Does Bhagavad-gita teach Advaitavada? | Wisdom Munches 6 | Chaitanya Charan

Question question I have a different question I get confused between duality and non-duality so just as Krishna has spoken about non-duality like I was reading at the Vedanta and it talks about everything being Brahman and everything being non-Brahman and Bhagavad Gita I kind of feel it's more duality there so I get confused between the two yes it's a difficult no I mean I'm just thinking how much time to take to answer this question so how should I answer in 5 minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes or we want to serve dinner and we can I can talk this can be the last question ok but you haven't answered my question to properly answer ok so I'll try to try to keep it brief but I'll answer see I think it is Max Planck one of the prominent scientists he said that in normal life the opposite of truth is falsehood but with respect to the great truths of life the opposite of one great truth is another great truth so he was talking more in terms of quantum physics and relativity both are true although both to try to make sense of both of them together is difficult so we could say that is what applies to the domain of spirituality also that that that there is oneness and there is personhood both of these are truths and it's not that one is true and the other is false so the that there is an ultimate reality beyond this world that is universally accepted by not just the Vedic traditions of the world so now what is the nature of that ultimate reality so if we consider there is a spiritual reality beyond this world so now is this personal or is this impersonal now the Advaitic idea is that everything except Brahman non duality is this is Brahman and that is the only reality and everything else is illusion to various degrees so now for example if there is a personal divinity so for example that could be Krishna that is Ishwara so their idea is even this is an illusion and you may have heard of these three modes goodness passion ignorance the three coverings within material nature so their idea is that that when the Brahman becomes covered by the mode of goodness it becomes Bhagwan it becomes God when Brahman becomes covered by Rajas the mode of passion it becomes the soul the Jeeva and when Brahman becomes covered by Tamas the mode of ignorance it becomes material nature Prakriti soul and material nature now this particular theoretical formulation this is not found in the Bhagavad Gita this is not found even in the Vedanta Sutra on which this generally based like specific this kind of idea but this is their idea and their idea of liberation is that we realize that Prakriti is an illusion Jeeva is an illusion Bhagwan is also an illusion and nothing exists except Brahman now what they also say is that it's very difficult to realize Brahman so provisionally one may seek to link the Jeeva with the Prakriti sorry Jeeva with Bhagwan and this is the process of Bhakti so that way a person can come out of material nature and as a person comes closer and closer away from the material nature closer and closer to Bhagwan then that person will realize initially you can worship Bhagwan so sometimes even the Advaitic tradition the non-dual tradition they may also practice Bhakti but their idea is ultimately I my sense of I-ness is an illusion the idea of God's person is an illusion and there is only Brahman so in one sense they call themselves as trans-theistic we accept theism and we go beyond theism now again all these ideas there is no explicit scriptural basis for them these are these are formulations and in its own way the philosophy can seem quite attractive but when it comes to scripture there is a problem and another point is that from logical perspective also if Brahman is all that exists then how did maya even come into existence and how did all these jiva, Ishwara, bhakti how did all form about that question remains unanswered now there is another way of looking at it that there is an ultimate reality and that ultimate reality has multiple aspects to it so there is a personal aspect to it and there is an impersonal aspect to it and there is an intermediate aspect to it also which is partly personal partly not personal so this is called as bhagavan the impersonal is called as brahman or brahmajyoti the effulgence and this is called as the paramatma now in the bhakti tradition the impersonal is also acknowledged as real and somebody can pursue the impersonal and they can also attain the impersonal in the bhagavad gita there are many places where Krishna categorically emphasizes that that the personal is the highest so for example 7.7 says there is no truth beyond or for example 15.19 he says those who know me they are enlightened and you could go on 10.8 it says that everything comes from me so everything includes nowhere in the gita says Krishna does in the gita does Krishna say or nowhere does the gita say that there is some truth beyond Krishna that is to get it Krishna talks about my nature but his nature refers to generic spiritual nature it doesn't refer to something beyond him so the gita clearly is personalist now having said this the gita does not reject impersonalism in the gita impersonalism is approached in two different ways the terms themselves have not been used in the gita but these terms have been used in the later tradition these two different approaches are one is in 9,11,12 and the other is in 12.2 to 4 or rather 3 to 4 so in 9,11,12 Krishna talks about those who consider the personal to be an illusion and he says such people are an illusion so this is technically called as mayavada and this is a widespread form of what we call non dualism but that is not the only form now there is other where the impersonal is the individual preference that means the divine may have the ultimate reality may have a personal aspect but I don't really care for it I want to go towards the impersonal and Krishna is fine with that they will also attain me he says but it is a difficult process 12.5 also it is a difficult process because to have nothing to contemplate on to go beyond all form all personality all quality it is quite difficult so this you could say this is accepted this is rejected so in the Gita so the if you consider advaitavada the term advaita literally means non dual now at one level the personal the impersonal they are all ones its one ultimate reality its not that these are different realities it is the same reality but it is perceived at perceived to different degrees I will give one example to conclude this point have any of you heard of this thing so if there is a gulab jamun now not everyone knows not everyone knows ok its a Indian dessert if you haven't tasted it then your life is wasted ok so now this has broadly three characteristics first is it has its form its attractive spherical form in its in it comes with its own juice or whatever you call it its form or you can say its shape then it has its fragrance smell and then it has its taste now each of them are attractive so suppose somebody lives in a prison and sent us to jail and the jail happens to be next to a sweet shop and in that jail they can in that sweet shop gulab jamun is being made and the smell goes over the wall to the prisoner and the prisoners smell this but the smell the fragrance is all that they have ever experienced they have never experienced anything more than the smell now they don't even know what the object is they experience only the smell and say they gave it the name gulla what is this object with the beautiful smell oh its gulla now say suppose on the sweet shop itself the sweet shop is next to the jail but the sweet shop is also on the road on the other side and say there is a poor man who goes by that road and there is a glass wall and everyday he can see the gulab jamun he can see this object now the smell is coming he is also seeing it but he has never tasted it so for this person there is smell plus glass plus sight plus shape you can say and say he gives a name to it called jamun and now he is also experiencing the same object but its not a complete experience the object is the same now suppose somebody is a customer they go into the shop and then they eat the gulab jamun so for them there is smell plus shape plus taste and they come to know this is a gulab jamun so now its the same object so the gula is not a lesser object than the gulab jamun jamun is not a lesser object its a different level of realization of that object.