Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academy-advaita.com
The Netherlands
1 August 2019
Gap (1)
“Distance”
Gap is a distance. There is a certain distance between the observer and the observed. This certain distance between the observer and the observed is a gap to knowledge. The distance in the gap can be measured, which is knowledge as well. The measured distance in knowledge is nevertheless known as a word.
Gap, which is a distance, is nevertheless real, meaning actual, to knowledge, because every man and woman knows that there is a gap, meaning a distance, between them and whatever they see in daily life.
A gap in life is present to man and woman in everything that they experience in daily life, be it sport, entertainment, work, objects in house, chores in house, feeling, mails, talking, doing, academics, objects in cities, including cities, buildings in cities and in nature.
A gap, meaning a distance in life, is present to every man and woman even when they do not see them. This is because they can imagine whatever they wish to see and this imagination is also in daily life.
The experience of every man and woman in daily life of sport, entertainment, work, objects in house, chores in house, feeling, mails, talking, doing, academics, objects in cities, including cities, buildings in cities and in nature is known as a word in knowledge, just as gap, meaning the distance measured, is known as a word.
Now, everything that is experienced in daily life in the waking state as a word is experienced in the sleeping state as a dream. Everything that is experienced in a dream has a gap, meaning a distance, between what is seen in a dream, just as in the waking state.
Every man and woman sees in a dream the very things they see in the waking state. They also know whatever they see in a dream by a word, just as every man and woman knows what they see in the waking state by a word.
Wisdom reveals that a gap of time is ever present, not only between two thoughts, but also between two letters in a word. The gap of time does not have numerical duration needed to have either a letter or a word in the mind.
Wisdom reveals that in every moment in life and in the mind only light and sound exist. Wisdom also reveals that light and sound are together and not separate from each other.
Wisdom also reveals that life and mind is a singular movement. Wisdom reveals that the singular movement in daily life cannot have a gap because, in a singular movement, a gap does not exist.
The gap seen in daily life between the observer and the observed, for example, a tree, is filled with atmosphere. Wisdom reveals that the atmosphere in the gap is made up of atoms and the observer and the tree are also made up of atoms. Wisdom reveals that light and sound appear as illusory observer, illusory tree and illusory gap.
Wisdom reveals that the mind is also a singular movement and, in this singular movement of the mind, words appear intermittently with gaps in between two words.
Wisdom reveals that the gap between two words is illusory and not real because the mind is a singular flow and, in a singular flow, a gap does not exist. Wisdom, therefore, reveals that the gap, meaning a distance seen in daily life, which is known by a word is, therefore, illusory and not real. This is because a word in the mind is illusory and not real.
The enlightened have rightly proclaimed that life is a singular flow, meaning that the gap, meaning distance seen in daily life, is illusory and not real, meaning maya.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
©Copyright V. S. Shankar 2019
Editor’s Note:
When anyone travels on a train to any destination, he or she may well be alerted by a loud, recorded voice to ‘mind the gap’: i.e. the distance between the train and the platform. This gap is, of course, very real to the traveller for to miss the gap may lead to unwelcome consequences. As revealed in this article, in wisdom, gap is not real, yet in knowledge that may determine appreciation of daily life; the illusion exists in the moment as maya. The enlightened accept life as it is in every moment, no matter what is in life in every moment in life.
Julian Capper