The feeling associated with non-dual knowledge is self-confidentbliss. The feelings associated with duality…fear, desire, guilt,anger, pride and so forth… arise from the false idea that the Selfit is separate, incomplete, and inadequate.
Vedanta contends that your true nature is undying bliss. Trust or faith in the words of scripture, after dedicated Self inquiry along scriptural lines, is perhaps the most important qualification for liberation.
There is nothing right or wrong with feelings per se, but the point of that satsang was to recommend inquiry into one’s beliefs, feelings, and emotions before one develops the idea that they are real, or once you suspect that they aren’t. Feelings are indicators of S/self-knowledge. So, if a negative feeling arises in you, you should not assume that there is something wrong with you, you should look at the feeling in light of the teaching that the self is anandam, bliss, and dismiss it as an untrue statement about what you are. If you say you are angry or depressed, for instance, you are ignorant of your nature because you have superimposed the feeling of anger on the Self, the ever-presentwitness, which is free of all feelings.
If you have a positive feeling, you should investigate the source, and you will find that it is caused by sattva, which is a pure reflection of the bliss of the self. A self-actualized person experiences a natural steady current of bliss in which feelings, mostly positive and occasionally negative, appear as insubstantial momentary images; they are known to becompletely unreal. Negative feelings are proxies for self-ignorance. If you think you know what you are and you experience negative feelings, you need to think twice, or as manytimes as necessary, about the transitory, unreal nature of all experiences. Nididyasana (mediatation/contemplation) is for theremoval of negative thoughts and feelings once the knowledge, “I am unborn existence shining as consciousness” is steady.
It is self-ignorance in the form of rajas and tamas – duality – that precedes the cognitive process. So, when a child starts to become aware of its thoughts and feelings, it will predictably experience a lot of negative emotions unless it was born with a predominance of sattva, in which case it will have a basically sunny outlook. The Yoga of the Three Energies, deals with this topic. Maybe you don’t understand the sixth and seventh steps of enlightenment presented in Panchadasi. Nididhyasana takes you through stage six to stage seven – tripti, perfect satisfaction.
