As we saw in the previous post, we cannot say anything definitively about the world: Is it real? Is it unreal? Does it exist when I’m not aware of it? There are no clear answers to these questions. The ambiguity makes the world neither helpful nor interesting. OK, let me put it this way: the world is interesting in many superficial ways but not interesting in the least if all anyone wants is to know the truth as it is.
What is interesting and certainly more helpful is to pay careful attention to one who is experiencing the world—and that’s the “me” in every one of us! After all, it’s me who certifies that the world exists, so it makes sense to check out the credentials of the certifying authority.
“So, then, who is this “me”?”
My present “me” is a combination of the visible (the body), the invisible (mind, intellect, ego), and the spiritual (the Ātman): the first two are material and the third is nonmaterial. How the material and the nonmaterial combine into a seamless whole would have been a mystery, except that they don’t. Their combination is similar to the “combination” of the rope with the (mistakenly perceived) snake in a semi-lit room.
Just as the snake “hides” the rope, the material hides the spiritual. The rope and the snake cannot be seen at the same time: when I see one, I don’t see the other. In the same way, the material me and the spiritual me don’t meet each other: when I am identified with one, I get disconnected from the other. And yet—and this is the mysterious part—they seem to coexist. When they do, it seems as if the material covers the spiritual and as if the spiritual remains hidden within. This impossible feat is made seemingly possible by māyā, the power which controls us until we know it doesn’t.
“Which of the two me’s—material and spiritual—is the real me?”
If a thing is real, it must be eternal. Temporary or time-bound reality is a euphemism for a dream or a hallucination—in other words, a misperception. A simple test to find the real me is to check whether it ever disappears. If it does, it’s not me. The real me—if it is really real—should be always present, no matter what, since real = eternal. This is not true of the body: it disappears when I fall asleep. I am no longer conscious of my sleeping body. I may run and dance in my dreams, but the body that does it is not the same as the one sleeping in my bed.
The activity of the mind manifests in sleep as a dream and it creates a world not essentially different from the one we normally treat as real. But the mind also disappears in deep sleep, when dreams cease. I am conscious of neither the body nor the mind in deep sleep. The disappearance of both body and mind may be temporary, but that disqualifies them from being considered “real.” They are not real and they are not me.
What never disappears but remains constant is the consciousness of waking, dream and deep sleep. If I weren’t conscious of these states, I wouldn’t even experience them. I am conscious when I am awake (at this very moment, as I write this, for instance); I am conscious when I am dreaming (I couldn’t see the dream unless I were conscious of it, could I?); I am conscious when I am in deep sleep (which is how I remember the following morning my experience of it: “I had a blissful sleep. I wasn’t aware of anything else!”). The Ātman is the consciousness which unifies the experience of all the three states. It is the Ātman which is the real me. Or, to put it simply, bluntly, and accurately: I am the Ātman.
“I am the Ātman? Isn’t “I” the ego?”
The answer is yes to both the questions. If that sounds contradictory, it is because the self is being confused with the sense of “I”. It is through discernment that I realize that I am not the “I.” How am I different from my “I”?
The “I”, or ego, provides me with an “I” sense. It separates me from whatever it determines is “not me”—and this “not me” becomes my “world.” The “not me”—or “the other”—makes relationships possible. “The other” may be a person, a place, an object, and idea, or whatever. Some of these I may want to either possess or run away from. Once a want is created, the desire to fulfill it arises, and it forces me to do something about it. Which is how the ego makes me think of myself as a doer: I do karma. It also makes me think of myself as the experiencer: I experience the results of karma. When my desire is fulfilled I feel happy; when it is not, I feel miserable. In this way the ego keeps me tied to the karma chain.
The Ātman couldn’t be more different from the ego. The Ātman is neither the doer nor the experiencer. Karma has no sway over the Ātman. Moreover, the Ātman shatters the barriers that separate me from others, living and nonliving. The idea of “I and mine” is absent in the Ātman. It’s the material me that is separate from the material world: my body, my mind, my ideas, my hopes—all of these can be distinguished from those of others.
But the nonmaterial me, or the Ātman, has no boundaries. My Ātman is not different from your Ātman. You and I seem to be different, it is true, but that is because we are identified with “I”-s attached to different bodies and minds. Once the “I” is out of the way, there is no way to distinguish one Ātman from another. It’s like two waves: once they subside, there is no way to distinguish one from the other.
The wave identity is temporary. When a wave subsides, it’s not dead and gone. What is a wave other than some water of the ocean shaped into a specific form and moving in a specific way? As a wave, it has a distinct identity. Once its wave identity ends, it doesn’t stop existing. It simply goes back to being one with the ocean. As a human being, I am a wave. As the Ātman I am the ocean. The Ātman unifies everything into an undivided whole. The Ātman is all that there is.
When all material vestiges are shed, I stand alone and infinite. There is no sense of “I” there, first, because there is no there there and, second, because there is no “world” from which I need to distinguish myself. When everyone and everything is me, and there is neither you nor this nor that anywhere anytime, even the idea of “me” becomes meaningless. When māyā is declawed, the ego disappears and, along with it, my identity as a finite, mortal creature. I become infinite and immortal, filled with joy, perfection and freedom.
That experience seems far off at present, because the Ātman is in the clutches of māyā and is “covered” with material layers which endow it with an “I” attached to a body and mind which become “me.” Of course, the Ātman is only deluded into thinking that it is under māyā’s control. The Ātman’s bondage is not real. The “snake” in the semi-lit room was not real either, but that didn’t stop me from being terrified. Such is māyā’s mesmerizing magic that the Ātman’s innate freedom and joy don’t stop it from experiencing bondage and suffering.