is within you, and not without as religiously preached.
But there are various stages to this as purported by bhakti and yoga. The evolutionary process to awaken your inner intelligence and inner purity leads to that final goal of self-realisation or God realisation. Vedanta also talks about the ways to get to the final truth. Tat tvam asi. Thou Art Thou. You Are That. I have seen the closer you are to this finding, the more forgiving and compassionate you become. Even to a silly date. The fabric of social-personal beingness is what I observe now. Like a witness. With zero judgements.
Anu Aggarwal
Actor, speaker, yogi and author
Instagram: @anusualanu