Welcome to Metaphysics of the Real. It is Friday 29th November, 2024, and this is your host, Oliver St. John. Sophia is our Guiding Light.
This second episode of the new series takes us in an entirely new direction. The Advaitan or Non-dual Way of Self-Realisation involves a prolonged and deep enquiry into the nature of the Self. By the Self, we do not mean the ego or the psychic domain of the person, but the true Self called Atma. ‘Self-Realisation’ is a short way of saying ‘direct knowledge of the supreme principial reality, gained not by inference or belief’. To the religious person or the bhakti devotee, this is knowledge of God, in whatever name or form God is worshipped. Advaita actually goes one step even beyond that and claims it is possible to know the Supreme Identity, otherwise called Brahma Nirguna, ‘Brahma with no attributes’, that is to say, beyond name and form. This is no small claim; however, seers and sages for millennia have asserted its truth. This episode includes readings from my book Advaita Vedanta—Question of the Real. The classical guitar was played and recorded the author, Oliver St. John and featured my own composition, ‘Awakening Om’.

Metaphysics of the Real, Episode 2 Part One: How do we Know?
The Advaitan or Non-dual Way of Self-Realisation involves a prolonged and deep enquiry into the nature of the Self. By the Self, we do not mean the ego or the psychic domain of the person, but the true Self called Atma. We must make it clear that this viveka ‘enquiry’ has nothing to do with any kind of ‘self-exploration’ in the ordinary way that is meant. We use the term ‘Self-Realisation’ even though it has, in the words of one scholar, become a cliché—we will go further and say that the term has suffered abuse. What better thing to do than to restore it to its true meaning? Sanskrit words do not have a direct translation in any modern language that can be put in one or two words. We have to use special terms created from our own language to approximate the meaning. ‘Self-Realisation’ is a short way of saying ‘direct knowledge of the supreme principial reality, gained not by inference or belief’. To the religious person or the bhakti devotee, this is knowledge of God, in whatever name or form God is worshipped. Advaita actually goes one step even beyond that and claims it is possible to know the Supreme Identity, otherwise called Brahma Nirguna, ‘Brahma with no attributes’, that is to say, beyond name and form. This is no small claim; however, seers and sages for millennia have asserted its truth. 
The Gnostics, a noun that is formed from the Greek gnosis, phonetically similar and identical in meaning to the Sanskrit jnana, ‘non-ordinary knowledge’, risked being done to death in horrible ways if they disclosed this truth. For that reason the Gnosis, or what is called Brahma-jnana in the Sanskrit, all but died out completely in the Western world, which is still largely ignorant of Advaita Vedanta, though study of the subject has increased through the efforts of certain monastic lineages, and the fact that many new translations of the core texts have been produced, some of these of a much higher quality than were previously available. Nonetheless, if we turn to a dictionary to look up Gnosticism we will find there that it is supposed by the experts that write these things to be something to do with ‘mysticism’, which it certainly is not! Mysticism must be attached to a religion, and involves emotional experience. Gnosis requires no religious attachment and rests on exact science, though of course that science is of an ancient and traditional kind, no longer understood by Western pundits let alone the man in the street.
How do we Know? The complaint often arises that words, by their very nature, are strictly limited when it comes to conveying non-perceptible reality. For instance, we say ‘Atma’ or ‘Brahma’, but how do I know what that means if I do not see Brahma? This is very true in so far as the words alone cannot convey what is really meant by them. If a person has never heard the word AUM before then we can show them the writing of the Sanskrit monosyllable. They say, ‘Very nice; it looks like a figure three with a crescent and a dot. But what does it mean?’ We can say, ‘You can also see it as a bow and arrow. The bow is your self, which you imagine to be body and mind. The hand that draws back the bow—an action that requires some effort—is the will to know. The arrow is light or consciousness itself, which must here be directed back to the source of all consciousness, which is called Brahma. When the arrow reaches the goal Brahma is truly known.’
All the same, the person goes away and in the confusion of their mind they think ‘Now I know that Brahma is a bow and arrow, which is another word for the same thing. But all I know is words, words and more words! I still do not know Brahma.’ That is very true and so for this reason we have a whole range of practices. Even the Advaita Vedanta school, which is not overly concerned with teaching yoga or breathing exercises and so forth, admits that practice is needed and can never be dispensed with until the person realises they are a Jivanmukta, totally enlightened and free forever—here and now, not in some remote future. That is the third and final stage. It is the other two stages we are mostly concerned with here, however much beginning students love to imagine they can get straight to the ultimate goal in ‘one flash of light’. In fact, that flash of light experience is very often still an experience and it is not the supreme realisation. The beginner is the one who hears or reads these words and doubts their truth. All the same, he is a beginner, which means he wants to start something, so there is certainly a small part of the viveka discrimination in him that thinks ‘There might be something in all this’.
For him, it is very, very difficult to know how to approach something like Atma, however it is put to him. The practices therefore are really only there to support this knowledge but they are indispensible to beginner and the yogin alike. Of the advanced practitioner, the vision of St. Paul on the road to Damascus is a good example. In one flash of light he saw the truth and simultaneously realised his mission to teach it. While that experience as such may or may not be the supreme realisation—we cannot really know—it is evident from the writings of St. Paul that his knowledge went to a very high degree. We do not have to be like St. Paul to know with certainty that all these words like Atma, Brahma and so forth, indicate what is real and true. That it is not a mere philosophical puzzle for those who like ‘abstract’ things. They know all this knowledge, even what is written, is very far from being abstract or ‘only in the mind’. In fact, in this day and age, and even a long time ago, those who have reached this level of spiritual maturity are few in number. If you are counted among them then rejoice! You have already received a thousand blessings from the Lord. 
The work for the beginner is doing the practice, which means reserving time for it instead of doing and thinking all the other things that can be done and thought about in the (false) world of ‘I am this body and mind, in a universe full of other bodies, other minds, creatures and things’. The work for the yogin is to keep on doing the meditation and not to become complacent, thinking it is enough to have a conviction of truth and rest there, or to fall into (tamasic) inertia, as a consequence of neglecting the practice. 
Now a word on ‘enlightenment’, a word that is often used far too loosely: As this knowledge that is our subject is only known with certainty in the minds of a few, what of the further degrees of Self-Realisation—so long as we admit that there are gradations or degrees? It is only in the most rare circumstances that an individual, owing to the accrued karma of many previous states of being, has aparoksha—direct knowledge of Brahma or the Real through entering what are best termed superconscious states. Of these rare cases, some of them become gurus, and they devise all sorts of ways and means to help others realise what they know with absolute clarity—we are not speaking of a mere philosophical ‘solution’.
A qualification is needed: By ‘previous states of being’ we do not mean ‘reincarnation’, which is a doctrine of the Theosophists that was invented in the nineteenth century. We refer to the transmigration of souls, which forms an accepted part of nearly all traditions. A soul is not born into a succession of human lives following a timeline forward through ‘history’. We are only born and die once in the human state, which is but one of countless states of the being that are possible.
It also happens to be true that the various degrees of realisation—while we accept this admittedly dualistic approach to knowledge—owe to the mysterious condition called maya, involving, as we have pointed out, previous births. Owing to that, realisation can come to a person at any time, even when it is least expected. This can happen regardless of whether the person seems to ‘deserve it’ or not, or whether they are thought of, or think of themselves, as being a good or a bad person.
In fact, such is the surprise element that St. Paul was a Roman that persecuted early Christians before he ‘saw the light’ while on the road to Damascus. He went on to become one of the most revered teachers of Christian practice—what a turn around! Metanoia in this case does not only mean changing one’s mind about something, it is far more profound and involves real knowledge, not of the ordinary kind.
Multiple errors can arise, which it is our purpose to point out. Firstly, this knowledge is not gained by reading or studies alone, but study is indispensible too as a support to realisation. It is also not even gained by persistent practice—which might come as a surprise to some people, because we know that practice is also indispensible. We could cite examples of persons that were ordained as monks or nuns in certain traditional disciplines—it matters not here of the difference in so-called paths because the goal must always be one and the same no matter how it is named or defined. These did nothing else but study, attend lectures and ordinations and meditate for long hours in isolation. After perhaps as much as fifteen or twenty years, they left the Order and were still in some doubt as to whether God even exists or is real at all—or in the case of Buddhists, many of whom are atheistic, whether there can really be such a thing as is called nirvana, and if there is, if it is in any way attainable. Or it may be they doubt if the Buddha himself existed, or avatars in some schools that retain contact with these. These were not in any way changed by what they experienced and before long they forgot most of what they had been doing all those years; what they can remember of it is no different from the recollection of a dream, somewhat vague and ephemeral. However much practice is needed, it is not by practice alone then that Self-Realisation comes about. Individuals are ‘qualified’ for knowledge in different ways; meditating in a cell or cave for years is no guarantee.
As for those who become Associates or even practitioners of an Order such as ours, they come and go like fish in a pond. If you have ever sat watching fish in a pond for some time then you will know that you see certain fish nibbling around among the weeds. Some of them shoot straight off and disappear. Others stay for a while, or go away and then return, but only a very few actually stay in that one spot you are observing. We will come back to that in a moment. The person that desires more and more sensual enjoyment in life, more ‘experience’, above all else, will get their wish granted through endless rebirth into other states of being until they realise that the very nature of such desire is never satisfied and leads only to more suffering and death. For the latter, a swift enlightenment will never be gained by ‘giving things up’ temporarily and then returning to those things as soon as enlightenment is gained, as if it was a bargain! Nothing can be denied until one has really had enough of it all and no longer wants it. To continue the analogy of the fishpond, those who stay in the one spot are as rare as those whom we call ‘advanced’ because they do not need to have their existence or the existence of God proved to them; they fully intend to take it further than that. If that is their wish then it will be granted sooner or later.
In Dakshinamurti Stotra 7: 32, Shankaracharya, different ways of getting to Self-Realisation are mentioned, and by that what is meant is knowing that the true Self is Brahma and no other, sometimes called ‘enlightenment’. Firstly, there is the way of Advaita Vedanta, which is directly knowing, seeing or recognising through viveka discrimination that Atma and Brahma are truly one. Then there is smrti or secondary knowledge, which means dilligently studying the shruti scriptures and their commentaries, learning, memorising, thinking and meditating on them. This may seem a contradiction of what was said earlier, that real knowledge is not acquired by reading a book, or even hundreds of books. In fact, while the words alone do not convey the knowledge, they point to that which is far beyond the mind to comprehend on its own ground. For this reason, scriptures are valid testimony and by a certain mystery of the Lord of the Universe and the power of Maya for some few persons partial or even full realisation can come about. It serves this way or route to knowledge by positing that Atma is known ‘inside the body’ (Bhagavad Gita 13: 2). While this is not strictly speaking true, for the lesser cannot contain the greater, it is the first step on the road to enlightenment and has been proved over very many centuries to work.
There is a kind of intermediary between this second way and the third one, which will be described in a moment. How can the mind know something that is not of the mind? The mind sees objects. The objects themselves are not self-luminous. Does the mind see things with its own light? This can be proved not to be so. The mind itself only exists because of what is called the light of consciousness—one must make a clear difference between thought and consciousness. This self-luminous light—for nothing else can illuminate it—is called the Witness, which observes all but does not participate. That is called Atma, which is one with Brahma. If the mind constantly turns to thoughts of this one light, which is all-pervading consciousness, not of the mind, an impression is formed in the mind that will ultimately erase all other impressions, because although it is still chitta-vritti (‘stream or wave’ of mind), it happens to be true whereas all other impressions are not true. In this way the mind assists in its own sublation. This might also be seen as the real power of the Word, which as according to St. John the Evangelist, is ‘with God’, and is also called Christ or Krishna or by countless names in all traditions.
Thirdly there is the case of aparoksha, the direct experience of realised souls as ‘I am Brahma’. These sometimes become gurus with special powers to help them in their mission. The fullest kind of samadhi called Nirvikalpa is among what we call superconscious states. This samadhi does not require any effort, although the person might have put that effort in towards attainment of more ordinary kinds of samadhi for many years. Either way, the recipient must be prepared for such an experience by spiritual practice otherwise it counts for nothing. As this comes about through previous births, as we have said, it is unpredictable. It can come at any time.
Nirvikalpa literally means ‘without change’, which means without mental fluctuations. In fact, it is sometimes compared to being in deep dreamless sleep (sushupti) then becoming fully conscious without returning to the dreaming or the wakeful states. It is clearly stated in the Upanishads that he who awakens in this way will know Brahma. The mind is hardly present at all, only in a seed form, so to speak. One is not aware of body or mind. How is it then possible to know that we were in deep sleep? Consciousness, the Witness, is Atma, not the mind or the thoughts. In Nirvikalpa we are Atma and no other while the mind and body are in a dormant state. We also know that Atma and Brahma are one, as this is self-evident in that samadhi. The full Sanskrit word aparokshanubhuti for this direct knowledge is translated differently in books and dictionaries but in the highest sense it is ‘the self vanishing into Brahma’. Hold on to that thought—it is what is meant by the sublation of the mind.
Lastly, there is aitihya. This is the oral tradition passed on from guru to the disciples as in That thou art (tat-tvam-asi), one of the great statements of the Upanishads. Put simply, it means that ‘you are, in reality, Brahma’. It should be mentioned as we are writing this in the penultimate phase of the Age of Kali Yuga that a disciple has to be exactly that, in the etymological meaning of the word, ‘follower of the discipline’. So yes, they follow the guru but that also means they follow out what he teaches, including the practical instruction! As a genuine guru is magnetic, in a manner of speaking, with or without special powers of charisma, eloquence and so forth, there will always be those drawn to him but unable to in any way comprehend who or what he truly is—they only see the man. The same is also said of avatars in the Bhagavad Gita, that Krishna is able to dwell in a human form from time to time but men will not see Krishna, they only see the human being. In their ignorance of reality, for they only see the covering or superimposition called maya, they are quite unable to pass beyond the appearance of things in the world. To the enlightened person they are exactly like prisoners in an iron cage—and they do not see the cage. That cage is the body and the mind, which they accept as absolute reality, no matter what words are said to the contrary in spiritual texts or even by direct word of a guru who has true knowledge of what he is talking about.
The universe of physical objects is to the unenlightened person beyond dispute. In fact, even Advaita Vedanta, the highest knowledge, does not deny that things exist or that we experience those things in our bodies and minds. What it does do is deny them ultimate reality. The most often used analogy is that of the rope hanging in a darkened room that is mistaken for a snake. If someone tells you it is a rope and you look more closely you will see it is a rope, which is the reality. After that, you only see the rope and are not deluded by the appearance of the snake. Now this analogy and others of a similar kind, involving clouds in the sky that appear as castles, creatures or giants, or trees that appear from the distance to be a man, is repeated many times in Advaitan texts, and for good reason.
The reason is that no matter how many times it is heard it is very difficult for a person to grasp who believes that their Self (really Atma) is the body and mind, that they have a ‘life’, consisting of firstly the fact that they were born, then the name that was bestowed on them by parents, then a history of events, situations, triumphs and failures, memories and so forth, along with all they are attached to as possessions, including the relationships of friends, wives, husbands, parents, children, grandchildren and even pet animals, for example. This powerful belief is reinforced since the day we are born. We learn that we have a name that distinguishes us from others. We have parents; we live in a house, a city, a country and so forth. Then education continues to teach us about objects completely apart from the true Self, even to what is considered to be an advanced level. Everything, even if we study Quantum Physics, is a story of objects apart from ourselves and includes nothing at all about the nature of the Self, called Atma-Brahma. Television, newspapers, media, the talk of other persons, all of it serves to reinforce the great delusion of the separate self involved in a world ‘outside’ as though it were the supreme reality, beyond argument. Only metaphysics dares to reject this belief, this mistaken identification. There is one other route to enlightenment mentioned specifically in the commentary of Swami Harshananda on 7: 32 of Dakshinamurti Stotra, which is that of inference (anumāna):
Here, the jiva or individual self or ego is realised as not essentially different from Ishvara, God or the Lord of the Universe as it is put in the Vedic shruti scriptures. This way is held in common with Advaita and Ashtanga Yoga, though the means to it are different. This last way is very prone to error in those whose minds are faulty. The person says, ‘I am God; that’s great and so what? Nothing else to do then.’ However, in yoga the realisation comes about when the fluctuations or ‘waves’ (upadhis) of the mind and all its various impressions are stilled or suppressed completely. Then there is no difference seen between the reflection of sky in water and the sky itself. This way is mentioned in the Yoga-Sutras and it is by no means something that a person will get to by attending a few classes or doing a banishing ritual every day for a few months. Acceptance of it as an ideal in the mind only is also very dangerous, for reasons that should be fairly obvious. The person so deluded may, to a certain extent, spread their delusion to others, acting out a rôle of anti-guru. Yet for some of those so taken in by a charlatan—and a charlatan may yet be sincere in his mistaken beliefs—even that encounter might provide a means to realisation so long as they are able to free their minds. Things are never as simple as we might like, however. It may also be that the guru is telling the truth and is absolutely valid. It is only that the person, not willing or able to follow the teaching, or lacking in faith and the intellect to comprehend it, seeks an easy way out of the dilemma by declaring they have seen through the disguise and already have found a greater truth! All such problems, however, arise from belief that the body and mind are the real Self. This is the essential error of all men, even when they need no proof that they exist as it is self-evident.
Advaita does not deny existence when it says the world is an illusion. It is pointing to the source of that appearance, which is the sole Real. In that way, all that exists is real also—and one. It must be understood clearly that there are not two things, Maya and the Real. With knowledge the appearance, how things seem to be, vanishes and is replaced by the realisation that nothing exists outside of Brahma.
In the final measure, nothing exists that is apart from light or consciousness, and by now we hope to have established clearly that light of consciousness is not the same thing as mind and thought. It remains to mention here a question that persistently arises as soon as we talk of ‘enlightenment’, which as we have said is used far too loosely, most particularly in popular New Age books and by those with pretended knowledge. It is a mistake to imagine that, as this constitutes a permanent change of state in the being—we never return to a previous state—we will then see the exterior world vanish away or otherwise will see everything in rays of light. No, this is not in any way true, not even of some of the greatest spiritual masters the world has known. The exterior world still looks the same. The difference is that we know that the world is not, only Brahma is. We do not all have to become monks. But we must become monks in our hearts. The realisation is an interior one.
After a short break, we will resume with Enquiry into the Nature of the Self.

Metaphysics of the Real, Episode 2 Part Two: Enquiry into the Nature of the Self.
Advaita Vedanta teaching, if we take the work of the avatar Sri Shankaracharya as the model, is at least 1,400 years old. In fact that is only the written down part, the tradition is at least 5,000 years old. So while some of the principles of this, the most complete and perfect knowledge that is the highest goal of any human being to reach, have been misappropriated by New Age fake spirituality, the core teaching remains impervious to such assaults made upon it. The enquiry into the nature of the true Self, or Atma, is supported by the recognition that ‘I am not this body, I am not this mind’. That happens to contradict everything that is ‘normally’ and habitually assumed to be the self. The first stage of the work corresponds to Solve in alchemy: we have to use viveka discrimination to separate out what is not the Real, the Self, from all else. Consciousness is not the same as mind, thoughts or feelings. Adi Shankaracharya gives many examples to prove this by simple logic, which any intelligent person should be able to testify from their own experience. It is not something that has to be believed in, or an abstract philosophy to entertain the mind. The testimony is what we all experience all of the time—it is not some sort of mysticism. But there is a great deal of repetition of these simple examples because it is very hard for people to ‘get it’. The person must realise it for themselves and not merely be convinced or persuaded by a powerful argument, or feel they want to believe it.
It is very hard for people to grasp that their perceptions, both external and even subtle, or of the mind internally as experience, are not the Real (Atma). To understand this and even to know it or realise it—which is not the same as understanding it though that helps—is a very important step to have reached on the way of Self-Realisation.
How does a person internalise this teaching in such a way that they are able to live its principles? This cannot be done overnight, much as people would like to have ‘instant enlightenment’ served up for them on a plate, or on the click of a mouse. We have already covered the four stages in the traditional method. Internalising it means realising it to be true so there is no doubt in the mind. When it comes to living out its principles we are skating on a very thin sheet of ice if we think we can do this before we have achieved actual realisation—which is more than an intellectual understanding. Otherwise, if we try to live it out when our basis is imperfect knowledge and insufficient preparation, purification of mind and so forth, we will fall flat on our faces. Others will not be fooled by our pretension. If it is ‘lived out’ only in exterior ways—something implied by the very terms we have chosen here—then it has become something very different from Self-Realisation in the way it is meant here, and there is no truth involved. It contradicts the first limb of the Ashtanga Yoga.
Until realisation is gained, what we think of as ‘my life’, ‘how I live’, always brings us back to the ignorance of ‘my self is this body, my self is this mind’, which means automatically there are all these other selves and objects out there in the world that are not my Self. That automatically evokes fear—fear of all those things that are not my self. I like this but I hate that. ‘I am what I like’ automatically evokes all we dislike. All induces fear. Until realisation is fully gained, then living out principles is usually about ordinary things. It boils down to morality and ethics. We can only ‘do the right thing’, ‘do what seems to be best’, or do things that do not cause harm to others, as stated in the Eight Limbs of Yoga for example. That is all about doing and action, which is karma. The way of Self-Realisation is not about doing things and acting as such. The realisation is internal not external. But that does not mean that when we gain realisation, or even enlightenment, we stop doing anything in the world at all. We will continue to do what we have to do but we will see things very differently. We will no longer be lost in samsara, the world illusion.
We need to be clear on this however: the first two steps of the Eight Limbs of Yoga, yamas and niyamas, cannot be missed out. Otherwise doing yoga is like a man with no legs trying to stand up. It is impossible. Once we have got the basis, then we can go to the yoga, samadhi and the way of Self-Realisation in earnest. However, if at the very beginning of practice we want to make it all about doing things and acting then we fail in the concentration within, which is necessary before meditation is even possible. Such ideas about external things will prevent us from doing the practice—it leads us outside of and away from the Self and into the exterior world, which includes thoughts, fears and imagining.
The purpose of the ‘abstentions and practices’ is to get all that out of the way—it does not become an end in itself. If that happens then the clear water of a practice well done is turned into mud straight away and we can’t see a thing, because of the mental habit of putting everything outside the Self through self-identification with exterior objects. It is the most common error in the world. We could even say it belongs to the world but not to the Self. This is why we need to work the first stage in Self-Realisation, which is to use the viveka discrimination to separate out everything that is not the real Self and establish ourselves in the Atma Self, at least intellectually. That might seem like a contradiction but otherwise it is all mixed up and any practice will be ineffective so it is not even worth doing in the first place.
The conservation of energy for the Great Work is frequently not understood at all by practitioners, or if it is understood, as soon as they get immersed in the world—which is in most cases nearly all the time—they slip back helplessly into the ‘default mode’ of worldly people and forget the true Self. Logistics, problem solving and all that, there is no end to it. Then they spend an entire day involved with appointments, tasks, meetings and so on, and they try to dilligently put in twenty minutes or so yoga and meditation practice the last thing before they go to bed at night, by which time the body and mind are tired and all they really want to do is sleep. In that case, to use a sacrificial analogy, all we are doing is offering the dregs or leavings, and keeping the good wine for chats and tasks and appointments and all the rest of it. We have to sort out what we have to sort out, but if we do it that way we are losing ourselves in ‘ordinary life’ and forgetting that we are Atma, infinite. That is the whole point of doing the viveka discrimination.
So much misery arises when we grasp and try and hold on to exterior things, which is always in the hope of finding joy and happiness. But if we do that, the pleasures are only temporary and we are taken along with the ups and downs, and the unavoidable woes and sorrows when expectations are unfulfilled. This applies to everything in life: relationships, husband, wife, children, possessions, even pet animals and cars, houses, money, status, our achievements and failings, all of it. We try and find happiness in things that are not permanent. It will bring nothing but endless misery and all because we were trying to find happiness in other people and things and not looking for that happiness within that is unchanging and forever. Then we get old and it does not get better. When we die all of it is gone—and death is the one certain truth that no one can argue against. In fact there have been and perhaps still are ‘immortalists’ that think that the immortality referred to in scriptures, alchemical texts and so forth, can be gained literally in the flesh. These tend to lose credibility when they die!
What then of our achievements and failings, joys and sorrows, our possessions and responsibilities? All gone. When we are able to find that deep spiritual joy from knowledge within we can still act in the world as necessary but if we know our Self is Brahma, infinite, then what more do we need? We have everything we could possibly want. It can then easily be seen that possession of anything is an illusion, even if it is a very powerful illusion for most people. All the same that does not mean we have to ‘give up’ all our possessions to follow out a spiritual path, or go to live in a cave in the Himalayas, or join a monastery. The realisation is internal not external. From that perspective it makes no difference whether we live in a shed, a caravan or trailer, or a billionaire mansion surrounded by trees—and no doubt electronic security fences and surveillance cameras.
The enlightened person does not self-identify with all these exterior objects any more than the objects of mind, because they know that their Self is in reality infinite, absolute Brahma, the ‘one without a second’. That can never be changed. The billionaire who is in ignorance of the true Self is still subject to fears and worries and one day will get old and suffer sickness and then death. So much for the billionaire mansion. Someone else has it now. It may be passed on to children but we do not experience the ‘future’ through children or other people. The best thing to pass on to children is knowledge and even that is very difficult when they are brought up in a modern world that will completely overwhelm them with powerful arguments against all spiritual reality.
All the rules and obligations of ‘ordinary life’ we have touched on here are referred to samsara or the great world illusion as it is termed. But that does not mean we can duck out of the inevitable responsibilities. We will see things differently, however. The person that is lost in all those worries and cares and duties and things in the world, that imagines it all to be his Self, which is called avidya, ‘not seeing’ or ignorance, is lost in samsara. He is described as a beast of burden in the Upanishads. He worries that he should have done this or that. ‘Why did I do this when I should have done that?’ It goes on forever, without end. Seeing it all for what it truly is, even knowing our Self as the infinite, absolute, pure being, consciousness and bliss at all times, does not make the world go away. When we come out of meditation, even if we have reached the level called Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the highest, the world of things will be the same old world. Even God or Ishvara, the Lord of the Universe, does not put an end to this world until the time comes to put an end to it. It is not something that comes about through our own efforts.
Managing our lives then, which takes so much of our time, is not a spiritual thing and it can never be that because ‘my life’ is exterior. So we do the best we can with that. However, the full interior realisation does alleviate suffering. The person that has no belief in God or Reality other than body and mind suffers a great deal. The people they know and love will die and eventually they will die too, and they think it is like switching off a television set, nothing else to it. That is very, very miserable, and from the point of view of the Brahma-jnanin person, it is in itself a matter of some sorrow to see people suffer like that and not be able to help them because they are materialists that hate religion, God and real spirituality.
But that is also their ‘choice’. If it is the karma of the yogin to help other people then he is not deluded into thinking he can do very much to help people like that apart from in ordinary ways such as is done by charities—feeding and clothing the poor, providing shelter for the homeless. The yogin that follows the way of being a teacher to others will concentrate on helping those ones who can be helped because they have not destroyed the knowledge of the Real that is always inside them. As for the rest he practices forbearance and the Six Treasures, and so far as harmful or evil people are concerned, total indifference. There is one other way for the enlightened person that we shall come to at the end of this.
Practice is reading the right materials and thinking on it a great deal, as we have said. Then the meditation, over time, brings about realisation gradually. Other things can take care of themselves; or when it is something we have to take care of then we must do what is needed but we do not worry about all the rest. In meditation the mind is completely stopped and one idea is held in the heart-mind—ego awareness is theoretically located in the ‘cave’ inside the heart lotus, which is called the Seat of Brahma. Even doing that for ten minutes a day can make a huge difference so long as we are studying and thinking on the path as much as we can for all the rest of the time. Even in meditation intellect is needed—but it is a different kind of intellect, and not what people usually think of as intellect. What we refer to here is more like a flow of pure knowledge. Even reflected consciousness (the I-sense in Patañjali yoga) is not thought.
From a dualistic point of view—yet it is one that can take us very far—wisdom is an authentic relationship, as is the relation between the guru and the chela. Abiding with what is Real or True at the deepest level is not a relationship though, because it is realised as your Self and there is no other. Brahma is one without a second, which is Advaita Non-duality. In the meantime, we can use a lot of duality and sometimes the yoga of devotion (bhakti) is considered the highest path—and that is when the person realises the Self and the Real and still wants to go on loving God (in whatever name and form) out of the sheer joy. It is called ‘auspicious’ in the scriptures. That is why we include bhakti in the wide range of our Raja Yoga practices, as well as the Advaita Non-dualism we are here discussing, which is the highest knowledge.
Lastly, a question frequently made by the unenlightened person is ‘What is the point?’ Meaning, ‘If I should become enlightened then what can I do with that?’ We will ignore the obvious case where the person is just thinking about wanting something other than pure knowledge—which automatically means no enlightenment because whenever there is a lack or a need then ignorance is there too. Desire for knowledge is acceptable, though.
So far as post-enlightenment goes, if we can use such bizarre terms (considering the subject itself), there are three ways: the first way is that the person renounces everything and vanishes into the infinite. This is perfectly fine—all this depends on karma. It is only dangerous to try and do something that amounts to the karma of another person. The  second way is that the person stays around to help other people in the way of knowledge—they defer their retirement from the world in that way.
The third way is that the person works to help others in material ways, as with charities, good works and so forth. None of that can bring knowledge to the unenlightened or to the doer of the good works. When an enlightened person does that he does not seek anything for himself. His involvement with the world does not mean he is lost in that world. He is forever and always with the Self, which is called Brahma or Brahma consciousness.
So there are three ways of non-action and action—and all of them are in reality ‘actionless action’.
That brings Episode 2 of Metaphysics of the Real to a close. The music I played on the guitar was Awakening Om composed and recorded by myself. 
Thank you for your attention.
Sophia be-with-us forever.