Role of Repeated Practice in Realisation

Invocation

[Prostrations to Śiva, the giver of happiness, who is the source of all knowledge, whose feet are worshipped by the Devas and who bears, in His crest, the crescent moon whose beams brighten the directions.]

Meditation on the Supreme

The settled conclusion of Vedānta is that knowledge of Brahman alone results in liberation from transmigratory existence. A question that arises in this regard is, ‘What should one practice to attain that liberating knowledge?’

[He should persistently meditate, ‘I am decidedly the Supreme Brahman.’]

Bhagavatpāda’s answer is that one should steadfastly maintain the notion that one is the Supreme Brahman. This is technically termed ‘brahmābhyāsa’.

Issues in Equating God and the Soul

Two entities with disparate attributes such as light and darkness cannot be equated with each other. So, God, who has no ‘kartṛtva, agency’, ‘bhoktṛtva, state of being an enjoyer’, attachment, aversion, pleasure and pain, and the jīva, soul, who has these, cannot be one. Thus, how could one maintain, without erring, that one is the Supreme and, thereby, realize this and attain liberation?

There is another problem. If it be that the jīva is God, the scripture would be superfluous for, God being ever free and the soul being God, there would be none to turn to the scripture and adopt, for becoming emancipated, the means prescribed therein such as ‘śravaṇa, hearing scripture and ascertaining its primary purport’. On the other hand, if it be that God is the transmigrating jīva, there will be no Supreme Being to create the world or for the jīva to realize and become liberated. In this case too, the scriptures would be useless.¹

Veda, the Ultimate Authority, Equates God with the Soul

The śruti itself definitively teaches the oneness of the Supreme and soul in the ‘mahāvākya, great sentence’:

[You are That (Supreme).]

We ought not to question the validity of the śruti. One of the important traits that a disciple should possess is steadfast faith in the śruti. Otherwise, one cannot truly become a disciple and the Upanishadic Truth cannot be imparted to such an individual. Of course, if the doubt is posed by a disciple in earnest for comprehending the teaching, it would be in order and deserve a clarification.

Disparate Qualities of God and the Soul are Unreal

If two entities truly possess contrasting attributes, they decidedly cannot be held to be one and the same. If, however, the traits are falsely superimposed on them, then the two can be equated. Let us suppose that one sees a rope in dim light and mistakes it to be a snake. The rope and the false snake are not distinct entities. A real rope and snake are, of course, different. People fear a real snake as it can bite them but not a rope!

No change occurs in a substratum when qualities alien to it are superimposed on it. An imagined snake does not affect the real rope wherein it is seen. Whether one flees from the rope mistaking it to be a snake, or, on the contrary, feels relieved that it is not a serpent, the rope undergoes no change. If a man with an eye-defect were to see two moons in the place of one, the result is not two real moons. Likewise, the attributes such as agency that mark out the jīva as a limited being distinct from the Supreme are those superimposed on Brahman due to ignorance. The jīva and God are, actually, just one pure consciousness. Bringing out their unity, the śruti says:

(Jābālas' śruti as per the bhāṣya on Brahmasūtra 4.1.3) [O, Divinity, decidedly, I am you; you are, for sure, me.]

A mahavākya of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad is:

[I am Brahman.]

The appropriate way to comprehend the teaching of the śruti about the unity of God and the jīva is to recognize the fact that their incompatible qualities are unreal.¹

Thus, Bhagavatpāda has emphasized as follows that one should meditate that one is Brahman.

[I am Brahman only. I am not caught in the cycle of birth and death. I am free. He should contemplate thus.]

It was objected that if the jīva were God, there would be none to resort to the śruti and strive for liberation and if God were the jīva, there would be no Creator and no Supreme to be known for liberation. A short reply is that creation, bondage, liberation, etc., have just provisional, empirical validity and stand negated when one realizes the Supreme. Thus, Gauḍapādācārya has written:

[There is no dissolution, no creation, none bound, none striving or aspiring for freedom and none liberated. This is the highest truth.]

From the highest standpoint, there is none trapped in transmigratory existence, intent on freedom, striving for liberation or emancipated; there is no cosmic creation or dissolution either. There is only Brahman; no duality.

Advaitins do not deny the existence of God or His act of creation in the empirical state. They only hold that the lowly attributes such as sufferance as also lordly ones such as creatorship that distinguish the soul and God are superimposed on Brahman. When ignorance, which is responsible for the appearance of diversity, ends with the realization of Brahman, all duality becomes sublated. Whose is this ignorance? Bhagavatpada’s reply to this posed question was, ‘It pertains to you who ask this.” The questioner objected, ‘The śruti has said that I am the Supreme’; he implied that if he were the Supreme, he could not be ignorant. Bhagavatpāda replied, ‘If you have realized this, then ignorance is just non-existent; there is none who is unenlightened.'¹ All the differences between the soul and the Supreme have just empirical validity and pertain to the realm of ignorance; in reality, they are non-different.

Repetition of Hearing and the Like

The next query is whether the stipulated meditation is to be done just once or it is to be repeated. The śruti says:

[The Ātman should be realised; It should be heard of, reflected on and meditated upon.]

The means taught for realising the Truth are ‘śravaṇa, hearing about It’, ‘manana, logically reflecting upon it’ and ‘nididhyāsana, meditating upon It.’ Each of the three is stated once. So, it needs to be done just once. This is the prima facie view. Consider the Vedic instruction:

Repetition of the desire-prompted Jyotiṣṭoma sacrifice spoken of here is superfluous. Likewise, repeating the triad is uncalled for. This is what a disputant contends.

An interim response is given in the form of an example. On hearing a person complain of pain in his chest, we learn that the individual is suffering but do not explicitly feel his pain. Likewise, when we hear the mahāvākya, ‘Tattvamasi (You are the Supreme),’ we get a general knowledge of the form, ‘The Jīva and Brahman are one.’ The triad needs to be repeatedly resorted to in order to get the liberating, direct realisation of Brahman.

The opponent refutes this tentative answer thus. ‘Direct knowledge of Brahman that has not arisen from the śruti and allied reasoning in the first instance cannot possibly be gained by repeatedly resorting to them. In any case, there are no general or special features in Brahman, for the Supreme is said to be devoid of any attributes. So, I do not see any use in repeatedly engaging in śravaṇa and the rest for knowing Brahman’s special features.’

Rare Ones do not Need Repetition; Others Do

The Vedāntin’s view is as follows:¹ Repetition is not at all needed for a rare, great soul who becomes enlightened on hearing the mahavākya just once from his Guru.

[To the one of ripe intellect, hearing of the words of the śruti but once results in the realisation of the Ātman.]

He who has acquired excellent mental impressions by his adequate recourse to the triad in his previous births becomes enlightened when he hears the mahāvākya once from his Guru. In the case of others:¹

(Mādhavīya-śaṅkaravijaya 10.95)

[In him who is not sharp, knowledge arises gradually by the service of the Guru’s lotus-feet and such else.]

They should serve the Guru for long and dwell upon the Truth taught.

Repetition Helps in Progressive Understanding

It is not that direct knowledge that does not arise upon hearing the mahavākya once cannot arise even after repeated efforts, for this is contradicted by experience.

[There is no question what is seen being impossible.]

What is explicitly seen cannot be denied as impossible.

A person approached an astrologer and sought to know how long he would live. On analysing his horoscope, the astrologer averred, ‘You must have died five years ago. I cannot accept that you are still alive.’ The client said, ‘How can you say that? I am quite alive and in front of you.’ The astrologer mulishly stuck to his view! What is directly experienced cannot be set aside as unfeasible.

Disciples have told me, ‘We heard the discourse of Your Holiness but we could not comprehend the subject at once. We then repeatedly listened to a recorded version of the same and now our understanding is much better.’

The speech’s content is the same whether it is heard once or multiple times. But, as the experience of these disciples confirms, one may, by repeated hearing, gain the clear understanding that eluded one the first time.

The triad, whose final member is nididhyāsana, focus on the Supreme, must be repeatedly practised till such time as the direct knowledge of the Supreme dawns.

Repetition for Removing Erroneous Notions

It was pointed out by the opponent that repetition of the triad to discern the special features of the Supreme and convert a general understanding into an intimate one is useless as Brahman is bereft of attributes. The reply is that while Brahman has no attributes, various are our erroneous notions that have to be dispelled to realise It and repetition of the triad serves to progressively do so.

Entities have origin, temporary existence, modification, growth, decay and destruction but the Supreme is free from these, known as ‘bhāva-vikāras’. The śruti states:

[It is not gross, not minute, not short and not long.]

The upshot is that Brahman has no qualities.

People mistake themselves to be the body, the senses, prāṇas, the mind, and the intellect. One should repeat the triad to dispel these false notions in order to realise that one is Brahman. Bhagavatpāda has advised us to contemplate as follows to counter habitual false notions:

[I am not the body, life-breath, the senses, the mind; the intellect, the locus of memories, and the ego. I am not the element earth, water, fire, air or space. I am not sound, touch, taste, smell and form.]

In the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, He has delineated three major faults that one needs to eradicate:

(Vivekacūḍāmaṇi 117)

[Sense of impossibility (about the non-dual Truth), doubt and the mistaken idea (that there is duality) never leave the one who is affected by the ignorance’s concealing power. Its projecting power ever afflicts him.] ‘Abhāvanā’, referred to here, is the impression that the unity of jīva and Brahman and the unreality of the world taught by the scriptures cannot be a fact. ‘Saṁbhāvanā’ means doubt. It does not mean here the money that we offer to priests! The third defect ‘viparītabhāvanā’ is the rise, by habit, of wrong ideas such as, ‘I am the body.’ To get rid of these three impediments, one should again and again resort to the triad, headed by śravaṇa, hearing.

Upaniṣad Teaches Efficacy of Repetition

There is a story in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad in which Śvetaketu is taught the mahāvākya ‘Tattvamasi (You are That)’ nine times. It is because, each time his father Uddālaka imparted the mahāvākya, he came up with a different doubt. The father had to progressively dispel all his doubts and, in the process, taught him the same mahāvākya nine times. Let none think that hearing it nine times is emphasised; it is not. Practice of hearing, reflection and meditation till realisation dawns is what the scripture advocates. Thus, Bhagavatpāda says:

[By constant practice throughout one’s life time, the aspirant becomes liberated even when alive.]

That is, one should constantly practice meditation for life. If one were to contemplate, ‘I am the Supreme’ for a short while and soon thereafter, become unduly restless about mundane things such as one’s bank balance, one will not make headway. One should acquire the requisite qualifications, such as dispassion, hear the Truth, reflect on It and remain focussed on It until one attains ‘jīvanmukti, liberation while living.’

Bhagavatpāda has extensively elucidated this topic in His Brahmasūtrabhāṣya so that no one may have any doubt in this regard. May you thoroughly comprehend the teaching, engage in constant contemplation on the Supreme and make your lives fruitful.

॥ हर नमः पार्वतीपतये । हर हर महादेव ॥