Nothing More to Know
When we last spoke three weeks ago on May 26, that was the breakthrough for me. Since then on one hand I feel like there’s just nothing that needs to be said except I want to express my gratitude again and again, but then on the other hand I do have a some status reports and questions. So I thought that I would go ahead and write another long letter and hopefully you will find some time to give me your thoughts, and we can have another call to follow up as you suggested. I imagine there will be a lot of overlap in the letter from our earlier conversations and emails, sorry about that. As always no urgency, no hurry, everything is fine here. I hope all continues to be wonderful for you.
At the end of the call I knew that was awareness and there was nothing more that needed to be understood. Thank you for that! I did have the thought that this was the fourth time that this had happened, that I seemed to be “firmly established”, and I wondered if it would last longer than a couple weeks this time. I thought that likely it would, because this time it really was just clear knowledge, not experience. I was genuinely surprised that it really was just simple knowledge. Despite the fact that you emphasize that over and over again but I never really believed it. For me it had always been knowledge accompanied by a wonderful change in the nature experience, or experience accompanied by a wonderful understanding, never just the knowledge alone.
Joy and Suffering Don’t Belong to Objects
James: Perhaps the most important qualification for people who are committed to Vedanta is faith in the teaching. Looking for some kind of experiential validate belies your belief that only knowledge lasts, in this case the knowledge of what we are. Vedanta is not theory and practice. Freedom is hard and fast knowledge “I am whole and complete. Nothing can be added to me or subtracted from me that will challenge my self-satisfaction.”
X: After a while however I did have a few questions. Before the call I had been watching your video series Vivekachoodamani 21-Dec-2011, and I was up to the last two videos of that series. I watched those last two and they answered all my questions completely. (By the way I think that is a really helpful video series, I’ve listened to it a few times now.) It was especially moving to me on the second to the last video when you read an email from a student of yours who had recently self-realized and who expressed their gratitude and that they believed they would never have an existential problem again, although time would tell. It was so moving to me because I felt exactly the same way.
James: Yes, time will tell. But if you are faithful to the truth, keep an open mind and discriminate in every situation a time comes when problems disappear because the one that claims them disappears. Just as there is only reflected momentary joy in objects there is only reflected momentary suffering in them. Only, you, existence shining as blissful consciousness endure.
Not Theory and Practice
X: Once I finished with the last video I started over again with the first one in the same series and it’s amazing how differently I was hearing your teaching. Most of it just seems like a matter of fact description of what it is, not even a teaching, just a description. So obvious. I listened without feeling like I needed any further clarification but just because I enjoy your videos.
James: The learning never stops…until it does. Deluded people say Vedanta is “only intellectual” but it is just statements of fact about the changing and unchanging nature of experience. They are deluded because they don’t see that their opinion about Vedanta is not based on knowledge. One needs to be taught Vedanta to know what it is.
Dramatic Visionary States
After our last meeting I no longer had any of those dramatic visionary states, which was a relief. I have no interest in any of that. Drama and flamboyance bug me. Also it seemed a little ridiculous that I had been so focused on psychological and behavioral problems. Almost a little embarrassing. I also no longer had any desire for or interest in deliberately discriminating, that was happening automatically. The dis-identification with doership was less steady. I drifted in and out of identifying as the doer. The knowledge is solid but living in accordance with the knowledge isn’t quite there yet.
The Reflected Self and the Self of which it is a Reflection are Not-Different. But they aren’t the Same either.
One thing that really surprised me is that the individual person seems so real. I feel more cleanly identified as X than I have since childhood. I feel that I am the awareness in which X is appearing, and also that I absolutely am X the meat-with-personality-that-will-die-someday person, both equally real, both at the same time. As a metaphor it is like being conscious of the theater and the movie simultaneously. I am X now without “the drama”, “the complaints”, “the story” and without the neurosis, but with incredible immediacy, clarity and peace. My mind is calm and mostly quiet, my senses are clear and uncluttered, as a body-person I am absolutely real and fine as I am, and so is the rest of the world. Not dreamlike or translucent or unreal at all. I wasn’t expecting that. I expected awareness to seem real and the person and the world to seem separate and at a distance and dreamlike like they did in the vision states but they absolutely do not.
The Unshakable Certainty of Self Knowledge
My sense of self and my attention wandered back-and-forth between “plain awareness” and then “awareness plus X”. From time to time I would identify with X completely and lose the awareness of awareness but it wasn’t a problem because I didn’t forget the knowledge. There was an unshakable certainty of self-knowledge.
What Happens Eventually Unhappens
After a couple more days I started to get stuck in the miserable X identification again and it worried me a little bit. I continued to have no interest whatsoever in discrimination or really anything at all. No desires, no goals. A couple days later I spent some time on activities that I find self-degrading. I spent hours reading outrage sites on the internet, hours watching gross television shows, and some time looking at porn.
Sick and Tired of Trying to Improve
The following day I was completely identified with the old self: critical, disappointed, neurotic X exactly as I used to be, and very unhappy; and very disappointed in Vedanta. I felt I had completed the teaching and Vedanta had dropped me back into the world exactly as I left it, without any change except that now I felt cheated and thoroughly sick of trying to improve. Somehow I had believed that after self-realization if I stubbed my toe it would hurt, and if I ate spoiled food I would feel sick, but if I participated in things that caused psychological illness I would somehow be immune to feeling like hell afterwards. I had believed that self realization would be the end of psychological suffering because I wasn’t the doer, and now it seemed like I would still have to work hard to feel good about myself. I could have done that or failed at that without Vedanta.
A Different Kind of Misery
I felt so disappointed and cheated, but at the same time I continued to feel all in one piece and self-confident and utterly real. It’s hard to describe. I was real and aware and a disappointing person and angry, disgusted and miserable but not at all in the same way that I had been miserable in the past. I didn’t feel fragmented and I didn’t feel like it should be fixed. I didn’t want to get better or pull myself out of it using karma yoga or discrimination. I was whole and complete and angry, disgusted and miserable and there was nothing that should be done about that besides suffer it.
After a couple more days I talked about it all with a friend of mine who knows that I am a student of yours and Vedanta and the discrimination between satya and mithya resumed.
James: And all those thoughts were known by whom?
Confidence and Certainty are Bliss
In the final two Vivekachoodamani videos you point out that the verses near the end give a description or checklist of the characteristics of person who is liberated while living, so I reviewed verses 83 through 93 and all of them describe me now except: “bliss is continuous and the world more or less forgotten.” and “most salient characteristic of the liberated is the absence of the sense of “I” and “mine.””
I don’t really experience bliss as much as confidence or certainty, it isn’t automatically a happy or glad thing. I do still get caught up in doership a bit. Sometimes I “see” the doer as unreal, which is a huge relief, sometimes I “am” the doer.
Eternal Vigilance is Required if you Think you are a Doer/Enjoyer. If Not, Not.
So now I think that the practice of the yogas will have to be continuous and consistent, regardless of any “liberation” or self-realization, just like I have to continue to discipline myself to get regular sleep, regular exercise, and eat a healthy diet. None of those things come naturally, easily or automatically, and none of them can be abandoned without consequences. They are all easier when healthy and rested than when sick and exhausted and much easier to maintain than to obtain. Why would the yogas be different?
James: Yes. Remember the Four D’s: Discrimination, Dispassion, Discipline and Devotion. One-off epiphanies never last. The final stage of Vedanta practice is actualizing, which means internalizing the teaching (nididyasana). If the knowledge of what you are is clear and it is not accompanied by a steady current of background bliss, then you need to “re-qualify,” which is to say go back to karma yoga and upasana yoga and bhakti yoga to get rid of the apparent obstacles. Discipline is called upasana yoga.
I’m Not Self–Actualized
X: Is that a valid metaphor? Is it true? What is life for self actualized people like you?
I’d like to know more about the lives of realized people like you James. Did you get so firmly established that there is no more practice for you? The Ashtavakra Gita sounds beautiful but it is so absolute it seems exaggerated or at least abstract, almost Taoist, like a description of the absolute unattached sage in Tao Te Ching (from Rory Makay’s translation:)
“The Sage lives openly with apparent duality and paradoxical
unity. Therefore he acts without doing anything and teaches without
saying a word. Things arise and he lets them come; things disappear and he lets them go. He has but doesn’t possess, and acts without any expectations. When his work is done, he takes no credit. That is why it will last forever.”
I am suspicious. Does experience really get like that, absolute freedom, effortless and natural; or is there always discipline? How would a person even live like that?
Is “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” only true prior to self-actualization and then no longer, or always? Is eternal vigilance the purchase price or the ongoing maintenance cost too?
James: You are still looking at it from the feeling, experiential point of view. Why do you want X to be different? Who want’s X to be different? Self actualization implies action and belongs to the jiva. Think “I am actionless awareness. I have no body and mind. The body and mind you see is generated by Isvara. They belong to the one that projects them.”
The Free Person
X: James do you ever just identify with and wallow around in the dramas of the jiva, or do you always enjoy or tolerate them “at a small distance”, or do you hold them a great distance by keeping a strong focus on satya so your mind is still and detached, or some combination, or something different altogether? Do you change it up?
James: I never wanted to wallow or not to wallow. I’m not a holder, focuser, changer. Dramas are away from me. Not far away or close, just away. The mind is away. It doesn’t matter if it is attached or detached or both. How can I be different if there is only me?
For the seeming person you are talking about it is just like it is for the seeming person that is you. Life is me but I am not life.
X: Does it depend on the personality of the liberated person, or the circumstances, or how healthy they are or if they’ve had their morning coffee yet? What is it like for you? Do you still fight with your wife sometimes and hope people will like your stories? Are there still goals and ambitions but you just know them as not-self? Do you get frustrated, angry, happy, giddy? What is that like? As life happens does it seem real or apparently real; immediate or distant? Was I supposed to start wanting to listen to country music? (joke)
James: You listen to country music. Braying nostalgia is not my cup of tea.
X: If a person could absolutely control the “strength” of their discrimination between satya and mithya by dialing up or down their focus on awareness or their love of awareness, should they keep it dialed to maximum like Ramana in the cave, letting the bugs eat his legs; or play around with it like Krishna, now he’s your buddy busting your chops and now a cosmic terror?
James: Whatever turns you on. I tried the cave sadhana when I thought I was a person but since I was never a person, did I live in a cave with a four foot cobra for six weeks? You’re leaving out the Isvara factor. Isvara, the momentum of the body-mind’s past actions, takes care of it. If you care to control you can control. If you don’t care, you needn’t care. If you combine the two, it’s fine. If you realize that nothing ever happens when it is happening you won’t have this kind of question.
X: Will a liberated person with well-established discrimination lose it when the body is sick or feverish, or drunk or drugged, or becoming senile?
James: When you meet one, ask him or her but scripture says there is nothing to lose for a well-established liberated person. It is like being Jeff Bezos. You can spend billions on a rocket ship and when it crashes you are still the richest man in the world.
X: What’s next? Do I continue to practice the yogas, especially discriminating the doer? Do I “Spend your time seeing your Self in every situation and enjoying the bliss of the Self.” Is there nothing left to do like it says in the Ashtavakra Gita: “To know this is knowledge, and then there is neither renunciation, acceptance or cessation of it.”
James: All of the above. As scripture says, “You’re free to do, not do or otherwise do.”
X: Thank you James, from the bottom of my heart.
James: You are most welcome, X.
