Ganesh: Can you please tell me more about being very sattvic and the importance to have one’s own space to live? More like a secluded place? Without avoiding intention either, this is for helping to take good care of our self. It is right?
Sundari: Our minds are so quiet, and the work we do requires a very sattvic mind, so if we must contend with outside sensory intrusions, such as other people’s vasanas or even just having to relate when we don’t feel like it, it causes agitation. Even though we are beyond the gunas as the self, we must still manage the gunas for the jiva, and this includes keeping our space clear. I have more hermit tendencies than James does, but both of us love being secluded from people for our living space. And then we have the choice of whom we wish to invite into it, and when.
Ganesh: It makes sense to me, and I ask you because last time I observed how Isvara cancelled the last meetings with the few friends I had (non-Vedantins). We have very different life values and goals. This cancelling was not surprising to me. Fine to meet them, but not too much. ☺ It is just three friends, so not at all a big deal. I am more like an asocial one, ha ha. ☺ I love people, but it is the relational things that I don’t always understand. With family, it is okay (my mum and pop are very dispassionate and always accept my choices of living, and never crave for me; I think we have a great understanding of unconditional love).
But not always with so-called friends. Not much drama, I have good relations with people I meet, but I find it difficult when it becomes too close and too often. It turns in a way into, as Ramji says, “I say yes, you say no, I say goodbye, you say hello”! It is just so meaningless. “Why, why, why!?!” (Chinmayanandaji).
