Everything Everywhere All At Once

The world as a grand symbol

The Phenomenal World, by Lorette C Luzajic

‘This universe is a symbol, in and through which we are trying to grasp the thing signified, which is beyond and behind.’

- Swami Vivekananda, from the speech titled ‘Bhakti or Devotion’ (Complete Works - Book 2)

Any serious student of Advaita Vedanta reaches a point where the quest transforms from being an intellectual one to a spiritual one. As our understanding of the philosophy deepens, as our doubts start to melt under the unsparing light of reason, as the full import of Vedanta begins to shine forth on us in short bursts, we realize that we can no more treat this as a merely intellectual exercise. It has to be something that we experience, something that we see.

Understanding is important. One must be able to argue the philosophical positions convincingly - to oneself at least, if not to others; one must be able to understand how the philosophy stands up to skeptical attacks from all directions - understand and be convinced, don’t just believe. But understanding, as Swami Vivekananda said, is the first step and not the end; it stills the doubts in the mind, so that the mind may turn its attention higher; it merely clears the path for the spiritual journey to begin.

I find myself on this transition point right now. What started off as a desire to understand this magnificent metaphysics has turned into an even stronger desire to realize it. As I start to gain an understanding of the core tenets of the philosophy, I want this to not just be knowledge I possess but a living reality.  

It is the spiritual and religious quest that is essential, and in that I am an infant. 

Which is partly why I have found it hard to sit and write for the last 6 months. While I am still a struggling novice on this path, what can I write that others might gain from reading? Why should people take me seriously? What can I have to offer when, instead, I can just point people to works of so many masters of the past? I thought it was better to keep quiet, put my head down, and stay on my personal quest.

But then I asked myself - why does one write or speak? One can do so with a mission, like the one Swami Vivekananda had, whose dream was for an India in which the light of the Upanishads shines forth from every street corner. Or one can write to clarify - for oneself - what one has learnt. Whatever little I have written so far has been for the latter purpose, so I asked myself - why stop? Why not keep writing, so that the philosophy becomes more deeply ingrained in my own mind? And in the process, if there are some fellow journeymen who read my writing - and perhaps even benefit from it - then that would be a humbling bonus. 

After all, while the spiritual quest is for each one of us to travel on by ourselves, the process of understanding can be communal. So I will write.

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People sometimes ask for ‘proof’ of Brahman. Brahman itself is the necessary condition - the fundamental substratum - for any proof to stand on (without the Eternal Witness, to whom is anything being proved?), but let that be for now. What is the response of Advaita Vedanta when someone asks for an undeniable sign of Brahman?

There are multiple responses to this, but here is one - Each and every sensory signal you receive, each and every thing you are aware of, through any of your senses, is proof of Brahman. That might at first seem like a strange thing to say, so let us try and understand it.

At every waking moment, we are hit by a deluge of signals. We see things, we hear things (also we think of things, we know things). Let us take any one of these signals. I am seeing these Bose headphones on the table in front of me. This headset is a direct pointer to Brahman; it is a symbol of Brahman. How so?

When I see the headset I think of it as existing, correct? I can say - the headset seems to exist. Or, since no one talks that way usually, I can say the headset is here. It is. If you have a few minutes, do this - pick any object in front of you and firmly look at it. For five minutes (set a timer), just keep looking at it. Don’t worry about processing any thought that comes to your mind, just look at it. The existence of the object might begin to hit you like a rock. The headset exists. 

It is something that we take for granted, we hardly even think of it, but isn’t existence itself simply stunning? If you don’t think so, extend the timer by another 10 minutes and keep looking at the object 🙂

When we look at an object we focus on the names and forms (whatever makes the headset different from, say, the pen lying next to it), but we take the existence of the object for granted. But Vedanta asks us to go under the surface and focus on that underlying existence. 

At a basic level, we can say that when I see the headset I see the existence of the headset along with the shape and color of the headset. Let us club shape, color, and all such things into the term appearance-of-headset. So then - when I see the headset I am seeing existence-of-headset plus appearance-of-headset. Make sure you are comfortable with this formulation - I am just simply stating the facts as we see them.

Let us go a step deeper now.

The formula above seems to indicate that there are 2 properties of the headset: property 1 is existence-of-headset and property 2 is appearance-of-headset. 

But is existence a property? 

Properties are tagged on to underlying substances. In a blue lotus (a common example in Vedanta), the blueness is the property of the underlying lotus. I can swap blue with red (i.e. change the property), and the lotus becomes a red lotus. Through this change of color, the ‘substance’ is the same - blue or red, it is still a lotus. Thus properties seem like optional ‘things’ that can be attached to an object; they are not essential to the object. 

Is existence, by this definition, a property? Is it something that can be tagged on to - or removed from - or increased, decreased - from an object?

Ask yourself this - What happens when you remove existence from an object? It will, well, stop existing; it is no more. That means existence is not an incidental property of an object - it is not optional; you cannot add or remove it to an object.

You cannot take an object and sprinkle some existence onto it - if there is an object, that means it already has existence; without existence, there won’t be an object to speak about. 

Existence thus is the ‘substance’ of the object; existence is what the object really is - existence is what remains unchanged in the object across multiple changing properties.¹ 

When I see my headset, then, what I am seeing is some color and form and so forth, AND existence itself. Is this existence that I see in the headset different from the existence I see in the pen next to it? Ask yourself - how can it be? Whatever is differentiating the pen and the headset are properties (if existence itself were to be the differentiating factor between the two objects, it can only mean that one object exists and the other does not.) The pen exists and the headset exists - existence itself is common to both.²

In other words, existence is the common substratum to all the objects that we perceive. And not just ‘physical’ objects, but even your thoughts that come for a second and go away. When you had the thought, it ‘was’, right? The thought  ‘existed’. Even in that thought you saw existence. In everything that you are seeing or hearing or thinking about, you are directly witnessing existence. Peel the layer of differentiating properties from each object and look beneath - existence is all there is.³

In everything, you are witnessing Brahman as pure existence - sat. Choicelessly so. Take any object of your senses and put it through the Vedantic lens and out comes Brahman. 

Thus one need not look beyond the world to find Brahman (which is good news for us, since we are stuck with this world). One need not shut off or look away from the world to seek That. ‘Sarvam khalvidam Brahma’ - ‘All this is Brahman indeed!’ If we can get ourselves to look beneath appearances (which is where the hard spiritual journey comes in), Reality is right here. 

The vision of Brahman is all around us - in everything, everywhere, all the time. We just need to learn how to look.

1. If you are closely following this you might ask - What if I break the object and crush it and blow it away - will existence go away? No, it will still be right there. Existence is right there, but the properties of that object have changed. Destroy everything in the universe, and existence itself will still be as is, untouched. The Advaitic position is that there ARE no properties apart from the substance - i.e. there is only pure existence, and properties are unreal appearances. There is only the non-dual substance (i.e. Brahman). This is a straightforward logical conclusion from what we have already demonstrated, but it requires some explanation which will expand this footnote beyond reasonable bounds. Let us tackle that in a follow-up piece.

2. There is a common Buddhist objection to this, which goes - if all you can see are the properties, what gives you the liberty to claim there is an unseen substance underneath (call it existence or anything else)? Perhaps there are only properties, with nothing holding them together. In other words, what if there is no substance at all. To which the Vedantist will say - the very fact that you are aware of something - call it 'just' an assortment of properties or whatever else you want - shows that there is an unchanging substratum of existence; otherwise to what are the properties appearing? The Buddhist might counter by saying that the properties are momentary in nature, coming into existence and going out of existence in infinitesimal intervals of time, hence they don't have 'existence'. To which the Vedantist will respond - If they are laid out in a series (so as to give the illusion of permanence), then that just proves that there is a thread stitching these momentary appearances together; without a background that remains unchanged, what sense does it make to talk of any connected series? In what is the connection between subsequent moments happening? All change implies an unchanging principle as the background.

3. The core tenet of Advaita is that existence is awareness (or consciousness). There is NO difference between existence and consciousness; reality is existence is consciousness. So whatever I demonstrated using ‘existence’ can also be done using ‘awareness’. It is just a difference in language. One can put it like this: if you are aware of anything (i.e. any object), what is undeniable is the presence of the ‘pure awareness’ (to what is the object appearing?). Take any object in your awareness and peel away its differentiating properties - you are left with awareness itself. In each and every object lies the symbol of the Unborn, Unchanging Witness.