On Freedom and Fatalism: The Yogavasistha and Arthur Schopenhauer | Dr. Aleksandar Uskokov

0:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Good morning and Namaskar. [SPEAKER_00]: Today we welcome from Yale University Dr. Alexander Yuskovkov, Senior Lecter in Sanskrit and Director of Undergraduate Studies, South Asian Studies, and also coordinates of the Buddhist Studies Initiative. [SPEAKER_00]: He is an historian of pre-modern Indian philosophy and religion, approached through the lands of the history of ideas.

0:39 [SPEAKER_00]: His area of specialization is Vedanta construed broadly, and is interaction with other knowledge systems on the one hand. [SPEAKER_00]: and Vesnaism on the other. [SPEAKER_00]: His focus is also on the foundational texts of Vedanta, the Upanishads, Brahma Sutra, and the Bhagavad-gita. [SPEAKER_00]: He holds a PhD in South Asian languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago.

1:12 [SPEAKER_00]: and a BA and an MA in philosophy from the Saints Cyril and Methodius University of Skopia in North Macedonia. [SPEAKER_00]: His most recent book publication is The Philosophy of the Ramasultra, an introduction which is published from Bloom's Berry Academic. [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Uscorkov has published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, the Journal of Hindu Studies, and the Journal of a Schneider Studies, as well as in the springer encyclopedia of Hinduism and tribal religions.

1:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He is also translated numerous Sanskrit texts into Macedonian. [SPEAKER_00]: The subject of his talk today is on freedom and fatalism. [SPEAKER_00]: The yoga Vashista and Arthur Chopinai. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us today, Doctor. [SPEAKER_00]: Please welcome you. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

2:17 [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much for having me. [SPEAKER_05]: It's a great honor and pleasure for me to be today here. [SPEAKER_05]: All I'm an academic, I have a great admiration for the Parama Krishna Mission. [SPEAKER_05]: As mentioned, I come from the University of Chicago, where it's one of the year, but I'm still a legend.

2:38 [SPEAKER_05]: I've greatly benefited from publications from the Adwaita's, from a translations of mostly of the works of Shankara by Swami's mother one and then Gambira and Anda. [SPEAKER_05]: I also enjoyed reading Swami Tapasana and the Bakti schools of Vedanta, so it's a great honor for me to be here and for you to think that I have something worthy of saying.

3:03 [SPEAKER_05]: So I hope I won't let the talk on Bitu academic. [SPEAKER_05]: the death sort of, that's a challenge for me not to make it overly academic, so hopefully I don't fail miserably in that we'll see how it works. [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, so I want to talk about freedom and fatalism or sort of the range between the two [SPEAKER_05]: in two philosophical and satriological systems.

3:36 [SPEAKER_05]: But before I do that, I'd like to clarify in what sense I will think about freedom here. [SPEAKER_05]: So this is a frame taken from sort of one of the points in which I based the talk, and there is art to show up in our. [SPEAKER_05]: And freedom is generally and commonly and uncontroversially taken [SPEAKER_05]: at a sentient entity's free to choose between several possible actions, right?

4:07 [SPEAKER_05]: At any given situation, and that freedom is required for having some sort of moral responsibility, right? [SPEAKER_05]: And that's a relatively non-controversial sense in which we understand freedom, and it's also a sense that is very common to the indict traditions. [SPEAKER_05]: And in the commentaries about, well, whether the agent is actually free or not, because moral responsibility and satirological aspirations have to sort of go with the agent.

4:42 [SPEAKER_05]: So there's a discussion between Vedantans and Sankas on this point, right? [SPEAKER_05]: But there is a second sense of freedom, I think, most clearly expressed by shop and how we're in which, you know, this is my writing, but so they get it right as a street. [SPEAKER_05]: An entity is free if its actions are not determined by something else.

5:12 [SPEAKER_05]: In this understanding of freedom, choice is not necessary, and sometimes it's not even involved, it doesn't present itself. [SPEAKER_05]: It's better understood at some sort of spontaneity, a natural expression of the things essential nature of our lives. [SPEAKER_05]: Some scholars would say, so, again, I'll come to [SPEAKER_05]: at the end of the talk to show up in how or how he thinks.

5:42 [SPEAKER_05]: that this is freedom. [SPEAKER_05]: But for the moment, for those of you who have read, obviously, some Indian philosophy, you may think of the difference between, say, the heat that is natural to fire, fire is free to burn whenever it does burn versus the heat that a water has, which isn't its natural capacity, but is received from fire.

6:07 [SPEAKER_05]: So what isn't in metaphysical sense, it is not free. [SPEAKER_05]: to burn, it can only burn by the borrowed characteristic of heat that comes from fire. [SPEAKER_05]: So, this is not 100% necessarily the way the Chopin Hour would think of that, but it's I think a good sort of starting point to think about, what sort of, what sort of, [SPEAKER_05]: other kind of freedom, there may be metaphysical freedom.

6:35 [SPEAKER_05]: A sort of spontaneity that is not restricted by any external factors. [SPEAKER_05]: So today I'll try to make the case that these two ontological [SPEAKER_05]: have what he sometimes in academia or deep structure similarity, that is, they have a shared form in the way that they understand freedom, although their realizations, the specific version of freedom versus fetalism, all freedom versus determinism is not necessarily identical, they are not [SPEAKER_05]: translatable to one another, the systems, but they share this deep structure, which is either similar or identical in any case.

7:26 [SPEAKER_05]: So I'll briefly introduce them, and briefly, he's always an aspiration, so. [SPEAKER_05]: you'll see how that looks like. [SPEAKER_05]: Just to tell you a few things about the yoga vasishta, or maybe just ask, has anyone read bits of that, or it's acquainted with it, yes, okay, several.

7:53 [SPEAKER_05]: It's a marvelous work. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, this is a German scholar who says, probably the greatest philosophical poetic work of all time. [SPEAKER_05]: It is truly a marvelous work, but it's not really a single work. [SPEAKER_05]: It's mostly a genre of related works. [SPEAKER_05]: Probably written in Kashmir or developed in Kashmir, completed probably around the 10th century.

8:18 [SPEAKER_05]: It's original title was Mokshopaya, that is, [SPEAKER_05]: how the book refers to itself in the text, or means to liberation. [SPEAKER_05]: Moxie is the crucial point of the work, but there are associated works. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yoga wasishta is, at some point, it becomes known as the yoga wasishta, and there is a brief version, the yoga wasishta, and then a sada, and essence, et cetera.

8:43 [SPEAKER_05]: So it's a genre of various texts. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it has been very popular, it became very popular during the Mughal era, the Mughal Emperors were fascinated by this text because it sort of presents the idea, it's a central idea of living liberation or liberation or being alive. [SPEAKER_05]: And this notion of an enlightened king, someone who stays in society, active, engaged.

9:16 [SPEAKER_05]: And yet, it was literally the person, at least, pursues liberation, right? [SPEAKER_05]: And it's also a very beautiful text. [SPEAKER_05]: If you can read the Sanskrit, it's a true marble, it is a caveat, full of beautiful descriptions, poetic language, [SPEAKER_05]: It involves narration that's mainly works by way of narration, but as illustration of philosophical points.

9:43 [SPEAKER_05]: So it's really three kinds of works in one, pretty unique in the history of world literature. [SPEAKER_05]: So I want to refer to previous scholars, but I obviously benefited from the works of many. [SPEAKER_05]: So it's not an academic talk, [SPEAKER_05]: And there is an interesting narrative frame, just again, by very little introduction.

10:09 [SPEAKER_05]: This is also, you can, maybe think of it as sort of you punish out of the Ramayana, that's how occasionally it's been understood, because it is an instruction by Sage Basitah to Prince Rama, who has become this illusion with the world. [SPEAKER_05]: At age 16, the perfect age to become this illusion.

10:34 [SPEAKER_05]: With the world, he has become this illusion, because he understands that whatever we see, relax, substance, it is a form of illusion, and then it's supposed to become a king. [SPEAKER_05]: So things will, whoever thinks they should be a king and hold some power in a world that just falls, must be a raging lunatic.

10:58 [SPEAKER_05]: Why would I become a king? [SPEAKER_05]: And then there's a long back and forth, et cetera. [SPEAKER_05]: But, say, it's Vishwamitra. [SPEAKER_05]: Things that Rama sort of can be cured, as it were, that is, keep his metaphysical understanding of the world. [SPEAKER_05]: But at the same time, really, in socially functional engaged in the world, as a king must be.

11:20 [SPEAKER_05]: So, and this is precisely this notion of given to someone who's liberated. [SPEAKER_05]: while still alive and so that is there's several layers of framing in the work but that is the the main one. [SPEAKER_05]: Okay now it's a very long work 28,000 versus if you if you translate the entire work that probably will come close to a million words.

11:50 [SPEAKER_05]: So [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know, seven-eight large volumes probably end up having so it's a large work. [SPEAKER_05]: and the complex work, but it seems as though it was too ontologically or metaphysically it comes with these two nodal points, right? [SPEAKER_05]: What's the nature of the world?

12:13 [SPEAKER_05]: Well, the world is illusory, but specifically with respect to freedom and determination, there seems to be two ideas in it. [SPEAKER_05]: There is the doctrine of determinism, of determination, niativeada, right? [SPEAKER_05]: And it's a long tradition of in and in philosophy. [SPEAKER_05]: To talk about determinism, strict determinism, going back probably, [SPEAKER_05]: Although it's the times of the Buddha not the Buddha himself, but when Makali Gosalahu was a leader of a religious group called Yajibikas who have not survived to our days, but one of the three major non-Bramanic doctrinal, sociological movements at that time.

13:04 [SPEAKER_05]: So the doctrine of me at the determine is very simply, you know, in a natural says that some must be the way it is always and inevitably. [SPEAKER_05]: something must be the way it is, always, and inevitably. [SPEAKER_05]: In the yoga, as I said, it has the sort of cosmological frame that is relatively well known to us from Vedanta, right?

13:31 [SPEAKER_05]: There is the world creation by the first leader, Adi Pradapati. [SPEAKER_05]: the yoga vasyvita Brahma, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Who creates the world, but when creates the world, perjapati, [SPEAKER_05]: sort of introduces our sets in motion, the world in its duality, right? [SPEAKER_05]: First, Brahma has this volition, it's a volition that appears as the first act.

14:06 [SPEAKER_05]: It's very similar to the Taitriya Upanishad, Sokama, Tabahu, Siam, Prajaya, that the first principle is being or the self-atman, right? [SPEAKER_05]: had a desire, how about I become many and percreate. [SPEAKER_05]: So, Prajapati has that notion and then in the sort of creation begins and the world is created dualities introduced, but it's also what is also introduced are the causal laws of the world.

14:37 [SPEAKER_05]: Spatial temporal differences, time and space are introduced. [SPEAKER_05]: And then the categories of the world are introduced. [SPEAKER_05]: Men are men. [SPEAKER_05]: The gods are gods, animals, etc. [SPEAKER_05]: So that is not, however, in the yoga of Asyushta, unlike in their forms of Vedanta, that is not a creation of external objects.

15:02 [SPEAKER_05]: Prajapati just has a thought. [SPEAKER_05]: And that thought is the entire world. [SPEAKER_05]: It is just things, the world. [SPEAKER_05]: And it's all in its entire scope from the beginning to the end. [SPEAKER_05]: So I've always thought of that as some sort of a film or a book. [SPEAKER_05]: that has been shot and then it exists, sort of in, or beyond time as it were, but it involves some sort of temporal spatial relationships, there are set characters, right?

15:38 [SPEAKER_05]: The story has been told, [SPEAKER_05]: And it's recorded, et cetera. [SPEAKER_05]: But it's not quite involved certain relationships of time and space, but there are somewhat malleable in that you can sort of go back and forth. [SPEAKER_05]: see the movie from some specific point of view or from sort of imagine the world from the standpoint of one of the characters rather than another.

16:06 [SPEAKER_05]: So in that sense, the intro far as the book's written, the world is seen, the spot. [SPEAKER_05]: and the single thought just is the world, it has happened. [SPEAKER_05]: And therefore, it has to involve that sort of determinism. [SPEAKER_05]: If things have happened, well, they have happened.

16:25 [SPEAKER_05]: The course of action has taken place. [SPEAKER_05]: The parent looks as though you cannot change much in it, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Okay. [SPEAKER_04]: But it doesn't seem that [SPEAKER_05]: that is quite so. [SPEAKER_05]: That is, the yoga vasyshta comes and it's probably the its distinctive characteristic.

16:50 [SPEAKER_05]: To add the same time, talk about what it calls an idea of accidentalism as it were. [SPEAKER_05]: The Sanskrit term is [SPEAKER_05]: And then it depends how you, in several versions of story, either fruitful, falls from the tree. [SPEAKER_05]: By mere correlation, not causal determination or the entire tree falls, and then the cromely thing that it's the cause of the event.

17:26 [SPEAKER_05]: Now, in the yoga process, that this plays out in the following way. [SPEAKER_05]: Insofar as the first creator, [SPEAKER_05]: is an entity that doesn't have a prior cause. [SPEAKER_05]: Creation is causeless. [SPEAKER_05]: It's also an entity that doesn't carry karma unlike in some other related systems of Vedanta when Brahma, the first world creator, appears.

17:56 [SPEAKER_05]: It is a pure instance of consciousness. [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't carry karma. [SPEAKER_05]: Creation in the yoga vassista is what's called an Indian philosophy, some kopa. [SPEAKER_05]: Imagination, a formed thought, a intentional way to discover it under the scope, but it just means that you have a thought and then create whatever is contained in the thought thereby.

18:26 [SPEAKER_05]: But having specific thoughts is depends on having mental traces from previous experiences. [SPEAKER_05]: that a sort of the cosmic background of an individual doesn't have that. [SPEAKER_05]: And then when you think the universe is just a natural manifestation of thought. [SPEAKER_05]: The essential nature of consciousness is defined in the yoga system.

18:52 [SPEAKER_05]: It's just to have thoughts. [SPEAKER_05]: But what happens when you have thoughts that are entirely undetermined? [SPEAKER_05]: Well, basically you can think anything. [SPEAKER_05]: So then, I think these to be absolute freedom, because your thoughts are not determining whatsoever way by external objects, or by traces that have left in the memory.

19:18 [SPEAKER_05]: In that sense, your thought is entirely free. [SPEAKER_05]: And basically, [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you could thought anything, but it doesn't seem that it's determined that there is an initial choice, even in the yoga vasysta. [SPEAKER_05]: A lot of other things, this and that, because just the traces are unavailable.

19:34 [SPEAKER_05]: So then something pops up in the mind, and that mind by that process creates the entire world. [SPEAKER_05]: You may think of that as randomness, but you may also think of it as entire spontaneity. [SPEAKER_05]: Right? [SPEAKER_05]: And both we think of that as spontaneity that would be something close to our Schopenhauer understands what absolute freedom is.

20:00 [SPEAKER_05]: Okay. [SPEAKER_05]: So there are these two stand points within the yoga massage. [SPEAKER_05]: Right, creation originally happens entirely in a spontaneous manner. [SPEAKER_05]: But then when it has happened, it has spatial temporal laws, it has laws of causality that are entirely consequent on how the thought went through.

20:28 [SPEAKER_05]: You know, we could imagine a different world in which we do not go straight, [SPEAKER_05]: We go down, instead of the dimension might look differently. [SPEAKER_05]: So that's all dedicated on the way that Brahma first had the thought. [SPEAKER_05]: But that thought itself is free entirely free.

20:48 [SPEAKER_05]: So in that sense, we have this tension between [SPEAKER_05]: determinism, absolute determinism, which might be called fatalism, right, if the world has happened, then what can you change in it? [SPEAKER_05]: But also have freedom in that world doesn't have to happen in the way that it has, right?

21:06 [SPEAKER_05]: And the yoga was actually occasionally tries to relax even the boundary between these two standpoints. [SPEAKER_05]: So on this, I'll tell you a story, [SPEAKER_05]: which is just what the Euro-Sister does, right? [SPEAKER_05]: The way that it works, it begins with a number of verses, 15 or so, and it says, but here, atra, tatra on this point, there is this following story.

21:37 [SPEAKER_05]: So this is probably, this for me is the most fascinating story in the Yoruba Sushta. [SPEAKER_05]: It's probably one of the most fascinating stories in World Literature. [SPEAKER_05]: So very briefly, go through it. [SPEAKER_05]: It's a lot of 300 verses. [SPEAKER_05]: So I'll summarize it very briefly.

21:56 [SPEAKER_05]: Now there is a Brahmin. [SPEAKER_05]: His name is God. [SPEAKER_05]: And he goes to a lake, wants to meditate, meditate from Lord Vishnu, and at the some time Lord Vishnu appears to him and asks him, what do you want, why are you meditating on me? [SPEAKER_05]: And this is what God asks.

22:18 [SPEAKER_05]: The Brahmin said, omit Vishnu, the soul lotus lake of the three worlds, the black bee, in the cavity of the lotus, there is the heart, [SPEAKER_05]: of the innumerable creatures. [SPEAKER_05]: I wish to see this deception of yours, my Lord, which is questioned by you and concerns the Supreme Self.

22:42 [SPEAKER_05]: They call it transmigration, samsara, and it is the sole cause of blindness. [SPEAKER_05]: So this is his aspiration. [SPEAKER_05]: He wants to understand Maya deception. [SPEAKER_05]: He wants to understand the nature of transmigration, [SPEAKER_05]: all of a sudden, we are the few days, he meditates in the lake, meditates on a mantra, but then as he whirls in the water, his consciousness inverts, and all of a sudden he sees himself dead, [SPEAKER_05]: and be moaned by his family.

23:20 [SPEAKER_05]: Apparently he is a wife, mother, etc., and he died and he can see himself died and taken to the cremation ground. [SPEAKER_05]: And then he's cremated and he sees himself reborn in the womb of a [SPEAKER_05]: who will swap a child or cook her a family of sort of some elements of the story or not, socially progressive as a family of swap a child or cookers, interesting with this.

24:01 [SPEAKER_05]: As part of the story may be illuminates that famous verse of the Bhagavad-gita, right? [SPEAKER_05]: With Devina Sampani, Brahwani Gavi Hastini Shuni, Chayvashvapakita, Pandita Sama-darshan. [SPEAKER_05]: Someone who's learned it was the same self in a Brahmin who's in doubt with knowledge and comportment, which was Godi before.

24:23 [SPEAKER_05]: in an elephant, the cow, but also a dog cook, right? [SPEAKER_05]: So that's not what he becomes. [SPEAKER_05]: He's reborn in a mountainous region. [SPEAKER_05]: The yoga as if the says Buddha, the isha, which maybe, or maybe not but, let's take it to be. [SPEAKER_05]: So he's reborn there.

24:42 [SPEAKER_05]: He grows up on the outskirts of a village. [SPEAKER_05]: In Joy's life, Mary's as a large, extensive family, all is good, but then calamity strikes, his entire family dies. [SPEAKER_05]: as he's already old, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, children, grandchildren, but then all that is wiped out.

25:11 [SPEAKER_05]: His entire family dies, he's all left all alone now. [SPEAKER_05]: And in his desperation, he goes out aimlessly walks to a place that has no specific place in mind. [SPEAKER_05]: He chances upon the srimati impurimas, the text says the beautiful town of the Kashmiris that is Srinagar. [SPEAKER_05]: where the king has died without leaving an ear.

25:46 [SPEAKER_05]: And now the tradition of the laws of the land require that an elephant, which is the oracle of state, will choose the next king. [SPEAKER_05]: So as a festival celebration, everyone's there and the king roams around, freely. [SPEAKER_05]: God he looks at him. [SPEAKER_05]: Well, he has a different name now.

26:09 [SPEAKER_05]: He's called Katanja. [SPEAKER_05]: He looks at him entirely transfixed and then the elephant picks him up Placism at the temple and he's a true East Trozen king Um, and the text reminds us as this point This all happens by chance by accident. [SPEAKER_05]: It's not this car [SPEAKER_05]: So he's chosen King and now he there begins eight years of great enjoyment for him as a king might However after eight years Pardon my very poor artificial intelligence during skills [SPEAKER_05]: After eight years, a band of musicians from his old place of the dog cookers comes the playing and then they recognize him.

27:06 [SPEAKER_05]: They recognize him, recognize him, talk to him, etc. [SPEAKER_05]: So now, [SPEAKER_05]: The Brahmins and the residents of Shinagar, they realize, well, he's a dog cooker. [SPEAKER_05]: How come we've installed as a king? [SPEAKER_05]: That's a great scene, right? [SPEAKER_05]: So now everyone is all of us in again.

27:28 [SPEAKER_05]: Within a second, everyone turns them on him. [SPEAKER_05]: And a great confusion arises in the city. [SPEAKER_05]: And so, [SPEAKER_05]: God it becomes desperate, but I'm in start emulating themselves on on on sacrificial pires and he does that as well. [SPEAKER_05]: So he burns himself on on fire and that burning sensation wakes him up.

27:55 [SPEAKER_05]: He finds himself back in the lake where his thought processing in verse does it where he gets out on water and [SPEAKER_05]: The Yolo Siddish is masterful here. [SPEAKER_05]: Says he recognizes this is the same word, but something is spooky. [SPEAKER_05]: It's not quite, there's something that seems off, right?

28:20 [SPEAKER_05]: But he's consoled, et cetera. [SPEAKER_05]: However, a fellow ascetic comes after some days and the difference from before. [SPEAKER_05]: And then this ascetic tells him, while I just came from Kashmir [SPEAKER_05]: that they were ruled by a dog cooker for eight years, but then he was discovered, you know, my god, you know, he burned himself on a sacrificial pyre and told a Brahmin's did that, etc.

28:52 [SPEAKER_05]: And so here, God is totally unsettled. [SPEAKER_05]: How could this be? [SPEAKER_05]: Right, so he leaves in the morning, he goes to both places, he goes to Bhutan and to Kashmir. [SPEAKER_05]: He learns from the folks there that this indeed has happened, and he sees recognizes the same places that he witnessed.

29:14 [SPEAKER_05]: in his life as Katanja was his name in that life. [SPEAKER_05]: So how can this be? [SPEAKER_05]: And so he goes back meditating, praying to Vishnu. [SPEAKER_05]: There are three manifestations of Vishnu, sort of this three-layer teaching that Vishnu gives to God, [SPEAKER_05]: It's a beautiful verse in the second appearance of vision where the text says, and Madhava once he's pleased with you becomes your relative.

29:46 [SPEAKER_05]: So, second, third time, the vision appears immediately. [SPEAKER_05]: So, for further instructions. [SPEAKER_05]: And so, there's again a lot of philosophical instruction on this point, but this is where it sort of will bounce to. [SPEAKER_05]: The Lord said, [SPEAKER_05]: The presence of the dokkukar was reflected in your mind and the minds of the boat as in the kira, the people of Utan and Kashmir, by accident or correlation.

30:14 [SPEAKER_05]: In the manner of the crown and the tala fruit, it is for this reason my dear, [SPEAKER_05]: that they narrate your story to you just it had happened. [SPEAKER_05]: For an appearance, appearance does not cease being appearance merely by recurrence. [SPEAKER_05]: Some doh kuka head indeed built a house.

30:34 [SPEAKER_05]: at the outskirts of the village. [SPEAKER_05]: You have seen it and entered it as it now lies in ruins. [SPEAKER_05]: Occasionally one in the same awareness episode appears to many people in the manner of the crow and the tall of fruit, strange of the ways of the mine. [SPEAKER_05]: So, what does this mean?

30:54 [SPEAKER_05]: It wasn't God's karma to see what it, and to assume this second identity that he did. [SPEAKER_05]: He was supposed to be in a universe in a world of regularity. [SPEAKER_05]: Niyati, right? [SPEAKER_05]: He's a Brahmin. [SPEAKER_05]: The Bible says, the gods, the gods, the men are men.

31:18 [SPEAKER_05]: the spatial temporal relations that exist, right? [SPEAKER_05]: We live in sequence, we live around of us, there are other objects, et cetera. [SPEAKER_05]: So how did this happen? [SPEAKER_05]: Well, it did happen just because it is the nature of consciousness to have thoughts. [SPEAKER_05]: And there are no external objects, right?

31:40 [SPEAKER_05]: So then I take it at the point of the story is to tell us something important about, well, the nature of the world that it is false, but also about freedom. [SPEAKER_05]: What had happened to Gotti accidentally, in fact, is what you can obtain or something of the sort that you can obtain upon liberation.

32:04 [SPEAKER_05]: So in yoga Vassista, liberation is obtained by way of samadhi, as in most, mostly in sort of sociological systems of India. [SPEAKER_05]: And that samadhi is defined as the space, as it were, [SPEAKER_05]: between whether it is within the mind being in one place and then another, that is having two different thoughts.

32:32 [SPEAKER_05]: So it's obviously a non-temperal space, it's called space of consciousness, it's the crucial metaphysical notion of your associated with human to that cache. [SPEAKER_05]: So if you can somehow stop the mind, [SPEAKER_05]: and enter that space of consciousness. [SPEAKER_05]: What happens in the yoga massage, the system is that you can attenuate your mental traces, traces of karma that are had shaping, right?

33:03 [SPEAKER_05]: And then you can basically control your own destiny. [SPEAKER_05]: So, and that state is called, [SPEAKER_05]: the state of pure mind where you can basically create your own worlds just by thought, let's go to the Satwanda in the yoga session. [SPEAKER_05]: So then you can intentionally create all sorts of worlds and tap any sort of point of view within the world that has happened.

33:31 [SPEAKER_05]: So I think of that in [SPEAKER_05]: But within that book, you can write another movie, et cetera. [SPEAKER_05]: So that is what a liberated self gets in liberation in the state that's called Jeevan Mukti, liberated while still living. [SPEAKER_05]: It's also not unlike other related systems of Vedanta.

34:07 [SPEAKER_05]: It's the awakening that is liberation in the yoga process has been compared to lucid dreaming. [SPEAKER_05]: Waking within the dream and understanding that it's a dream, you cannot wake up until the dream expires because Pramayas thought the thought. [SPEAKER_05]: It has happened, but insofar as you are dreaming loosely, you may just as well enjoy the dream and create worlds of your own within that.

34:35 [SPEAKER_05]: So I think that's here we have a sort of a transformation. [SPEAKER_05]: as it were, from freedom as absolute spontaneity, not a choice between X and Y, but merely the expression of consciousness to create thoughts, to think thoughts, to intentional freedom. [SPEAKER_05]: Here you can think your own thoughts, undetermined by the vassanas and impressions, mental traces from your previous life.

35:08 [SPEAKER_05]: So here, think we get [SPEAKER_05]: this middle path between fatalism and entire spontaneity in some sort of actual freedom as a freedom of intentional freedom as it were. [SPEAKER_05]: OK, I think I went over this. [SPEAKER_05]: Now, in the remaining remainder of time that I have, I'll talk a little bit about Arthur Schopenhauer, [SPEAKER_05]: partially describing, he's still probably the only major western philosopher who has been thoroughly deeply influenced by Indian philosophy.

35:53 [SPEAKER_05]: I don't need to go through his life story etc. [SPEAKER_05]: It's generally known that he read the Upanishads. [SPEAKER_05]: He read, in fact, the Upanishads in the Persian translation, in the Latin translation of the Persian text, the opening cuts, so called the opening cut, which had included in them large sections of Shankar's commentary.

36:18 [SPEAKER_05]: So he read the Upanishads not just alone, but already with [SPEAKER_05]: included exposition of Shankara, so the Persian translation that produced by the Mughal Prince Dada Shukal, which was then translated by the French scholar Amkitil Duparounin, Latin, and then Chopin Haurin read that.

36:39 [SPEAKER_05]: We know the date that he checked out the book from the library. [SPEAKER_05]: It is March 26, 1814. [SPEAKER_05]: We also know that he read the Bhagavad Gita, etc. [SPEAKER_05]: OK, just another thought before we dive in into his philosophy, he was a lifelong student of Indian philosophy.

37:07 [SPEAKER_05]: He read the Upanishads every night as his meditation. [SPEAKER_05]: But he also was very well acquainted with Buddhism. [SPEAKER_05]: And the image on the slide is his own image of the Buddha that he got from a friend from Paris in 1856. [SPEAKER_05]: There's a very beautiful nugget from a recent work where an incident is reported.

37:32 [SPEAKER_05]: He sits like a tailor, remarked to open how a strict Catholic housekeeper Margaret Schnepp with a laugh. [SPEAKER_05]: Have I ever blasphemed your Lord God, Shopenhara replied so? [SPEAKER_05]: He thought of sort of Buddhism if there's close to something like his religion that was, that's always intimately acquainted with both with Vedanta and with Hindu Buddhism.

38:03 [SPEAKER_05]: Now, [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe I can skip this, this is sort of well-known. [SPEAKER_05]: He talks about three major influences of his philosophy. [SPEAKER_05]: One is Kant, the other is Plato, the third are the Upanishads, etc. [SPEAKER_05]: His main idea is that the world, as we know it and as we should know, it is two things.

38:24 [SPEAKER_05]: It's representation and will. [SPEAKER_05]: When he talks about representation, it's quite close to what Adveta Vedanta means by the idea. [SPEAKER_05]: How the world is constituted in our mind is sort of complicated philosophy around that. [SPEAKER_05]: He talks about the principle of sufficient reason that works in four ways.

38:50 [SPEAKER_05]: He wants to sort of [SPEAKER_05]: Given a count, not just of the world that we see, but also of its laws, natural sciences, ethics, logic, all of that. [SPEAKER_05]: But basically, the world as our representation just means that there is something out there, what it is, we'll see shortly.

39:08 [SPEAKER_05]: But it is conceived known by the world as representation. [SPEAKER_05]: of that external reality and is known primarily by means of two faculties in the mind one is time and space we know things in time before middle and after and we know that in space in relation to other options and by laws of causality.

39:39 [SPEAKER_06]: Now here's an interesting point. [SPEAKER_05]: He talks about the world of representation as the veil of Maya, right, and precisely or almost precisely in the same way as Shankara would define it. [SPEAKER_05]: To be something just means to be, but everything that we know that is, it's just the middle [SPEAKER_05]: be is.

40:12 [SPEAKER_05]: And if you object that we know insofar as we know it is an object, we know in relation to other things insofar as I can see the chair, I can construct the chair because there are other chairs to the side and other well elements of space that's called them. [SPEAKER_05]: So then they cannot be being because being has to be absolute.

40:34 [SPEAKER_05]: But they are neither known being because, well, here they are, right? [SPEAKER_05]: So here he talks, this is from his major work, he talks about what precisely comes from Shankar as Sadasat Bhamunir, what's in the end, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Inexpressible, either as being a known being. [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.

40:56 [SPEAKER_05]: However, unlike the yoga vassista or the forms of Vedanta for him, that first thing, [SPEAKER_05]: that is beyond representation, the metaphysical truth, as it were, isn't Brahman, but is what he calls the will. [SPEAKER_05]: And it's a very interesting concept. [SPEAKER_05]: For him, the will is blind, is any striving that is evidenced in anything in the world.

41:24 [SPEAKER_05]: If a crystal is formed in a certain shape, he's just the phenomenal manifestation of what is blind striving. [SPEAKER_05]: When you're seeing winter, this window frost, it shapes perfectly, what it is. [SPEAKER_05]: Well, it's just an expression of the metaphysical will. [SPEAKER_05]: It is the nature of that metaphysical will, just to be striving, to become something.

41:51 [SPEAKER_05]: He talks about it as will to live, but it's really sort of that it's a play on as the expression of poem to be something. [SPEAKER_05]: And in humans, it expresses as the will to procreation, right? [SPEAKER_05]: The will wants to perpetuate itself. [SPEAKER_05]: So that is the metaphysical principle of poem.

42:21 [SPEAKER_05]: thought, or like consciousness in yoga vassista, is absolutely free. [SPEAKER_05]: It is spontaneous. [SPEAKER_05]: It is, insofar as it can be characterized as anything, it's just me as driving. [SPEAKER_05]: Emples. [SPEAKER_05]: Forests. [SPEAKER_05]: Why do rivers flow to the ocean?

42:42 [SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's an expression of will. [SPEAKER_05]: Why do things fall? [SPEAKER_05]: It's an expression of the will, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Why do we procreate because we want to perpetuate the species? [SPEAKER_05]: It's an expression of the will. [SPEAKER_05]: So, and the will is free in that sense.

43:03 [SPEAKER_05]: It's pure spontaneity, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Insofar as the will takes any specific shape, like the window frost. [SPEAKER_05]: who are like the embodiment that I am. [SPEAKER_05]: It's entirely contingent in his system. [SPEAKER_05]: It's nothing determines that. [SPEAKER_05]: The wheel is spontaneous.

43:24 [SPEAKER_05]: It becomes whatever it becomes. [SPEAKER_05]: So in that sense, since we have something like absolute freedom, but when the wheel has taken any shape and it can only take a shape in our mind, [SPEAKER_05]: That's the world of phenomena, right? [SPEAKER_05]: We never capture the truly metaphysical will.

43:46 [SPEAKER_05]: Well, sort of, we have an intimation of that because our own bodies is an expression of that. [SPEAKER_05]: So we kind of understand because we know our own impulses. [SPEAKER_05]: And by way of analogy, we can understand it elsewhere, right? [SPEAKER_05]: But when it has taken some expression, when it has become embodied as it were, phenomenal will, [SPEAKER_05]: It is absolutely determined.

44:10 [SPEAKER_05]: It's originally absolutely free. [SPEAKER_05]: If you can take any shape that it does. [SPEAKER_05]: Once it has taken a shape, then it is absolutely determined. [SPEAKER_05]: Then the river really needs to flow to the ocean. [SPEAKER_05]: If it is checked by something, you'll find another way.

44:28 [SPEAKER_05]: That's just the experience, it's what a will does. [SPEAKER_05]: In human beings, for him, that means that [SPEAKER_05]: How will he determine by the character that we carry? [SPEAKER_05]: We all somehow born with a certain character, randomly, spontaneous, the better. [SPEAKER_05]: And so we say, someone is an egoist.

44:52 [SPEAKER_05]: That's a determination of the will and that becomes pretty fatalistic in his sense. [SPEAKER_05]: It's not entirely fatalistic because we can change course, but not destination. [SPEAKER_05]: It gives an illustration of an egoistic person. [SPEAKER_05]: Even egoistic person, they don't want to give money.

45:13 [SPEAKER_05]: That's what an egoism means. [SPEAKER_05]: But any egoistic person may understand because the will is blind and requires knowledge. [SPEAKER_05]: for its own accomplishment, knowledge, something that the will itself produces. [SPEAKER_05]: So the will can understand, or an egoistic person can understand that occasionally giving knowledge means getting knowledge in return more knowledge.

45:39 [SPEAKER_05]: So then although that is determined, the character is determined, its expression doesn't have to be. [SPEAKER_06]: Now with humans, interestingly, [SPEAKER_05]: I said, will requires knowledge, right? [SPEAKER_05]: If I am too, as an expression of my will, as a human need to procreate, or need to live alive that strives to be free from misery as much as that is possible, I need knowledge for that.

46:14 [SPEAKER_05]: With humans, he thinks, so he argues, rather, that there is some superfluity of knowledge as well. [SPEAKER_05]: We, as humans, somehow, can know more and is merely required for the will to perpetuate itself and to accomplish its purpose, sort of a manufacturing error in the will as it embodies itself in human beings.

46:44 [SPEAKER_05]: superfluity of knowledge, which is knowing more than we need to know for our empirical life and for avoiding misery. [SPEAKER_05]: Can bring about real freedom, because then we can understand the world, we can understand the world as being an expression of the will, as involving constant suffering, [SPEAKER_05]: sort of undo its achieve true liberation and so if he finds two ways to do that, one of them is temporary and is art.

47:27 [SPEAKER_05]: Insofar as in art we are not properly interested in the substance of things, but just in their mere form we do not want to [SPEAKER_05]: if you see a fruit, for instance, you do not want to eat the fruit which would be the natural expression of the will, right, satisfy hunger, etc., you just want to see the object, appreciate the form that the will has taken in the object.

47:53 [SPEAKER_05]: And so in that way, sorry, there can happen the subject and the object can coincide in what it thinks is pure knowledge. [SPEAKER_05]: It's a very interesting [SPEAKER_05]: sharing many similarities with the Rasa theory of of India. [SPEAKER_05]: It's a story for another day. [SPEAKER_05]: The second way is to understand [SPEAKER_05]: Because the will is just one.

48:21 [SPEAKER_05]: A metaphysical will is one. [SPEAKER_05]: It's beyond time and space and causality, which is how things are individuated in the world. [SPEAKER_05]: So if one can, by way of the superfluity, excess of knowledge, understand that whenever we see someone, it is the same will. [SPEAKER_05]: that is us.

48:43 [SPEAKER_05]: We can develop true sympathy. [SPEAKER_05]: This is his interpretation of the great Panishadik Mahavaki at Tatumasi, right? [SPEAKER_05]: It's a very, it's quite interesting and unconventional, let's say, interpretation of the Mahavaki, but beyond that, [SPEAKER_05]: Beyond death, beyond mere sympathy for the will that is the same in every living being, we can also develop this passion.

49:11 [SPEAKER_05]: We can understand that the will [SPEAKER_05]: bring suffering because it always wants to perpetuate itself. [SPEAKER_05]: For him life is a very interesting thought. [SPEAKER_05]: Life is a pendulum between misery and no one hand and boredom and the other, so it just goes disobeyed. [SPEAKER_05]: And that way.

49:32 [SPEAKER_05]: But because we have this extra knowledge, [SPEAKER_05]: the manufacturing error in the will, we can understand that and put an end to it. [SPEAKER_05]: And the way to do it is by the practice of a sadisism because the will primary expresses itself through sexual desire, right? [SPEAKER_05]: So that's the way to achieve liberation.

49:53 [SPEAKER_05]: And then we have an expression of will as something intentional, right? [SPEAKER_05]: A freedom as something intentional. [SPEAKER_05]: So we start from absolute freedom, [SPEAKER_05]: which is just spontaneity. [SPEAKER_05]: There is this first principle, it is the will. [SPEAKER_05]: It cannot pierce anything.

50:11 [SPEAKER_05]: It's nothing determines. [SPEAKER_05]: Once it has appeared though, it seems as things are fatalistic. [SPEAKER_05]: You know, the river has to flow to the ocean. [SPEAKER_05]: We have to procreate and try to avoid misery. [SPEAKER_05]: But we can also somehow, we have that superfluity, extra knowledge by means of which we can understand that life is suffering and then try to put an end to it by means of asceticism.

50:42 [SPEAKER_05]: So then we have here in what I've presented. [SPEAKER_05]: a bit too long. [SPEAKER_05]: We have this two metaphysical slash sociological systems because that's what they both are, in which we begin from something that looks like absolute freedom. [SPEAKER_05]: I won't call it randomness, but spontaneity.

51:06 [SPEAKER_05]: That takes shapes, forms, it looks like strict determinism. [SPEAKER_05]: But finally, both of which somehow manage to end up in something like intentional freedom are a choice between this and that. [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, I hope I made some sense and it's all I have to say for today. [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much that was really interesting and more so to know about Schopenhjer's views really enlightening.

51:46 [SPEAKER_04]: I just have one question which is to just clarify whether I understood correctly. [SPEAKER_04]: Is it that that you can will is really spontaneous but what you will exactly? [SPEAKER_04]: cannot be spontaneous for example I can will that for example I can dream that there are all men with horse faces but that's because I know horses exist I know men exist and so I dream of for example the story he dreams of Kashmir because he must have heard of Kashmir.

52:15 [SPEAKER_04]: And probably this is why in traditional Vedanta you say the first creator always creates based on the past cycle. [SPEAKER_05]: So yes, thank you. [SPEAKER_05]: He doesn't seem to be like, you are absolutely right. [SPEAKER_05]: It is like that in Vedanta. [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't seem to be like that in the yoga process, for some reason.

52:33 [SPEAKER_05]: Brahma is said to create a caronum without a cause and he has no [SPEAKER_05]: And so in the U.S., that seems to, as far as I've been able to understand and other scholars have argued, like that there is some, as though a bubble pops up in that limitless space of consciousness, and then the way that [SPEAKER_05]: Brahma thinks and creates the world doesn't seem to be predetermined by memories of his formal life or the words of the Vedas that he knows and then creates things in their image, etc.

53:15 [SPEAKER_05]: But then we, when we become free, the key term that the yoga vasysta uses is Tanava. [SPEAKER_05]: attenuation of the vastness. [SPEAKER_05]: So they are no longer impaling factors for us, but we know we have them. [SPEAKER_05]: We have these images, and then we can sort of, as you said, I can dream of horses, but I don't intentionally create them such that I'm not restricted by.

53:42 [SPEAKER_05]: the impelling force of the vassanas that I would otherwise be. [SPEAKER_05]: So that's the idea. [SPEAKER_05]: I should dissatuate how yoga was there's the cause, it's of course a very commonly used term in Indian philosophy, but that specific understanding of the yoga system, likewise seems to be slightly specific to it.

54:03 [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_10]: Hello, okay. [SPEAKER_10]: Thank you so much. [SPEAKER_10]: I have been contemplating on this topic so long and it helps me to survive. [SPEAKER_10]: So, my understanding from the psychological point of view, I try to figure out from this point of view. [SPEAKER_10]: So, basically, you say that primordial being is spontaneous.

54:31 [SPEAKER_10]: It wills. [SPEAKER_10]: So when we come to buy evolution, when we come to any most state of light, we live by instincts. [SPEAKER_10]: So there is no free will. [SPEAKER_10]: But we are given new cortex and we can develop visit time even not before I don't know 40 years old. [SPEAKER_10]: Later on, when we develop our understanding, we can become co-creators kind of.

54:56 [SPEAKER_10]: And finally, we will have some final liberation. [SPEAKER_10]: Is it how it works? [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, I think that is very much right. [SPEAKER_05]: And probably it's how Chopper Hauer himself would say, because he's again, he's very interested in science. [SPEAKER_05]: He wants to explain the world in its entirety.

55:17 [SPEAKER_05]: The will shows itself, but it can show itself in degrees. [SPEAKER_05]: So the level to which the will shows itself in an inanimate object is a lesser degree than it does in an animal. [SPEAKER_05]: And with humans, in particular, as you say, it develops this additional sort of knowledge that goes beyond its needs.

55:46 [SPEAKER_05]: So then we can sort of become co-creator, but only, I mean, either on the side of art. [SPEAKER_05]: where we can, yes, become co-creator insofar as we are not interested in the object as objects, right? [SPEAKER_05]: I don't care about the chair as something I can sit on. [SPEAKER_05]: I merely care for the form of the chair as knowledge, not as something useful, but as something I can know, any that, for him that is an [SPEAKER_05]: And insofar as I have no personal interest in the chair, then me being a subject, and the chair is a pure form can coincide.

56:32 [SPEAKER_05]: And that for him provides temporal temporary relief from the will. [SPEAKER_05]: But for permanent relief, [SPEAKER_05]: So if we have to understand that the world just is suffering and boredom and whatever is between that and then practice a sadism. [SPEAKER_05]: So, yes, that's why what makes a specifically human in that evolution is the faculty of knowing things in a disinterested way.

57:08 [SPEAKER_05]: That's what makes for them. [SPEAKER_05]: Right? [SPEAKER_05]: We do not care about things as being practical, having a use for us. [SPEAKER_05]: We just care about knowing. [SPEAKER_05]: that's specifically what we as humans have, unlike lower species or dimmer expressions of the will, as you would put it.

57:31 [SPEAKER_06]: Okay? [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_08]: I thank you. [SPEAKER_08]: So, I'm relatively new to a data vedanta and some of these ancient texts, but for the yoga vasitha. [SPEAKER_08]: You're stating that the individual does not necessarily have control or does these texts indicate that once you're in light and are self-realized, then you have the ability to create with some sense of freedom.

58:16 [SPEAKER_08]: happens, it would seem that you're still creating, would you say the text is saying you're not creating or you have no control. [SPEAKER_05]: The text would say you are, in fact, co-creating as all is the name, I'm not right, but the way that you are co-creating is entirely determined. [SPEAKER_05]: by the sorts of mental traces you have.

58:43 [SPEAKER_05]: So yes, you are co-creating the world, but not freely. [SPEAKER_05]: We come and see with a character as Chopin Howard would say, right, we come with what's in the Anthropoccusboss and a mental traces that shape, [SPEAKER_05]: the way that we understand, the world end, he was, as I would say, yes, we do cook, cook, create.

59:07 [SPEAKER_05]: Occasionally there seems that there can be an error in the metrics like it happened to Gadi. [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't carry those vastness, and all of a sudden, he's assumed an entirely different identity for him. [SPEAKER_05]: Or maybe that was facilitated, because he wants to know some sarah transmigration.

59:27 [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe that was somehow facilitated, but it's not appropriate for him. [SPEAKER_05]: But if you become liberated, if you can enter that space of consciousness, steal your thoughts entirely, and you can purify that mental traces, such that they are done binding, you can take them as blueprints of them, you want to create, rather than have to.

59:51 [SPEAKER_05]: Does it make sense? [SPEAKER_08]: It does. [SPEAKER_08]: And with the sharpener, is there a, are you saying that there's a knowing, which is the equivalent of a self-realization or illumination? [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, it comes in two ways. [SPEAKER_05]: It comes in art where we can appreciate objects without appreciating their content, which just appreciate the form.

1:00:23 [SPEAKER_05]: and it's being a form of the will without having any personal interest in that. [SPEAKER_05]: The chair is a relatively simple example. [SPEAKER_05]: Then I can coincide the subject that I am. [SPEAKER_05]: I can coincide with the object that is the chair and experience temporarily relief from willing.

1:00:49 [SPEAKER_05]: Just because I do not want to do anything with it. [SPEAKER_05]: But permanent relief requires the life of a sadism in which the will, having produced this superfluity of knowledge can undo itself. [SPEAKER_05]: That's also common the Advaita Vedanta Troopchankara. [SPEAKER_05]: Manda Namesha talks about it as, in practice of meditation is something like an ancient old Buddhist image in fact.

1:01:23 [SPEAKER_05]: that will clarify the water but also because truck itself in the process so then the superfluity of knowledge is something of that sort for Shopenhauer. [SPEAKER_08]: Thank you, Dr. [SPEAKER_11]: Thank you for the wonderful, wonderful expression. [SPEAKER_11]: I see clarification on two points from your talk.

1:01:50 [SPEAKER_11]: One is, the central theme seems to be, the key for becoming free from will is the idea of abnormal superfluidic of knowledge. [SPEAKER_11]: I'm curious to know, what does Shopnhar or yourself have to say about the difference in becoming free from the will, versus becoming free from the intellect?

1:02:13 [SPEAKER_05]: The freedom is from the will, right? [SPEAKER_05]: The intellect is just what serves as an instrument for achieving that. [SPEAKER_05]: Freedom from, for him, freedom from the will just means station of the striving for life. [SPEAKER_05]: Just passing out of existence, maybe not, depends who you ask, it has some [SPEAKER_05]: conceptual affinity with the Buddhist Nirvana.

1:02:49 [SPEAKER_05]: He's not a Vedantic philosopher, he's not a Buddhist, he's an authentic philosopher of his own. [SPEAKER_05]: He appropriates this idea. [SPEAKER_05]: There is no necessarily transmigration for him, etc. [SPEAKER_05]: But the goal for him is sort of to become a sage. [SPEAKER_05]: Something like liberate it while living, right, instead of remaining a subject of the will and its constant striving, [SPEAKER_05]: to perpetuate itself safe by producing progeny the true sage who he engages in the sadisism and in that way, annals the will as it were.

1:03:31 [SPEAKER_05]: But it's a superfluity of knowledge because [SPEAKER_05]: In humans, we can know more than just what we need, right? [SPEAKER_05]: We need to know how to make a car, repair a car, prepare a dish, etc. [SPEAKER_05]: These are things that we need for life. [SPEAKER_05]: It's not the sort of thing that a sort of knowing that provides liberation of freedom from the will in his system.

1:04:03 [SPEAKER_05]: The only two ways to do that is one art. [SPEAKER_05]: We do not have a personal interest, but that's just temporary. [SPEAKER_05]: And a citizen which provides permanent relief. [SPEAKER_11]: So he seems to caution us about the impediments that are caused by going on the path of instinctual urges or such desires, right?

1:04:27 [SPEAKER_11]: So I'm curious to know, in his entire understanding, did he ever comment on the impediment caused by Shastrovasana? [SPEAKER_11]: So again? [SPEAKER_11]: I'm also curious to know if in his entire exposition or his research that he comment on the impediment that is caused by Shastrovasana.

1:04:47 [SPEAKER_05]: Chastravasana, do you mean something like infatuation with knowing? [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, absolutely. [SPEAKER_05]: He is a true philosopher in that he's not a professional philosopher. [SPEAKER_05]: He carries a lot of garage against [SPEAKER_05]: walk just the expression of their own little right so he doesn't put it in those terms but he very much he opens his major work with a diet tribe against that so yes it's very much so thank you him I probably fail pray to that myself it was a wonderful talk thank you thank you [SPEAKER_04]: I also thought it's interesting Shankarayan the Upadhesha Sahasri not so much in his commentaries also makes a point that the Jeevan Mukta has the Vikshapa Shakti still acted while the Aavanashakti is maybe something similar you think.

1:06:04 [SPEAKER_05]: in the Eurovision similar to Eurovision? [SPEAKER_04]: No, in the, yeah, so the spontaneity in, like, for the example, the art that you see, I have no stakes in it. [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, I'm not sure that John kind of would take it in those terms. [SPEAKER_05]: Of course, you know, in his system, Brahma video is a form of a video, right?

1:06:21 [SPEAKER_05]: It's a form of it, it forms this. [SPEAKER_05]: where we know Brahman and we have become certain in knowing Brahman and we have to go through life encountering the world just like everyone else does without being affected by the world. [SPEAKER_05]: But I don't think he is terribly interested in what the yoga-assisted does with that and that is creation of this fabulous world in which he can enjoy, et cetera.

1:06:53 [SPEAKER_05]: they did the model for that is King Jannakam who story is narrated in right before some little before the story of God in the first book who becomes [SPEAKER_05]: enlightened, but remain socially active, right? [SPEAKER_05]: So that's the, well Shankar is, you know, Shankar, Shankar is a little bit Dante, he's properly from monastics, so he will be much sort of, I think he would have a lot of great affinity with Schopenhauer's system.

1:07:31 [SPEAKER_05]: Although, obviously, we do see the well-enlightened doors of Brahman still see the well, etc. [SPEAKER_05]: They just know it's false with absolute certainty. [SPEAKER_05]: Let's say that sort of Shankaras thought culminates as it were. [SPEAKER_05]: Does it make sense? [SPEAKER_04]: except that there is still an element of Viksha Peshakti being active, as he speaks about it in Upadhesha Sari.

1:08:00 [SPEAKER_04]: I thought maybe it's... [SPEAKER_04]: Which part of Upadhesha Sari, the pro or the Pertri section in the beginning chapter? [SPEAKER_04]: It's one of these, one of the chapter's deals with it. [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I can get back. [SPEAKER_05]: In Nagadya? [SPEAKER_04]: In Nagadya? [SPEAKER_04]: In Nagadya?

1:08:13 [SPEAKER_05]: In the first? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: Does he really use the term to create? [SPEAKER_04]: Well, not the words, but the idea that the Jeevan Mukta still has the projection of the word going. [SPEAKER_05]: Oh yes, yes, there's no doubt about that, yes. [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, so far as the Jeevan Mukta sees the world.

1:08:28 [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, that's true. [SPEAKER_05]: But he just knows that the world is false. [SPEAKER_04]: or where, as you say, yoga was decided as a positive-glimming. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the liberated one in yoga was decided, knows that the dream is the door, this false. [SPEAKER_05]: And continues to dream?

1:08:45 [SPEAKER_05]: Continues to dream on his own terms, because it has become a form of lucid dream. [SPEAKER_05]: So if I have to see things until I become Bideha Mutta, finally liberated. [SPEAKER_05]: Well, let me do it on my own terms, right? [SPEAKER_05]: Up, because it seems as though one key difference is that one does not become liberated until Pralayam in Yugoslavia, towards that's not the case, but I'm gonna write karma is run out, and this is once Brahman is known, and you know, it's on Prayam, when it becomes free.

1:09:30 [SPEAKER_05]: But in the office that that doesn't seem to be the operating idea, so there are slight differences here. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm sure you're aware of it in the eye. [SPEAKER_07]: I'm sure you'll aware that in Ramakrishna's teachings, he would say that in the sense that Western philosophers talk about it, there is no such thing as free will.

1:10:03 [SPEAKER_07]: However, Ramakrishna's states that God has implanted the notion of free will in the mind so that immorality would not increase. [SPEAKER_05]: Can you comment on this interesting thought, I mean, I like to think that [SPEAKER_05]: There is some sort of free will and that we can conceive of it.

1:10:32 [SPEAKER_05]: Chopin, how I definitely thought that although we are apparently or seeming when we live without free will, that we can become [SPEAKER_05]: are liberated by a practice of asceticism which is not it's it's it's as I hope I shown it's an idea that has affinity with notions like advanced in Advita Vedant and hopefully with Ram Krishna himself.

1:11:02 [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not sure what I would say to that [SPEAKER_05]: A claim that just the idea of free will is a check to immorality, I have to think about it. [SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to be rushed. [SPEAKER_09]: Thank you professor, and your definition of freedom or in fact shopping hammers, definition of freedom as intentional thought, or your thought and will that's free of vastness makes a lot of sense.

1:11:56 [SPEAKER_09]: And you know, the role of [SPEAKER_09]: the superfluid impersonal knowledge as the means to achieve that freedom. [SPEAKER_09]: I'm curious what Schopenhauer or Yoga Vescher has to say about the role of personal knowledge, you know, specifically understanding ones. [SPEAKER_09]: Mental traces or vasinas, how does the person in knowledge fit into this conceptual framework of knowledge to achieve freedom as Stephen Mukta?

1:12:32 [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not sure what I would put them in terms of personally or impersonal, maybe reflective versus intellectual understanding ones on vassanus. [SPEAKER_05]: Now if I think from the standpoint of Schopenhauer, [SPEAKER_05]: Understanding one's own personal vassiness insofar as they become motives for the will would be an expression of the same Superfluity of knowing because I do not do that for selfish selfish in the expression sensual the expression of the will purposes [SPEAKER_05]: I do not do that to obtain something for the will.

1:13:21 [SPEAKER_05]: I do that in order to understand myself. [SPEAKER_05]: So, in a way that's not available, for instance, to animals. [SPEAKER_05]: So, I think that he would classify the same under the superfluity of knowledge. [SPEAKER_05]: And that's an idea in yoga, in any case. [SPEAKER_05]: The vassan is becoming attenuated or burned.

1:13:50 [SPEAKER_05]: So the seed being burned gives precisely the forms that one can freely intend later, right, without being impelled by them. [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not sure that I've answered your question entirely, [SPEAKER_05]: in character. [SPEAKER_05]: There wouldn't be mandated by a specific phenomenal manifestation of the will.

1:14:21 [SPEAKER_05]: It would rather be a result of that superfluity in knowledge, understanding once urges drives and thinking of that of them as unwholesome, would precisely be that. [SPEAKER_09]: I think that's very significant, it seems like your vast knowledge is knowledge as a movement in faith or freedom.

1:14:47 [SPEAKER_09]: in this world but then they're almost like sort of cast aside but for us you know like I think modern psychology the basis of it seems to be very much that to understand the world better and to operate in the world more freely you need to understand your preconditioning your mental traces and I'm just trying to you know figure out where how do these two concepts reconcile if that [SPEAKER_05]: The question would become what does understand the world better, mean, what's the point of it?

1:15:26 [SPEAKER_05]: If the point of it is to have it easier in the world. [SPEAKER_05]: Then Chopin Hour is not interested in that that's for him is still the will finding a different way to achieve what is in character, predetermined. [SPEAKER_05]: If the point in understanding once specific form of embodiment is becoming free from the urges of the will, that would be an expression of a superfluity of knowledge.

1:15:58 [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, that makes sense. [SPEAKER_09]: Thank you very much. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm in a sense having a bit of trouble understanding where will fits in here because at least for me. [SPEAKER_03]: And it kind of relates to the previous question that you just answered. [SPEAKER_03]: But at least for me, I feel a, in a sense, a desire to flourish, a will to flourish, a will to understand my vassanas to the best of my ability for the sake of freedom.

1:16:33 [SPEAKER_03]: It feels like I could use the word will, like I have a will to become as free as possible. [SPEAKER_03]: But clearly, like that's a different kind of will than, uh, than show-in-how or understands it. [SPEAKER_03]: He would understand that as like, maybe, you know, a will to, [SPEAKER_03]: You know, maximize one's tapping into their absolute earth, their their their their superfluity of knowledge Yes, I mean now to clarify that's why insisted these are not translatable systems [SPEAKER_05]: what they share is the form that some sort of freedom, that is the freedom of choice emerges from what looks as an initial position of entire spontaneity and fatalism, right?

1:17:19 [SPEAKER_05]: But in, say, for Schopenhauer, what the Givenmukta does by way of engaging its vassan as they are no longer urges, [SPEAKER_05]: The yoga was if the system isn't necessarily that of a citizen, right? [SPEAKER_05]: So my artwork was trying to say is that the form is shared. [SPEAKER_05]: There is a beginning of something that looks like expression of spontaneity and absolute freedom that takes a form of [SPEAKER_05]: almost fatalistic determinism, but in between or by some sort of philosophical understanding or meditation practice, some sort of true will emerges.

1:18:11 [SPEAKER_05]: The two are not translatable to one another. [SPEAKER_05]: The specific realization is, right? [SPEAKER_05]: So I wasn't trying to say that, oh, Chopin Harris is the same thing. [SPEAKER_05]: No. [SPEAKER_05]: He thinks in a similar form of thought that makes sense. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for your talk.

1:18:39 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm interested in the temporalities, the temporal space between the active creation and what's created. [SPEAKER_02]: So the active creation is an atemporal space. [SPEAKER_02]: The well is an atemporal force. [SPEAKER_02]: And then what gets created is determines the time. [SPEAKER_02]: And it seems like the desire, the liberation is to get back to the initial point of creation of the universe when there was no previous incarnations.

1:19:12 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm wondering if freedom is like an expansion of the space between creation and what's created or if it's an overlay. [SPEAKER_02]: And in the sense, if the liberated person could imagine even the beginning of everything as existing at the same time as what it created. [SPEAKER_02]: And if it's sort of like, [SPEAKER_02]: Are you aiming for an expansion of the space between creation and what's created?

1:19:41 [SPEAKER_02]: Or are you aiming to see that all the creation could potentially be this overlay? [SPEAKER_05]: That's a very interesting thought, and there seems to be, well, it seems that both directions are possible, so deliberate itself. [SPEAKER_05]: in the yoga of a sishta, which is interesting, represent as an anwa, as an atom of the chilakasha space of consciousness.

1:20:04 [SPEAKER_05]: It seems to be able to go away, it will exit, all the, the, the created bubbles, as it were, that are individual worlds that emerge from this space of consciousness and find themselves just in space of consciousness. [SPEAKER_05]: And yet come back, [SPEAKER_05]: into the world in the same sort of empirical embodiment that they have.

1:20:30 [SPEAKER_05]: Although, while with the perfect understanding that this is all just illusory, it ultimately doesn't exist because in the space of consciousness there are no spaceships, we call it space, but they're just a metaphor. [SPEAKER_05]: because, well, space is what accommodates things, consciousness accommodates thoughts, it's what we call it, the space of consciousness, but it's not spatial in the sense of tree understanding, relation between different objects, prior posterior and that side of this side.

1:21:03 [SPEAKER_05]: So, then all the while, the curious understanding, the world is absolutely false. [SPEAKER_05]: Imagine, we just exist. [SPEAKER_05]: in the space of consciousness. [SPEAKER_05]: So that it seems that both are somehow possible. [SPEAKER_05]: But in so far as the world hasn't expired, they seem to carry on with their specific form of embodiment and remain this atom within the space of consciousness.

1:21:37 [SPEAKER_05]: Because you get accounts that go in both [SPEAKER_05]: Now, of course, as Mr. Anzoidius and thought, we always try to impose some systematicity into a work. [SPEAKER_05]: That's of an expression of charitable reading, but it should be said that the yoga was yesterday's itself very liberal.

1:21:59 [SPEAKER_05]: As the story of Godi, hopefully, showed us Godi, wasn't supposed to see what he saw. [SPEAKER_05]: That's now how things supposed to work when you're embodied. [SPEAKER_05]: And yet, [SPEAKER_05]: Why not because, ultimately, time and space are false. [SPEAKER_05]: So, stranger to the ways of the mind is the his Lord Vishnu.

1:22:19 [SPEAKER_05]: Conclude it. [SPEAKER_06]: What time is the last picture? [SPEAKER_06]: Jesus. [SPEAKER_01]: Namaste. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much for the beautiful talk. [SPEAKER_01]: So, my question is simple and maybe don't directly relate it. [SPEAKER_01]: So, my question is, how does [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so let me rephrase it.

1:22:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Just as I find the things happen, situations happen. [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't believe they're random. [SPEAKER_01]: I think they're meant to happen. [SPEAKER_01]: So everything happens for reason is the way I look at it. [SPEAKER_01]: Is this my mind making that up? [SPEAKER_01]: Or is there any validity to that?

1:22:59 [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, we'd like to think that, right? [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, life should have some meaning. [SPEAKER_05]: So, that's a great solace to think that what seems like a random occurrence, is in fact somehow preordinated and cares a message significant for our lives. [SPEAKER_05]: He doesn't seem as though the yoga was used to care as much for that, [SPEAKER_05]: was that Lord Vishnu statement, which is by the way repeated several junctures when Gody walks aimlessly in ends up in Kashmir.

1:23:50 [SPEAKER_05]: The illustration there is like [SPEAKER_05]: A vulture has randomly changed upon a dead animal in the forest. [SPEAKER_05]: All of a sudden, there's a feast. [SPEAKER_05]: It didn't happen. [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't seem to necessarily be on the grandfielder's of communing, that it's all happening in the space of consciousness.

1:24:13 [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't seem like it's teaching on grand or less and war that this entire world is some sort of. [SPEAKER_05]: Let's at least my sense, you know. [SPEAKER_00]: And thank you from all of us. [SPEAKER_00]: It's been absolutely wonderful. [SPEAKER_00]: And we've really enjoyed having you here.

1:24:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you've enjoyed being here as much. [SPEAKER_05]: I very much enjoyed being here. [SPEAKER_05]: And I was marveled by the sheer number of questions that I get. [SPEAKER_05]: I am a teacher, I don't think recently I had had a class with so many questions. [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you for that.