Can you enlighten me? In one of your seminar series you say that ‘matter’ is inert. Then in another series you say ‘matter’ is eternal. I might be confused for the wrong reason. Is this reflection or possibly non origination?
James: I hope so. Consciousness/Awareness is eternal and matter is eternal. Consciousness is not conscious and matter is not conscious. But when Maya (Macrocosmic Ignorance) is operating Consciousness and matter together become conscious, which is to say that they appear as conscious beings, first as a unicellular organism, which complexifies by dividing. This process goes on for approximately 14.67 billion years on the cosmic clock. This process is called reflected awareness. Prior to creation of the material world, which provides a reflection for awareness in the form of sattva, the eternal inert material “portion” of Awareness is potential. It exists, but it is unmanifest.
At the very end of this process (from our point of view, although the reflection is still expanding and will probably expand for many more billions of years), sometime in the last 5-10,000 years the reflection becomes more subtle and we can say that a very tiny minority of human beings) become aware that they are aware. Most humans are not aware
that
they are
not
humans.
An equally tiny cohort of this tiny cohort somehow hears about Vedanta, of which an equally tiny cohort understands the value of Vedanta (freedom from dependence) and commits to actualizing said freedom, of which an equally tiny cohort is set free of the notion that it is a created (born) entity. In short, a very rare few. One of my friends once said that there probably aren’t twenty five people in the world who understand what I’m talking about, which is is fine with me in so far as I like to make myself useful.
From this point on Awareness enjoys the option of granting freedom to the created entity. Keep in mind that the created entity is not non-existent. It is a living functioning conceptual entity that eventually dies. So the question becomes, “If I am unborn Awareness and know it, there is no death for me. So why would I bother blessing a finite entity with a happy life?” Vedanta’s answer is “Why not?” It gives three reasons: (1) for the sake of the jiva itself, which suffers various limitations (2) for the sake of the teaching tradition, which taught it that it is free and, (3) for the sake of the world. One less person with an active Duryodhana factor is a net gain for the world.
