Let us take up the topic of ‘Brahmanubhava’ or experience of Brahman and go a little bit deeper into this topic.
In all the empirical experiences, in our day to day experiences, there are three factors – the known, the knower, and the knowledge. Now, who is the knower? Is the Self the knower? Is the intellect the knower? Is the mind the knower? Who knows? There should be some knower. Self is the only thing which is conscious. The rest are the intellect and the mind, which are not conscious. Intellect and mind are unconscious. They are matter. They derive their power from the Self. Because of the power from the Self, they appear to be conscious, but they are really not conscious.
Then who is the real knower? Is the Self the real knower? If the Self is the knower, and there is knowledge of the flower, there is knowledge of table, there is knowledge of chair; and as you know different things, there is a change which is taking place in the knower, because of the knowledge. So, knowing is an activity. The Self is without activity, being infinite, being non-dual. The Self has no activity in it. Self is pure awareness, pure Consciousness, without any activity as such. The Self cannot be the knower, because there is nothing else for the Self to know. For the Self, there is no other. It is non-dual. And, nothing else can know the Self. When somebody says, “I know the Self,” it means he doesn’t know the Self. Nobody can know the Self; neither can Self know anybody else. Because it is non-dual. There is no other in the Self. So, the Self is not the knower.
Intellect derives the power of Consciousness from the Self and experiences the world as the knower. It is the intellect which becomes the knower. Even though intellect is inert, because of the power of Consciousness which is superimposed on the intellect, the intellect can be considered as the experiencer, the Jiva, along with the reflected Consciousness. So now, the intellect itself, made up of matter, derives the power of Consciousness. The intellect is the empirical Self or the Jiva. The confusion is between the Jiva and the Sakshi, the witness. The Brahman witnesses the phenomena, and witnesses the Jiva experiencing the world, without getting involved in that. The Brahman is the witness, the Sakshi of the intellect. The Sakshi is not an action. There is no action involved in that. Sakshi is merely present, there is no action. Whereas in intellect, there is the action of knowing. The Sakshi is the one who witnesses the Jiva. So the confusion in all of us, or the Avidya or the ignorance, is that we mistake the intellect for the Sakshi. The Consciousness which is the Sakshi, we mistake for the intellect. We superimpose the Consciousness with the intellect; superimpose the characteristics of the Consciousness on the intellect and otherwise.
Intellect has the activity of knowing, because of the power of consciousness, but we think that the Self is the one who is knowing. We superimpose the activity on the Self saying that the Self is the knower. Self is not the knower, because it has nothing to know. The self is a mere witness. And the Chit(Consciousness) aspect of the Self is superimposed on the intellect. So there is a mutual superimposition here.
The example of super imposition which I can give is – you are going on a boat in a lake. Suddenly you start seeing the trees moving. Your boat is moving in reality, but it appears as if the trees are moving. The Consciousness of the Self makes intellect appear to be conscious. The activity of the intellect is superimposed on the Consciousness, to say Self is the knower. Self is neither knower nor doer because Self has nothing to do. It is infinite, it is pure and it is non-dual. There is no activity in the Self. All the activity of Triputi, the knower, the knowing, and the knowledge belongs to the empirical world of the Jiva and the world. Because the Self is not a doer, there is no karma, and nothing will be there on the Self – Sakshi.
And all experience of karma is experienced by the Jiva, individual soul, which is the intellect powered by the Consciousness.
Pranams.