This is the first part of the talk I gave on our Zoom satsang last Sunday. The second part will be given this Sunday.
We have been talking a great deal lately about how the psychology of the individual impacts the assimilation of Self-knowledge, and there is no getting away from cleaning up the unconscious. Therapy is very helpful with this often difficult process.
To be eligible for self-inquiry, the bottom line is that if we have a lot of psychological issues that plague us, we will not be qualified for it. But while therapy supports self-inquiry and vice versa, the truth is that they are not equal. The basis of nonduality is very different from the basis of therapy. Therapy is about improving the mental state of the jiva by exposing our unconscious primary conditioning and helping us to resolve it, which is essential preparation for self-inquiry. But it does not address the root issue of suffering – duality, the identification with the doer. Self-inquiry is about negating and disidentifying with the personal identity or egoic doer, altogether, with reference to Isvara/Consciousness. It is not about perfecting or making them a better person. Though that does happen indirectly, it’s not the aim. It is about transcendence of the personal identity through negation.
Without doubt therapy and self-inquiry are complimentary, and therapy can be helpful even to very qualified people in the nididhysana phase to understand deep samskaras that come to the surface when the time is right. But nonduality is the ultimate truth that not only manages the mind but totally objectifies it. It requires total surrender to Isvara and this is not something a professional therapist can ever advise a client to do. But without that, no therapy will ultimately work to free the mind from the real source of suffering – ignorance of our true nature. That is the fine print.
The enlightenment sickness phenomena I discuss a little further on, is far more prevalent in the secular West than in India because Westerners have more trouble understanding bhakti for God, which is essential for keeping the ego in check and qualifying the inquirer for Vedanta. As Rory says, many westerners tend to look down on devotional practice as somehow primitive or even faintly embarrassing. I covered this topic extensively in the first book of my Enlightened lifestyles trilogy, in the chapter, ‘Why Everyone Needs God’. The cultivation of a humble, devotional spirit is essential in Vedanta, and it is unlikely in the absence of God, so the ego often expands itself to godlike proportions. We have seen this happen with many advanced inquirers, especially lately. The ego is so inflated with its own superiority, it has no objectivity about itself, thus enlightenment sickness is completely undetected.
However, if we do have the good grace to find the right therapy that will help us uncover and release our adaptive child programs, which will prepare the mind for self-inquiry, and then we have the good grace to find Vedanta and a qualified teacher, we are definitely one of the fortunate people that walk this planet. There are so many spiritual paths and truths available, and many of them contain a lot of truth, but there is no spiritual offering available that offers what Vedanta does – the means of knowledge to immediately objectify our ‘stuff’. In doing so, it allows us to reason that we must be the knower of our stuff, and not our stuff. This leads to Self-realization. The combination of dharma, karma yoga, bhakti and guna yoga is Vedanta’s psychology for neutralising mental disturbance and emotional problems, and it is more than capable of doing so. Many secular therapies and therapists do not appreciate how powerful and sophisticated it is, if it is understood, assimilated and applied. Instead of trying to fit therapy into Vedanta, therapists often don’t realize they are trying to fit Vedanta into therapy.
What many qualified inquirers do who understand the essence of Vedanta quickly, is skip the methodical process of assimilating all the stages of self-inquiry, or hone in only on the parts of it they relate to or fits into their own knowledge. But Self-realization requires putting aside all that we know or think we know. If we cannot do that we will never have faith in the teachings, and Self-knowledge will not obtain. Self-realization is where the real ‘work’ of self-inquiry begins. The road ahead in terms of total freedom from the personal program depends on many factors, but probably the most important apart from having developed the qualifications and being properly taught by a qualified teacher, is how dedicated we are to understanding the whole methodology of Vedanta, not just the parts we understand, like best or find easiest.
You cannot skip any part of it, and you cannot fit anything into it, if you understand what Vedanta is. It is a complete and perfect means of knowledge for the Self. Self-knowledge can only do the work of removing ignorance if we are committed to the whole process of self-inquiry. This takes as long as it takes, even with dedication. When we know we are the Self, if we have an ignorance relapse which temporarily blocks access to the bliss of our true nature, that does not mean ‘we are not getting it’ or that Self-knowledge is failing us.
It just means we need to keep going because ignorance is tenacious. Most of us in this sangha definitely ‘get it’. Once you know who you really are, you cannot forget it. It is not a spiritual bypass if we can quickly identify what comes up from the unconscious or personal conditioning with reference to Self-knowledge, and instantly negate it. That is how Self-knowledge is supposed to work, if it is working at all for us. When a residual jiva issue surfaced recently and I dismissed it very quickly with reference to Self-knowledge, I was accused of ‘pivoting’, being ‘mercurial’, even schizo’. One good friend thought I was using ‘Vedanta double speak’.
I understand why this happened because from the dualistic perspective, nonduality does not make sense. But if nonduality has assimilated, Self-knowledge is so powerful, it does not allow for ignorance to remain in the mind for long because it is so uncomfortable. It ejects it just like the body ejects a splinter. But if you do not understand what being the Self means, then the teachings on nonduality have not assimilated, or you have not completed all the steps to self-inquiry. In which case, things do stick in the mind, and you get to make a big story about them, which only reinforces the ego and ignorance. And so you suffer.
There is no shame in having residual ignorance that pops up, that is par for the course for every inquirer, beginner or advanced. We did not put it there. It is beginningless ignorance, but lucky for us, not endless. Self-knowledge alone removes it. What we can be comforted knowing, at all stages of inquiry, is that we are never any less the Self, even if our ‘stuff’ can still occasionally get in the way and trip us up. Obviously we want to minimize this happening because it causes suffering, in which case, we do need to look at and acknowledge what comes up in light of Self-knowledge.
We may not have immediate access to residual unconscious samskaras, but take heart in the fact that everything we need to see about ourselves appears to us every moment of every day in the form of our likes and dislikes. This is the ‘low hanging’ fruit we can tackle, thought by thought, moment by moment. Vedanta gives us the best tools possible to do this, which as mentioned, are guna knowledge or knowledge of Isvara, karma yoga, and bhakti yoga. More on this in my next talk this Sunday. Let’s first look again at what is meant by ‘enlightenment sickness’, and why it matters that we understand what it is.
If we don’t understand what nonduality is, we can mistakenly believe that it means we must deny being a person, and forgo all that it means to be human, which is not true at all. All the same, nonduality can seem so cerebral and unfeeling. But that is only true if you don’t understand the true nature of God, the person, and their common nondual identity as Consciousness, which is love. The truth is that the only way to truly be happy in the fullest and most accepting way possible is to be able to objectify who we are as someone with a changing body/mind and story, with reference to something constant and outside of ourselves. Vedanta gives us the means of knowledge to realize this, but it is the hard part.
The easiest part of self-inquiry is the logical part, which as inquirers, is given to us upfront: You can’t be what you know. Who knows what I am thinking or feeling? It can’t be my thoughts and feelings because they are not conscious – they do not know me. There is one factor I can never negate and overlook in every experience I have: the knower or witness of what I am thinking and feeling, Consciousness. Is that somebody else, God, or big brother in the sky? No it can’t be, because it’s inside of me. It must BE me. If that is so, who is that me, and how do I identify with the knower as my primary identity?
Identifying with the witness is the ticket to freedom in every experience we have in every moment of our lives, and this is where all the teaching of Vedanta comes in. The only way to answer the above question is to understand the two orders of reality, satya and mithya. Only with understanding both do we have the ability to discriminate between mithya/duality, that which is not always present, always changing and always involved (the limited personal identity), from our true identity – satya/nonduality (Consciousness), that which is always present, unchanging and uninvolved. The witness. It sounds simple, and it is, but it also isn’t because of what it entails. What stands in the way is the personal ego. There is no way we can just jump to satya and avoid mithya, as the Neos try to do. It won’t work to free us of the limitation of the ego identity because it does not take Isvara into account.
It would be great if we could all just get that once and for all, but ignorance/duality does not relent easily. Why is that? To begin with, to undertake self-inquiry and be qualified for it means our spiritual values and our desire for freedom from limitation are stronger than our worldly or material values and desires. If the mind is sufficiently purified and we are lucky enough to find a qualified teacher, Vedanta has a whole methodology that tackles the difficulty of understanding the difference between those two seemingly different orders of reality, and living that truth, which is the important part.
Enlightenment Sickness is Normal
If we meet the criteria and do realize, even if it is by logical deduction alone, that our true identity must be the impersonal Self and not the ego, most of us entirely miss taking one important fact into consideration. We will all first realize the Self as an ego, and we are not to blame for this. In fact, there is no way to avoid it because Maya installs duality filters in each Subtle body that don’t come off easily, even when we understand what duality is. Nonduality is very counterintuitive for the mind. As inquirers we will all do our best to understand and assimilate nonduality according to our qualifications, and will live it more or less, as egos, for as long as it takes for Self-knowledge to remove all ignorance, i.e., duality, from the mind.
Even when we are firm in our true identity as the Self, most of us will be blissfully unaware that we are nonetheless still transacting with the world if not entirely, somewhat as an ego, albeit a more ‘enlightened’ one. While we can use the term ‘enlightenment sickness’ for this, it is not strictly speaking enlightenment ‘sickness’ if we are not inflated or feel aggrandized by Self-knowledge. Of if there is an inflated ego involved feeling superior. It is merely the natural deception of Maya – ignorance. Enlightenment sickness sounds like such a terrible indictment. OMG, it’s a disease, right !? In the spiritual circus, spiritual vanity is very common and a big problem. But people qualified for self-inquiry are generally a different breed. This kind of gross inflated ES afflicts relatively few, and it’s usually quite easy to spot. It is especially noticeable with inquirers who do not understand the meaning and importance of devotion to Isvara because they have big egos and thus, have a hard time cultivating humility.
What is not so easy to spot is the ES that comes with the territory of assimilation, and is actually, quite normal. Make friends with it because it’s part of the process. There is no way to rush moksa, it takes as long as it takes. As I often point out, no matter where we are in the process of being released from the jaws of Maya, the steps to get ‘there’ are the qualities of ‘being there’. Not that there is a ‘there’ to get to because you are never not there. But that is not always our lived experience, thanks to the fact that the ego identity is not easy to be entirely free of. There is no magic wand or fast track to freedom from that limited identity.
Be comforted in knowing that this is par for the course for everyone. The ego is not such a bad thing as it is a function of the mind, we need it to navigate the world. It’s just an identity that must be educated as to its true place in life – as the office messenger of the mind and not the CEO. The ego is not our friend when it’s in charge of the mind because it does not have the qualifications for it. It will fake it because it cannot do an honest job of running the show. When the mind is controlled by an inflated ego, you can be certain that the adaptive child program is in the driver’s seat. And as an adult, that does not bode well for anyone because that entity is based in fear and denial. It is a frightened, spoiled and entrenched tyrant because it wants to get noticed. But once the ego is educated and cut down to size by Self-knowledge (which is the only thing that really works and is always painful), it behaves quite nicely and does not cause problems for us. However, be assured that no matter how subtle nonduality is, moksa is not complicated.
Much love
Sundari
