Vedanta, Mukti, and the Art of Turning Toward the Self – Reflections on Spirituality in Absolute Terms

Vedanta teaches us two kinds of liberation: Krama Mukti (Gradual Liberation) and Sadyo Mukti (Immediate Liberation).

Krama Mukti is a step-by-step approach to liberation. In this path, a devotee who has cultivated deep meditation and devotion toward the Divine may attain Brahma-loka after death, where liberation is ultimately completed through Self-knowledge.

Sadyo Mukti means immediate, direct liberation through supreme Self-knowledge (jnana). It is attained through realizing one’s true identity as Brahman, the ultimate reality, through direct spiritual wisdom and Self-inquiry (Vedanta vichara).

And when liberation is realized while still living, this is called Jivanmukti — freedom while alive.

I do not need to become Brahman.

 

I was never separate from Brahman.

Let me meditate on these thoughts often, to turn my mind toward God, toward the ultimate reality within and beyond me. If my worldly desires become greater than my longing for God, my mind becomes divided. Let me not seek only the pleasures of the world, but the source from which all things come.

If I have other desires greater than God, my mind will be divided. Where my focus goes, my energy follows. So let my mind, my actions, my desires, and my attention become aligned.

I do not have to reject the world. I have to loosen my attachment to it.

Let me move from distraction to alignment, from many desires to one-pointedness, from the outer world to the inner Self.

When I experience dukkha, let me recognize it as an opportunity to examine what I am clinging to, what I am identifying with, and where I have forgotten my deeper Self.

Let me return to what is.

 

Let me return to Brahman.

 

Let me turn toward the Self.

The Bhagavad Gita teaches the movement from desire toward steadiness. The Upanishads point toward the Self as that which is realized by the one who turns toward it. The Taittiriya Upanishad points toward ānanda as intrinsic to the nature of Brahman — not merely happiness or pleasure, but fullness, completeness, and freedom from the sense of lack.

Aham Brahmāsmi.

 

I am Brahman.

 

The Self is not something I need to acquire. It is something I need to know.

Brahman is complete, it is the infinite. Brahman is ānanda. Let me live from that knowing.

Through deep meditation and contemplation, the mind may become profoundly still. There may be moments of non-dual absorption in which the distinctions between observer and observed become quiet or disappear.

This is the territory of Nirvikalpa Samadhi, a profound state of meditative absorption in which mental distinctions and modifications become deeply still. But liberation is not simply the experience of a temporary state. The deeper truth is that the Self was never separate from Brahman.

Aham Brahmāsmi.

Let me live with that knowing. And let Mukti be not something I seek to attain, but the freedom of knowing what has always been true.

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HUMBLE DISCLAIMER: This is notes I’ve compiled while listening to spiritual discourses on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Sanatana Bhakti tradition. Please let me know if I have misunderstood something here, I am lifelong student of Vedanta.

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About Sanatana Dharma

ब्रह्म सत्यं जगन्मिथ्या जीवो ब्रह्मैव नापरः।
अनेन वेद्यं सच्छास्त्रमिति वेदान्तडिण्डिमः॥

Brahman alone is real; the universe is mithya – neither fully real nor unreal, but an appearance. The individual self (jiva) is none other than Brahman itself, not separate or different. This is the true teaching of the scriptures, as revealed by Vedanta. ~ Verse 20 from Brahma Jnānavali Māla