And a great laughter arises in the skies || Acharya Prashant, on Vedanta (2021)

Acharya Prashant (AP): Duality is about thinking that you who is just a chemical — a prakritik product of your past, is a sentient entity looking at a largely insentient world of things. That's the dualistic illusion we usually live in. It’s false, obviously. As we are, there is nothing in ourselves that's not material. That which we call as our consciousness, is just a function of the brain. And the brain is just material. Therefore, there is really no difference between the material and the conscious. Therefore, there is no point calling ourselves as living or alive or conscious or sentient. We are processes, not consciousnesses. We are mechanistic not sentient. The moment you see that, the ego cannot live.

The ego lives on an imagined division. The ego says, “You see, even as I arise from the material, I have something of the para-material within me.” No sir, you're just molecules. The moment you see the molecular as just molecular, a great laughter rises in the skies. Now everything is molecular and you are free of the molecules. It’s only now that you are really conscious.

So, how do you become conscious? By giving up false consciousness. The consciousness that we have, I repeat, is purely biological, chemical, mechanical — insentience masquerading as sentients, hormones acting as feelings, influences acting as thoughts, robotic inferences acting as wisdom. When you see all of that as just dead, then you come alive. And then you don't come alive as a body, then you come alive in an immortal way.

No point coming alive as the body, the body is going to be dead. Then, I said, there is a laughter in the skies. Now, you have immortally come alive. Now, there is going to be no end to life. But that's not the life you know of.