Yoga For Your Intellect: How Vedanta Offers Freedom from Experience

By Joseph Emmett · Human Potential Coach & Breathwork Practitioner · Visiting Master at AyurMa Maldives

What if ultimate satisfaction was not found through experiences, but in freedom from experience.

This may sound revolutionary - perhaps even disturbing - but it’s the truth.

We’re conditioned to believe that more experiences lead to more fulfilment. That the next unique destination, new dish, or great adventure will provide the peace and bliss that we seek.

Yet, peace and bliss continue to elude us. We achieve our long-desired goal and we are satisfied… for just a moment. Then, almost immediately, the next desire arises. We never reach a still point. Satisfaction is always just around the corner.

The Cycle of Desire & Experience

According to the ancient Indian philosophy of Vedanta, your true nature - your real Self - is infinite, eternal, all-pervading and perfect. But we don’t know it. We have lost the knowledge and live in ignorance of our real Self. This ignorance creates a sense of unfulfillment, a sense of lack or void within.

As a result, our thoughts and desires run towards the world in an attempt to fill that void. It is like hunger generating the desire for food. So we have desires, and we try to satisfy them with experiences in the world. But this approach doesn’t work.

Experiences may temporarily satisfy us, but the hunger always returns. Moreover, more experiences only breed more desires. The cycle of desire, experience, desire, experience goes on, and we remain unfulfilled, incomplete, and dissatisfied.

What We Want Is What We Already Are

The great masters, who have reached the state of spiritual enlightenment and have Self-realised, are the only ones who have proclaimed to be full, complete, and satisfied. For them, the chase is over.

Established in their own infinite Self - the pure Consciousness within and beyond all experiences - they are free from the endless, meaningless cycle of desire and experience.

Essentially, that is what we want. All our pursuits of the world, all the experiences we keep chasing are just misguided seeking of our own true Nature, our real Self. What we think we want outside of ourselves actually lies within us. What we want is what we already are.

Beyond Experience – Pure Consciousness

Life, according to Vedanta, is ‘anubhava dhara’, a stream of experiences. An experience consists of two components: the subject (you) and the object (world).

When you meet the world, there arises an experience, and the flow from one experience to the next is life. To have an experience, you must contact something outside of yourself, and these experiences grant either pleasure or pain.

When you meet a person, travel to a place, contact a thing, it gives you either joy or sorrow.

But your real Self is beyond pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. Beyond experience.

It is Bliss itself: the native home of happiness, peace and satisfaction independent of external contact. It is Self-satisfied - satisfied in Itself, by Itself.

Vedanta declares that liberation from longing, hunger, grabbing, holding, fearing, losing and sorrowing is possible, and that there is no higher purpose in human life.

Those who truly understand the teachings are lit with a sense of urgency and stop at nothing in their pursuit of that changeless, perfect state of Pure Consciousness - the state in which anything added or taken away makes no difference because It is infinite.

In that state, our erstwhile worries and anxieties, concerns and conundrums vanish like mist before the sun. Even before that final realisation, just the scent of this higher way is enough to elevate us above the things that may today keep us awake at night.

Study as a Tool for Liberation

Thus, the study of Vedanta not only takes us to that highest state but, along the way, we begin to ‘breathe an ethereal air’.

Every small step we take towards understanding our true Nature liberates us from the inevitable changes and challenges in our personalities and lives in general.

The perspective gained from knowledge of Self renders the mind calm and the intellect clear. Our thinking becomes sharp, our emotions pure, and our actions streamlined.

Stress and strain melt away; relationships become frictionless; work invigorating and inspiring - a source of recreation rather than exhaustion.

Every aspect of life, each experience is improved until we reach that finality, which is free from experience.

Talks & Further Exploration

The talks I will share at Ayurma will present the knowledge of Vedanta from its highest reaches of contemplation to its most practical takeaways. Questions and discussion are welcome.

I will also be available for one-on-one private and confidential meetings, should you wish to hear a Vedantic perspective on the personal challenges and opportunities in your life.

For those wishing to explore Vedanta immediately, I recommend these four books in the following order:

They can be purchased here: Books & E-books

For an introduction to my teachings, you can check out my podcast, Yoga For Your Intellect, available here: YFYI  (and anywhere else you get your podcasts).

Joseph Emmett returns to AyurMa at Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Landaa Giraavaru from

Mar 9th – Apr 8th, 2026, Explore the schedule and topics of his upcoming Vedanta talks by clicking here.