Sahaja avasthā, the natural state of Being: the image of the rope and the snake in Vedānta

There is a question Vedānta asks in many ways: if the “I” that seeks is the same “I” that forgets and the same that remembers, what is there to attain? A talk in Hindi, in the format the Indian tradition calls satsaṅga, a gathering to hear and discuss the teaching, revolves around this question and around an idea the speaker presents as the rarest of all attainments: sahaja avasthā, the natural state of Being. The speaker is not identified in the source material.

The speaker stands within Advaita Vedānta, the school of non-duality, for which the most intimate “I,” the maiñ in Hindi, is neither the body, the mind, nor one's life story. What follows presents the teaching as the tradition formulates it, without taking it as fact.

The rope that looked like a snake

The illustration is an old one in the tradition. In the dark, someone sees a snake and is frightened; with light, they discover a rope. The rope is reality, the snake, illusion. The speaker applies the figure to the “I”: a person imagines themselves as body, mind, ego, seeker, sinner, or saint, but in every one of these roles, he says, it is always the same self.

This self would not change when one's mood changes or when life takes another course. The same self that existed in childhood exists in adulthood. One has never stopped being who one is.

Beyond good and evil

The talk sums up the goal in one sentence: “Neither renunciation nor enjoyment: my aim is the ‘I’.” According to the speaker, good and evil are functions of the mind, while Being does not change.

There is, however, a warning. This freedom would not serve as license to act without responsibility. Whoever uses this knowledge to justify desires and vices, he says, will reap the consequences. Dharma, order, and duty cannot be an instrument of the ego.

Who forgets, who remembers

The next argument is simple. If someone forgets themselves, it is the self itself that forgot. If they remember, the one remembering is the same. Both the ignorant and the awakened are this self, the only constant.

Recognizing this is what the tradition calls ātma-niṣṭhā, steadfastness in Being. It is not a matter of adding something to the person: it is recognizing what they always were, even before they began to seek.

Krishna, Arjuna, and personal authority

The speaker invokes the Bhagavad Gītā, in which Krishna, on the battlefield, guides the warrior Arjuna to act and teaches him that, at the level of Being, no one kills and no one dies. The point, for him, is not to justify violence, but to show that action only becomes clean when it rests on the Self.

Krishna, he argues, did not give a universal authorization: he spoke to Arjuna because Arjuna was prepared. Hence the conclusion that true spiritual authority is personal, granted case by case.

The natural state

Sahaja avasthā is described as rarer than knowledge, renunciation, or sainthood. In it, even the idea of “I am” would dissolve into Being, with no memory of the ego and no desire to remember it. The person would go on acting, working, laughing, and crying, but without the sense that someone is doing it.

The talk ends as it began: the teaching, the speaker says, is not for those who want pretty phrases, but a hard reminder that no one was what they thought they were. What remains, once the ego loses authorship, is the question the text leaves open.