Reflected Bliss and Nondual Bliss
On the last Sunday zoom satsang a couple of weeks ago, Ramji spoke about bliss, what it means in terms of nondual logic, and what is and isn’t in terms of duality. Everyone wants to be happy, but is happiness the same as bliss? Bliss is a rather loaded word from the mithya perspective. It carries the weight of exceptionality, a state of mind out of the ordinary, very desirable, rare and fleeting. And it is. We have all experienced the high that comes with the experience of bliss at some point. For most people, bliss is related to gratifying the senses, be it with sex, food, entertainment, drugs, extreme sports, or whatever. But it’s usually seen as something ‘special’, amped up happiness that comes from somewhere. Problem is, rather disappointingly, dualistic bliss that seems to come from an experience, always ends. So we are left not satiated or satisfied, but hungry and chasing more of the same.
The main reason many inquirers have trouble understanding nondual bliss is that the meaning we normally assign to the word does not apply in Vedanta. Vedanta contends that bliss is not a special feeling because it’s not a feeling, and it is certainly not a high. How could it be, if there is nothing but the Self? How much higher could ‘you’ get than knowing and living that? In fact, nondual bliss is ordinary and normal because it is a synonym for the Self. True bliss with a capital ‘B’ does not come from anywhere and it is not dependent on any particular state of mind.
This bliss, called anandam or tripti – perfect self-satisfaction – is always present. Best of all, it produces perfect Self and self-confidence, which also does not come and go. You are not only confident as the Self, you are confident as a person because you know they have the same identity. You cannot create nondual Bliss, nor can you gain or lose it. But you can mistake reflected sattvic bliss (small ‘b’), which is a feeling, as nondual Bliss (big ‘B’), which is not. Or you can mistake its true origin and believe erroneously that an object or experience produced bliss. In which case, you will lose it.
The bliss of the small self is all about the person. The bliss of Self, if your personal identity has truly been negated and is permanently transferred to the Self, has nothing to do with the jiva – AT ALL. This is such a subtle but important point, and it is absolutely central to moksa. It really comes down to not only satya mithya discrimination, but also the negation of satya mithya (knowledge and ignorance) as teaching tools.
You just are Existence/ Isness, and it does not really feel like anything, though you give rise to all feelings, including sattvic bliss. Many people mistake sattvic bliss with moksa. The problem arises with the misapprehension of what moksa really is as well as the different meanings of the word “bliss”. There are two kinds of bliss: anantum which is experiential bliss and anandam, which is the bliss of the Self.
The bliss of the Self—that which is always present, unlimited and unchanging—is not an experience because it is your true nature. Consciousness is present whether or not anantum is present. However, the bliss of Self-knowledge, which is the reflection of nondual bliss in a pure mind, can be experienced as a feeling. Such as the bliss of deep sleep, which is inferred when you wake up, or as parabhakti where love is known to be you, your true nature, meaning Consciousness, the Self. Parabhakti is having all you could ever want and knowing that it will never leave you. It is love loving itself.
The nature of the Self, Consciousness, is parama prema svarupa. Parama means limitless; svarupa means nature and prema is the love that makes love possible. In its presence, love whether relational or spiritual, comes alive. However the bliss of experiential love no matter how pure, is dualistic – a transaction between a subject and an object. A feeling of love for God or for a person, for example. But when I know I am Consciousness, I am prema, limitless love. This love is knowledge because Consciousness is intelligent. Prema is only known when the doer, which includes the doer identified with bliss as a personal feeling, has been negated by Self-knowledge, and your identity has been fully transferred to the Self.
The problem is that, when people get to the Self-realization point, they are no longer seekers, so they stop inquiring. They can’t imagine that there is anything more than the bliss of Self-knowledge, what James refers to as ‘jnanananda’. But, the idea that the bliss of knowledge is the loss of ignorance escapes them. Proclaiming: “I know who I am, I am blissful” is good, but that’s not the end of the story. Who does the ‘I” refer to – reflected self-bliss or Bliss as in Existence/Isness?
The Gita says that moksa is complete knowledge, not just knowledge of satya. We need knowledge of both satya/mithya, and as they are teaching tools, they must be let go, at some point. But the teaching tools will only be discarded if the personal (reflected) bliss has been completely transferred to the original Self during the Self-actualization phase. You see how subtle moksa is?
As subtle and contradictory as it sounds, though the reflected bliss of Self-knowledge is a huge step in the right direction, if it is the source of your bliss, you have just begun the spiritual life. Take note: just begun, not ended. If you have concluded that it is the end, you are stuck in what James calls bliss bunny mode. Which to paraphrase him, isn’t the kiss of death. So what’s the problem?
The problem is that personhood is still the primary identity, and bliss bunny mode can become an ignorance set point which prevents further investigation of what still lies behind it. Meaning, because you are convinced that your true nature is the Self and this feels great, you can simply ignore whatever still lurks unresolved in the jiva program. You can wax lyrical about the Self and even be well versed in the scripture, but Self-knowledge is still supported by ignorance, the zero-sum nature of the apparent reality being what it is. You are stuck in an ignorance set point convinced it’s moksa.
For this reason, even though it sounds like hair splitting, we must split these hairs if moksa is the aim. For nondual bliss to obtain, the bliss needs to be attributed to the loss of ignorance once Self-knowledge obtains. If not, there is still room for the reflected self (ego) to make a nice comfortable sattvic niche in the arms of reflected bliss – ignorance. We see many advanced inquirers do this, convinced they have nothing further to assimilate. Some become judgmental of anyone who is comfortable with their emotions, positive or negative, seeing it as ‘unenlightened’. But a truly free person is not enlightened or unenlightened. They are free to feel anything and not attached to experiential bliss.
If the zero sum nature of reality is recognized and inquiry continues, the next step is transferring the personal bliss from the reflected knower (jiva) to the unknowing knower (Self). Here finally, you can say: “I don’t have bliss. I am bliss”. Meaning unborn, whole and complete. Thus, the personality is not trapped in bliss bunny mode, as James pointed out in his last Zoom satsang. You are then free to be real, meaning comfortable and disidentified with ALL emotions (positive or negative) which naturally entails understanding Isvara and letting one’s reflected self be an instrument of Isvara’s will.
So, what stands in the way of appreciating our true nature as bliss, perfect doubt-free confidence, and satisfaction? As we all know, the obstacle in the way of experiencing bliss as my nature is identification with the mind and the positive or negative thoughts that run it. These are produced by the gunas, which also produce our sense of doership and our likes and dislikes – i.e., our egoic identity. This complex and complicated entity is almost impossible to understand from within ‘the system’ of duality, mithya, because it is so multifaceted, and always changing.
All egos are a conglomeration of many factors, run by fear and desire, vainly attempting to control everything in the field of experience, always chasing bliss. It is best to just lump all egos together, yours included, under the label ‘ignorance’, and not give them any importance! So much of our life energy gets diverted into figuring out or trying to understand ours or ‘other’ egos. While that is necessary to some degree to have good relationships, for the most part, it is also a futile task. Why bother getting too invested in yours or anyone else’s ego? It’s not real.
That said, we do need to understand what the ego identity is and why it functions the way it does, what’s hidden in the unconscious that drives our thinking and emotional patterns. Though there is nothing essentially wrong with thoughts and feelings, and we don’t stop thinking and feeling when we are established in Self-knowledge, to manage those patterns requires an investigation into them.
How we relate to our thoughts and feelings is an indicator of Self and/or self-knowledge. If a negative feeling arises in the mind, you should not assume that there is something wrong with you, unless you identify with it. When negative feelings appear, you should look at them in light of the teaching that the Self is anandam, eternal unending bliss, and dismiss the negative feeling as an untrue statement about what you are. Remind yourself that negative feelings are proxies for self-ignorance. If you think you know what you are yet you experience a lot of negative feelings that stick around, you need to keep investigating why, and the transitory, unreal nature of all experiences.
If you say you are angry, depressed, or even happy, you are ignorant of your nature because you have superimposed the feeling of happiness, anger or depression on the Self, the ever-present witness, which is free of ALL feelings, positive and negative. If you have a positive feeling, you should investigate the source, and you will find that it is caused by sattva, which as mentioned, is a pure reflection of the bliss of the Self. Experiential bliss is possible because of the presence of the Self, but it is not the Self. The Self is free of the gunas and of experiential bliss. Yes, even the experiential bliss of Self-knowledge.
Because of the nature of the gunas which make up and govern the creation of everything, the nature of the field of existence is constantly changing. Just like we cannot hold onto the bliss of deep sleep, having a peaceful (sattvic) mind is not something one can hold onto indefinitely. One needs to gain the knowledge that you are always fine no matter what is going on in the mind, even though one aims for peace of mind at all times. Making sure one’s life conforms to dharma in every way is of great importance if peace of mind is the main aim. This includes cleaning up your lifestyle – and keeping it clean. As within, so without.
A highly rajasic or tamasic life is definitely not conducive to peace of mind and will make self-inquiry impossible, or at best very difficult. Living a dharmic life gives you an experienceable peaceful mind capable of inquiry. When moksa has obtained, one may and usually does feel experiential bliss regularly, but one does not depend on it because you know you are the bliss. After Ramji’s talk two weeks ago, a friend of ours wrote in to say she ‘felt bliss today’. What is wrong with that statement?
Well, firstly, who does the ‘I’ refer to? And secondly, a Self-actualized person would not say that because they experiences a natural steady current of Bliss all the time. It’s their normal state of mind. In this kind of mind, feelings, mostly positive and occasionally negative, appear as insubstantial momentary images; they are known to be completely unreal and are not paid much attention, if any.
This basically epitomizes what mind management with reference to Self-knowledge amounts to. While reality is nondual, there are always two transactional modes available to us. Remember, you do not stop existing as a person when you know who you are. It’s just the status of your identity that has been transferred to the Self when personal ignorance is removed by Self-knowledge. Contrary to what many in the nondual arena try to do, particularly the Neo-Advaitin’s, which is to insist mithya does not exist, the most prevalent transactional mode, Self-realized or not, is duality. What a shocker, right?
Reality is nondual, how can I say that?! Well, we need to respond to life, Isvara, appropriately, ‘as though’ we are a person and the world is real, knowing we are not and it is not. It is totally futile to pretend that the mind and the world don’t exist because they do, even if they are only apparently real. You are never not the Self, that’s a given. It’s only when content appearing in the mind, i.e. positive or negative thoughts and feelings, gain purchase and threaten Bliss that we bring in the big gun – nondual transactional mode. If Self-knowledge is firm, nondual vision obliterates any disturbance in the mind, instantly and permanently. And perfect satisfaction, nondual Bliss, prevails.
Unless or until this is true for you, to even approach the development of the qualifications required for self-inquiry means that at the very least, your ego identity has achieved some kind of coherence. If the ego is too fragmented, overrun by negative feelings and too dysfunctional, there will not be a sufficient springboard for the qualifications for self-inquiry to develop. If they do, they won’t stick. This is why we say to approach Vedanta, you must first be reasonably ‘happy’ as a person.
So, though nondual logic is fundamental to the negation of your ego identity and the removal of what stands in the way of you appreciating your true identity as the unborn Self, to begin self-inquiry, you need to have achieved a modicum of mithya bliss. Meaning, you ‘know who you are’ and are reasonably happy with who you are, speaking as a person. You still have a problem with your likes and dislikes and identification with your thoughts and feelings, but you have done some work on yourself. If you have too much stuff to deal with in the conscious and unconscious mind, you will not have gotten there, and will be very unlikely to be a candidate for self-inquiry, let alone moksa.
Sundari
ShiningWorld.com
