Experience: An Eternal Illusion

 

गुरुर्ब्रह्मा गुरुर्विष्णुः गुरुर्देवो महेश्वरः। गुरुः साक्षात् परं ब्रह्म तस्मै श्री गुरवे नमः॥

Greetings !

In the last blog, you realized your true self; the knowledge of self-realization is called AatmGyan. You realized that you are not a body, nor mind, nor any other experiences, but you are that immutable Experiencer that is the background on which all experiences appear and go. Apart from your true self, whatever exists in existence is called Experience, or you can also say that the visible aspect of Existence is called Experience. From today’s blog, we will strive to understand Experiences.

You can start by simply observing the experiences around you. Take a good look and try to see what you are able to experience. You may be able to experience the sky, stars, sun, clouds, mountains, river, sand, trees, houses, walls, food, tables, laptops, people around you, your body, sensations within your body, emotions, thoughts, desires, and memories. You can categorize these experiences as coming from the world, body, and mind. You can categorize the following experiences under the categories of World, Body, and Mind.

• World: Sky, Star, Sun, Cloud, Mountains, River, Sand, Tree, House, Walls, Food, Table, Laptops, People around you, etc

• Body: Your Body, Sensation within your body, etc

• Mind: Emotions, Thoughts, Desires, Memories, etc

Now, try to find the exact location of the experiences of the World, Body, and Mind. In your initial thoughts, you might say that the experience from the World is outside, the experiences of the body are where you are, and the experience from the mind is within your body. However, try to think it through again.

All the experiences of the world that you see around you are captured by your sensory organs and projected onto the mental plane. Similarly, all the experiences of your body are also projected by your sensory organs onto the mental plane. Therefore, all experiences, whether of the world, body, or mind, are nothing but mental experiences, and there is nothing physical around you.

Since you have gained true self-knowledge through AtmaGyan, you understand that you are only the experiencer of all the experiences around you. So, all the experiences around you are not actually there; they exist only in your mental plane, and you are simply experiencing them.

Are all experiences true or just an illusion? 

Having read the third blog, you now understand the criteria of truth. This understanding empowers you to readily discern truth from illusion. Applying these criteria, we can safely conclude that anything subject to change cannot be absolute truth. Let’s delve deeper into our everyday experiences to know what is true and what is not.

Mental Experiences: 

By examining your own firsthand experiences of feelings, thoughts, desires, memories, and other mental phenomena, you can readily observe their changing and impermanent nature. This suggests that these experiences may not represent absolute truths. 

• Let's delve deeper into specific examples like desires and memories. While some fundamental desires like hunger or the instinctive need to breathe may seem constant, closer examination reveals their inherent dynamism. Hunger ebbs and flows, its intensity fluctuating based on various contexts. Even seemingly fixed memories can evolve with time.

• Desire to Eat: Based on your personal experiences, the urge to eat feels intensely real. However, paying attention to the timing of your last meal reveals the transience of this desire. Once you've eaten, the craving for more dissipates. While it's true that the desire for food returns after a few hours, recognize that this is a fresh desire, not the same one that was just satiated.

• Desire to Breathe: Even the desire to breathe isn't absolute. With each inhalation, the urgency to breathe subsides, only to be replaced by a new desire to breathe a few seconds later. So even the desire to breathe is also an illusion.

• Memory: You can readily recall past events, but does that guarantee their absolute reality? Your mind, a powerful tool, possesses the ability to retrieve memories and transform them into imagined scenarios. However, these "imagined memories" swiftly dissipate once you cease actively recollecting them. This phenomenon suggests all of our seemingly concrete memories are just mental impressions rather than absolute truths.

• Genetic Memory: While you might argue that humans only give birth to humans, not monkeys or other animals, suggesting real genetic memories, modern science reveals the continuous evolution of all species. The human lineage that today produces humans did indeed give birth to primates like monkeys millions of years ago, and even further back, mammals like dogs. While evolution occurs on timescales beyond a single human lifespan, making it difficult to directly observe, it's an undeniable and ongoing process. This continuous change casts doubt on the absolute truth of genetic memories. 

With this understanding you can now easily say all mental experiences are an illusion.

Body Experiences:

• Experience from Body

• As you've witnessed firsthand, the body undergoes constant change and growth, transforming from childhood to adulthood. This ongoing transformation suggests that our experience of the body is not an absolute truth.

• Experiencing body sensations

• Bodily sensations like pain and hunger are inherently transient, arising and subsiding over time. This impermanence suggests that they are not absolute truths, but rather fleeting experiences shaped by our physiological state.

So all the bodily experiences are just an illusion.

World Experience: Let's contemplate the experiences around us. You might think some experiences are permanent, like roads, buildings, and cities. But in reality, without constant maintenance and reconstruction, these structures wouldn't last even a thousand years. Similarly, astronomical objects like the Sun, Moon, and Earth won't last forever and will eventually be destroyed. Even the largest galaxies have a finite lifespan.

We can infer that all experiences, whether of the world, body, or mind, are impermanent. The regularity and slow pace of change often create the illusion of their permanence, but in reality, all experiences are fleeting. Imagine significantly accelerating the flow of time, like fast-forwarding a movie – you'd witness the rise and fall of experiences much like waves crashing in the ocean.

Drawing upon the insights from the previous blog and the liberating power of dispelling ignorance, you might perceive yourself as the central wellspring of experience. You’re the radiant sun, illuminating and bringing forth all experiences, akin to how the moon reflects the sun's light, making it visible.

How many experiences are there?

You have already pondered the idea that all experiences, whether of the world, body, or mind, are ultimately mental experiences. This suggests that all these experiences share a similar nature; they arise and dissipate within your mental space, existing solely as mental phenomena.

Contemplation on the illusion of diverse experiences?

Imagine a bag of potato chips. You open it, holding a single packet in your hand. Dividing those chips onto two plates doesn't alter the fact that there's still just one quantity of chips. However, someone newly seeing those plates wouldn't perceive them as a single unit; they'd likely count two plates of chips. Despite no change in the chips themselves, their perception differs between you and your friend. For you, it's one packet, while for them, it's two plates.

Similarly Earth has billions of species which appear diverse to our perception, but with the help of scientific understanding of evolution you can easily dispel this illusion of difference, that the variety of species are nothing but the same experience.

Just as a single river appears diverse from different banks, yet remains one continuous flow, all that we perceive around us, though seemingly distinct, reveals a deeper interconnectedness. This physical world, composed ultimately of a vast sea of atoms in varying arrangements, ultimately translates into our minds as unique experiences.

With your dispelling of Ignorance you can now easily analyze the nature of experiences with the seven questions of What, Why, When, How, Where, Who, How much ?

• What is Experience?

• The true nature of experience eludes us. Our sensory organs filter reality, showing us what's necessary for survival, not ultimate truth. This subjectivity extends across the animal kingdom – an experience varies widely between a human and a dog, leaving neither with absolute understanding. So we can never know what experience really is.

• Why is there Experience?

• To know why there is an experience you need to know the reason, and any reason will be nothing but another experience. Then you need to find the reason for the 1st reason and this will create an infinite chain of reasons and everyone of those will be an experience itself. So we can conclude that experiences are reasonless .

• Since when is Experience come into existence?

• Answer to this question will be an instance of time before which there was no experience. But there is already time which is experience itself. So there can’t be any time when experience was not there, in fact time itself exists in experience. Experiences are beyond time.

• How do Experiences come into existence?

• Answer to this question will be a process that brings experience into existence. However every process will be an experience itself. So there can’t be any process that can give birth to experience, in fact all the processes exist because there are experiences. So Experience comes into existence by itself.

• Where is Experience?

• Let's consider Place X where experience exists and Place Y where experience doesn’t exist, but this can’t be true because Place Y, itself is an experience. There can’t be any place where experience doesn’t exist. Experience doesn’t exist in places but places exist in Experiences.

• Who is Experience?

• Answers to this question are always directed towards a being and we already know that all beings are nothing but experience, which rise and fall; however this river of experience is eternal and manifested into diverse events. 

• How many Experiences are there?

• We can only define the quantity of something if we can create a boundary either in distance or in time but we already know both distance and time are experiences itself. So we can’t quantify experience, at max we can only say there is continuous experience. However to satiate the mind we can say there is just one experience.

Blogs till now contain enough information to dispel the ignorance you might have held so far. By reading and rereading them, you can solidify your understanding of yourself and the experiences around you. Remember, for a beginner on this spiritual journey, it's crucial to always remember your true nature: you are the experiencer, simply witnessing all the events around you without clinging to any expectations. 

I wish you success on your journey, and I'll be back with another blog soon. Until then, always remember: you are the experiencer.