Questioner (Q): Next one comes from Ron Jagannathan. He says the core philosophy of Advaita Vedanta is experiencing Brahma. Ramana Maharshi advocated direct enquiry for the same. How many people have experienced Brahma this way? How long does the training usually take?
Acharya Prashant (AP): Ron, that's not the core philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. Brahma is not an object to be experienced. In fact, Vedanta or Advaita Vedanta are not at all about Brahma so much. Even though they name themselves as Brahma Vidya. Practically, when it comes to you and me from our perspective, it is about dissolution of the experiencer.
Not adding another experience to the experiencer's kitty. You see, the experiencer is a sucker for experience. He is thirsty. He is thirsty because all his life he has been taking in things that have not only not quenched his thirst, but have actually worsened it, exaggerated it. So, he is in a deep problem. His throat is burning. He looks this way and that way and wants to experience more and more. That's our situation. That's the general situation of mankind. He wants to add to this long list of the objects he has experienced.
And he says fine, I now have Advaita Vedanta. I want to experience Brahma as well. The trouble here is, this experiencer exists only in his own dimension. And therefore can experience stuff only in his own dimension. So, all the stuff that he experiences is bound to have a certain commonality. This Brahma that he wants to experience will not be very different from the men and women and the food and the drinks he has experienced so far in his life. Are you getting it? See, can you experience something in four dimensions? Can you? But you have experienced a lot. Such a great diversity of experiences you have. But do you see that that diversity is actually not diverse really. All the objects that you have experienced so far belong to your own dimension and which is the dimension of three dimensional perception in space. Have you ever experienced anything that is not inside time?
