Dear James,
I am sure you had a blissful day. I watched the Satsanga videos about Sat Darshanam, by Ramana Maharshi and read his comments once again.
I feel that the teachings of Vedanta are beginning to reprogram my mind. These days I’ve found myself regretting childhood memories. I saw myself as a child, jumping on the street, happy. My mother walked a little further back and said: “Look how interested she is. She already got what she wanted…” The words of my mother joined others and the triad: interested, selfish and false was in my mind. I looked at myself with regret, not knowing how to help me to get rid of these negative characteristics.
I saw myself associated with the bad feeling and thought instantaneously, without effort: “I am not this person, I am not these characteristics” and a relief followed this fact. I felt that I do not need to find out why my mother had said this, if it is true or not, how I can get rid of these characteristics and so on. I was simply not involved with the feeling anymore.
James: Good for you. That’s application of the knowledge. It works. Keep it up. Emotions are signs to apply knowledge. There is no sense working on emotions, just dismiss them as not-self. Eventually they lose their power to disturb the mind and just fade away. Regret is a useless emotion.
Francine: I am thinking about Effort… As a yoga practitioner, I have always read and listened about Tapas (Niyama) as Effort. I read Tapas as a doer: “without making the Effort, I will not get anywhere.”
After listening to the Satsang, I saw that I don’t need to make any effort to know that sugar is sweet. That I don’t need to make an effort to know that this Jiva is female. It’s a calm, serene, natural knowledge. There’s the calmness of looking at a fact that doesn’t need to be rationally analyzed or questioned. I could also understand what would happen to me if I knew who I am… It would be a fact… I also remembered some supposedly “magical” experiences that occurred without any effort, when I couldn’t even say that I was dedicated to spirituality. Something like the Self guiding myself. The Self showing itself the Dharma, the Swadharma. Something like the water following the natural course of the river.
But at the same time, I feel that the craving of the doer is firm in me.
I read that you keep your rajasic doer under control by dedicating yourself to Vedanta. I notice that I dedicate myself to Vedanta with the craving of the doer. There is a fascination that attracts me daily to the texts and the videos. But there is also a kind of suffering, as if dedicating myself to it was heavy. I feel anxiety in the background. I must somehow consume Vedanta. But I also see that this weight is on the background of many activities I must perform.
I observe the doer. I give the doer to Ishvara. I give the tensions on my body to Ishvara. I give my anxiety to Ishvara…. The doer hurts… Acting as a doer, there is no possibility to let it go, to be swallowed by me.
James: The fascination is good. It is called mumukshutva, burning desire, one of the four fundamental qualifications. So it is a good motivator. It comes from love of truth. You are a devotee of truth. At the same time desire creates time and time is out of your hands so turn the desire and the time over to Isvara. If you think of Self knowledge as a goal, an event that will happen, leave it up to Isvara, which is time. Que sera sera. And let the desire motivate you to study. Surrendering the desire to Isvara is putting it where it belongs. Isvara is the part of you that wants to be free. In this way it will be a joyful pursuit, not a heavy chore.
At the same time, no time is involved in knowing. Sugar is sweet doesn’t imply time, only knowledge. And knowledge takes no time. The removal of ignorance reveals the object of knowledge to have been always present. You know you exist and you know you are conscious. Nobody needs to tell you that. It is innate knowledge. When you think or speak the word “I” you are saying that you exist and that you are conscious. You should know that you are free too because the scripture says you are and the scripture is a valid means of knowledge for the Self.
If you know it but don’t feel free, it is because you are including your body and mind when you use the word “I.” The body and mind are not included in the word “I.” It is ignorance to include the body and the mind with the word “I.” So when you think or say the word “I,” just mentally subtract the body and mind since they don’t belong to it. If you don’t include them you are free. The body and mind aren’t free so they add a heavy weight to the body and mind, a bondage.
You “become” a liberated person by dismissing the one that thinks he or she is a limited entity and in no other way. There are people who intellectually know that they are free but are unable to claim that they are limitless non-dual ordinary ever-present unborn consciousness because they don’t subtract the body and mind. They think that something has to happen to get rid of the body and mind, the “I-sense.” They stagnate as they wait for something outside themselves to prove that the scriptures are true. But there is no way that an event will prove the truth because you, the truth, is prior to the claimant, the “I-sense.” And nothing needs to happen to remove the “I-sense” because it is only a sensation in time. It is as good as non-existent. Vedanta says you are always free, you just don’t know what it means to be free. It means that the body and mind aren’t you. You can’t say what the Self is because it is not an object of knowledge. But the knowledge doesn’t get physically rid of the body/mind/sense complex. Knowledge doesn’t get rid of anything except ignorance. If you say that claiming that you are Awareness is ignorance it is true since the Self doesn’t think it is limited, unless it is under the spell of ignorance, which it is or it wouldn’t say it isn’t a jivan mukta, a free entity. It is free when it doesn’t know it and it is free when it does.
But people who know Vedanta often fall in love with the knowledge that they are free, not with the entity that is free, so they leave that entity to suffer with the belief that it isn’t free. They think that the Self is an entity that is associated with the feeling of limitation when they know the self isn’t associated with anything. They don’t realize they are doing it because they don’t have a proper guru who would point out their confusion. They are in love with knowledge, not the removal of ignorance. If they realized that knowledge is useless when ignorance disappears, they wouldn’t cling to it. But they don’t. So when they are convinced they know they actually don’t know. It’s a painful state. They keep longing for what they already have.
Anyway, I love your letters. You’re definitely on the right path.
With love,
