[Advaita-l] What do we interact with as people?

[V Subrahmanian]

What do we interact with as people?

Swami Paramarthananda in one of his classes made this very crucial, but not
at all generally perceived, revelation. He asked his students:  How would
you feel if I were to tell you that I am seeing in front of me inert bodies
and minds?  Surely you would retort:  How could you ever say that to us who
are beautiful, well-dressed, well-educated , intelligent and well-mannered
people?  How indeed could we be inert entities?

The Swamiji went on to say, what you would say is true of me as well. You
are seeing in front of you a me, an inert body-mind entity.  And he
explained:

When I speak to you, it is the body doing the speech function through the
speech organ, vaagindriya.  When you hear that, it is the hearing
instrument, shrotrendriya, that does the hearing. Your mind assimilates
it.  The shaastra teaches that all this is pancha bhuta kaarya, inert,
anaatma.  This alone is actually perceived by you and me.  But the Atma
that is what you and I are  is really not perceived, being not an object of
perception. Therefore, all interactions happen at the body-mind level alone
which is inert.  The substratum of all this, the Atman, is there, without
which these interactions can never happen, is the one missed by most of us
and the shaastra wants us to recognize this and realize that we are the
Atman and not the body-mind.

In this background that the Swamiji has built, we can ask questions like:

What is it that is cared for, looked after, by parents with regard to
children?

What is it that is governed, administered, protected, by the government, or
the King?

What is it that is protected, nourished, etc. by Bhagavan?

To all these questions the common reply is: the body-mind complex alone and
nothing other than that.  When parents care for, feed, nourish, develop,
etc. with regard to children, it is nothing other than the body, the mind,
the intellect, that is what gets nourished, developed, honed, etc. The
govt. too protects the body alone of the subjects. And by extension,
Ishwara too enlivens, energizes, protects, nourishes, etc. the body-mind
alone.  The most significant 'extra' that Ishwara does is: provide the
means for us to realize that we are not the body-mind but the Atman.

Thus, children depend on parents only for the protection etc. of their
body-mind. We depend on the govt. only for our rations, security,
infrastructure that helps our body-mind grow.  So too we depend on Bhagavan
only for the protection of our body-mind, the development of the skills to
realize the Atman as distinct from the body-mind and also realize that it
is the Atman that is at the back of the mind and sense organs for their
functioning.  Bhagavan or Ishwara or Paramatman cannot and does not protect
the Atman, the Pure Consciousness, that is distinct from the
body-senses-mind complex. This is simply because the Atman, the true nature
of all of us, does not need any protection for it exists by itself, never
to be destroyed by any force whatsoever. Hence there is no dependence on
any other entity by/for the Atman. It is anatman that needs and gets the
support of the Atman/Bhagavan/Ishwara/Paramatman.

It is the Upanishads that Shankara has expounded that teach us this truth.
It is only in Shankara's works, and nowhere else, can we see this message
explicitly given out.

Om Tat Sat