You Cannot Have Your Cake and Eat It

Ajātivāda represents the pinnacle of non-dual understanding, suggesting no creation or world exists – not even their appearance. This perspective, often deemed too profound for discussion, contrasts sharply with experience. A step below is vivartavada, in which the world is perceived as illusion: real, yet not as it seems. The world, made not of matter but consciousness or love, only appears through the lens of perception. The adage 'you cannot have your cake and eat it' encapsulates this philosophy, illustrating the mutual exclusivity of knowing and being. Knowing requires subject–object relationship; we can’t be something we know, and vice versa. At the core of our experience is true self, not knowable as an object. This unnerving realisation, representing a separate-self death, is a gateway to rebirth as our true self. To the mind, this self is 'nothing', yet, inherently beyond something or nothing, it is the absolute, known not by mind but by being.