Note from Sundari: This is a rather long satsang in reply to an inquirer questioning Ramji’s character. It involves a long back story regarding a few former teacher’s on Shiningworld. It is of value in that it covers the importance of understanding the value of the student – teacher relationship, qualifications, how tenacious ignorance is, how tricky dharma can be to understand, and what moksa really entails.
Douglas: I hope you and Ramji enjoyed the holidays and are having a good start to the new year. Seeing and having dinner with you two in September was a highlight of my trip to Europe. Thank you again for the lovely dinner and the pleasure of your company.
I’ve been hesitant to share what I’m about to share for many months. I thought about discussing this with Ramji at Trout Lake and again at your home in Spain. That said, I love you both and I haven’t wanted to risk creating any discord between us. That said, seeing the title of your recent email: “Dharma Trumps Moksha” has inspired me to find the courage to share the following.
More than once, I’ve heard Ramji say that he would rather spend time with a dharmic person than with a person who has attained moksha. I’ve found this to be a highly valuable perspective. Hearing this has inspired me to make a sincere effort to “up my game” with regard to living a more dharmic life.
Here is what I want to share:
Christian is one of my closest friends. I’ve known him for nearly 30 years. As you know, he was one of Ramji’s “sanctioned” teachers and the two of them were quite close for a good while. Ramji even posted some of his writings on Shining World.
At a certain point, Christian says Ramji turned on him in a way that both shocked him and hurt him deeply. He and I talked at length about this a few years ago and frankly, I found what he said about the way Ramji treated him to be both credible and very disturbing.
More recently, I had a long conversation with Paul, also a dedicated student of Ramji and someone Ramji acknowledged and supported as a teacher for at least a couple of years. Same thing happened to him. According to Paul, Ramji suddenly treated him very disrespectfully and he was completely rejected by Ramji. Paul and Sarah were shocked, deeply hurt and profoundly disappointed by this. After hearing what they shared, I too was disappointed. If I am to be entirely honest, hearing these things has diminished my respect for Ramji.
To me, this is a “both and” situation in the sense that he’s both a great teacher whose wisdom has served me greatly…AND he has behaved in some ways that, to me, seem quite adharmic.
In addition to how Ramji treated them, Paul and Sarah both described in detail what they experienced as his abusive behavior toward you, especially in Bali. Hearing this really hurt me as I love and respect you greatly.
I could go on but I’ll leave it there. If you are willing, I’d really appreciate it if you would be honest with me about what I’ve shared here. To be clear, I respect and accept what Christian, Paul and Sarah shared with me as I have no reason to believe they were being untruthful. Please let me know how you would explain his behaviors in a way that makes sense and in a way that honors the truth.
All of us jivas have vasanas, samskaras and qualities that we are encouraged to examine and refine. This does, of course, include Ramji.
I sincerely hope saying what I’ve said here does not damage my relationship with you two as I value your friendship and your wisdom greatly. I look forward to your response.
With much love and respect,
Sundari: Lovely to hear from you, and we too very much enjoyed your visit last year. Thank you for your email, for your considered thoughts and honesty about writing to me with your doubts about Ramji. I know it can’t have been easy. As it is an important topic, I have replied at length, both from the mithya and satya perspective, as it applies to me, Paul, Sarah and Christian. We are very sad about what transpired with Paul and Sarah last year, and with Christian many years ago. The saddest part is that they are still harboring such unhappy thoughts.
Let me start with the satya perspective, as that is where everything begins and ends. The first question to ask is, as always, are you asking this question about Ramji as an inquirer and a Vedantin genuinely committed to moksa, or as a samsari? This is important because if you are the former, then the rules are different. If you are a qualified inquirer with faith in Vedanta, and if the teacher is qualified, and Ramji is, then they are always right, even when you don’t understand their behaviour towards you. You accept that Isvara is involved, you investigate and apply the knowledge. Though as the Self you are Dharma with a big ‘D”, what is dharmic or adharmic from a mithya point of view, never applies to the Self, only to mithya. And it may or may not apply from the mithya perspective in the way you think it does. It depends on several factors, but most especially in this case, if you are really committed to freedom from and for the jiva. More on this further on as it really is the crux of the matter.
When you encounter Vedanta, you are told upfront that your true nature is the nondual Self. To assimilate that, you need qualifications, dedication and to be properly taught by a qualified teacher. If you are lucky enough to find one, the teacher will unfold the nondual methodology for you, so that your mind can be freed from the hypnosis and limitation of duality, i.e., bondage to the jiva identification, and the suffering it causes. This is the greatest gift life has to offer, and indeed, only happens by the grace of Isvara.
Self-inquiry, Vedanta, is about freedom from and for the jiva, this you must know, correct? To achieve this, we need to understand what the jiva is and how it is conditioned, i.e., its psychology. This is where all the problems lie, and where most of the teaching takes place, because the jiva is run by biases, likes and dislikes, thoughts and feelings based on erroneous thinking – it’s ego identity. That is to say, in ignorance of its true nature. But nonduality is so subtle, and duality is so persuasively persistent and resistant that sometimes it is necessary for the teacher to apply some very tough love. It may seem adharmic from the jiva perspective because it’s not ‘nice’, or may seem unkind, even brutal. But it is in fact, quite the opposite. Ramji had a lot of this from his teacher, Chinmayananda, who often ripped into him. Inquirer’s often miss the fine print when they commit to Vedanta. Expect your ego to take a beating. If you really are tired of that petty tyrant of an identity, pray for it, because in order to be free of limitation, that pesky pathetic ego must be re-educated.
We are teachers of nonduality, Vedanta. It is a flawless teaching if moksa is your main motivation. But the downside is that it is hard to teach something so subtle, and the ego is exactly that – and entrenched tyrant. The upside is that if the teachings do not assimilate, it is always on the inquirer and not on us, if we have done our job as teachers. We cannot make the teachings assimilate if the inquirer is not qualified, and we are not in the salvation game because we know nobody needs saving as they are the Self. Vedanta has nothing to do with us or anyone else as people because it is an independent teaching to remove or negate mithya and taking a stand in satya as satya. This is the truth of who we are. We can only unfold the teachings for the inquirer and help them along with their doubts.
However, Vedanta is also about people, how can it not be? While nonduality negates the person, they still exist. We do our best not to get involved in people’s psychological lives, but it is often inevitable as we are the kind of Vedanta teachers (unlike most Indian teachers, please note) who are very accessible. We invite a personal friendship with us, and help inquirers during the nididhysana phase. Most people do not realize how unusual this is in the Vedanta world, how rare or how valuable. You won’t find this easily. But it has its serious drawbacks, for us.
It is tricky teaching something as powerful as nondual knowledge because the ego definitely does not like it. Especially in the nididhysana stage, which is all about remaining psychological (mental/emotional) issues, and negating the jiva identity – ergo, the ego. Helping here is often a difficult thankless task, with blowback for us because inquirers who are not ready to really look at their ‘stuff’ project it onto us, and often, judge us as people. If the qualifications for moksa are not solid, here we lose inquirers who hang onto their ego identity – and blame us as teachers, of course.
Whatever you have decided you know about Ramji based on other people’s opinions of him, we both live impeccable, dharmic lives. I have lived with Ramji for almost 15 years, and if anyone is qualified to make this statement, it is me. I know how valuable it has been for me to have had this time with him, to be his friend, and to be taught by him. It is beyond price. This is true of anyone who finds him as a teacher and friend, regardless of whether they are qualified to know this or not. I say qualified to know, because only someone who is still bound to their jiva identity would not recognize the value, and allow their opinions, feelings, hurt or otherwise (i.e., the ego), to keep them from appreciating this.
I say this having had the same experiences that Paul and Christian had with him, as have a few others over the years. Kate, our most recently endorsed teacher, had the same experience with him last year. Though it was very hard on her, like me, her main motivation is moksa, and freedom from the ego. She understood the lesson and applied nondual knowledge, and the change and freedom is a beautiful thing to witness. Her respect and love for her teacher are greater than ever because satya won. There is nothing that beats freedom from the limitation of duality.
My relationship with Ramji is nondual, and in that regard, it is perfect. But from the personal perspective (as people) it is not everything I would have liked. Who doesn’t have similar issues in relationships? We know we are the Self but we are still people. I have had to resolve wanting things to be different and see some uncomfortable and hard truths to overcome my jiva issues, like everyone else who is a genuine inquirer. But as stated, as moksa was my main aim, on the whole, the value of my life with Ramji, and what he has given me, cannot be quantified. I would not be who I am today without him. I live in deep gratitude for all of it, even though Ramji’s ‘God sledgehammer’ as I call it, has come for me several times, too.
As grateful as I am for my life with him, at times I felt I was entitled to justified and righteous outrage and hurt because my ego was bloodied. For others assessing our relationship from the outside, based on their own ideas of what dharmic behaviour is, or what was really going on, I understand how this could be interpreted. But things are not always what they seem, to others or to ourselves. The only real issue was that I understood the blows to be from Isvara, aimed at my Durodhyana factor, that hard fearful part in all jivas so resistant to love, to freedom, and the lessons were well learned. However, as recently as last year, after the Bali seminar, I took a really unfair blow from Ramji, and this is the first and only time this has happened. Ramji apologized for this profusely.
Lucky for me though, my love for him and his for me is genuine. Self-knowledge kicked in and despite the unfairness, I understood what was coming at me. The time had come to address residual dissatisfaction that had taken hold due to the last remnants of a samskara. The message behind the blow was of nondual love, even though the ostensible reason it was given was not true. What it really was about was the end of the jiva edifice, total freedom from and for the jiva. It was about becoming fearless. It was about true humility that comes when one faces all that Isvara throws at us knowing it is irrelevant whether it is based on ‘truth’ or not. You get to say NO! to the ego, and YES! to satya. God works in mysterious ways, and the hardest blows that hurt the ego the most are usually, the most valuable, and instructive.
It’s complicated in my case because Ramji is both my teacher and my ‘husband’. Different rules apply for both, as I said. But also as stated, the most relevant point in this whole discussion, is that my main aim has always been moksa, above all. I was sick and tired of the ego identity, it had to go. Isvara gave me the grace to know who Ramji really is. He is a Mahatma. You can call me brain-washed, others have. And it is true, my brain has been washed and purified – of ignorance. Sarah accused me of ‘Vedanta double speak’, meaning I justify abusive behaviour with Vedanta.
But she is dead wrong. Mithya is the only abuser. I discriminate perfectly between satya and mithya and satya always wins because that is who I am. When Self-knowledge is firm, which by the grace of God thanks to my teacher, it is for me, everything resolves in me. I now have crystal clear vision regarding the jiva identity, and though I love it as myself and know it’s limitations, it does not have the power to delude me. Avidya is over, for me. Ramji is most certainly not an abuser, and apart from being one of the best Vedanta teachers alive, is in actual fact, the kindest, most dharmic soul anyone is lucky enough to be taught by, or know. It takes great love to give tough love, especially to those you love. To face an injured ego, and to have the courage to be so disliked.
Paul and Sarah have always been and still are, much loved by us. We deeply valued and remain tremendously grateful for their support of Shiningworld, and of us. They have been the most incredibly generous donors we have ever had. Nothing has changed with regards to them or Christian on our part, nor will it regardless of what they think or say about us. Paul and Sarah, as with Christian, were all treated with deep love by Ramji, and all three of them were given an invaluable opportunity to learn from him. He went out of his way to help all of them. Christian came to live with him for three months when we lived in Bend, and Ramji spent endless hours with him, editing his book for him. The hard part for all of them, as it was for me and Kate, is that though Ramji is always your best friend, when you come close to a Mahatma, the fire burns hot for you as a jiva. Isvara is going to make you see aspects of your jiva you are blind to, and you are NOT going to like it. What price freedom?
From the mithya perspective, the backstory with Paul goes way back. When they first came into our life over ten years ago, they attended a seminar in Bend. We loved having them there, but Paul was disturbing the whole sangha with his constant interjections in the teaching, making weird noises, and fidgeting. People in the sangha complained to us. It was also being recorded on the video. Ramji asked me to speak to him, which I very reluctantly did. I tried to do so carefully and explained it was not personal. But Paul and Sarah claimed I was terribly rude and disrespectful. I was stunned to find out in Bali last year that they still hold a grudge against me for this to this day! Paul was simply not willing to look at himself or his impact on others, and had no respect for the fact that he was disrespecting our satsang dharma, in our home. He could only see his injured perspective, no objectivity whatsoever.
But Ramji and I could see and appreciate Paul’s enthusiastic though somewhat bombastic rajasic nature, and we know he meant well. Everyone is made the way they are made. He is a great guy, bursting with rajas, like a superannuated school kid. For ten years, Ramji reached out to him to help him grow through incorporating his knowledge of psychology into assimilating – and teaching – Vedanta. They became very good and trusted friends. Though Paul had a long way to go to become a qualified Vedanta teacher, he was doing quite well, and was starting to make some valuable contributions. We respected him and his and Sarah’s knowledge of psychology as a method to prepare the mind for inquiry. But as it is with everyone, the problem is always dealing with the personality, the ego. Paul has a big ego problem he can’t see, and unfortunately, he was not liked by many in our SW community, who found him arrogant. We were both very aware of this, but Ramji is always so positive about people’s growth. He loves Paul and felt that it would work out of his system as his knowledge deepened, so he gave him a lot of latitude and encouragement.
But Isvara had other ideas, and blew the lid off, so to speak, when Paul burst into a Sunday satsang and ranted on and on about his opinions about teaching Vedanta. We were shocked because it was so obviously out of line, though he was, and clearly still is, oblivious to this. He offended many people, some even told us that they would no longer attend satsang if Paul was teaching. Like Ramji, I hoped it would never come to this, but I had seen it coming for a long time. Rory, who is the most humble Vedanta teacher and person one could meet, came out very strongly on this point and told us we have to do something to control Paul. The result was Paul got the sledgehammer. Ramji had been so patient with him for over ten years, and kept quiet. But this time he had to tell him that he could no longer teach, that he had to be humble and just listen. Instead of understanding the lesson, Paul took it as an injured ego, as dishonest and disrespectful. The ego won. And that, as they say, is really the long and the short of it.
I truly sympathize with Paul as I know how much it hurts, how fragile and sensitive the ego is, how hard it is to see our flaws, and to win through to acceptance and nondual love. Perhaps Ramji should have been more direct with him a long time ago, but we tried being direct in Bend, and clearly, it did not work. Ramji always leans towards trusting Isvara to help people to grow without him having to be heavy handed. That’s just his nature and he avoids it until he can’t. It was not dishonesty and he was not disrespectful, as Paul claims, but doing his duty as a teacher out of love for his friend. The truth of the matter is that Ramji has always been, and still is, the best friend Paul ever had or will ever have. It is indeed sad that he cannot see this.
If you are truly dedicated to moksa, and you accept a Vedanta teacher as qualified, which Ramji most definitely is, then he is a representative of Isvara, of God, of the lineage. Isvara, and therefore the teacher, is the boss. If you understand the value of such a teacher, however much a friend or person you think he/she is, despite your limited jiva evaluations, whatever he/she says to you, you listen. If it hurts, all the better to see why and to put nonduality into practice. What else are you an inquirer for? If all you want is for your ego to be stroked, you are definitely in the wrong place, and your motivations need to be reassessed because Vedanta is not for you. If freedom is what you are after, however, you know Isvara will ask no less than everything of you. No fine print.
And Paul, who made a big point of the value of karma yoga, of having the courage to be disliked, always preaching about allowing emotions to surface but never allowing them to lead, could not practice what he preached. He could not take it as a message from God. As with the situation in Bend, again he had no ego objectivity. He let the emotion lead and took it as abuse from a person. He could not see the love, nor God behind it. Self-knowledge never kicked in and the opportunity for freedom from his ego was lost. He never asked himself why suddenly, despite being a psychologist, after ten years of close contact, taking James as his teacher and friend, and supporting Shiningworld as he and Sarah did, do they see him as unkind, disrespectful and adharmic now, when there was no indication of this, ever? It doesn’t make sense.
As for Christian, he is a lovely man, we both liked him immensely and supported his path as a teacher on SW. But after we endorsed him we found out he was using Vedanta and Shiningworld to make a living – charging people 1000 $ to attend his seminars, which unknowingly, we were promoting on the website, without realizing he was doing this. We trusted him. This is just not dharmic. It’s fine to take donations, but Vedanta is not a cash cow; it was completely the wrong motivation and against SW policy, and we told him we could not accept it. He was also encouraging another young teacher from South Africa to use our SW platform to tap our supporters for financial help for his extensive medical bills. Again, this is just adharmic behaviour.
They both deserved a very stern direct talk from Ramji, which is exactly what they got, because they were completely out of line. It is a huge privilege to be endorsed as a teacher of Vedanta, and a big responsibility. It is our duty as lineage holders to ensure that anyone associated with Shiningworld and Vedanta upholds dharma impeccably. But Ramji was not unkind to either of them, nor did he ‘reject’ Christian. That is just not true. We suspended the teacher in SA but did not suspend Christian. He asked to be removed. Where is the disrespect, on our part? Who was really disrespectful? Christian and this other teacher were given an amazing platform to teach from, and they both blew it. It is shameful that Christian cannot be honest about it.
With Ramji, nobody ever gets shown the door. Nondual love does not change when it encounters change. Ramji and I defend the lineage fiercely, but Ramji has infinite compassion for human flaws, and love for everyone which is not modified by their behaviour towards him. If any of them had spoken to Ramji and been contrite, meaning understood the lesson and practiced humility, it could have been resolved with reference to the Self, as well as in understanding of correct jiva behaviour, especially with respect to teaching Vedanta. But sadly, they choose the smallness of bondage to their egoic grievances instead, and went public with them.
You say your visit to us was the highlight of your year, yet you are ‘disappointed in’ and have lost respect for Ramji, based on what you think you know as relayed to you by other people’s experience, which you think is credible. From whose perspective? Are you certain you know the whole story? You must surely know that respect or disrespect is highly subjective, and only applies to mithya, where anything can be true or false. There are always many sides to everything when Maya is involved.
But the most pertinent and important question here is this: have you ever had reason personally, to lose respect for Ramji? Like Paul and Sarah, you are a psychologist, that is your means of knowledge. But you are at best a part time inquirer, from what we can ascertain. As with Paul Sarah and Christian, Ramji has given you the greatest gift possible – Self-knowledge. Yet you judge him as a person, according to your likes and dislikes, or yours and the psychological assessment of others?
Do you know the root meaning of the word respect? It is to look again: re – spect. Respect for ourselves or others is built on what we value, and on the law of non-injury as we see it, or as it applies to us. It is also curated by our biases and conditioning. So when we say we gain or lose respect for someone, we mean we have judged them according to our values and subjective ideas, either finding them up to our standards, or wanting. Consider this fact: Ramji has been teaching for more than 50 years, and he has literally thousands upon thousands of testimonials from people whom he has helped to find the ultimate prize – freedom, and who will testify to his infinite kindness and patience. Who do you choose to believe?
Yes, indeed dharma trumps moksa. But dharma is a tricky thing because though based on the principle of non-injury, what is dharmic for you is subjective and, it is situational. Sometimes, we have to have the courage to cause hurt to others to follow dharma, and to be honest. Non-injury can come in ways that hurt us deeply, and unless the cause of our hurt is someone intentionally causing injury, the reward is great if we get the lesson it delivers. If we look at that hurt from the perspective of Self-knowledge, the opportunity to put nonduality into practice is invaluable because freedom and fearlessness are the result. But Paul, Sarah and Christian, all purportedly ‘true Vedantins’, were not able to do that, even at the behest of a Mahatma.
So, what is it you, or they, want? A ‘perfect’ person, according to your ideas of what that is, to teach you Vedanta? There is no such thing. Ramji is a Mahatma, there is no doubt about this, though you are obviously free to doubt it. All god’s have feet of clay. As the Self, nobody is more or less special, and teaching Vedanta does not make us special. Though we are all perfect as the Self, as teachers, we are all flawed vehicles who do our best to give our best for Isvara. And we work extremely hard to do so.
Ramji is the Self, but as we all do, he has his God given character as a person, which is sometimes hard to deal with, from the jiva perspective. I cannot say it has been all easy for me. It has not. I had to overcome unhappiness that arose from residual jiva issues of my own, as stated. Self-knowledge does the trick, if it assimilates, and the freedom of nondual love is extraordinary.
Ramji knows that he is not everyone’s cup of tea, an acquired taste. But I can tell you this. There are very, very few people alive today, or have ever been alive, with a love so big, so unconditional, and who have given as much to help as many people find the truth of their being, and to live it, as Ramji has. He spreads happiness wherever he goes, and will continue to do so until his last breath.
A good question here, if you are inclined to judge him, is: ‘what have I done, where is my contribution, really’?
Please feel free to share this email with Paul, Sarah and Christian, send them our love. I look forward to your reply, and will post this satsang anonymously on Shiningworld.
Much love
Sundari