Sean: Thank you for your responses to my e-mail. I greatly appreciate them. When I sent my anniversary e-mail, I wrote about what I learned in America that is most meaningful to me. I forgot to write that the most valuable thing that I learn in America is to be completely satisfied with myself as I am and the world as it is. I have both of you and Vedanta to thank for this knowledge.
Sundari: Why ‘in America’? Surely this knowledge is good anywhere and is not specific to America? Perfect satisfaction is indeed the highest ‘state’ there is to experience as a jiva – especially when it is not a state because it does not come and go. If it is truly permanent, that is the litmus test of true freedom. But it is easier to claim than to live.
Sean: Even though James is my first Vedanta teacher, Sundari is an influential figure in my Vedanta education. Sundari urged me to take a stand in Awareness and I could not wrap my head around her suggestion when she first suggested it to me a decade ago because it felt “inorganic and unnatural” to me. I used the word “unnatural” at the time but what it really was that taking a stand as Awareness felt profoundly counterintuitive. That is what makes the knowledge of Vedanta so hard to get. I felt like I could not do it at the time but with the grace of Isvara, I gradually and imperceptibly shifted my identity and my identification. What a huge relief and astounding joy that is when I made that shift. I felt so light and free. I felt like I could walk on water.
Sundari: Whether you heard that from me or James is unimportant – it is the central message of Vedanta, and I was taught that by James, as he was by his teacher. It will feel unnatural to the person identified as such because it is entrained by duality. In order for this to truly assimilate means the mind has to be trained to not only understand the nondual teachings but to live them spontaneously. A complete cognitive system change must first take place to reverse the reversal that Maya imposes on the mind. That does not happen until the jiva identity is fully negated. Self-knowledge is sporadic and intermittent, before then, and what takes over is an ‘enlightened’ ego..
The main question here is, why do you say ‘I could not do it’, ‘I shifted my identity’ and ‘I made that shift’? The ego/doer cannot ‘do it’ or ‘get it’ or ‘make the shift’ because it is the problem. If a true shift has obtained, there is no doer and therefore, no problem and no shift. It’s a shiftless shift because only with direct Self-knowledge obtaining does ignorance and the doer identity fall away, fully and permanently, revealing the ever-present, unchanging and ordinary, Self.
Feeling ‘light and free’, while lovely and often a signature that nondual vision is at work, is still just a feeling. One that can come and go. The bliss of Self-knowledge does not feel like anything. It is just the unassailable knowledge of ISNESS, Existence shining as Awareness.
Sean: Every day I experience the mental agitation and suffering of everyone around me and every day I see the huge cost of identifying as a jiva. Jivas get reactive and bent out of shape at the drop of a hat.
Sundari: Yes indeed – the price of duality is very high, and the suffering it causes is great. But, again, who is it that experiences the mental agitation around you? Are you sure it’s not an improved ego? As the Self, you don’t experience it but simply witness duality at play – and you know it’s just a play. It doesn’t touch you.
Sean: Peter thinks that I sound crazy when I say to some people that their problems are because they think they are human. What else could people be if they do not have the KNOWLEDGE? Even if they have the knowledge, they may not be able to realize who they are because they are not qualified.
Sundari: You are right, but Peter may be right too in cautioning you not to make such statements to people who are not qualified to hear them. It would only come across as crazy, arrogant, even. Watch out for spiritual hubris as that is a sure sign of duality. Remember that true freedom is ordinary and impartial.
Sean: I realize that this waking up process has to do with karma and knowledge As James has pointed out many times, you can get THE KNOWLEDGE for a day, a week or a month but for many, the knowledge does not stick.
Sundari: True, but as the Self, how can you wake up when you never slept? Who ‘wakes’ up?
Sean: I see clearly now that what is needed, among other things, are qualifications, the guidance of a teacher, knowledge of Isvara and GRACE. I need not tell you the essential requirements for Vedantic inquirers are, but I want to share with you that the most exquisite one is DISPASSION. Dispassion lessens my mental agitation and virtually eliminates my suffering.
Sundari: You are right that a lot is required for nondual vision to be permanent and spontaneous, and that the most precious mental attitude that Self-knowledge imparts is dispassion. But before you shout too loudly about being home free, be sure that the ‘I” that ‘sees’ sees only itself. The way you use I in this email sounds disconcertingly like a self-congratulatory ego talking.
It would be more appropriate to say that the Self, seeing only itself, is that which knows the seer with reference to the seen, only when Maya is operating. The Self-aware Self appears as a seer; but it never actually is a seer, unless seeing refers to its own Self. Whereas, when ignorance is operating the jiva thinks that the seer is different from the seen, the subject and object are different. And it sits in judgement of everything, either seeing itself as greater or lesser. Whereas the Self sees only love, no matter what appears before it.
Hari Om
Sundari
