The Nature of Existence - Musings from Yoga Vasiṣṭha

This essay was written in parallel with “Chapter 8 The Chance Effect (Cause and Effect Fallacy)“ of my award winning book ”IN/ACTION: Rethinking the Path to Results”, available everywhere you buy books online. While the book’s chapter addresses the more practical aspects of the role of chance in life and business, this piece started out on the spiritual and metaphysical aspect of randomness. Before I knew it, I went deep into the nature of existence as discussed in an ancient Indian text, Yoga Vasiṣṭha, which is why this piece isn’t in the book! If you enjoy reading this, please share with your network.

The desire to understand the nature of existence, why do things exist as they do, is as old as intelligent thinking humans are. I am sharing my thoughts and learnings here in anticipation that this may open your mind to an atypical insight into the nature of existence. It incorporates philosophy and metaphysics and integrates with what I know from my spiritual inquiries as well as quantum theory of time. You don’t have to be spiritual, nor familiar with quantum theory to appreciate this piece. You may even identify with the protagonist Rama, in a story in this piece, as he embarks on a quest to understand the nature of existence and the purpose of life.

Several years ago I was introduced to an ancient Vedantic (Indian) text called Yoga Vasiṣṭha. Compared to the more popular Bhagavad Gita, this is a little known text in the West and even in India. It captures a dialogue and conversation between a young Rama, who is one of the most well-known Hindu Gods, and Vasiṣṭha, a sage.

The conversation starts with a depressed Rama who has observed the nature of life deeply and has come to the conclusion that all life is destined to end in sorrow, old age, sickness and death. This realization has made him wonder what the point of it all is. This inquiry of Rama’s is very similar to the quest Buddha embarked upon before he became enlightened. They were both raised in the lap of luxury and after a trip abroad came face to face with the harsher aspects of life; poverty, misery and infirmity. The two, however were far apart in age and the consequence of making this discovery. Buddha was a married man in his thirties and abandoned his princely life to embark on a quest to finding a way out of the suffering of life. Rama, on the other hand, was still a young man, a prince and had become listless and sad with his findings. His father, the King, noticed the depression and requested the wise sage Vasiṣṭha to counsel the prince.

Vasiṣṭha recognized that Rama had encountered a profound truth about life, but instead of liberating him, it had depressed him. Instead of giving him a lecture, he used a cornucopia of stories to illustrate his teaching. These stories are full of people magically transporting, Star Trek-like, from one time and space to another. Stories are embedded inside other stories, much like the dreams in the movie Inception. Reading the translation of this text by Swami Venkatasenanda, the most easily available book online was like going into a maze and rabbit hole combined into one. The book is full of intricately intertwined stories with fantastical events such as this one, which I am paraphrasing:

A Story Within A Story

“Let me tell you the story of Lila” says Vasiṣṭha to Rama. “Lila is the devoted wife of her husband, a King and ruler of a great kingdom. They are wise, just rulers and happy together. Lila doesn’t want to ever lose her dear husband so she invokes Goddess Sarasvati into her palace and asks for a boon that even when he dies, his soul stays with Lila. Sarasvati says sure, but points out that ‘all this is unreal’. Lila says ‘sorry? I didn’t get that’. Sarasvati says, okay let me tell you a story. ”

Here you go, a story within a story.

“There was a holy man Vasiṣṭha“, (you only find out at the end of this very long book that it’s the same person as the author who is telling Rama the story!), ”who lived with his wife Arundhati. One day, while meditating on top of a hill, he saw a colorful procession of a King and thought to himself ‘when will I be king and ride like this’. Well, life went on and eventually the holy man died. He died eight days ago. Because he had a strong desire to be King, in his new life he became King. That King is your husband and that wife is you. And this is the exact same hilltop where the holy man and his wife lived“

How on earth is that possible, you might ask!? Lila and her husband have, presumably, lived for decades. Even if they were reincarnated, how could the previous incarnation have died only eight days ago? If that isn’t confusing enough, the same holy man had ruled as a different King Viduratha. At another point in the text, Lila and Sarasvati travel “billions of miles in the same room” to visit Lila and her husband in yet another life. And so on. The timing in these stories never matches; there’s no head or tail to any of the tales.

While we can dismiss all this as fantastical, esoteric hog wash (I certainly did for years), Vasiṣṭha claims that what the stories are relaying is real and that our understanding of linear space time is an illusion. We have been tricked into thinking someone can only be in one place at a time. Even those who believe in reincarnation and multiple lives think that these lives are linear. They come one after another. Which is how some people “remember” things from past lives. But that is also a trick.

Interpreting It All

What I was reading was vaguely familiar with what I knew about quantum physics. So I went to work searching online. I voraciously read everything I could find on quantum theory, the space time continuum and the ‘block universe’. They all seemed to be saying the same thing.

All past, present and future are happening now; they are mere locations in a universe in which the four dimensions of space time make up a block. We, rather our minds, hop between locations on this block. Everything a mind can imagine already exists right now. We don’t cause it, we merely visit it in this block universe. It looks as though we made it happen, but, in fact, we only chose to experience it. Each location is a random collection of events and happenings.

From the memory of these visits to locations of random happenings, we then create a causality: we think this happened, hence that happened. Lila and Sarasvati were traveling “billions of miles” in this block universe of nows in the time-space continuum. Sarasvati was enlightened and knew what was happening even though Lila did not. Because of Sarasvati’s presence, Lila was lucky to get a free ride on this “real” plane of existence, even thought she wasn’t enlightened. She couldn’t have gone it alone.

I am not enlightened, and I don’t have Sarasvati to hang out with. I am convinced that I was born in Mumbai, grew up, traveled to the United States for grad school, then graduated, then got a job and so on... and other things happened building upon all previous life events.

This kind of causality creates an illusion of linearity of our entire lives or even something smaller like a trip to the store. That thing called memory helps in creating this illusion of causality. I was able to eat that yummy Cold Stone ice cream because I drove to the store and bought it. If there is no memory, there is no linearity, no causality. Indeed, it never happened!

Deconstructing linear causality leads to interesting possibilities. Swami Venkatesananda, the author of the English translation of this text, ponders an interesting question in one of his talks: “Have I just now woken up to the fact that I am a 56-year-old man? Or am I a 56-year-old man because I keep thinking myself into it?” Hmmm... Does that mean I can change what I am merely by thinking it (or stopping to think it)?

While I was writing my book, I kept waiting till I was published so I could legitimately call myself a Book Author. A writing coach told me to “think and act like a published Author”. In that instant, I became a published Author in my mind. I dropped words like ‘debuting’ in my LinkedIn title. I started giving book talks. This shift happened before this book was published. What changed?

Change your mind and change your life.

What was really shocking in reading this was the consequence of this theory. If this is indeed how it works, then I can create anything for myself. If I want to be a millionaire, I can make that happen so to speak by choosing to visit that possibility, which in fact is an existing reality; a location on the time space continuum.

As you think, so shall you become.

A natural question that comes up is: “So why do I choose misery. Why do we, humans, choose violence, poverty, disease?” Hold onto that inquiry, we will visit it soon.

The text goes on to say that, in reality, nothing exists as we think it does. Three components of existence -- matter, space and intelligence -- are what create the illusion of life as we experience it. Matter exist as just that: a dense form of energy. Space gives matter a chance to be delineated from other instances of matter, this piece of matter (person named Jinny), that piece of matter (you who is reading or listening to this article) and that other piece of matter (the device that holds the article). Space also gives matter the chance to move, evolve, change and transform. Moreover, it allows all matter to be connected. It is the mind or intelligence that gives all this mish-mash a label, a meaning and a story. A tree, air, a person I love, a person I don’t like, me in the time space location where I have a label of “10 years old”, me in the time space location where I have a label of “20 years old”. We create meanings such as “it is bad to be poor or sick or physically disabled”. Our labeling creates the experience, we make being a millionaire a good thing and not having much money a bad thing. And so on.

Ironically, by giving matter a label and meaning, that very intelligence gets trapped in it. Thereby it forgets that it created it in the first place. Imagine a painter getting trapped inside her own painting! I feel stuck in my job or relationship or this stupid long line to pick up my food. But I, rather mind, created it and forgot that I can change it and create something else.

In other words, all life is an entertaining game where “intelligence” or the mind is flitting from time-space to time-space, making up its own interpretation, changing the interpretation while the underlying matter is also changing (being born, aging, dying etc.). It’s all one big churning mass. If you think about it, it is rather magical that we manage to make sense of the world at all. And when we say the world doesn’t make sense anymore, maybe we have hit upon the “truth” without realizing it. Of course we don’t like that truth. We don’t know how to operate in that way of being.

Phew!

Now onto the question of why we choose negative things: violence, disease, poverty, the list can go on. We can think of two ways to look at the phenomena of a negative event. What we call negative is the experience, not the event. Two people in the same plane accident can have completely different experiences. One could become traumatized and stop flying, the other could become grateful for being alive and make positive changes in his or her life. Our experience of an event depends on our beliefs, preferences as well as our past experiences. Terrorists feel as strongly for their cause, which in their mind justifies their act of killing, as do the people who oppose them. No real right or wrong exists; it’s our interpretation of it. Time also changes our definition of right and wrong. Things that were once largely considered as right, for example slavery, became wrong.

It’s all in our minds, individual and collective.

The other way to look at it is that if it weren’t for contrast of positive and negative, all existence would collapse into a blank hole of nothingness. Let’s start with a simple example. If all people and objects around us were the same height, we would not know the experience of tallness or shortness. We would not know tall if there was no short. If we were happy all the time, we would not appreciate being happy. It takes a period of unhappiness for us to experience happiness, to know what happiness feels like.

Taking this up a notch, if it weren’t for the existence of bad, good would not have a chance to exist. In the 2008 movie Dark Knight, the villain Joker tells Batman, “You complete me”. For good to exist, we must have bad and vice versa. If all villains disappeared from earth, there would be no heroes and heroines.

This is the design of creation. A collection of contrasting experiences so we can experience each component that makes up the contrast.

So What Am I Supposed To Do With All This

Does this make you uncomfortable? If yes, take a break and let it soak in. When you come back to it, we will try to make this concept more usable in life.

How is this knowledge applicable in daily life?

One practical application of this theory is this: if something doesn’t make sense or is not going my way, I only need to remember that the very mind that got me into this situation can and will get me out of it.

This might seem like a tall order. When I feel stuck, I feel stuck. It is not always easy to just change my mind.

In that case, chill out. Just do what you can possibly do. Don’t worry about cause and effect, outcomes and results too much. It’s all good. Let it comfort you that there’s nowhere to get to and that you can’t really go wrong. There's no such thing as missed opportunity or wasted time. You can always choose another opportunity when you want to. Even if you believe in linear time and missed an opportunity in the past, there's always another one out there you can choose or even pursue if that's the word you prefer (it might make you feel more in control!). Life is a long game. Be entertained with it. And marvel at whatever it was that designed this superb game. Marvel at it. Wonder at it.

Even if this entire article and all this theory feels like hog wash, consider the possibility that we make up stories and narratives on things and events that don’t exist anywhere except in our mind. If your mind allows the possibility that this might be true, then a good first step is to consider this: what if we changed the story to something that pleases us? That is a good enough starting point to apply this theory. If you are going to make up a story, then make it one that makes you feel better about life. Instead of a "woe unto me" tale after a negative event, how might you re-tell the story to make it more pleasing to think of, before you take any further action?

For true enlightenment, one needs to drop the positive stories as well and acknowledge all existence as a series of random occurrences super-imposed by the ideas and imagination of the mind. The promise is, once you get there, you see existence for the entertaining play that it really is! For now, replacing a negative story with a positive one is a good enough starting point.

The nature of existence is whatever story we tell about it. Let’s make it a good one!

Citations

Nolan, Christopher, dir. The Dark Knight. 2008; Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures. Blu - Ray Dics, 1080p HD.

Nolan, Christopher, dir. Inception. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2010.

Roddenberry, Gene, Marc Daniels, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, and Alexander Courage, Dir. Star Trek, The Original Series. 2004; Hollywood, Calif: Paramount.

Venkatesananda, Swami. The Concise Yoga Vasistha. New York: State University of New York Press, 1985.

Venkatesananda, Swami and Swami Venkataramani. Multiple Reflections : Talks on the Yoga Vasistha. San Francisco: Chiltern Yoga Trust, 1988.


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