If you are Turiya, pure consciousness, you don’t have problems. If you have problems, then in some sense you’re still identified with the body and mind … Problems are always there in the three states, but in the one reality beyond the three states there is no problem … Realizing yourself as that, then live your life in the waking state, in the dream state, and in the deep sleep state—you are not affected by any of it.
To get stuck in a particular body, mind, and personality is ignorance. To step back from a particular body, mind, and personality into the background consciousness is enlightenment.
When you are enlightened, you realize everything is that one consciousness.
This very consciousness that you have right now, this awareness itself, is the absolute reality … This very self, this Self itself, is the absolute reality.
I am not a bundle of flesh and thought. I am consciousness to which appears this entire universe … Now, the subtle question is what are these objects which appear to us? Are they distinct, are they exterior to consciousness, or are they in some sense interior to consciousness? … Both the world and the body are experienced in thought, and thoughts are experienced in consciousness. When you pursue this line of thought, then the initial distinction which we made to appreciate ourselves as beings of pure consciousness, we begin to see not only consciousness but whatever consciousness is aware of—the entire external universe, the entire internal universe of thoughts and emotions—all of that is also not distinct from consciousness. It’s true that consciousness is distinct from everything it experiences and illumines, but that which it experiences and illumines is not actually distinct from consciousness because it’s just an abstraction to say that something exists outside consciousness.
The good and the bad, the elevating and the demeaning, float past you in the stream of the mind. You are the consciousness sitting on the banks of the river of the mind watching.
Consciousness alone is the reality and that which we take to be the non-conscious—matter, time, space, bodies, this world—these are appearances in consciousness, not apart from consciousness. Just like a dream when you go to sleep and dream—all the things that you see in the dream have no existence apart from your own mind. In the same way, this entire universe which we experience has no existence apart from consciousness … There is no reasonable, logical answer within the dream for a dream.
Shankara’s commentary on the Brahma Sutra is the foundation of Advaita Vedanta, nondual Vedanta … ‘Nondual’ means apart from you—that real Self—there is no other thing. You are the only reality that exists. Apart from you, there is no second thing. If there is not two, a very interesting consequence is then everything that we see around you must be, in some sense, you only—not not apart from you … Consciousness is nondual meaning there is no second thing apart from consciousness … In you the consciousness, the entire universe is an appearance—not a second thing apart from you, hence you are that nondual consciousness … Oneness at the core expressed as the many—then what we have to practice is the harmony of the many.
This universe which you experience, you are experiencing it in your consciousness. In your consciousness, no universe is born—it appears. No universe is produced. No universe actually evolves. It appears, it is experienced, it disappears.
Advaita says the entire universe is an object, known and unknown, appearing in consciousness—not distinct from consciousness, not constituting a countable second to consciousness. It’s not actually a second entity apart from consciousness, just as waves are not a countable second apart from water … All the universe, known and unknown, is nothing but consciousness appearing to itself as its own objects, and therefore not two, non-dual.
You are not really the waker. You are not really the dreamer. You are not the deep sleeper … Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep keep coming and going throughout our days, but behind it is one common consciousness, one common awareness.
You the Self are the witness of the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep … All of the three states (waking, dreaming, deep sleep) are appearances—they appear and disappear in one consciousness which is the Turiya, your real nature.
This entire world, body, mind, this person, and all other persons are all appearances in Me, the one consciousness.
Body-mind appearances appear in you, the consciousness, and they disappear within you. You, the consciousness, are the experiencer but ever unaffected.
Advaita Vedanta makes a clear distinction between mind and consciousness on the basis that mind is something that appears to consciousness. Therefore, consciousness is just that which illumines all objects … First-person experience is what consciousness does … From Advaita’s perspective, the definition of experience is ‘consciousness plus object.'
What is Vedanta? Swami Vivekananda would say two things: the divinity within us, and the oneness of existence … Vivekananda used Advaita Vedanta as a foundation for morality. What Swami Vivekananda said was, because it is one reality, if I hurt somebody else, if I cheat somebody else, if I lie to somebody else, I am hurting myself in the deepest sense … Swami Vivekananda has said that he who runs away from the world to meditate and die in a Himalayan cave searching for God has missed the way. He who plunges headlong into the vanities of the world—he too has missed the way. Then what is the way? The way is to spiritualize your everyday life … We should realize ourselves as pure consciousness—Turiya—and everyone and everything as none other than the same Turiya, and live life in peace and fullness and joy. Realize the divinity within yourself and the spiritual oneness of the whole universe. Manifest that divinity in daily life through peace, love, and service to all beings. That is the spiritualization of everyday life.