Notes by: Vikram Ranganath

2.8.23

• The central idea is that our own nature is joy!
  • Last week: our own nature, is existence.
  • How to define something as real: that which is the same in all three periods of time.
    • That which is changeless, is real.
  • Only thing that is truly changeless, is the principle of existence.
• How does existence make a difference to me, how does it affect my own life?
  • Person in the documentary shows the person that this knowledge of existence can shape us into.
• Documentary:
  • Insightful information:
  • Everything that we do is oriented to essentially grasping and using it.
    • Those things that stand out to us stand out because we perceive that we can use them for a certain purpose.
    • We do not see bening objects in the world, we see manipulatable objects that we think we can use for our own benefit.
    • The habit of constantly using things for our purposes, we only get joy from exploiting things around us.
  • Whenever we perceive things, they are essentially filtered through a story that we are telling ourselves.
    • Our mind will perceive small things in a different way, a way that we find different, more of a reflection of ourselves in the world around us.
  • Even our senses of perception can change depending on how we are conceiving the world around us.
    • Ahimsa allows us to feel one, such that there is closeness and connection with others.
  • We can boil the whole universe down to all of its existence.
    • Ex: when you get down to the smallest level of quantum mechanics, molecules eventually become indistinguishable, and one cannot predict where the molecules are, but only where they will be.
  • Documentary demonstrated how when we are able to see there is something the same within everyone around and everything around us, we find immense beauty and more importantly immense JOY! 
• Next week: the third realm of being is “Consciousness”.