I want to talk about spiritual traditions, and the idea of “Waking up.”
There is one thing that traditions agree on, life has suffering, and maybe even life is suffering. Each tradition can show you how to end this suffering.
Faith traditions say you suffer because you are separated from God, and you have to believe in, have faith in, God in order to stop suffering.
Experience‐oriented traditions like Buddhism say that you suffer because your mind is full of cravings and desires, and to stop suffering you have to quiet the mind’s cravings.
With both traditions, a person can have deep religious experience that transports them past the ordinary into the divine, from a limited experience into something bigger, something vast and limitless, filled with love, light and compassion.
Each form has its own problems, though. The problem with faith orientations is doubt. For example, fundamental Christians believe many things that I myself have deep doubts about, so their benefit is lost to me. The problem with experience‐oriented religions is that their highest expressions, like nirvana, mainly come only after many years of preparation and practice. An example of this is the Zen practitioner who has “A sudden enlightenment” – but after 20 years of practice, all day, every day for many years.
The alternative to faith and experience‐based traditions is called “Nonduality.” This has as its root, the Hindu name, “Advaita Vedanta,” “Advaita” means “Not two” and “Vedanta” means “highest, final teaching.” So Advaita Vedanta translates as “The highest and final teaching of “not two,” nonduality.”
Advaita says that the cause of suffering is a lack of knowledge – that you don’t know just who you really are, what your own identity and existence actually is. The way to end suffering is, then, to really know yourself, to know the nature of your own existence. This is experiential knowledge, not cognitive knowledge. This is knowledge like knowing that you exist.
So Nonduality is the way of deep inner knowledge, or ever‐present consciousness.
Waking up is not a part of faith traditions. It is a main idea in both experience traditions, and nonduality. In both, it is “waking up” to the experiential knowledge of your deepest identity, that you are not the changing body or mind, but rather what ultimately exists is this unchanging, unlimited consciousness, and that is who you are.
So if the key to ending all dissatisfactions lies in deep knowledge of yourself, how do we get this for ourselves?
One way to find this knowledge is simple and direct. It does not require faith, or special experiences that come after long practice. Rather it is with your immediate experience. Nondualists might ask, “Do you exist?” and then ask, “How do you know you exist? Is it through your senses? Is it from the mind?” “Well, do you exist even when you have no sense inputs?” Yes, so it is not from the senses that you know you exist. “Do you exist even when you are not thinking?” Yes, then it is not from the mind. They then point out, “Since it is not your senses and not your mind, then it must be from something deeper. What is this? Know this.”
Let’s do this for ourselves, right now. I ask you, “Do you exist?” Now, where within yourself do you “look” to find the answer? Observe closely. Is it from your senses? Is it from your mind? Or is it some kind of deeper knowledge that you just know?
This starts to open the door to waking up.
VIDEO: ALAN WATTS ~ IF YOU'RE LISTENING TO THIS LECTURE THEN YOU'RE READY TO WAKE UP…