Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academy-advaita.com
The Netherlands
22 April 2020
Hope (1)
“Expect”
Understand that you need to understand yourself first. Man and woman need to understand life. Man and woman need to understand his or her mind. Understand that man and woman believe that he or she understands life.
Man and woman are convinced they understand their mind. Man and woman neither understand life nor his or her very own mind. Man and woman defend his or her mind.
Man needs to realise that he defends his mind every day. Similarly, a woman defends her mind every day, not realising how long he or she is going to defend his or her own mind.
When will the defending end? When will man or woman be victorious within his or her mind? Man has to wake up. Woman has to wake up because a tremendous illusion is being manifested, which includes man and woman, by life.
Understand that this illusion is tremendous because something tremendous is revealed when this illusion is understood. The understanding reveals a state of enlightenment.
Understand that enlightened state is a thoughtless state. A timeless state. Man and woman need to understand that life, which he or she lives and breathes, is timeless and thoughtless and only intermittently thoughts are manifested as an illusion of sound.
That understanding is revealed to man and woman by the intelligence in life and, once it is, man and woman will no longer be living with hope of living. Man and woman will be an existential being, living every moment as it is.
A live being. Life itself. Man and woman are yet to realise that, because man defends his mind and woman also defends her mind. Man and woman always venture into mind to find out life.
Understand that man loses himself in his mind in search for enlightenment in the hope of finding himself. Understand that woman too loses herself in her mind in search for enlightenment in the hope of finding herself.
Understand that you are not going to find enlightenment, because the mind with thoughts finds hope for enlightenment and not enlightenment. The mind with thoughts of hope is an illusion manifested by life.
The wise understand that you need not hope for any moment. The wise understand that every moment in life, including its contents, happens without a hope.
The enlightened live life and not hope to live life.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2020
Editor’s Note:
Yes, yes and yes again! It is so. It is confirmed by the wise, the enlightened, that the revelation gifted in this article is life. Hope and the plenitude of aspirations created by mind with thoughts is not life – it is a shadow of life. Mankind thrives on hope and its companions of illusion. Stay awake, for the mind with thoughts is conditioned to nurture hope, after hope, after hope. Unfulfilled, this only leads to exhaustion and more hope. Stay awake and accept what is within each moment. Do not be deceived by the play of tantalising thoughts, including hope. The revelations of the enlightened, here and elsewhere, may gradually bring you to realise who you really are, if they are meant to.
Julian Capper. UK
German Translator‘s Note:
Hope, revealed here as illusory, disguises the timeless here and now in every moment. In many ways in this article, Dr. Shankar encourages deep reflection on hope, which is considered so indispensable, especially in supposedly difficult times. The moment and everything it contains has come into being without hope for it. The unexpected moment functions without any prior hope for it. May a deep understanding of life happen to the reader, which in truth, in a positive sense, is hopeless.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.