Leila:  I was curious about how Ramji’s recent teachings around memory and time applied to this model too. Freud’s Iceberg Analytical Model includes a big memory component. I remember when Ramji delivered this Satsang, it took me a while to get my head around it. Are you able to speak to this in this satsang teaching? Do you see how it fits?Â
Sundari: Even though time is not real from the nondual perspective, we experience it from the jiva perspective. Without a sequential process guiding experience, life would be total chaos. Imagine if everything happened at once!
In mithya, time is the space between events/experience, which are recorded by memory, an important function of the mind. If we could not remember experiences we could neither evaluate or assimilate their meaning, nor what is going on in us and our environment. Our intellect would not be functional, and we could not make sense of our mental/emotional state. This is why memory loss is the signature of the onset of dementia.
When it comes to self-inquiry, memory is important in that we need to be able to memorize the teachings so that they can assimilate. However, it is not memory per se that provides the ability to know. Memory is recollected knowledge, but it can also be the driver of experience. Experience happens followed by knowledge and then memory (retention) happens (or not) which then activates a tendency (vasana) and another experience. Thus, most people are on constant repeat in the predictable way they respond to their inner and outer environments, like hamsters running on wheel.
It is Consciousness shining on and in the mind that provides us with the ability to know and remember anything (sattva). What we know and remember depends on the purity of the mind (how much sattva is accessible), which is conditioned by ignorance (rajas and tamas covering sattva). When ignorance is removed from the mind, it is not done so by sattva, but by Self-knowledge itself, which is not a function of memory. Sattva is just the guna required for Self-knowledge to assimilate and become accessible to conscious awareness. Duality/ignorance can be removed because it is not real, a superimposition onto the nondual Self/Consciousness, our true identity.
To remain free of ignorance, until such time as Self-knowledge actualizes, even though the gunas are objects known to you, nondual Consciousness, all three gunas must be understood and managed with reference to Self-knowledge. This is the constant application of the nondual teachings to your life, as we discussed. Though it is a very common tendency among inquirers once the Self is known, you cannot jump over this part and impose satya onto mithya. That does not work. Both Jiva (system 2) and Isvara (system 1) must be understood to be truly negated, making duality and your conditioning impotent.
Lucky for us, you cannot forget Self-knowledge once you know the Self is your identity when it is direct knowledge, just as you can’t forget your name. Unless the mind is impaired, such as having amnesia or dementia. But if the Self is an object of memory (indirect knowledge) you can forget who you are because object knowledge is subject to memory. Memory is a tool for evaluating experience, but it is not capable of producing Self-knowledge.
How Memory Relates to Freud’s Iceberg Analytical Model Translated into Nonduality
Link to previous satsang: https://shiningworld.com/decoding-freuds-iceberg-psychological-model/
Isvara can be said to be Time, even though Isvara is the Self so not ‘in’ time. Remember that Isvara is both the cause and effects of the creation, but never enters its, so is not conditioned in any way by the gunas (Maya). If it did or was, there would be no escape from Maya. The Causal Body (System 1 in the model) can be seen as Macrocosmic Universal Memory because it ‘contains’ all vasanas, and vasanas look like memory because they generate experience.
Though vasanas seem to be personal in terms of the individual’s conditioning (level 3 and 4 of Freud’s analytical model), actually, all vasanas are universal and impersonal. This concurs with level 1 and 2 of Freud’s model – meaning, System 1 – Macrocosmic Ignorance or Maya. So you are quite correct in your deduction that there is a huge memory component in the discussion on the psychological order of reality, both Jiva and Isvara.
We can say the Causal Body (level 1 and 2 of Freuds’ model) is the repository of all memory from the beginning of ‘time’.
Vasanas and Memory
The vasanas are different from memory though because the Causal Body is active memory, whereas the Subtle Body or microcosmic memory (individual unconscious) is passive memory. Its function is to store and recollect information. But memory can also be said to generate experience because our likes and dislikes (vasanas) are greatly influenced by memory. Who are we without our life story, which is just a bunch of memories? Experience is no good without memory. If you can’t remember what you experience you cannot evaluate experience, as stated above. And without memory, you can’t generate, maintain or hold onto your story. Our ego identity depends almost entirely on memory.
Animals, for instance, don’t have a memory function because they have no intellect. They follow instinctive group knowledge, which is a kind of memory stored in the collective mind of the species, so they seem to remember, but they don’t really. They act and react instinctively to the Field, i.e., Isvara/Causal body. All animals, birds and insects, and even the world of microorganisms are just programmes run by Isvara, the gunas. Though they seem to have memory, it is the vasanas that are operating, not memory.
Animals cannot deviate from their program. Only humans who have intellects and memory can be influenced by it, thus in evaluating what happens to them, in them, and in their environment, go against their program. That said, when we look at the jiva in terms of conscious and unconscious mind (system 2) and the much more powerful Causal body (system 1), much of what drives human behaviour, though in large part driven by memory, is not directly available to be known by the conscious mind. Hence the need for self-inquiry.
Memory and Assimilating or Teaching Vedanta
As mentioned, we need a good memory to assimilate the nondual teachings. And to qualify as a qualified teacher of Vedanta, one must understand, remember and be able to unfold the complete teachings of Vedanta to assist an inquirer at every step of their self-inquiry, which definitely requires a good memory. The teachings on the steps of self-inquiry on our website and in our publications give clarity on what this entails. It is good that you understand the importance of the methodology and teaching it properly.
Leila: Also, I wondered about making it even more clear in your Satsang about the idea that there is only one Consciousness. I can see that in the translation, ignorance is the unconscious but without a clear explanation, a lay reader (let’s say another psychologist without Vedanta knowledge) may conclude that there is an unconscious and a conscious. Do you know what I mean? These ideas are rife in psychology around the subconscious/unconscious and some theories talk about ‘many consciousnesses’ let alone how many ‘greater states of consciousness’ there are .
Sundari: My Vedantic explanation of Freud’s analytical model in the link above, would not be comprehensible to someone who has no qualifications for self-inquiry, I am afraid. I did not write it from that point of view as I don’t know if it can be done. Perhaps there is a simpler way to put it, but I would have to put more thought into it.
Though reality is nondual, it is necessary to break it down into its components for teaching and assimilation purposes. There is no way to actualize nondual Self-knowledge without first understanding what the apparent realty is and how it functions to create the experience of duality, mithya. I understand that this can sound like we are teaching duality, which in a way, we are, to begin with. Vedanta provisionally accepts duality and starts off there in order to negate it.
I did mention that both the Jiva, the microcosmic unconscious and conscious mind – the personal or system 2, and Isvara, the Macrocosmic impersonal unconscious, or System 1, make up the psychological order of mithya. Both can be negated by Self-knowledge, so neither are real according to the definition of real provided by Vedanta, i.e., always present and unchanging, which applies only to nondual Consciousness, the Self, one without a second.
But the essence or common identity between Jiva, the field of experience and Isvara, which is nondual Consciousness, cannot be negated and is always present. I do not know how you would translate that for a samsari of any kind, except to point out the not so obvious, obvious: how do you know what you know? You can’t be what you know. And if you are convinced your thoughts and feelings are you, do they know you? So who is that you that knows them? There must be another factor to take into consideration (which never is) that is always present, knows what you think and feel, and cannot be negated. I.e., Consciousness.
But understanding that Consciousness, which is not the same and not different from your personal reflected consciousness, is your true identity – well. That is where the rubber meets the road. Freud, one of the smartest people in the psychological world, never even approached understanding that. And as you know, Jung who was equally brilliant, ran away from it. He could not bear facing the possibility that everything he took to be true was based on a false premise.
The teaching on Jiva – Isvara is the most difficult and subtle of all the teachings in Vedanta. Unless the mind is able to ‘go there’, I don’t think it would land. I will give it more thought, but basically, it comes down to that every time. One can try to ‘dumb down’ or simplify Vedanta to a degree, but there is no avoiding the necessity for at least some qualifications. I have come to more fully understand how restrained you are as a psychologist to step outside the strict boundaries of what the world of psychology allows you to do. So how you put this across to your patients without getting sued for malpractice, I don’t know. I think you would have to strike out on your own, away from ‘the system’, which of course, entails a lot of karma for you.
I will continue working on this to see if I can come up with something that may be acceptable in your field.
Much love
Sundari
