Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academ-advaita.com
The Netherlands
17 November 2019
Many Actors (6)
“In Life”
You cannot know about God. But you can know the word God. And how does this get prevented? Prevented in the sense, why does the understanding not happen? The understanding does not happen because the ego is attached to the mind.
The mind can neither know God nor the real actor. Why the mind cannot know the real actor or God is because the mind wants to know about that real actor and about God. The difficulty is that the mind can only know the word God and the words real actor and can know neither God nor the real actor.
The mind is doing the right function. But the ego may say from now on I will not know about God, I will know God. But the mind just cannot know God. That very understanding will release you from bondage that you can know God.
And what is that understanding? The understanding is that the mind wants to know that big One, which is either God or the real actor. What does the mind do? It can only do the following: I will know more about it so all that I have got to do is gather more information about God and I will know God. Can the mind really know more about a particular thing by gathering more information about the particular thing, is the question? The mind believes it can.
Now let us examine very carefully. Look at your house. Let us go object-wise. If we get more objects, does it become one big object? It will remain many objects. Is it not so? It will only remain as many objects in your house.
Objects are nothing but a mental aspect of the mind. And the mind is nothing but the material aspect of an object. This means that, if you gather more information, you will have only more information, but not one big information.
If you observe very carefully, whenever you want to know about any subject, you can only know information about it. Is it not so? Either the latest information or the past. So there is a lot of information in your mind. You have simply gathered many objects in your mind.
Therefore, you will only gather a lot of information about God. But it will all remain separate pieces of information. They cannot be joined into one information. The moment you understand that you will realise that the mind simply divides to become One, which is impossible.
The enlightened realise that there is a lot of information about God and about the many actors. The enlightened realise that information is light. The enlightened realise that God is pure light and the many actors in daily life are illusions of light.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V. S. Shankar 2019
Editor’s Note:
The mind is man’s singular and exceptional companion in his lifetime. It is provided by the intelligence of life and it performs in the way it is meant to perform. The mind, however, is influenced by the attendance of the ego, whose particular characteristics are self-aggrandisement and self-esteem. It claims ardently that it, usually referred to as I, is/am the doer, the thinker, the knower, etc.
The wise make no such assertions about their capabilities. In their deep understanding of man’s predicament, they are revealing, with such simplicity, the key to his release and their compassion for his striving for what the ego asserts, yet is impossible to attain.
Julian Capper. UK
German Translator’s Note:
Elsewhere is the quote from Dr. Shankar: "More knowledge is not wisdom." In this article, the essence of this quote is made clear to the attentive reader. To know more about God does not mean to know God. The difference remains hidden to the conditioned mind. The fragmentation of the knowledge of the mind can never grasp the whole. It is precisely the deep understanding of this eternal fragmentation of the mind that reveals to the wise the undivided unity of life that cannot be known, recognized or experienced.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.