Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academ-advaita.com
The Netherlands
3 February 2020
Awakening (2)
“Process”
Knowledge is neither in the past nor in the future. They are false. Look into your life in any given moment in time, when you are breathing, when you are seeing, when you are hearing: what do you know?
The mind has just one thought at any given point in time. In your entire life, in every moment, you know only one thought. You do not have the capacity to accommodate two thoughts in any given moment in time in daily life.
This is your state of existence and you talk about knowledge? At any given point in time, even actual, numerical duration of time is non-existent because it is not known. Numerical duration of time is a thought and thought is an illusion of sound in the moment.
Then you will know how to deal with knowledge and how to deal with whatever it is as thoughts. So, if knowledge is what we come to know through words only and sounds do not carry any meaning, you know pretty well that words have illusory meaning.
Understand that words conveyed by others’ meaning of the words and you put your linguistic meaning to the words which are taken as knowledge. It is illusory knowledge, due to exchange of sounds.
Sound does not belong to you; sound is manifested in you by the intelligence in life. Words do not really have any meaning at all. So the linguistic faculty in the mind puts illusory meaning to the sounds and converts it into illusory knowledge and puts it into the mind where it is.
So what could 'who am I' be? You are clear in your mind that only through knowledge can you come to know anything in the waking state. Only in the waking state is your state of existence. So you have to work out the question who am I?
How? When you know that you can know only one word in any moment as long as we breathe in this world, only one word can you know, not more than that. You do not know entire knowledge at one given moment, it is not possible.
That is how your life flows in every moment. When there is an action, there is no word in the mind, mind you. The thought of an action as a word is known when action is not there in the moment.
When an action is going on, there is no thought in the mind. Understand that a thought is a word. Action is very fast and, if an action is absent, there will be a word. And when the word is present, there will be words in the moments that follow.
The wise understand that there is only light and sound in every moment in daily life. Awakening is a deep - understanding process that is completed in the moment ‘here and now’ by the intelligence in life.
The enlightened are awakened and realise that daily life is an illusion of light and sound.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2020
Editor’s Note:
Knowledge per se is highly regarded in human affairs. It comprises the sum of what is known or comes to be known of the world of animate and inanimate phenomena. It is recognised as the essence of what is passed on from teacher to pupil and stored in memory. The efficacy of this process is regularly assessed.
Wisdom per se is not widely understood, nor can it be. It is accessible neither to being taught nor to being passed on from human to human. Wisdom is a concept relating to those who are reputed to be wise or offer wisdom to those in search of truth. Such is the integrity of spiritual retailers who thrive on public demand.
The wise do not profess to teach those who happen to meet them on their journey. Yet their deep understanding of the intelligence of life, shared so generously, is transformative for those who are awakening, if it is meant to be so.
Julian Capper. UK
German Translator‘s Note:
It is generally assumed that one could develop a thought from a previous one. To do this, one would need the ability to have two thoughts at the same time, because only if one could think the previous and the following thought at the same time, could one emerge from the other, otherwise one would not be able to see the connection. Dr. Shankar explains in this article and elsewhere why this is not possible, because in every moment there is only light and sound in life, which can appear as only one thought in the mind at any given moment. This reveals that light and sound mysteriously just flow by, so that it looks precisely as if a thought emerges from a previous one. That this is so is another thought that may or may not happen afterwards. What a miracle is the mystery of the world of thought in which the human ego lives and which it mistakenly believes to be reality! Step by step in this series of articles, Dr. Shankar explains and accompanies the awakening process as it is spontaneously and precisely manifested by the intelligence in life in the reader, if it is meant to be so. The awakened sages do not live IN, but WITH their thoughts.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.