Vedanta and the meaning of experience

Dear Keith,
Below Ive tried to answer your question.
Keith: Would you be willing to answer that earlier question
perhaps under the umbrella "The simple act of lifting (a
heavy object) according to Vedanta?"
Ram: Vedanta is a means of Self knowledge. It is not a
philosophy or a school of spiritual thought. So Vedanta
deals with meaning, specifically, the one to whom
experience occurs and the one who interprets experience.
Vedanta says that any experience has no meaning without
inquiring into who is having the experience. In the statement
above three factors are stated or implied. The stated factors
are a heavy object and the act of lifting. The implied factor is
the lifter. We will assume that the lifter is the human body,
powered by the mind. But it might just as well be a freight
elevator.
The act of lifting has no meaning to the heavy object, unless
that heavy object is a conscious being, like a fat person or
and elephant. If the heavy object is a conscious being then
we would have to inquire into how the object saw the act of
being lifted. Assuming that the heavy object is insentient we
cannot make any statement about the act of lifting from its
point of view.
Nor can we make any statement about the act of lifting itself
because lifting is simply an impersonal karmic process
devoid of consciousness. But, assuming we are not talking
about an elevator, the act of lifting can have meaning to a
conscious being. We can eliminate animals, elephants for

example, since we have no way to know how the elephant

feels about lifting a heavy tree in a tropical rainforest.
If a human being, which is just an animal plus an intellect,
lifts a heavy object we can interview the human being and
learn his or her opinion. It was fun, one might say. It was
awful, a skinny groom said about lifting his obese bride
across the threshold, Ill never do it again.
The answer that we get from human beings would not be
truth, however, since many human beings interpret the act of
lifting (or any other event) in many ways according to their
past experience. We would get many personal truths but
we would not get truth, a hard and fast statement that
applied to every act of lifting every time.
When you asked, Is it possible for you, Ram to lift a very
heavy object while there is awareness of this action? I
replied, Yes, but not in the way you think. I am awareness,
not the lifter. If there is a lifter, it is me, but I am not the lifter.
There is in fact no lifter, no lifting, and no lifted from my point
of view.
My reply, which perhaps seems a bit crazy, points to the
third factor in any experience, the Self. You assumed that
you were speaking to a human being and perhaps you
wanted to know how the I that you thought I was sees the
act of lifting a heavy object. But I replied that I am not a
human being, that I am the awareness in which the lifter, the
lifted and the lifting occurred. And then I went on to dismiss
the question since the act of lifting and any possible
interpretation of it by a human being, the lifter, would have
no lasting reality to me. I could report the various physical
and emotional sensations that appeared in me, awareness,
when the body lifted the object and I could also report any

interpretation of the sensations by the intellect, like the

thought, Whew! This is heavy. Or in the case of your
intellect: The lifter, the lifting and the lifted merge into the
movement simply lifting.
Vedanta would not quarrel with either your statement or
mine. In fact your statement is much more interesting from a
spiritual point of view than mine, since this is uncommon.
Your statement is a statement of a mystical experience.
This interpretation is borne out in another of your
statements, Or when I dance. At some point, the dancer,
dancing and the dance morph into simply dancing. What
ensues is bliss and presence and the act of dancing remains
without a me. No one is doing anything, and still the
dancing happens, somewhat impersonally.
To report this experience, which includes the subtle events
of presence and bliss you would have to be someone
other than the lifter, since the lifter has disappeared into
simply lifting.
This is fine as far as it goes, but Vedanta would ask two
further questions: (1) Who is there to see this merger
happen? and (2) what does this merger, which results in
presence and bliss, mean?
I think the intent behind your asking me about this
experience is to resolve some doubt you have about it. It is
an unusual experience from the normal point of view since
most people who lift heavy objects or dance do not report
that these activities produce epiphaniesprobably because
they are not wholly engaged. But yours is actually a
universal experience and happens during almost any activity
when the mind is fully engaged in the activity. What is
unusual is the degree of clarity in reporting the experience.

The clarity is there because the Self is actually recording the

experience, although, in your case, you take the Self to be a
person called Keith.
If you knew that you were the Self you would not have been
interested in explaining the experience. You would not have
looked for meaning in it because you would know even
before the experience occurred that you are the meaning of
every experience. By this Vedanta means that without you,
awareness, no experience can take place. Without you,
nothing can be known. You are the essence, that which
gives meaning to everything; but nothing gives meaning to
you. Human beings are the Self deluded by the belief that
what they experience and how the intellect interprets
experience somehow validates or invalidates them.
My reply was how the Self would see this experience. It
would not have any meaning to the Self because the Self is
a limitless impersonal vision, uncontaminated by
interpretation and meaning. Everything experienced is
meaningful because of the Self but it is not meaningful to
the Self.
I hope this is helpful to you. Let me just say, for whatever it
is worth, I think that questing for meaning through the
interpretation of experience, no matter how transcendent or
mystical, no matter how much presence or bliss is
produced is not the way to goif you want enlightenment.
Of course it is through our epiphanies that we are moved to
seek enlightenment, but enlightenment is not experiential,
contrary to Yogic teachings, unless it is the experience of
understanding. Experience we have plenty of. It goes on
eternally. In a non-dual reality, which this is, experience is
the Self. But the Self is not experience. And enlightenment

is just the hard and fast understanding (jnanam) that I am

the Self; I am everything that is; I am actionless, limitless
awareness. You can not experientially gain the experience
of this. You already have it. That you do not appreciate it is
due to the fact that you are trying to understand it through
ideas that do not serve to elucidate it.
This is where Vedanta comes in. It is a means of knowledge
that removes the ideas that stand in the way of appreciating
yourself as you actually are. You cannot apply this means to
yourself, at least not in the beginning. You need to have it
worked on you in a skillful way by the Self in the form of a
guru.
Om and Prem,
Ram