Only silence remains and the words THANK YOU. Here are a few of the gratitudes I feel:

Thank you for validating the understanding of my Being as consciousness and showing my doubting mind where its ignorance still had traction.

Thank you for not “being a perfect human being” and thereby destroying my attachment to the dangerous idea of a perfect teacher rather than a perfect teaching.

Thank you specifically for your teaching on Ramana’s Upadesa Saram that dissolved the apparent gap between my mind and my heart. Since then I only know love.

God speed and blessings on this next phase of your journey to Italy and beyond,

Thank you, thank you,

With love, my dear friend

You’re most welcome, Mary.  Give yourself a nice pat on the back for being an imperfectly perfect student.

Love,

James

James:  Hi X. Yes, it certainly appears as if provocateur is one of Ishvara’s roles.  But Ishvara isn’t a conscious being with likes and dislikes, so the idea that It needs to manipulate us into accepting It as “our creator” doesn’t hold water. It doesn’t know that there is a creation, unless ignorance adds a creation to It.  In so far as there is a world apart from consciousness, Isvara is responsible for delivering the apparent results of our apparent actions.  Only people who are ignorant of their non-difference from Isvara think in terms of gain and loss, merit and demerit, actions and results etc.  What advantage could It gain by doing good or evil…or anything else for that matter? 

X:  For example, my gluttonous nature keeps me from being slim and healthy; or I have one terrible habit which I can’t seem to shake, and it bothers me and insults my pride or otherwise good opinion of myself, etc. Then eventually, even if we are unable to heal or cure ourselves of terrible habits or personality flaws, we finally submit to God’s will, flaws and all, and realize that in spite of it all, even with all our imperfections, and no matter how diligently we strive to qualify ourselves and requalify ourselves for comprehensive inquiry, we fall short. It is as if Ishwara finally says to us, “But what are you worrying about, you are one with me no matter how many flaws you have, and you and I share equally the same ground of being , Pure Bliss Consciousness and Existence!  Do your, but do not worry!”

James:  Yes, I think you are saying that you need to stand as awareness and love yourself warts and all.  If so, this is how to proceed.  First say, “I am existence shining as whole and complete consciousness” (which is the truth) so I cannot be insulted.  I am fine as I am.  It seems God wanted a warty person.”

It’s all a matter of confidence in the scripture, which is Isvara’s words.  Given the idea of ignorance, Isvara knows how difficult duality is and offers a straightforward solution.  If you don’t avail yourself of it, you are choosing to suffer the consequences of unmentionable tendencies.  But, if you can’t take a stand in your true self, admit that some part of you enjoys the unmentionables.  Be honest.   Maybe, you need to keep at the unmentionable until you hit bottom.   

P.S. Maybe being slim and healthy isn’t wise for a gluttonous person.  If you stand as awareness, you can’t stand as a glutton.  Try it.  You’re not thinking as you are, you’re thinking as you aren’t.   Of course, it’s hard being X, but it’s just as hard not being the Self, so pick your poison.  I’ve settled on being chubby and healthy, so I don’t diet to get rid of excess pounds…are they really that bad?  I eat superfoods, sleep like a baby, and talk Vedanta.  There’s an idea for you.

Sufferer: I would love to tell you about hitting bottom during this current OCD attack. Though it’s happening in the dualistic world, it shines a light on how OCD works and how Vedanta can be applied on this bubble of fear.

James:  I am not sure I’d love to hear it.   But it will make a good satsang for the website.

Sufferer:  The story goes like this:

I sold our 13 year old Mercedes with nearly 180.000 miles to a guy from a city close by. He called me after arriving home and asked whether I had trouble with the car’s indicator. I said no, but afterwards I remembered that there was a faulty code during diagnosis of the car but I cleared the code.  It happened one or two times more, but then it didn’t. I didn’t even think about it when I sold the car but it obviously it occurred while the buyer drove home. At this very moment OCD Bubbleland set in.

I thought “What if the new car-owner drives the car while the indicator fails and an accident happens!?” OCD is always about the worst case; someone will die and who is responsible? ME! because I didn’t fix it.  My mind and my body gets totally absorbed in these fear thoughts.

James:  Yes, fear is very attractive to weak-minded people. 

Sufferer: I see myself in jail because I failed.  The fear drives me to act. What can I do to get back in charge and avoid further, harmful, consequences.  I called the owner and asked him to go to a service station and fix what’s wrong with the car. I offered him 500€ for the security of knowing no one would become injured. I called a lawyer but he said he wouldn’t have said anything, because the indicator worked when I sold the car.  But that’s not my point.  It’s about non Injury. His advice was requesting the new owner not to drive with car until the problem is fixed. I did so, begged him to do so and told him that we can talk about the bill later. Since this happened I am a mess.   I hit bottom, and pray for a good outcome. This scenario has happened all my life, but it turned out better since Isvara’s grace brought me to you as my teacher and to Vedanta.

James:  Well, a lot of good your teacher has done, since you don’t take his words as God’s words.  Never mind that, my point is that throughout this whole miserable narrative, you’re busy injuring your not-self and ignoring your true self, the one that witnessed and reported many attacks over the course of your life.  Anyway, you’re the jail, the jailor and the one in jail. 

You reported the most recent case with complete objectivity, which means that the OCD has nothing to do with you.  You didn’t ask for it. You don’t generate the attacks and yet you want to take responsibility for them?  Something fishy here.  A wise person once said, “Bitten by the vipers of guilt, obligation and responsibility, human beings suffer endless births and deaths in the ocean of samsara.”  Why is it so hard to see that you are never what you see?  What you see/experience is always only an inert object known by you, awareness, presented to you by ignorance.  

God Finally Enters the Picture

Sufferer: Now about Vedanta. When I turn back and see how this process of selling the car worked, it was a kind of a flow. It couldn’t have been any other way. Isvara brought me and the new owner together, Isvara didn’t bring this thought of the indicator failure to my mind. I felt like a puppet on a string. I know the results are not up to me, no more control, which I hadn’t anyway, except the effects will work on the jiva. Isvara is teaching another lesson, Karma Yoga.

 James: No effects on the jiva because it is not different from you, consciousness.  But yes, I know what jiva you are talking about. 

Sufferer: Can something like this disturb a wise person? It disturbs an OCD triggered mind. I am barely capable of withstanding these thoughts of fear and being a failure.

James:  But you do withstand them. 

Sufferer:  And yes, if something worse happens, like an accident, I will feel passionately about about hose who might be involved.

James:  Feel passionately about the one who is uninvolved.  The one who is ‘involved” is the one who is unloved. 

Sufferer: Due to the laws I have to surrender to a possible law suit.

James:  Due to ignorance of the uninvolved one, you worry about a law suit.

And the wise man knows that he isn’t affected anyway, It’s isvara’s stuff.

James:  Being wise only involves accepting what the guru tells you.  This OCD stuff is just a kind of “poor me” vanity.  Seems I’m not doing my job very well. 

Sufferer: But honestly speaking, I am not a wise men, I only know that a wise man couldn’t be disturbed by the world.

James: Yes, it’s clear to me you’re not wise but I love you just the same.  If you know you aren’t wise you are a wise man.  It’s funny to watch you ignore yourself, Arjuna.

Sufferer: By the way, of course I talked about the whole story with my wife. She also said, like you did, don’t be so hard on yourself.

James: I’ll bet she’s sick and tired of hearing it.  Think of her the next time Isvara2 attacks you.  This is hardly the way to have a happy marriage.

Sufferer:  And while I am listening to my inner voice, it’s not talking good about me, I put myself down, while I am a failure, incomplete and while this OCD thing comes back all the time and I lose power to withstand it.

James:  You withstand it.  That’s why you are repeating the story.  If it destroyed you, you wouldn’t be talking to me.  I must be a fool to repeat myself again and again.  What good does stubbornness do you? You`  would accept the words of Isvara if you liked yourself.  The way you to like yourself is to accept the words of God, not the words of Arjuna the fool.

Sufferer: I read a book about music, “Liberating the Musician Within” by Kenny Werner. There is a section which I love, “ We are all part of a universal game. Returning to our essence while living in the world is the object of the game. The earth is he game board and we are the pieces on the board. We move around and around until we remember who we really are, and then we can be taken off the board.” Being taken off the board that is what my innermost wish is all about.

James:  If God hasn’t done it by now, it’s up to you to remove yourself. 

Much love

As I understand it, Brahman (pure consciousness) pervades everything, having no specific locus or identity. The Mandukya teaches that we are Turiya—the witness consciousness (sakshi)—and not the waker, dreamer, or deep sleeper.

Ramji:  Brahman and Jiva are non-different from each other and non-different from Turiya, the witnessing awareness.

Here’s where I’m confused: if I am consciousness (which of course I know I am) —without location or identity—why do I seem continuously linked to this one body, waking each day as the same “David”? If consciousness is all-pervasive, why is my experience not distributed across all beings? Thank heavens it’s not! — but I can’t grasp what maintains or seems to maintain this particular association.

Ramji:  Operative word is “seem” in line two above .  The key idea to this question lies in the idea of limiting adjuncts (upadhis).  Maya is the upadhi that makes every name and form seem to be different from consciousness.

1.      Consciousness is not “in” the body; rather, the body and mind appear in consciousness. It illumines all experience impartially.

2.      However, due to avidyā (ignorance) and the functioning of the subtle body (sūkṣma śarīra), consciousness seems to be localized — as though it were confined to a single perspective. This “I”-sense (ahaṅkāra) arises where consciousness identifies with the gross, subtle or causal body. 

3.      The “link” you speak of — waking each day as “David” — is nothing but the continuity of the subtle body’s causal impressions (vasanas/ saṃskāras). They persist in the causal body (kāraṇa śarīra) during sleep and fructify again on waking, maintaining the sense of personal continuity.

4.      From the standpoint of consciousness itself, no linkage actually exists. Consciousness is never bound, never connected to any one body; it merely illumines whichever mind-body happens to be active, just as space seems to take the shape of the pot enclosing it, though it remains undivided.

So, the appearance of “me, this person” is the operation of the mind-body mechanism under ignorance. The experience of localization continues even after realization, but the belief in being localized dissolves.

In deep sleep or in samādhi, when the mind is resolved, the seeming localization ceases — and yet you, the consciousness, remain.

Reflection Teaching

When I look in a mirror, I see the frame, the glass, and my reflected face. The frame and glass belong to the mirror, but the face is mine. Similarly, objects belong to the world, but the awareness of them belongs to me.  Everything depends on me, is born in me, rests in me, and dissolves into me.  I need no external support.  This is true for everyone irrespective of the differences appearing due to the upadhi.

David: As I understand it, karma is inert yet functions as the operating mechanism or program for each jiva, impersonal yet specific. Consciousness animates this process (or appears to), enabling the jiva to experience life according to its karma. Am I right so far?

Yes.

So, what exactly keeps this sakshi—which I know myself to be—tethered to this particular jiva?

It isn’t tethered.  Ignorance of the original unborn limitlessness of the non-dual witness awareness seemingly tethers it. 

Is it because what I experience is reflected, rather than original, consciousness?

Yes. The gunas (matter) are seemingly embedded in consciousness so every conscious entity looks different, even though the consciousness required to operate their karma is also required to operate youe karma.  Karmas are different because no two conscious entities are born at the same time and place.  What you experience has nothing to do with you, the sakshi.  It is an object.  The sakshi never becomes an object.  Objects are always remote and unreal. 

Or is it simply due to lingering identification with the “David” jiva?

No. Because Jiva is actually universal existence shining as consciousness, Isvara 1, original pure existence shining as conscious plus Maya, ignorance. When you look at your husband  don’t you see the same awareness as yours ?  If the answer is no, then you are associating his thoughts, not with his consciousness.  Ignorance causes “lingering” identification.  It normal to identify but only for a minute until you bring the teaching “I am awareness” to mind. 

Or is it the incomprehensible play of maya at work?

Yes, but Maya is comprehensible if you understand it as an upadhi for all conscious entities.

I hope I’ve expressed the question clearly enough Ramji, and I’d very much appreciate your insight when you have time.

With love and thanks,

It was easy for me because it was well-expressed.  Appreciation is always appreciated.

Love,

Ramji

Yes.

But I don’t understand why I have to make choices throughout the day though there is no “me” as such. I don’t understand why I must do all the work involved in living. 

As long as you think you are Joe you have to make choices.  You don’t understand because you are lazy.  If you don’t want to make choices, let Isvara choose for you. This is called Isvara bhakti and take what happens as a gift from Isvara.  It gets Joe in harmony with Isvara’s will.  The next step is to identify as effortless awareness, which has no karma, so life is choice-free and very blissful, since awareness is bliss (the self is sat-chit-ananda).

I don’t understand what Iswara wants of me.

Isvara is not a wanting person with likes and dislikes.  It delivers the results of Joe’s actions.  All this (and more) is carefully explained in the first six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita and in hundreds of satsangs on the website, books and videos. If you know what karma yoga is and lived it every day, you wouldn’t have these questions and expect me to answer them.  I think you just do your sadhana when it suits you.  If you lived your life as sadhana, you would be doubt-free.

I would rather not exist at all than go through life with all its demands. I seem to not have a choice in this and that makes me sad.

You are just feeling sorry for yourself.  Man up, mighty Arjuna!  Do what has to be done with a cheerful heart.

All the “experiences” I wanted as a kid I have now got many times and I just feel “done”.

Now you want to be free of experiences?  You will be free of experiences the day your body dies, not before.  You have a bad attitude.  Karma yoga is right action and right attitude.  You need to start over with your spirituality.  Otherwise, just let Maya/Isvara teach you, which is what is happening now.  You are generating this miserable karma by the way you think.  

I am awareness that illuminates existence itself, but existence (life/the universe) seems overrated.

How is life different from you, awareness?  Yes, it’s not the same but it’s not different either.  Think about it, get off your lazy butt and do proper sadhana.  Sign up for the jnani’s class on you tube and/or go to the website, click “New to Vedanta” and follow the recommendations.  I will help you if you learn what is required. Otherwise, you’re wasting my time. There are many excellent resources available on ShiningWorld. 

Love,

Ram

I loved you when you were over there in my imagination.

Without sailng, I sailed past your comforting form

shimmering in the seeming untouchable distance,

a treacherous unfeeling wall of ice between us.

A large lenticular mustache of meaning

hovering gently over you hid the smile that

told me you were smiling back.

I was cold and detached like the icy wind that

filled the sails fluttering above as

my spectral shadow and i sailed reverently by

on life’s limey iridescent currents.

You were remote in those days,

unfuckable but enjoyable in a romantic spiritual sort of way.

Life was beautiful then. She fed my longing,

always a vulgar greedy drooling mouth.

Without a speck of evidence I believed she

would feed my nostalgia forever.

But I was wrong.

One fine day, the sailing, the longing and

my tangible fuckable self changed places.

It was magic; I had nothing to do with it.

There I was smiling behind my mustache

as those two rotting humble corpses sailed off to

hunt some walrusy worldly dream.

Imagine that.

Topics:  Dependence on unstable factors, Manipulation by greedy entities for whom the end justifies the means aka “covert elites.”  Us and Them.  Psychological Operations

In a recent YouTube video discussing the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Chase Hughes, author of The Tipping Point, argues that mainstream media perpetuates a hard-core binary narrative, portraying society as a battleground of far-right and far-left extremists.  It discourages independent thought and aggressively shapes public perception to fit a covert agenda. It rejects the notion of society as a collective of ordinary people engaged in everyday activities—eating, sleeping, walking, talking, loving each other, or quietly watching the sunset from a front porch. Instead, it fosters division by legitimizing rage and promoting violence as a reasonable means of resolving conflict.

Aligned with powerful political figures who depend on large sums of money to remain in office, its lackeys are incentivized to impede pending legislation that holds individuals accountable for their words.  It promotes hate speech under the aegis of free speech and supports anonymity through avatars, which conceals the identities of those who spread its vitriol.  Like criminals (naturally it’s all “legal), these so-called masters of the universe…a wealthy elite with vast resources…are driven by an insatiable desire for power and wealth. According to Hughes, this “covert elite” dreads nothing more than the erosion of their influence, a threat they perceive if and when their billions begin to dwindle to millions.  While rational people who appreciate the zero-sum nature of life experience JOMO, the joy of missing out on the downside of greed and other unhealthy psychological tendencies, this cohort suffers greatly at the hands of FOMO, the fear of missing out, which motivates them to continue  exclusively pursuing shallow material ends. 

1.   PsyOps and Covert Elite: Manufacturing Consent Through Duality

Duality is the belief that the appearance of things is the reality of things, which leads to unintended consequences. However, the covert media elite, actively promotes duality at every level. It capitalizes on the illusion that our individual fears and desires are distinct, when, in truth, they are proxies for a single universal longing: to be free from fear and desire itself.

The media amplifies fear, broadcasting it relentlessly across every communication device, day and night, not because reality is inherently threatening—one it is investigated, it is revealed to be remarkably benign—but because the mere perception of threat transforms rational, clear-thinking individuals into easily manipulated, fearful, violence-embracing fanatics. This urgent message lights up our screens: I can’t love and respect you because you’re different!  This propaganda, masquerading as the light of truth, fuels division as the covert media’s profits pile up in darkness and ordinary people worry about financial security in daylight. 

If universal common-sense values gain traction, media’s fear of losing control intensifies and rational voices…think Spinoza, Mahatma Gandhi, Yitzhak Rabin, and Martin Luther King Jr. are unceremoniously unalived.  The media sees people, even our grey-haired leaders, as little more than lifelong children for whom facts rarely Trump fears. 

Manufactured Consent

Recent history illuminates how unconscious forces shape behaviour.  Eddie Bernays, author of a book published in 1928 entitled “Propaganda” and the inventor of the concept of “manufactured consent,” pioneered the application of Freud’s theories of unconscious drives to public relations, advertising, and consumer marketing. He argued that appealing to subconscious forces—rooted in Freud’s concepts of id, ego, and superego—enables companies to sell products and shape consumer culture more effectively than relying on rational appeals. Bernays orchestrated campaigns that linked consumer goods to deep-seated emotional needs. For example, he rebranded cigarettes “Torches of Freedom”, symbols of women’s emancipation, tapping into universal desires for rebellion and equality, significantly boosting tobacco sales among women and indirectly among men who felt the need to bond women attached to cigarettes, hardly a desirable outcome for the health of the nation.  Note that the billboard wants us to “Reach for a lucky instead of a sweet.”

By encouraging physicians to endorse a heavy breakfast of carb-heavy toast, clogging eggs and fatty bacon, he framed bacon as a wholesome, doctor-approved choice, leveraging trust in authority figures to cement its place in American breakfast culture, to the delight of hog and egg farmers everywhere.

Psychological Warfare

PsyOps, which is just propaganda, in wartime situations may be useful to defend a country’s values, but in the hands of materialistic sharks binge-feeding deep in a peacetime ocean of affluenza, it is proving to be a nightmare, because it encourages and legitimizes hate.  Yes, we have our small everyday dislikes upsold as hates, but we generally keep them to ourselves, or only share them with intimates we trust.  Normal societies don’t promote it.  Hate only injures the hater in the beginning but dwell on it and people die unnecessarily when it eventually spills into action.  Not in droves, but enough to scare the hell out of society, keeping the coffers of the covert elite overflowing with almighty God’s hard-earned dollars, and ordinary people at each other throats.  By perpetuating a hard-core binary narrative, this dark arm of the media ensures that division prevails, obscuring the loving beautifully intelligent spiritual oneness behind it.

Sadly, Hughes’ gloomy analysis is mostly correct and toward the end of his video he briefly mentions the word God, which is the next step, but the video ends with a desire that this assassination becomes a tipping point presaging a return to sanity.  Rational people want a tipping point to be sure, but what tips one way eventually tips back the other way when the next demagogue captures the imagination of a disaffected citizenry.  Life is a self-equilibrating zero-sum matrix.  

B.  What’s God Got to Do with It?

Topics: Action (karma) yoga and knowledge (jnana) yoga. Good (dharma) and evil (adharma), religion and Self inquiry

Reality does not need a big remote God person sitting in a transcendental sky passing judgement on us…our own healthy and unhealthy actions reward and punish us sufficiently.  God is the total network of physical, psychological and moral laws into which we are unceremoniously thrust by our karma.   Vedanta rhetorically asks, “What isn’t God?” 

PsyOps, as Hughes presents it, operates in the dark material side of the psychological sphere.  In the best of all possible worlds, religion should fill the other side and encourage the growth and maintenance of the heart and mind.  Unfortunately, it seems this isn’t the best of all possible worlds, in so far as history not only lights up the moral benefits of religion but also the immense harm inflicted over the last few thousand years by unpurified religious zealots.  To its credit, it has not failed to point out the good and evil foisted on us by secular entities of all persuasions, either.  Evil, popularly known as the “devil” by certain primitive religious types, is just ignorance of the perfection of God’s creation and all the entities in it.  Ignorance is destroyed by God knowledge. 

The Universal Expectation of Non-Injury

Unlike Neo-Vedanta, which has thrown the God baby out with the religious bath, traditional Vedanta points out that our relationship with our primary caregiver…God…precedes our relationship with our worldly parents, who shape our spiritual and material values going forward.  God appears in this world as a universal expectation of non-injury in thought, word and deed, what Vedic culture calls dharma.  It is built-in.  Saints and most ordinary people appreciate and practice it.  Even scoundrels are mindful of it and the worst of our lot…hit-men, who seem to enjoy a certain sympathy among haters… sleep with pistols under their pillows. 

No man is an Island – Karma Yoga

Sane individuals appreciate the fact that we are interdependent and that it pays to honor all beings as perfect children of God, in so far as we depend on each other to fulfill our number one priority, survival.  No man is an island.  Without shared spiritual values life is war.  Common sense Karma Yoga is the way to practice true religion.  It is offering all your actions to God before you do them and taking the results as gifts from God.  If you respect God, you will respect yourself.  Needless to say, if you respect God, you will not offer God-insulting actions to the world, which is non-separate from God and the world will benefit.  Because the field of existence is conscious it naturally loves you back and your self-esteem grows.  Vedanta explains the benefits of Karma Yoga as worship of God exhaustively in the Bhagavad Gita so there is no need to unfold it in detail here.  There is no downside to the practice of Karma Yoga, whereas the consequences of commitment to desire and fear-oriented actions is always subject to the zero-sum rule: joy and sorrow prove to be woven fine.

The Value of Values

Understanding the value of values is an important aspect of Knowledge (jnana) Yoga, which is based on verses in two chapters of the Bhagavad Gita.  Without a moral compass pointing true north, freedom isn’t free.  Sanity is appreciation of universal values: don’t lie, cheat, or steal, etc.  Needless to say, in affluent societies sanity is unappreciated but fortunately like insanity, it is contagious.  Vedanta defines insanity as ignorance of the wholeness of the non-dual nature of reality, an appreciation of the identity of a pure and perfect God and God’s pure and perfect “children,” meaning all sentient beings.  If you believe that you are separate, inadequate, and incomplete, you are insane because there is no evidence to support this conclusion, apart from the well-meaning but incorrect belief inculcated by your secondary caregivers, your parents and society beyond.  Sin, the belief in separation, is yummy fodder for the mainstream media, not to mention certain religions, allowing both to manipulate us to their hearts content.  It must be quarantined. 

A Straightforward Solution If you don’t feed ignorance, it collapses.  You starve it by asserting the truth.  Try it on your own mind.  Educate yourself like this, “I’m a pure and perfect human being as God made me.  I’m whole and complete before duality turns me into an American or a Russian, man or woman, rich or poor, black or white, liberal or conservative etc.”   Seriously commit to  Vedanta and it will set you free.

C. Beyond God and Man

Topics: Non-duality, Free will, The unborn Self

God creates, sustains and destroys the universe.   It doesn’t live or die because It was never born, unlike all living and non-living things in the creation.  It is unintelligent to rely on the whims and fancies of individual living beings for our security or to trust collective karma to protect us from the tangled web of desires and fears motivating our actions.  The Bhagavad Gita points out that whereas the creation is zero sum, God Itself is no-sum.  No sum means that reality is non-dual, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.  There are no parts to add and subtract.  There is nothing to gain and nothing to lose…only peace.  And because there are not two things in reality, God and sentient entities intersect, meaning they share a completely secure identity.  Both the creator and Its creatures are unborn existence shining as blissful awareness/consciousness, the spiritual factor.  As previously mentioned, “What isn’t God?”

If I am eternal unborn consciousness I needn’t worry about life and death, killing and being killed.  Because of this fact, Vedanta seems to sanction violence and has been regularly accused of being atheistic, which could not be further from the truth.  Life and death are part of the zero-sum matrix.  Only the body/mind/sense complex, which is not myself, lives and dies.  Nothing can be done about it, so worry about it is a waste of our precious mental and emotional resources. 

Is the Kirk killing about life and death or is it about something else?  If I identify with the body, life is a valuable but unreliable resource.  It is valuable because it is so beautiful, but it is unreliable because life implies disease, old-age and death.  So, whereas the security  of the body is our most important desire, it is also our greatest fear.  See the zero-sum. 

Free Will

From the spiritual point of view, life and death is a ho-hum no-sum because I am an eternal spiritual entity.  But from the material point of view, it is a precious but precarious gift.  The question now becomes, am I free to choose my identity? 

From Dependence to Independence

We know that dependence on the world doesn’t work, but God is reliable.  It brought me here, knows what I need to do and has gifted me with the talents and abilities to achieve success.  Understanding that as an active doer, I may influence what happens but do not control what happens, I live my life as Karma Yoga.  Keeping in mind the Creator’s gift of life I offer my actions as gifts of love, learning from unwanted experiences.  My work is my worship.  I am sensitive to others’ feelings and avoid sharing beliefs and opinions, which I usually sell as hard and fast knowledge, that might hurt them.  I don’t lie.  I shift my focus from my birth parents to a no-binary Mother/Father God and associate mostly with spiritual companions, which transforms sentimentality into true sentiment.

Reflection Teaching

When I look in a mirror, I see the frame, the glass, and my reflected face. The frame and glass belong to the mirror, but the face is mine. Similarly, objects belong to the world, but joy belongs to me.

Once I acknowledge my dependence on God and no longer require it, I transfer my devotion to the one and only Self.  This final step is difficult because my attachment to things and beings made me weak.  To overcome weakness, I assert my true identity as the eternal unborn witness of all that is.  Everything depends on me, is born in me, rests in me, and dissolves into me.  Scripture…God’s words…informs me that I am nondual existence shining as consciousness, the cause and support of the world.  I need no external support. The Heart knows it is true. 

Knowledge Yoga Builds Confidence.

I trust God, but do I trust myself?  Vedanta (knowledge yoga)builds self-confidence.  Each day, I gain the power to face its challenges. I don’t reject God but pray to God for success in Self inquiry.  Self-dependence is true independence, while God-dependence is still dependence.  I never feel completely satisfied when I experience dependence.  The world exists because it is known to exist, but it is only apparently real like a dream.  An apparently real phenomenon is as good as unreal phenomena, which means that you can stop depending on the world because it is unreal.  If you knew it was unreal when you set out to conquer it, would you set out to conquer it?  God is real but that doesn’t make me real unless I can discover the point where we are non-different.  Vedanta is god’s words meant to reveal our non-difference from existence shining as whole and complete consciousness. 

Join the seminar in October for Astavakra Gita which continues this train of thought and  explains confidence building.

The Tipping Point, a video by Chase Hughes: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/WhctKLbmmDMlRhbWngNKRZjLzGhRfSqNbmXNmNcqJFwbsWQQrKJtmgtZjgHVTNJHjjlXXkg?projector=1

When I surrendered to you as my teacher, I felt a washing away of my ego as I had known it, which I had been focusing on for many years. I think you teach that surrendering the ego is not a step toward realization. Or do you say it cannot create realization? Is it a step toward qualification, or is there another way to express the change in the ego? I see the change in that it no longer cares about results, which seemed to be its major role prior to surrender. Also, when one lives by the values, the ego is no longer prideful, etc. Some teachers say it must be annihilated, but that is dualism, right? I have thought… you can’t kill it, but you can train it—give it duties that serve the Self.

I have many questions about “surrender” and ego. I feel I have knowledge about both, yet because they are referred to differently by different teachers, I wanted to know your stand. Would you clarify for me when you have a moment? I know I am VERY different since Self- realization, and it seems that surrendering was what made it possible to learn from you. It’s on the back doorstep, for sure.

James: Good email. It brings up several nuanced topics. Let me see if I can help. The ego is the part of you that wants results. Karma yoga is surrendering the results to God, aka life. By surrendering the results, you remove the anxiety that distorts and disturbs the ego. Nobody wants to surrender the ego or the results of their actions, nor should they. Because without an ego, who is there to enjoy the results of the surrender? If you say Awareness, you would be wrong because there is no action or results for the non-dual Self. The ego is the part of you that performs actions to enjoy results, but if there is no ego, how will it surrender or enjoy the result of surrendering? You feel high and happy because you have surrendered the results, not surrendered the ego. Ego is a good thing.

You seem to acknowledge this fact when you say, “a washing away of my ego as I had known it,” the implication being that it is still present. If the ego follows dharma and leaves the results to God, the ego is fine. Karma yoga and knowledge yoga (jnana) are duality. A surrendered ego is dualism. It is good if you understand the big picture as revealed by Vedanta. The “you” that is training the mind is a dualistic ego, looking for a result, i.e., a trained mind. Why? Because it will make the ego happier—or so it thinks. If your ego is dynamic, then keep it busy doing its spiritual practice. The ego dies the day they put you six feet under, so there is no getting rid of it. Egotism—masturbatory levels of self-regard—needs to go if you want to grow, however.

If you want to surrender your ego, there is only one way: jnana karma sannyas, which means the surrender of doership by understanding the nature of Isvara, the laws operating in the field of karma. When you appreciate the complexity of factors involved in producing action, you let go of the idea that you are a controller and accept what happens with a glad heart. You are free of the doer. Your ego is alive and seemingly happy, and you are identified with it. It has been blessed with a means of Self-knowledge and the motivation to practice it.

Wendy: Wow. I knew I shouldn’t have written you when I was so tired and rambling. I thought I would get more compassion, but I guess I just needed a kick in the butt. Self doesn’t need compassion… Self is. This letter is from my heart.

Ramji: I don’t see it as a kick in the butt. The upside is that you learned that you can’t express yourself clearly when the mind is dull. I’m not sure what compassion has to do with it, insofar as holding your emotional hand is not part of my job description. I say that a person who helps unconfuse another person is compassionate. Anyway, I’m here to help you understand the nature of reality, a topic that requires a mature mind. There are always many so-called gurus that will schmooze you…for a price.

Wendy: I understand more than is coming across, but you are the Guru, so I am listening.

Ramji: Listening is always good depending on what you understand, but how is anyone else going to understand more than one lets on, except by words and deeds? I assume that you want Self-knowledge, which requires analyzing your thinking and letting go of beliefs and opinions that are not in line with it. You have an academic background and have received thigh honors, so it is understandable that you approach Vedanta from an academic point of view. However, Self-knowledge is completely counterintuitive; we use language differently from the general population. Our aim is to teach the intellect to think from the non-dual platform, whereas the general population, including academia, is not aware of the value of non-dual thinking and thinks only from the dualistic platform.

Wendy: Here’s what is happening for me: I want to spend all my time in devotion, and I am letting “duty” interrupt my practice, as I tend to think that teaching, etc., are my duties.

Ramji: It doesn’t matter what you do or what you want. You’re a good person with good values. It matters that you do what you do in the right spirit (karma yoga). Karma yoga is devotional yoga. It is worship of God by offering actions and their results to God. You evidently believe that some activities are more spiritual than others, which they are from one point of view, but if you love God, you won’t do self-insulting or God insulting actions. God is not just Awareness; it is a moral force if you take the world into account. You have karma, you like doing karma, so do it in the karma yoga spirit. When you discover what you are with the help of Vedanta, you lose all karma. You act as the Self from that point on. If you want to do something, just do it. Nobody has a gun to your head forcing you to “teach.”

Wendy: That is where my confusion was. My confusion does not lie in not understanding Self.

Ramji: You’re right; the Self is the easy bit. But what good is understanding the Self if you don’t do karma yoga properly? You invite aggression and dullness into your mind. Karma yoga is how the self-knowing Self acts in the world when it is in a human body. If you wish you can thing of Wendy as an instrument of God or the Self. The point is that there should be no sense of doership, or if there is you should know that the doer is a seeming entity cooked up by ignorance of your wholeness.

Wendy: I know how I am different since studying Vedanta, and I know that I am burned out and need to recuperate. I don’t know that this upcoming trip will help with that, as it seems like a duty as well, to family.

Ramji: OK. If you see your family as God, it will be a pleasant trip. Anyway, appreciating Vedanta has a very positive, long-lasting impact on the mind because you discover that freedom and non-dual love are within reach. In any case, freedom is not only about your ego being different. It is about freedom from the doer/enjoyer entity, the born person. Freedom is knowing without a doubt that you are unborn. You are inspired by Vedanta, but inspiration only goes so far without a clear understanding of the teachings and the right lifestyle. You are still not clear about your priorities. If you were, you would not have this conflict.

Wendy: There is no way I can stop studying Vedanta. It is the essence of my devotion and my practice.

Ramji: Vedanta is about you. It is not an academic discipline. You can’t study it anyway; you must be taught, assuming various qualifications.

Wendy: I am very new to it in comparison to other teachings, so I don’t feel confident teaching it. Yet, when I teach it, I trust myself and my students respond to it. I was asking for guidance from you when I should have just trusted my Self.

Ramji: If you teach properly, people have no choice but to respond positively because it reveals the one unborn Self to be a steady current of bliss. You have no business teaching it if you don’t understand it and your life doesn’t model it. What would your students think about the last letter you sent? You don’t have control of your mind. It operates on its own. Meditation (upasana yoga) is for refining, concentrating, and controlling the mind. Subconscious forces (gunas) are running you. Anyway, it has nothing to do with others, only with how your mind interacts with the teaching.

Wendy: I know neither moksha nor Self is an object, Ramji. Moksha is freedom. Self is sat-cit-ananda. When I say I have moksha, I mean I am free. I know everything is working out perfectly, and I know the Self doesn’t need taking care of. I believe you are right that this transformation has been a huge wake-up call, and my mind has moved from rajas to sattva most of the time. I also believe that I have created burnout from enthusiasm around serving, learning, and becoming free.

Ramji: Yes, this is an accurate statement of your thinking. But right thinking is more or less useless unless you control your actions. If you were confident with the knowledge in your statement, your mind would remain focused and controlled; you would have seen this coming. Rajas and tamas are doing you. No blame. You are burned out. Karma yoga is burnout insurance.

Wendy: You beautifully clarified and reminded me that Isvara is in charge. I know that, and that’s why I keep doing what I am asked to do. Something happened energetically this week that made me realize I don’t have inexhaustible energy.

Ramji: Better late than never.

Wendy: So, Isvara is slowing me down.

Ramji: Isvara is very compassionate.

Wendy: Through you, Isvara is also making me look at what I do and don’t know as my essence. I ask myself… is this just my intellect? And I get, “no”… the foreground has become the background. I am just having a hell of a day/week.

Ramji: You get “no” because you need to hear “no.” It’s hard to understand you because you’re tired, but snippets of truth come out. For instance, “the foreground has become the background,” which means that the relationship between your Self, which you previously thought was an object, has been reversed by Vedanta. Isvara is reminding you that the Self is the subject and Wendy is an object. All along you thought Wendy was the subject, but Wendy is just a conceptual identity cobbled together from various real and imagined experiences.

Wendy: Again, I wish I hadn’t written in my early morning confused state. I am gathering a sense of humor about it now and will take in all you have said. My letter was from a different person who was temporarily lost. I am not willing to wait to get back on track. I am back on track.

Ramji: I’m glad you did. Regrets suck. It’s totally ironic. But the irony wasn’t there when you wrote. In any case, you didn’t write. Isvara wrote so that I could see that you are ahead of yourself spiritually. You’re doing fine. Stay humble.

Wendy: You can give up on me, but I am not giving up on Vedanta even though I know I can be a fully happy person as a karma yogi. We are having a satsang today with Rod and Mary… I’ll see where that takes me.

Ramji: Yes. If you know what it is and live it, you will be happy. However, the next step is to find out what’s beyond happiness. People come to people like me when they realize the limitation of happiness. However, it’s not the kiss of death.

Who said I was giving up on you? But I am suspicious of statements like, “I’ll see where it takes me.” I honestly don’t think you are the one to evaluate where you are at. It seems to be small self-referential, although you are doing your best to listen to me. Most strong-willed people would have picked a big fight and cooked up an excuse to write me off by now. So good for you.

Wendy: I have an automatic donation to you every month. We are happy to help in any way we can. I won’t refer to you as my Guru anymore if you don’t want me to, but you will always be the teacher that allowed me to surrender my ego to Self, and I am forever grateful.

Ramji: It is not up to me how you think about me, or what you call me. I just try to reveal the teachings. Vedanta goes to great lengths to explain the whole sadhana from A–Z so you can evaluate yourself. You do not understand the complete teaching yet, but bits and pieces of the puzzle slowly come together to get the big picture. You’re doing fine. Thanks for the donation to ShiningWorld. The money doesn’t go to us. We use your donation and our own money to propagate the teachings.

Wendy: Yes, I am back on track. I woke up as Self and meditated and read and had some major insights that correlate with what you have written. First, this is the first “overwhelm/confusion” I have had in years, so I know it was important. I will not slip back again. In my meditation I saw how this burnout began, and it had to do with me feeling like people were seeing me diffrently and projecting expectations on me which I did not feel comfortable with—so a slow sabotage began.

The Takeaway

Here’s the big thing that I got, which is kind of exciting in a weird way: I could not get comfortable with the “realized” label. My ego wanted it to mean I was different, and my heart knows I am not. I needed this humbling experience, and when I woke up this morning, I really felt different in the sense that Self is Self without any separation or difference no matter where someone is on the path. I “knew” that before, but I GOT it through this experience, and I feel much more attuned.

I want to clarify that I was not talking about teaching Vedanta. I know I am not knowledgeable enough to teach, but I can participate well in satsang. What I meant was teaching the dream work with touches of Vedanta, and the ego is a big part of dream work, which I love. I wanted to use your words, not Chinmayananda’s or anyone else’s. I have been asked by many women to teach Vedanta, but I told them I am not ready, though I can study with them. I also recommended they take your seminars this summer. They also want to do more study of the dream work with me, and I feel fully qualified in that, along with the amount of Vedanta that complements it.

I am feeling now that I had a “folly of the mind,” which has been resolved, thanks to your honesty and patience. And contrary to my previous “reads,” I actually do like what I am reading from you. It is a great relief to let go of who I thought I was. Because I always had discipline and pretty good vasanas, I see where I had a sense of arrogance around people who were less disciplined, etc. That feels washed away and replaced with deep humility and compassion for myself and others on this journey. So, I am really, really grateful that this episode happened. The fact that I was half-asleep when I wrote it and was barely coherent makes me laugh at the brilliance of Isvara/Maya. It saved me from myself! I do feel awkward in that it put so much on your lap, and I am so grateful that you are hanging in there with me. I think all the knowledge I have gained from study of the scriptures, etc., will be absorbed more deeply now, as I can see that Wendy was translating what she learned through her long history of devotion and multiple teachers.

I love learning, and I feel more open to the guru connection now. I think I was being defensive without being conscious of it. Ego at work. “The glory of life is not in never falling; the true glory consists in rising each time we fall.” —Chinmayananda

So here I am, standing again, dusting myself off, and surrendering to Self with great humility and gratitude.

I love you, Ramji.