[Advaita-l] The essence of advaita

[Shrinivas Gadkari]

Namaste,

Consider the following modern analogy on
the nature of reality:

Most of us have played computer/ video games
at some point in time. Consider a computer 
game gives you direct control of one character
in the game and other characters are controlled
by the computer program based on certain
"rules". While playing the game very often
one identifies quite strongly with the computer
game character.

1. My identification with the computer game
character is - "ahamkAra".

2. Since I am sensing the events happening
to the character - to some extent the character
has consiousness. What is the origin of this
consciousness - myself - this is the
"atman".

3. The entire apparatus including computer,
display, controls, and the underlying 
program is "mAyA".

4. The "rules" in the game are "Rta".

The difficult question: What about the "other"
characters in the game - they only seem to be
like the one character that I am identifying with
however I am not "sharing"/ "supplying" my
consciousness with/ to these "other" characters. 
This seems to be different from the real world 
where each living being SEEMS to have have 
consciousness.

Or may be .... this is no different from the
real world!! (This is very likely is the most
disturbing question one will encounter in
advaita - it is best to leave this question
on the back burner - trying to answer this 
question too early can potentially create a 
chaos in your life).

Remark: (not for beginners)
If computer game analogy is a good approximation 
of the nature of realtiy, it should be 
possible to create vidyA-s/ upAsanA-s
based on computer games - especially with the
ever increasing compute power that we are
making available for gaming applications.
Needless to say there will more abuse than
good use of this "technology". Anticipating
this well before this "technology" arrives 
may be we can invoke the correct balancing
tattvas to promote good use and reduce abuse.

Regards, and best wishes,
Shrinivas



       
____________________________________________________________________________________
Need a vacation? Get great deals
to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel.
http://travel.yahoo.com/