Updated: February 20, 2025
Chapter 13 of the Bhagavad Gita in the words of Krishna, I am the field and I'm the knower of the field. So modes of knowing so far discussed have been witnessing awareness, mind, intellect, ego, and the five subtle senses. Today, let's explore the five what we call perceptual activities that we experience in the waking state, sound, touch, sight, taste and smell. Of course, we have organs for this ears, skin and hands, eyes and our tongue and nose. But these are instruments that we experience, there's no sentience here. So today, let's do some reflective inquiry. When you hear a sound, put your awareness on the sound and ask yourself, is there such a thing as an unheard sound? And soon you realize that even the question is ridiculous. If there was such a thing as an unheard sound, what would it sound like? Similarly? Ask yourself? Is there anything such as an unfelt sensation? And if there was what it would feel like? See how ridiculous that question is? Is there such a thing as an unseen color or shape or form? Same thing.
The question reveals itself as meaningless. Is there such a thing as an untasted flavor or an odor that has never been experienced as smell? So soon you realize that what we call sound and sensation and color and form and shape and sound and, flavor and fragrance are not properties of the physical world. And what we call objects are actually a combination of these qualities. So see the objects on the screen, see me, see your screen, see your own body, see any object. And you realize that actually they don't exist in and of themselves, they're a combination of qualia sensations, the alchemy of sensations and therefore they are modified forms of the self. So now look at that green plant, it's, you look at me, it's a modified self, modified expression of you. But that you is not a person because even the person that you call yourself me is a modified form of the self that you is the infinite, formless, borderless, irreducible open expanse of emptiness, which is constantly bubbling with these qualities of sensation.
And the combination of these that appear as persons, animals, objects and things. There are no things. There is only you, modifying yourself as all things. And then that includes your person that which you call your person, that which you call your person and all other persons and all other objects of experience are entangled and inseparable in this fundamental reality that we call the vast infinite, borderless, irreducible, spaceless, timeless incomprehensible, unimaginable smaller than the smallest, larger than the largest emptiness modifying itself as all forms and phenomena. You are that. I am that. All this is that and that alone is Tat Tvam Asi.
Now as we proceed, we'll come to a mind boggling conclusion. And that is all experience, all experience of people, objects, things, situations, circumstances, relationships, events is processed outside of spacetime and the real you is outside of space time. You have never left home. The theater of spacetime and causality and the five elements are also projections of these modes of knowing and we'll get there soon.
But when you have that experience, it blows your mind because as I said, you realize that there's no birth, there's no death and you have never left home. The you that is infinite possibilities, the you that is entangled with all knowers, modes of knowing and things known. The you that is unpredictable, the you that has infinite creativity and the you that is constantly self-regulating and self evolving into infinite forms and phenomena in a neverending horizon of evolution. More to come..
