Advaita Vedanta

The question I always ask is "Who am I ? "  and "Am I really who or what I think I am?'  "What do I believe in?  What is reality? "

Do I have something to want or to like?  Can I observe myself with myself?  Take the matter of the brains.  Can thinking think about itself? The real adventures starts when I go to sleep at night.  Apparently, I'm able to be aware of the 'falling asleep'. . I can look at what is happening in my brains.  That's a strange statement. Watching activities in your brains, is that not what's happening by the brains? Can the brains  say something about themselves?

There are people who swear that we are nothing more than the brains. These people focus on the science of biochemistry, but  they are forgetting that what they are researching  is the investigater itself.  What you are investigating is by definition the investigation itself. The researcher, that which is studied and the investigated are identical: the brains investigate itself with itself as an instrument.

 Yet this is the first step: watching all the activities.  To look or to witness is a meditative state. Meditation is becoming increasingly popular in recent years in the West. Nowadays there has been much research.  Scans shows  very little brain activities. This is because the 'witness' does nothing. It is unbiased. The Witness itself has no feelings, emotions, thoughts. Watching has no form, no location.  Watching itself is either consciously or unconsciously.  You are only conscious of your feelings, emotions and thoughts as those in your "watching" will appear. If you don't notice them, they are unconscious. Meditation is  used as therapy for psychiatric patients. . It brings peace and stability in your busy world of experience.

 Watching yourself is a given that is available for everyone. . Everyone is capable to look at themselves from a distance, if only temporarily. It's like watching yourself through the eyes of another.  Meditation as an activity - sitting on a mat in the lotus position - I never liked to do that.  I had not the peace, and therefore I hated it. But It is not necessary to meditate in that specific way, because meditation is no activity. It's not about the act of meditation, it's about awareness of everything  what  appears. This awareness is always approachable. . It is never absent.  Not even during dreaming and deep sleep.

 The waking, dreaming and sleeping are three states which are extremely interesting to investigate.

 Where am I if I dream? Where am I when I sleep deeply? And where am I when I am awake?

 Let me now look at what happens when I fall asleep.  I was overwhelmed with flashing images of people, landscapes, events.  Razor-sharp, as if I'm awake. I have no control. And then I start dreaming, and I can watch my dreams.

When I slowly 'wake up' in the morning I become slowly aware of the behavior of my brains. They are very busy in my case.  Actually, they are busy without me ! My brain leads a life of its own! When I sleep the brains just keep on going without "me."  It seems a bit like a psychosis, but a smooth neutral psychosis. The dream goes on without me doing anything. The brain works without any involvement.  It seems like all kinds of information  pass through the brain automatically at their own pace to be processed.

 How can I now witnessing? And what if the brain also continues without me at daytime? Am I just dreaming my awakeness ?  Who will tell me with certainty that I do not day dream? Frequently, the opposite happens: I wake up, but  I know nothing. I do not know who I am, where I am, what I am ... it is so incredibly empty, this so called nothingness,  but  slowly I start remembering my self made identity... These experiences can cause fear if I would try to declare such experiences. So I don't. I am just aware of it.

 Should I be afraid of this weird experiences? . No, never.  I see it happen, and thát what sees it happen  does not even need to be an  I, an ego. Do I have a brain disorder?  Maybe so. And so what?

 I am not my body, so neither am I the brains. I am the experience of my body and brains.

The above experiences have a major difference with psychosis. A psychosis is often based on fear, stress and usually a denial of emotions. But I still believe that people with a predisposition for psychosis, also are prone to spiritual experiences where they catch a glimpse of the truth about consciousness.

 Reality: a dream?

Every man finds himself  in its natural state and therefore knows each person by nature who he really is. This knowledge is available to anyone at anytime. Still, I think you can be wrong or you  can be misled by all kinds of ideas to which you cling. Usually you do that out of fear. Therefore begins the answer to the question 'who am I "always with a personal quest: what ,how, and why do you experience what you experience?   It's important that traumas must be visualized and be recognized.

 Only when the whole personality with his range of emotions, feelings, experiences, ideas, etc. is recognized and accepted, can be seen that what you really are is beyond the personality which you have always believed. Your identity appears to be an illusion. The familiar world that you saw as the reality is as a constant dream where you expose diligently. Sickness, health, birth and death are parts of this dream. This position is not a matter of experience, but a matter of seeing. This consiousness has nothing to do with emotions such as fear and joy, dissociation, lighting or other concepts.  It's not faith or religion. . This is a ruthless thorough self-examination. That means: everything is possible. Openness is the key.

 I discovered that an ancient Eastern trend  encourages self-examination.  This is called Advaita Vedanta.

 Before you read on, I tell you something about this ancient spiritual tradition that is originated from India.  It is called Advaita Vedanta and the philosophy of "nonduality."  The significance of Advaita Vedanta is 'not two'. Dvaita means' two 'and a- dvaita means' not two '. . That has to do with the fact that you can realize that you are identical to the others, the world and the cosmos. There is no separation between what you accept as your individuality and that what you perceive. In the view of the dualism is assumed that the separation between you and your body /mind, you and the others, you and the world and you and  God are just mental concepts.  These separations which are in essence not true,  is precisely the cause of conflict.

The goal is to  focus on Consiousness. This is done through knowledge and personal experience.

 Many people ask themselves the question of what ever happens to them if they die or where they come from, how the world began and whether it will ever end. In the tradition of Advaita Vedanta, there are many wise people who  point to answers on these questions. There can only be pointed out because there are no words for that one truth, the inexpressible.  The uniqueness of the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta is that this philosophy is based on self-knowledge, so self-examination. Answer to your life questions are implicit in the questions you ask. In Being that you are.

But tradition or not, truth is not found in a name, vision or philosophy.  Advaita (nonduality) is another term and every seeker would be able to hide behind the term, despite the fact that this doctrine encourages purely self-examination.