Dear James,
Happy Guru Purnima!
I just want to express my gratitude to you for introducing me to Vedanta and keeping it in my life. In various ways, I had been a spiritual seeker since I was a child. I immersed myself in Christianity as a teen. I considered myself an atheist through most of my 20s, yet was always seeking something. In my 30s, I was heavily into Eckhart Tolle along with various other teachers. I also started attending satsangs, meditated, went to a silent Vipassana retreat, etc., but there was something missing. I had a basic understanding of who I was, yet I was still seeking.
About ten years ago, in Toronto, a couple who would sometimes host spiritual teachers, and had previously held regular Tolle-based satsangs, sent out just another announcement amongst others about a talk to be held at their home. Maybe ten people showed up. A man gave an inspiring talk on the basics of Vedanta, how it had changed his lifestyle around 180 degrees, how great your book “How to Attain Enlightenment” was, that you were an inspirational teacher, but also with a caveat that Vedanta itself is the teacher, that it’s not your teaching.
When I first started reading your book, I was happily stunned. It was a wealth of knowledge. It all made sense. I couldn’t put it down. Somehow Isvara gave me the breakthrough I desired. I dropped all the previous stuff because it all became irrelevant.
I’ve never met you in person, but we’ve had a few email exchanges over the years, and a few years back, I had some more regular email exchanges with a couple of ShiningWorld people. How to Attain Enlightenment was an excellent book, so I read it several times. Over the years, I’ve spent countless hours watching various of your video satsangs and reading your books and other writings. Five years ago, when I was craving to spend time with an Indian guru in an ashram, you kindly provided me with a few potential contacts, and eventually I ended up at a couple of ashrams run by long-time disciples of, and teachers for, Swami Dayananda Saraswati.
I spent three beautiful months in India, enjoying gurukulam, but unfortunately there was very little of the teaching I expected to receive, and I had to really consider how I would go about making a living, so when my visa in India expired, I moved on to other things in the way I felt best.
Thanks to you, my life was opened up to the beautiful world of Vedanta through your own words, and also through the various swamis and others you’ve talked about, and then others that they have. Of course, scripture has been beautiful to read too, and it has helped having commentary by you, your gurus, and others. I’m so lucky to be able to read the Bhagavad Gita, for example, and really get it, instead of reading it as a dry intellectual task, which I could have easily done in my 20s or 30s, and sadly dismissed it as just an interesting old Hindu book.
I’ve been a Vedanta addict for a decade, and one of the funny things is that virtually nobody around me knows. Sometimes, I wish there were others around that understood, but that’s just how it is. I’m not as much of a Vedanta addict lately, in the sense that I don’t feel like I need to get more information, hear more words. Enough realizations have become hardwired, and I’ve taken in so much over the past ten years that I already understand what you and the other gurus are talking about. Hinduism in general is a bottomless pit of scripture, stories, and all of the culture that is built around it all, that I could never possibly fully know it all, although sometimes I’d like to. I enjoy all of those stories, all the deities, etc.
As a jiva, I’m just plugging away at my life. The pandemic, my work having shifted to working from home, along with the value of not courting company and other things, keeps me in a relatively solitary lifestyle. I wouldn’t say my life is easy, and I often get caught up in thoughts about whether I’m living life properly, if I’m following my personal dharma, if I should be doing things differently, that there are opportunities I’m ignoring, and that maybe I’m an idiot for not living life differently. I can write these thoughts off as just the mind, but they can be persistent.
For me as a jiva, Vedanta has been a very gradual thing. I can’t point to one moment when it all clicked. Sometimes the jiva is concerned about this. “Am I fooling myself that I don’t need to have had a particularly memorable moment when it all made sense? Even James talked about a certain time in India when it just clicked. That other swamis sometimes talks about ‘when you’re enlightened, …’. Those other Vedantins who seem to get it sure seem to be living nice, comfortable lives. I wonder if there’s some secret they’ve got from Vedanta than I’m missing out on. Et cetera.”
I know I’m not the body, mind, or senses, yet I can’t pinpoint a time when I really understood that. I’ve heard it a million times, and I’ve thought it a million times, and I just know it. I can’t say that it all clicked one day. I don’t feel like I need any more Vedantic knowledge. Whenever I listen to Vedanta talks, I know everything other than details like stories about certain deities or particular verses from particular scripture.
Anyway, thank you for your part in all of this. As a jiva, for whatever reasons, what you’ve said has always made sense to me, and your personal story has been intriguing. You’ve always talked in a way that is understandable. Maybe that’s part of what hooked me. I’m so glad I never approached Vedanta from the standpoint of a study of religion. I would’ve completely missed the boat. By Isvara’s grace, I read your book, it led to a lot of contemplation, and a steady intake of Vedanta over the years, with constant contemplation.
James: You said, “I spent three beautiful months in India, enjoying gurukulam, but unfortunately there was very little of the teaching I expected to receive, and I had to really consider how I would go about making a living, so when my visa in India expired, I moved on to other things in the way I felt best.”
What teaching did you expect then? What do you expect now? You seem to have ticked all the Vedanta boxes but I’m picking up a sense of dissatisfaction. Maybe you need to leave the “beautiful world of Vedanta” by getting rid of unnecessary teaching remnants. Vedanta is just the tools you need to attain perfect satisfaction. It’s natural to lose interest in Vedanta when you have basically assimilated the meaning of the teachings, so that is a good sign.
Your sense of dissatisfaction seems to center around a lack of community, a legitimate need to be loved. “Heard” is the word bandied about these days. Yes, the Sanatana Dharma is a totally bottomless cornucopia. Somebody sent me a link to a text by Shankara that I’d never heard of a few days ago. Yes, you probably are ignoring opportunities to connect. You probably should start cultivating people and sharing what you know. The loner samskara gets a bit tedious at some point.
That moment when it all clicks is an important moment because it sets you free of the jiva. That it hasn’t happened means that there are still doubts about the teaching, “I am whole and complete limitless unborn ordinary existence shining as awareness.” Maybe you expect that the jiva from that point on is liberated. It is, if you don’t think about it at all, but the idea that “I am a created entity” has a life of its own. We call it prarabdha karma.
The only way that person is going to experience freedom, which is the experience of the always-fulfilling bliss of being, is by dismantling the jiva-born thoughts brick by brick. They were born in ignorance of your wholeness and they take the edge off the apparent jiva’s happiness. You dismantle them with the knowledge that they are mithya. You’re truly free of the jiva when Self knowledge has “clicked” i.e. is a “firm conviction,” to quote Shankara.
Of course, if you are free, you are free not to help the jiva. You can see its dissatisfaction as a joke in light of the fact that it is bliss itself, smile and watch it comically soldier on. That’s why Krishna smiles when Arjuna finishes his big self-righteous whine. I met mahatmas that made that call and were none the worse for wear, probably because they weren’t Westerners, who almost always have a love deficit, myself excluded. I just finished a little story on this topic as part of a book that I’m writing and I attached it to this email.
John: I know I’m not the body, mind, or senses, yet I can’t pinpoint a time when I really understood that.
James: It’s not surprising because the reason is so obvious that nobody thinks about it. You aren’t “the assemblage” because you experience it. You couldn’t experience it if you were it. The entity that knows it is you, awareness. There is only one knower. The body/mind/sense complex doesn’t know anything because it is a construct of inert energies assembled and glued together by Isvara, like a balsa wood airplane model, which appear as thoughts. Thoughts don’t know anything. They are known because you are aware of them. Isvara is the material principle.
You don’t need any more “Vedantic” knowledge, John. You need common sense knowledge. It’s common sense that you aren’t the entity called John. You don’t confuse yourself with a tree but from an epistemological point of view there is no difference between John and a tree or a dog or mountain, etc. Some unreasonable expectation is troubling you.
I hope this helps. Much love,
James
