Douglas: Wow, I am blown away by your body of work and feel so grateful to have found you. I think I’ve worked out what is causing the tension in my practice. Prior to finding you/Vedanta I consumed a fair bit of Ruper Spira material, as you probably know his whole thing is about everything being just awareness. The result of listening and applying this knowledge led to a firm conviction that the essence of every object is just awareness, so the automatic thought when experiencing anything became “what is there to this but the awareness of it?”. Now with the Vedanta discrimination practice of negating all objects as not Awareness/Self, what I’m finding is this sense of confusion/tension occurring. It’s as if the former understanding/practice is undermining the latter. I’m struggling to juggle both simultaneously. Any idea on how to manage this situation and proceed without this constant conflict, should I just focus on the not-Self practice and stop with the “yeah but technically it IS the Self” thoughts?
James: If everything is awareness, how do you account for the world, the jivas, suffering, seeking, etc? Rupert is a good guy but he’s irresponsible because he doesn’t account for the world and show the apparent part of the Self that’s apparently in the apparent world how to negotiate happily in the world with the knowledge I’m awareness, which is the truth. There is still a Douglas entity that thinks and feels and has karma. Does awareness have karma? Awareness doesn’t think or feel or have karma. It has no instruments of knowledge and experience.
If you don’t think, then there is no world because the world is only your thoughts i.e. what you think it is. Trying to stop the mind doesn’t work because you didn’t start the mind. It’s under Isvara’s control The key to liberation is the Isvara/Maya teaching. The Neos are ignorant of it. They have all heard about it but they don’t understand its significance, so people just end up confused and frustrated. If there is only awareness then you are awareness and awareness won’t think “I’m awareness” or “what should I do now that I know that I’m awareness.” One woman who was very devoted to Rupert came and begged me to help Rupert. Of course it doesn’t work that way. A person has to realize they don’t know something and ask for help.
The “there is only awareness” teaching is called ajativada, non-origination of the world. It will only be understandable by someone who has gone through the preliminary stages (karma yoga, upasana yoga, jnana yoga) and assimilated the Isvara/Maya teaching. The problem is that when a teacher gets famous and rich from giving the highest teaching, which gets the hearer temporarily high, he can’t backtrack and amend it. If he does, people will be completely confused, his reputation will suffer and he will have a big mess on his hands. The person stops growing. You may know “The Truth” but that doesn’t make you a good teacher. To teach you have to provisionally accept duality and understand how dualistic teachings lead you to freedom and non-dual love.
We have the same problem in Vedanta when people take it upon themselves to pursue Vedanta without being properly qualified or properly taught. People read my book, have their Eureka! moment and off they rush to nirvana. However, this nirvana doesn’t last; their vanas (desires) don’t dry up and one fine day they suspect something is wrong. This year I’ve been doing a teaching called “The Complete Teaching” for people who have been following Vedanta for considerable periods of time. The qualification for hearing this teaching is that you forget every single bit of Vedanta that you ever heard and start over at the beginning. A humble open-minded person will be happy to discover his or her limitations. Thinking you know the truth is a kind of arrogance.
Rupert is a very nice sincere person but he is offering only a small slice of bread and evidently he thinks that he is giving the whole loaf. The “all is awareness” teaching is not a body of work. It is just one of many equally important teachings (prakriyas). I hate to criticize him and others, but basically Vedanta is very successful in the West because I (and a few others) had the temerity to question the whole modern approach to liberation in Chapter 2 of How to Attain Enlightenment. Probably 80% of the thousands who pursue traditional Vedanta a la ShiningWorld are Neo-Advaita casualties. I’d be happy to teach satya/mithya to the Neos but they aren’t interested. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Strange to say, but ShiningWorld more or less qualifies as a Neo-Advaita Anonymous support group. You may be surprised to know that the people that progress most easily and quickly, at least at the beginning, are those who have no idea about the modern spiritual world.
If you understand Vedanta you will see that this ‘direct path’ approach has caused problems for thousands of years. It goes on. I am required by the rules of the tradition to point out the limitations of other teachings. I used to get hate mail for it. Ignorant people who think they are enlightened are not particularly rational. My book has been out for more than ten years and to this day, I find it amazing that not one Neo teacher has addressed Vedanta’s basic criticism! Well, it’s not amazing because there is no argument. The situation brings to mind the story of the emperor’s new clothes. Only a small innocent boy whose eyes are open sees the truth, not the truth seers. The problem is so obvious, it’s not obvious at all.
Now to your question.
Douglas: The result of listening to Rupert and applying this knowledge led to a firm conviction that the essence of every object is just awareness, so the automatic thought when experiencing anything became “what is there to this but the awareness of it?”. Now with the Vedanta discrimination practice of negating all objects as not Awareness/Self, what I’m finding is this sense of confusion/tension occurring. It’s as if the former understanding/practice is undermining the latter. I’m struggling to juggle both simultaneously. Any idea on how to manage this situation and proceed without this constant conflict, should I just focus on the not-Self practice and stop with the “yeah but technically it IS the Self” thoughts?
James: The problem is that “the awareness of it” is you. The operative words are “of it.” If everything is awareness who, or better yet, What is aware of it? Saying awareness is aware of itself doesn’t work because reality is non-dual awareness. The Isvara/Maya teaching explains it. We call the teaching pratibimba vada, the reflection teaching and I won’t go into it here. You will come across it as you continue your inquiry.
Love,
James
