Updated: March 23, 2025
Brahma Sutras and related scriptures. So let me see what the sutra translation says today. अपि च स्मर्यते
In perfect meditation Brahman is experienced. And from there, the shruti and smriti. OK. This needs a lot of elaboration. So let's go through a few things. First of all, if you believe in matter as the ontological primitive, which means matter is the fundamental reality, then there are a lot of problems in explaining any experience, any experience, motor or sensory, raise your hand, it starts with an intention which presumably is non material and then everything else here is material, right? Physical how does that happen? No explanation in science. So the first step in motor activity is kind of a mystery.
After the first step, you know, motor cortex gets activated and then sends an electrical impulse and all that is physical presumably. OK. So motor activity, first step is a miracle. If you believe in matter as the ontological primitive. Now look at an object or touch an object or you know, smell a rose or whatever and all that's going again to your brain is an action potential. That's physical electro chemistry. In the brain is also physical. But the experience, you know, these colors, shapes, forms sounds, textures.
How does electrochemistry create the appearance of the physical body of the physical universe? Again, last step in sensory experience is a miracle, close your eyes and let me ask you something, close your eyes now. And I ask you the following question, what did you eat for dinner last night? So let's say it was pizza or whatever you ate? Ok. As soon as I ask the question, then there's an experience, you know, you might remember where you were, the restaurant, the pizza, what it tasted like, who you were with, et cetera, et cetera.
There's an experience, mental experience. How did that happen? Where was that memory before I asked you, what did you have for dinner last night? Ok. People say memory is in the brain, but I can assure you there's no picture of pizza in the brain nor of the restaurant nor the conversation that you had , at the restaurant. Let's go a little deeper. , do you remember any incident from your teenage years? And suddenly there's an experience. Ok. Where was that memory before I asked you the question or go even further back? Do you remember an experience from your childhood? Certainly there is an experience, your mother, your father, the bedroom, you know, and that experience is images, sensations, feelings, thoughts. So where was that before I asked you the question and people neuroscientists will point to some part of the brain which is associated with that memory.
But where was the memory before I ask the question again? A big mystery, right? So there's no picture, there are no colors, there's no memory until you actually retrieve it. But where is it before you retrieve it? And when you retrieve it, there's no picture or sensation or, or anything that we can call an experience in your brain. So what's going on? Where is memory stored? Where is stored memory? This is impossible to answer. with our current science which believes in an objective world without without without consciousness. So the world exists independently and the brain is responsible for all motor and sensory activity and memory is stored in the brain. But you can see that everything I asked right now for you to do was basically inexplicable as long as you believe that matter, and brain is considered matter, is the ontological primitive, the fundamental realities physical. So we have to turn it upside down. If consciousness is the archaeological primitive and everything is a modified form of consciousness, then there's no problem. The intention is a modified form of consciousness, memories in the form of sensations, images, feelings, thoughts are modified consciousness, the body experienced as perceptual and cognitive activity is modified consciousness.
And so is the world no problem. So this leads to a very interesting interesting realization which includes everything, the mystery of death, the mystery of what could be called reincarnation or the recycling of memory and actually addresses existence itself. So let's say existence is pure consciousness, infinite possibilities. And what we call shruti, is that which is heard and smriti, that which is remembered. So now close your eyes again and do nothing and you will soon become aware of your internal dialogue, internal dialogue, you are speaking to yourself and you can hear a conversation.
And with that conversation, you can also experience other sensations, feelings, images and this conversation is thought, you can hear it, but there is no sound in the brain. You can see images but there are no images in the brain. So where was the memory before you had closed your eyes and did nothing? What were those memories and those memories, if you understand consciousness, is the archaeological primitive, our past experiences, our interpretation of past experiences which we call karma, the memories as they are stored do not exist in the brain. They exist in nonlocal awareness in that particular wave of nonlocal awareness that we call the individual soul. But it's a manifestation of the universal consciousness which is the storehouse of all memories in the matrix of inter being or the akashic field. And they're constantly surfacing as our internal dialogue. The seeds of memory are called saskara ok? Like seeds. But then they sprout into memories which also then turn into desires. If the memory was pleasant, then you want to repeat the memory, the experience. If the memory was not pleasant, then you want to avoid it.
But that's also a desire. So Karma memory and desire are the words in Sanskrit that refer to the storehouse of memory and experience that is present nonlocally in what we might call jivatmal or soul. And that is what recycles as the physical body, the conceptual body, the Karmic body and the memory itself cannot be destroyed because consciousness cannot be destroyed. The memory can be transcended, it can be transmuted, it can be, it can be transmitted into another experience, but it remains part of the field, the field. And of course, one can disengage with the memory and that one can through processes like meditation also have the insight that the experience which is a memory. All experience is a memory. When you look at me, you recognize me, recognizing me. So you remember me and then you reconstruct me in the moment. So recognition, recognition is memory recognition is memory and every experience is a memory.
And of course, it's also a desire which is also in the same chit or chidakasha So what is reincarnation? Reincarnation is the recycling of memory. That's it, add all its forms desires, etcetera. And when we become aware of this, then there is no hard problem of consciousness the hard problem is matter because matter doesn't exist. Matter is a word, a convenient construct for science to create technology and all everything that we do. But there's no substance called matter. Matter is a human name given to perceptual cognitive activity, which is ultimately memory. So let me let me read a little poem from, from my childhood days and I'm trying to find it right now and I think I have it here. Man, let's see. I have it here. 95. It's a beautiful poem.
OK. You know that the let me find it 95. 95. Poem 95 here. It's beautiful and summarizes the whole whatever I've said. So here's the poem from Rabindranath Tagore I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery? Like a bud, like a flower in the forest? At midnight? When in the morning, I looked upon the light, I felt in a moment that I was no stranger this world. We never feel strangers in this world. Why? Because there is memory. When in the morning I looked upon the light, I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world that the inscrutable without name and form. What is the inscrutable without name and form the inscrutable without name and form is pure consciousness infinite beings, divine consciousness, universal consciousness.
So I'll repeat the sentence when in the morning, I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world. And the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Mother is also recycling of memory. Even so in death, the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love life because I love this life. I know I shall love death as well. That is the incubation before the recycling. The rest the child cries out. When from the right breast, the mother takes it away in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation. So my friends reflect on this because this insight will give you freedom from that which we call death. Birth and death happen. Every moment, every thought that is born dies instantly, every perception that is born dies instantly. But then it recycles, memory and also evolves into higher levels of creativity.
And this is the soul's journey in cosmic time..