Essence of Advaita

[Miguel Angel Carrasco]

On 29 Dec 1997, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote :

>> Unless I can untie this Gordian knot, saying ^ÓI am That^Ô will not bear
>> much meaning for me and will sound like an imposture.
>> If I am really That, I needn^Òt say it.
>> If I do need to say it, then I am not That.

>Remember what Alexander did to the Gordian knot? He didn't waste effort
>trying to untie it. He took a sword to it and cut asunder the ropes that
>made up the knot. You must do a similar thing with these questions.

On reading this answer, I felt confused and a tiny bit annoyed. I thought,
where is Alexander^Òs sword, to cut the Gordian knot? How can I just cut the
questions without having an answer?

Now I^Òm starting to see that there are questions with no answers. Silly
questions.  A good friend helped me there.

So, as a penance for my silly question, I^Òll try now to amend my previous
stance.

I do accept and understand that all questions arise in the mind.
That the mind is not an entity, but only a stream of thoughts.
That one of those thoughts is the body and the person.
That all the world is a set of thoughts.
That all events (all thoughts) merely appear in the One Consciousness.
That there is no agent.
That every single event is a link in the chain of appearances.
That no event is better than others.
That it is all lila, a sort of show or movie with no purpose.
That the One, the Witness, is in no way affected by the images that appear
on its Consciousness, the Screen.
That my body-mind is but a character in that movie.
That I am not that character, which is only a mental object, an empty form
with name.
That what is real in me is only Consciousness, the One Subject,
the Witness, the Self, which is not an object and has no qualities.
That the cognizer cannot be cognized.
That all statements including ^Óshould^Ô, ^Ómust^Ô, etc are only part of the
movie.
That nothing can really be done.
That no statement is ever absolutely true.
That there is only the One Consciousness, and everything else is imagined.

That even this declaration is inadequate, as truth can only be lived, not
expressed.

All the above I fully understand. With no reservations.

Just one more observation, probably a silly one, as usual. I graphically
imagine the Screen of Consciousness as an immense void with no limits or
attributes. But more solid than rock. Lila appears on a tiny area of it.
There are many characters in the film. One never seems to leave the scene,
Miguel Angel. The movie gets seen through this particular character^Òs mind,
as a sort of autobiography. This fact affects the clarity of the viewing.
Luckily, his mind responds to other characters^Ò advice and appears
to be getting clearer, emptier, more transparent, thereby allowing a
cleaner, purer vision. Initially the movie appears with no borders, no
frame around it, so it is taken as the only reality.Gradually, a frame
emerges: the very character through which it is seen. Having now a
perimeter, the scene is seen as an appearance. Only the frame looks real
still, until the obvious is realized: the frame and the image within are
both seen, therefore they are not the seer.
... And the seer just keeps on enjoying the LILA movie.