Christian: It’s strange, isn’t it, being carefree and relaxed while surrounded by so much worry and distress. If people only knew their true nature, pandemics wouldn’t matter (that is, in the way in which samsaris perceive them to matter.) They could just put down the triple world and leave it to itself while still doing what needs to be done. Apparent things get done apparently, as a matter of course, after all, whether the jiva makes a big production out of it or not.
Just wanted to think out loud with you. I don’t really have anyone with whom I can share this and have it understood as intended. But it’s fine, really; I share out of enjoyment and love, not out of need.
Warmest wishes, as always, and please extend the same to Ramji for me.
Sundari: Thank you Christian, good to hear from you again, thanks for your email. Yes indeed, this world does not make sense without Self-knowledge. What can one do but observe the madness knowing it is just the three gunas out-picturing, and feel compassion for those so caught up in the movie? It is so interesting to live this life fully ‘awake’ as the Self, observing the both/and of it all…, completely untouched and yet apparently involved!
Christian: Thank you for your reply, I love it! And yes, it is! Both/and. There is only satya, but there can be no mithya without it. Orders of reality. Which reminds me… early on I used to give the usual lip-service about “everything is Consciousness/Self”, and so on. But this isn’t and was never *really* it. It’s a misperception. There is no “every” and there is no “thing.” There is *only* Consciousness/Self and that’s it. One can stop there and relax.
Anyway, thank you for the little chat, Sundari. And not just for this, but for being such a guiding light in the thicket of Vedanta teaching.
Sundari: You have it Christian, that is the home run, so to speak, in a nutshell. The placeless place we never left, found, lost, or returned to. The place where there is no ‘there’ there, no ‘every’ and no ‘thing’, the bliss of the Self, requires the shedding of all to be All. It is the eternal now if we must use words at all, and all words ultimately fail.
As the jiva free of the jiva, we are no longer shackled to time, our minds no longer a window closed to infinity, our eyes no longer blind. We are the witness who is not a witness because there is only itself to see. We are the unbroken Stillness, the music etched in Silence. There are no more keys to turn, no more dreams to hope for, no more stories to tell. I Am. Is all. And it is very OK!
It reminds me of the stanza from TS Elliot’s poem, The Four Quarters:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”
Thank you for your kind words.
Love always,
Sundari
