Vedanta For Beginners

The following non-localised and undated conversation between the Transparent Ironist (TI) and his aunt Anondomoyi (AA) took place at the level of the Super-Mind. (It is non-localised and undated because this level is beyond spatio-temporal limitations.)

AA : Over the last two years, I have gradually come to lose all interest in this world of mice and men. I therefore deliver myself to your feet so that I may drink therefrom the ambrosia of the celestial message of the eternal Vedanta.

TI : As for the men, I can understand. Pretty nasty creatures, those miserable thingies. Indeed, I am surprised that it took you 48 years to lose your interest in men. But why the mice? How do they come into the picture?

AA : Ah, you don't know what havoc mice can wreak on the harvest. Last month, they ate up all the wheat and the rice we had stocked up in the barn on our family estate in the countryside. I am now fed up of all these worldly concerns. I seek the bliss and the tranquility that you speak of in your texts of the timeless Vedanta.

TI : Yes, Mother.

AA : Mother? I am not your mother!

TI : Indeed, you are not. You see, when we speak to each other, we cannot make a distinction between the lower case and the upper case, can we? I have called you Mother, not mother.

AA : You mean Mother?

TI : Yes, indeed, Mother. Mother with the upper case 'm'.

AA : But why call me Mother?

TI : Because you have passed the first test, and you are well on your way to crossing the next hurdle before you attain the supreme, undecaying, and unchanging bliss of enlightenment.

AA : What is the first hurdle? And which is the last one?

TI : The first one is this world of misery, this veritable jungle of a thousand desires that lead you astray. No woman who has become so exhausted of the pleasures of this world that the very thought of these pleasures fills her mind with disgust can come to the school of the heavenly Vedanta. By becoming a mother, that is, a woman who has given life to finite beings, you have crossed the initial ford. Now you shall become a Mother by withdrawing into yourself the life that you have given out, and thereby shall attain the ultimate truth that you are hankering after.

AA : You mean, once I was a mother, and now I shall become a Mother.

TI : Yes, once as a mother you gave life, but now as a Mother, you shall become Life Itself.

AA : But there are still so many questions that remain unexplained in my mind, clamouring for an answer.

TI : Fear not, O Mother, to speak them out to me!

AA : When my husband died a year ago, why did I endure so much grief?

TI : Such O Mother is the fate of all ignorant beings.

AA : Ignorant?

TI : A woman who sees only plurality in this world goes from death to death. But she who sees, underlying all these men around her, nothing but Life Itself will not seek to grasp one of them, nor when she is dissatisfied with him, another one, and so on in a never-ending frenzy of acquisitiveness. Rather, she will freely give up all attachment that she might have to any of these men, miserable thingies anyway, and become Life Itself.

AA : So I, in my ignorance, thought that my husband had died, not knowing that he, in his deepest essence, is Life Itself and is therefore beyond death?

TI : Indeed, O Mother, at this rate you won't need me to give you this discourse on the secret of the Vedanta.

AA : But do you mean to say that all these men around me do not exist?

TI : They do, O Mother, but only at the lower level of plurality. Ignorant beings that they are, they repeat the same cycle in their lives, running after one woman after the other, and even then their thirst is not slaked. But those men who see nothing in these manifold diversities of women but Life Itself are able to overcome this evanescent realm of transience and attain the highest level.

AA : And what is there at this highest level?

TI : That O Mother, I dare not speak of! My tongue is not equal to the task of describing to you the bliss that one attains there. What great beauty, infinite glory, and unspeakable joy!

AA : But now I have a question for you.

TI : Fear not O Mother, to speak out to me!

AA : How do you know all of this? You have not attained that level, have you?

TI : Indeed, I have not. That's why I am an Ironist, you see. I can only obliquely direct you towards what lies there. Do not mistake my finger for the moon that the finger points to.

AA : But how do you know that the moon that you speak of is 'out there'?

TI : Oh Mother, how much you ignorant beings love to go round and round in riddles! The moon you speak of is not out there, it is in here.

AA : In here?

TI : Yes, whatever is in here is also out there.

AA : So when I am established at that level, can I come back and check on you to tell you whether you were right or wrong?

TI : Ah Mother, when you attain that level, there won't be any 'you' left to do the reporting!

AA : But how do I know that what you are telling me right now is true?

TI : You don't. But, you see, neither do I know whether what I am telling you is the truth of the matter. You simply have to take it on trust from me, and hope for the best!

At that moment, aunt Anondomoyi's teenage daughter barges in, throws her school-bag on the sofa, and switches on MTV playing Guns and Roses. The long strains of 'November Rain' fill up the room, and the Transparent Ironist closes his eyes and pricks up his ears to listen to his *all-time* Fav rock song.

Aunt Anondomoyi watches him, awe written all over her face, loudly exclaims : 'My, this little boy is truly on his way to enlightenment. Fancy that, a teacher of the Vedanta in our own family that is going to hell day by day! Who would have guessed that that we possess such a bright star of our dynasty? He must have been born through the cosmic penance of some great sadhu', and then shouts to her daughter at the other end of the room : 'Ankita! Just come here! He is so unlike you! No attachment at all to your American MTV, or to your stupid Runs and Goses! I wish you could be at least one iota like him!'