Interpretation of Complex Scriptures

I have been grappling with the various scriptures and their complexities for a very long time. With all this effort, the final output was a sense of intellectual gratitude and a false sense of spiritual elevation. But none proved to be of any help to either identify the true self or to find a path or an action plan to get me to that self-identification.

My preceptor gave me a simple process, that I would like to believe is sacred to me and specific to my nature. However, the mental inertia to keep the motion going in a “search of myself” is high. Especially for me who has a background in science and dissect almost anything under the sun with the scrupulous mind of logic and legitimacy of my senses before I can agree to any advice.

With that approach, the mind starts to play its own games. And at some point, books on philosophy, psychology, sciences, mathematics seems so convoluted that they start circling back on itself, rendering the whole analysis of the mind relentless & almost recursive. Thus ends science!

However, I began to think where the actual complexity lies. And it turned out that the first problem lies in that fact that I am beginning with the premise that the need to discover the true self and the process of discovery is complicated. And science and scientific ways are the only means to help analyse and assimilate that might problem. This path, as I mentioned earlier, is the real ad-absurdum, since I was putting my mind to analyze the mind. In Advaita Vedanta, as I was mentored, you get to know the Self if you reach a State of No Mind. So I am in the process of giving up progressing on this path!

With so many opinions around, with so many ideas and interpretations provided by so many intelligent & intellectual people, my intellect is falling far short of being able to decide and analyse them. So the complexity that I created for myself, is to seek, sieve and solidify these numerous opinions around me and try to decide which one is right for me.

This leads to the second nature of the complexity I created. This again is a cyclic recursive problem. Let me state this problem in another way. I am trying to find the best path forward to realize my true self, when I acknowledge thus, that I do not know what nature my true self could be. I just assumed that my true nature is somewhat intellectual in nature and I employed my finite intellect to define probably a slightly bigger intellect. So simply put, I am seeking something that I do not know what, using means that I do not know completely. Again, this path, is the real ad-absurdum. So I am in the process of giving this path up!

I am convinced that the problem or its solution is simple. Just like anything else in nature and about nature, the construct could be complex, the appearance could be very complicated, but the true problem and the solution is always simple and almost always very elegant. The path forward, with this assumption, would necessarily be simple even though the effort required to get to the goal could be monumentous.

With everything else in nature that is so balanced, so elegant, self sufficient and self contained, the major problem with realizing and accepting that is even before we understand it & realize it myself, the mind first goes out to be able to understand in a way & to an extent where I can explain that to someone else. If I take that “someone else”, other that myself, away from the equation, looking at this issue from a point of non-duality, where I do not have to convince anyone else of what I know, then the whole need to prove the realization with equations or intellect simply vanishes! Things become simple and I have no more hesitation to just go with belief & run on faith.

Maybe, now that I look back on some of the readings that I did of the lives of many of these people who have realized their true self, they simply stopped talking. Who could you explain things to for which you cannot quote other references or put up a nice logical mathematical equation with the left side completely balancing the right side when all that the listener would look for are citations and documented proof.

My personal challenge currently is to either slow down the momentum of analytical mind or to be able to drive the momentum in a direction where I begin with faith, experiment myself and then absorb or reject an idea.