Q: I think I have a serious problem with rajas – and am a dopamine addict. I spend hours online, have trouble coping with the incessant thoughts and desires that push me around. I have learned yoga, meditation and spent 6 months in India last year. I think I understand the teachings on the Self, karma yoga and the guna teaching, but am still grappling to apply them. Can rajas be likened to dopamine?
Sundari: Rajas and tamas always work together, so if you have a problem with rajas, you will have a problem with tamas. There is so much hype online about dopamine “detox’ these days, as it is the hormone behind the drive for reward – and therefore, rajas. But always after the reward inevitably comes the cost – tamas. The complex and powerful endocrine or hormonal system, correlates well with the three gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas. The brain has distinct neural pathways which drive and motivate behaviour that automatically seeks and evaluates reward. No matter the circumstances, however prosaic, sublime or depraved, this is what everyone is after, and the actual reason for this is that we all do know that our true nature is the Self, and bliss is our nature. But ignorance cuts access to this off from us.
No matter whether you are trying to gain or avoid something, your brain doesn’t care what you find rewarding—as long as it thinks the reward is potentially satisfying and within your grasp. And when presented with a potential reward, such as something we desire/like, the neurotransmitter and hormone dopamine (rajas) is released involuntarily and automatically, enhancing the urge to act (rajas). When you make progress toward the reward, whether it is to gain or avoid something, your brain wants more of whatever you crave because it temporarily makes you feel good (sattva). Dopamine is referred to as ‘the molecule for more’ with good reason. It is the poster child for rajas.
Which, of course, in turn releases more rajas-fuelled feel-good dopamine, in an endless cycle. Overindulged rajas (or sattva) inevitably turns to tamas. It’s true that too much of a good thing turns bad pretty fast. When tamas is present, the mind is in denial, chasing pleasure any way it can, even if it is seemingly sattvic. We see this often in the spiritual world with people who are chasing sattva as though that is freedom. But that is another ego cage – albeit a golden one. The chase for sattva masks the rajas and tamas. Mick Jagger hit the nail on the head with his lyrics ‘I can’t get no…satisfaction!’
It’s good advice to do a dopamine detox– if you understand what that means. A true dopamine detox is a like and dislike detox. Self-knowledge makes it possible to get to the heart and to the heat of the matter. Which, when the mind is disturbed or dull, is almost without fail, excessive rajas and tamas. Self-knowledge also takes the heat OUT of the matter. because it negates the fear, dependency, lack, denial and self-doubt that lives in the minds of all human beings.
Get to it. Do the detox by putting into practice the tools at your disposal to manage the mind and the gunas – karma yoga – which is consecrating each thought/feeling to Isvara before it morphs into action, and especially when it has. Guna knowledge gives us total clarity about what is motivating our thoughts / feelings, likes and dislikes. And thus, the space to discriminate and be dispassionate.
Q: Thank you for your last reply to my previous question on bliss, it was very helpful and makes total sense. But even though I have been a pretty committed inquirer for many years now, I still feel like my world is falling apart sometimes. Literally like I am ‘falling’.
Sundari: For a very rajasic person, this is par for the course. But I think this is a very human existential feeling, and most of us experience it at times because life is just a dream. There is nothing to hold onto, it’s zero sum. But in the dream there are certain rules of behaviour we need to know and follow. If we don’t we suffer. I like the saying: ‘rock bottom is not a place, it is a process”. The thing most dedicated inquirers forget is that as powerful as Self-knowledge is, it won’t take care of the karma that made you seek Vedanta.
It’s not going to ‘fix’ you as a jiva. In fact, if it’s working, nondual teachings will probably make you ‘feel’ like you are falling apart even more because everything you previously thought was true gets turned on its head. If the ego edifice is being subjected to nondual overhaul, hopefully, the ego is falling apart. It is not an easy process though, and not much fun for the poor ego.
People often say, “I hit rock bottom, and that is when I changed.” But rock bottom is not a floor. It is a slope. If you put off ‘doing the work’, you can always fall further into the abyss of ignorance, and that’s not a good place to go. If you are a serious inquirer, which you are, and you are steadfast in wanting to live nondual truth but you are stuck, as you are, then it is time to face the excuses you make to maintain your identification with your ego identity. Be honest and admit that it is because you are avoiding doing ‘the work’.
It’s time to take a hard look at what or who is behind the wheel, and get a grip on rajas and tamas – your likes and dislikes motivators. If you don’t, you will keep going wherever you are going and get to wherever you don’t want to go. Isvara doesn’t mind, one way or the other. Only you pay the price. Trying to pretend you don’t need to do the cleaning up because the person is not real does not let you off the hook.
The human brain is a very powerful, self-correcting instrument, and it is enormously creative in manufacturing its own reality. It is run by unconscious fears, desires and biases which will keep the mind within the parameters of how you want to see life, not how it really is. To shift gears and make meaningful change in our habitual modus operandi, which is duality, you need a complete nondual mindset reset. If nondual freedom is what you want most, there is no fine print, no shortcuts, no place to hide.
We need to give this powerful machine, the brain, a clear, noble purpose to commit to. There is no higher purpose than Self-realization. Without this purpose, our internal compass spins and we drift. Life can seem meaningless (which it is) because we don’t know what true meaning is. That we are the meaning. Rock bottom is not the lowest point we can reach. It is just the moment we finally notice how far we have fallen or, how far we are afraid of falling, or just how far we are from grace.
Humans are extremely good at making excuses, finding shortcuts, or just plain cutting things out, denying they exist or dressing them up as something else. But particularly ignoring them. The thing is that denying and ignoring something does not make it go away. Quite the opposite. And if we live in denial, we are falling into the abyss. You don’t stop falling when you are falling unless something intervenes to stop your fall. Newton’s laws of motion apply to our psychological makeup as well as to material objects. The worst falls are always internal.
If you have the great good fortune of having found Vedanta, it won’t fix your jiva, but it will stop your fall and forever make you impervious to the zero sum nature of life. You no longer need to live in fear of the abyss because you know that you are No Sum. You will stop feeling bad about yourself and negative about life. It’s a game changer. But it does not come easy, as they say. There’s the thorny issue of looking in the mirror and not looking away until you can look without wincing. Isvara does not give out passes on this one.
If you are at the bus top of life and climb onto the Vedanta bus, be happy because your troubles are over. But be warned because for that to happen you will have to understand and love the cause of all your troubles. You. Or, more accurately, not – you. Person/doer/jiva you. The means of knowledge now at your disposal is flawless and infinitely merciful. But it is also without mercy, and demands no less than everything. So, no more excuses.
You could decide to get off the bus, or not get on, and keep trying to get the world to give you want you are looking for. But as we all know all too well, life will not often give us what we want. Eventually it will hollow us out and break us when we refuse to grow and accept what we need to do so. Make no mistake about it, Isvara will flatten you. Nobody is here to resolve your karma, or give you what is missing. Stop waiting for someone to save you and stop blaming people for the fact that you think you need saving. You don’t. You need freedom from you. Small you.
We all pay a very high price for hanging onto our denials, our stubborn likes and dislikes, our precious ideas of who we are, and our procrastination in facing the uncomfortable work of cleaning up the detritus in the unconscious. The only thing that will free you is radical honesty, and it will hurt. A lot. So what? What price freedom? Do you really want to drag that needy, in denial, dissatisfied desire driven child around with you, like an albatross around your neck, for the rest of your life? Surely not. Get with the program and do a reality check, and a reality reset.
Self-inquiry with reference to nonduality boils down to the examination of experience. If the nondual teachings assimilated, your mind will not be thrown around by rajas and tamas, nor be hiding behind a made up fantasy of how spiritual, ‘blissful’ or ‘free’ you are. You are none of those things if they come and go. When we have the courage to face who we are afraid we are, and learn to be ok and alone with that, this is where reasons and excuses end. Here we are alone. All one. We can only walk this path alone. And here we find out that there is little that is kinder than solitude when you know there is only you.
Even the strange and wild paradoxes of life, such as it’s possible to be very sad, angry or upset but not unhappy or ‘unenlightened’; that life almost always fails to give us what we think we want yet it is infinitely merciful in gifting us every moment of every day what we need; that nobody on this earth can love me or make me feel worthy or seen, I have to validate, love and see myself; that nobody no matter how wonderful is ever really there for me in the way I want them to be, everyone is in the same boat as me doing their best to cope with their lot; that no matter how well you think you know the ones you love you really don’t…etc., etc.. On and on.
Stop making excuses. Let life be, surrender to God. Let go, keep falling. But fall into the Self. Here there is no floor, no up or down, no beginning or end. Just Isness. Your true and unassailable home.
Om Tat Sat
Sundari
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