Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academ-advaita.com
The Netherlands
31 March 2020
Conviction (9)
“Belief”
Understand that you have never enjoyed coffee. You have enjoyed the thought of coffee. You have never enjoyed the drinking. You have enjoyed the thought of drinking.
Understand that every movement in life is a spontaneous, uncontrollable and unpredictable movement. A particular action as such is an optical illusion of a movement.
Because of your conviction that you are seeing an action, event and a situation in the present, you are convinced that the mind is seeing life. That is why you are also convinced that you can plan and that planning will happen in life.
Life shows you how ridiculous you are with your beliefs, while life simply flows and goes without anything happening in it. Understand that everything happens in the mind as thoughts after nothing has happened in life.
All that happens in your mind is an illusory, optical illusion of movement and auditory illusion of sound, which you think are real. You have no proof of this. Even the proof which you have is an illusion as well.
How did man get convinced that something has happened in life? Even though you only came to know after it has happened, you have no proof of its happening in life from beginning to end.
Understand how every word which is drawn from the past could be the word in the present. If a word is in the present, it is a present word. Then you will know what is happening in life. But there is only light and sound in the present moment ‘here and now’.
Understand that this is why the mind with thoughts is not in life because words are not in the present. That is why the mind with thoughts is absent in life. Understand that it appears as though it is present in life and that is why your conviction that you have seen action, event and situation is false.
Understand that you are involved in planning and are depressed if planning does not work as planned. Understand that all your planning works. Understand that planning will work or will not work.
Understand that by this understanding you will be happy if it works and you will be happy when it does not, because that is how it works.
Understand that man is not the thinker. Thinking will happen to you. Planning will happen to you just so you may understand it always works. Watch the magic how it works.
Understand that your conviction that something has happened in life makes you cry, laugh, be depressed or be angry. Understand that the emotions are a drama because all that ever happens in life in any moment is only movement of light and sound.
Understand the conditioned mind deeply. If you do, then you will admire life. Then you will be authentic friend. Authentic husband. Authentic lover. Authentic brother. Authentic sister. Authentic relatives and authentic family.
The wise understand that life is not what the mind says it is.
The enlightened is an authentic human being.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2020
Editor’s Note:
Life is carte blanche. It has nothing written on it and yet everything that could possibly be written is written on it – only to disappear - for appearance implies disappearance. Nothing repeats in life save illusion after illusion, repetition which is itself illusory! Even this reader’s understanding of the words of the wise is illusion, including the one who is understanding. Man’s fall is the adamantine belief that whatever happens in daily life is real. Man’s redemption, if it is meant to happen, is the gift of the enlightened beings – their deep understanding of life as it really is.
Julian Capper. UK
German Translator‘s Note:
How could the conditioned mind trust life when it is full of conditions, desires, demands and expectations of life?! Plans make the mind uneasy as to whether or not the expected result will come true. Unconditional trust in life is only possible when there is a deep understanding that the mind does not reflect life as it is. Dr. Shankar also reveals in this article the illusions that arise from the misunderstanding that actions, events and situations are real, including the many emotions that inevitably follow this belief, especially when planning is involved. The understanding deepens in everyday life when alertness to the illusions of the mind happens. The emotions fade away and the mind becomes present in the here and now without thoughts and plans, if it is meant to be.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.