Gita 13.30

Sadhak: "I can intellectually accept that everything comes from one source. But I still experience separation. How does seeing become real?"

Guru: "Intellectual acceptance is the beginning, not the end. The seeing becomes real through sustained contemplation, purified perception, and grace. Spend time in nature observing diversity; then ask: 'What is common to all these forms?' Sit with beings—human and animal—and ask: 'What is the same presence in all?' The mind, trained to divide, must be retrained to perceive unity. Eventually, what you first believed, you come to see."

Sadhak: "The verse says 'attains Brahman.' Does this mean becoming something I'm not?"

Guru: "'Attains' here means 'recognizes as one's nature.' You don't become Brahman as if you were something else; you realize you always were Brahman, appearing as this individual. The wave doesn't become ocean—it recognizes it was always ocean. Brahman isn't a destination; it's your identity, obscured by ignorance, revealed by knowledge."

Sadhak: "If diversity comes from the One, why does the One manifest as diversity at all?"

Guru: "The scriptures offer various answers: for play (līlā), for self-experience, for love to have an object. But ultimately, the 'why' is unknowable from within diversity. The wave cannot fully understand why the ocean waves. It can only recognize: 'I am ocean expressing as wave.' When you attain Brahman, the question may dissolve—not because it's answered but because the questioner has merged with the questioned."