Hi Jim,
Thanks for the message. Yes, I will really slip down the rankings if I don’t beat a path to Colmenar pretty damn soon…. ha…. ha….. In fact, the weather forecast for Malaga has been on my weather checks for the last few weeks. Whether or not I make it over there, is not entirely clear.
Jim: Not to worry, you are in the top percentile.
I had two messages out of the blue this year. One, an email from Jack in Bodhanath in Kathmandu, so I hopped on a plane and had a great time with him. Then a couple of months later, a call from the Lady of Ha Long ( an owl is just hooting outside right now) so I I hopped over to Vietnam, a more or less complete waste of time and money. But in the fall out, I suggested that we do things differently and she listened.
Jim: It’s not surprising that the love bit didn’t work although hope springs eternal, great that you have money to waste (or not),and greater yet that she listened. Don’t forget to keep me posted on the ending. I love tragedies and comedies and happily every-after endings.
My lady friend is a successful businesswoman, and who can blame anyone on the journey out of poverty into material security? However, she is at that very interesting point where she’s realizing the limits of money and pleasure, and is beginning to say to herself, there must be something else.
Jim: Not surprising. It happened to me in the same way. Money comes after the war. Materialism takes a giant step forward, afluenza blooms, spiritual malaise develops and
one starts to ask the important questions.
She is basically pretty intelligent and very quick witted, so the objective is to head towards a more European working life style – taking breaks, going to interesting places, plugging into the universal juice and…. breathing…. and who better to guide her on this path of love and discovery than Herr Direktor of ……. You may recall when I last broached this subject with you, I pitched is as a battle between consciousness and hard wiring. Well, the advancing years seem to have intervened on the side of consciousness, inasmuch as the hard wiring doesn’t seem to be quite as hard as it used to be… naturally I’m working on it…… moving swiftly on…..
Jim: That’s the battle. Hard wiring is hard, which is not to say standing up to it isn’t, but the alternative is worse…a slow death akin to the Chinese water torture, which is to say: looking in the mirror every morning at a very boring person. Spirituality is about unboriig one’s self.
Until I wrote out this sequence to a third party, It had never quite occurred to me that mind and intelligence are consciousness when attached to an ego. No need for any background, take it as it is, just an example of Applied Consciousness :
Jim: Yes, they are hard to separate. There isn’t an ego without mind and intelligence and there isn’t mind and intelligence without existence shining as unborn ever-full consciousness.
As you made various personal comments about me in your email, that establishes the right for me to comment about you personally. By contrast, you may find my comments positive and constructive :
Jim: Fair enough. Positive is always good and there is a definite upside to negative owing to the zero-sum nature of reality. I hope it’s OK if I take the third option…viewing it from what I really am. As you know the what isn’t positive or negative.
An Observation Take it or Leave It : I get no sense of Pure Consciousness from you, none of the calm, peace or serenity that goes with it.
Jim: More’s the pity. Speaking as if I were a projection, it seems I’m famous precisely because of those qualities. People can’t seem to get enough of me. Actually, pure consciousness…the what…is free of all qualities so any “sense” of it is only an imprecise inference. The material aspect of existence produces positive and negative qualities. The what simply observes.
If you are into psycho world paradigms (neuroscience? Crickey!) then your mind could wobble like a jelly forever. You are awash with emotion and on a hair trigger. That would continue until pure consciousness is firmly established within you. Three things to look into :
Jim: Well yes, sort of, but pure consciousness can’t be established in anything. It is the substrate in which all sentient whos and insentient objects are seemingly imbedded. But yes, nobody like a wobbling mind.
The Turning About In The Deepest Seat of Consciousness ( Tibetan Buddhism)
Whereby consciousness moves from the ego (mind, intelligence) to the universe (pure consciousness)
Jim: Sorry to have a go at this particular idea, but pure consciousness doesn’t move. At best it seemingly moves, which is to say it doesn’t move. It is unborn immovable pure existence shining as pure consciousness. When you look at it through a changing mind, it seems to move. One monk said, “The flag is waving the breeze. Another monk said, “The venerable monk is wrong, The breeze is waving the flag.” A third monk said, “The minds of the venerable monks are waving.”
Pure Consciousness ( The Vedanta Tradition, India ) Understanding the nature of consciousnessVeda/knowledge, anta/end = The end of knowledge / The end of searching
Jim: Yes and no. Yes, in so far as the discovery of one’s self as unborn pure consciousness ends the search for one’s self. However, ask yourself who is searching in the first place. The answer is “The seeker is the sought.” Conclusion: Although seeking is inevitable owing to ignorance of our unborn whatness it turns out to be illigitimate owing to the non-difference between the seeker and the sought.
Tao Teh Ching (Daoism China) (Wytter Bynner version) Section 15 : ‘roiled as a torrent’
https://terebess.hu/english/tao/bynner.html
“That all emotions are observable. That all emotions begin with a thoughtThat all emotions can be deconstructed. That every emotion has a biography,a beginning, a middle and an end. In such a manner, the ‘wild horses’ of emotionmay cease to rampage uncontrollably.
Take it or leave it.
Jim: Nice thoughts, but only those who don’t know what they are are bothered by thoughts and emotions. To the what that one actually is they are seen for what they are, unreal projections of the ego/mind. I opt for option three…I don’t take it or leave it. Whos…even wealthy Herr Direktors…get caught in the tangled net of free will. The what worships at the church of the utterly indifferent to quote Kurt Vonnegut.
To be fair to both of us and perhaps anticipate an argument you might have going forward, I need to add another idea.
You could argue that my emphasis on the impersonal identity of the unborn what (consciousness) as our only identity and the use of free will to identify AS (not with) it is a tad unrealistic in so far as most everyone thinks they are created entities unceremoniously thrust into circumstances not to their liking and therefore motivated to gain freedom for that entity. You might understandably dismiss the whole idea as quibbling over pronouns.
However, the quibble isn’t actually a quibble because words are not suitable to define the uncaused cause of everything that exists. How can you journey to it, connect with it, merge into it when you are it? Vedanta deals with this issue by provisionally accepting duality, which means accepting one’s identity as a person subject to karma (his or her circumstances) until one is ready to dismiss that “self” as a fictional character and assume the unassumed, which is to say one’s self as an impersonal whatness.
In the beginning of our relationship, which you initiated on the beach in India thirty years ago, I tried to get this point across, but quickly realized that the who self aka “Nigel” confessed to a more pressing issue, which is to say a fairly serious load of samskaras that needed to be addressed first. So we talked about the solution for people who are compelled to act for results from the yogic perspective, not from the Vedantic perspective. I have since published a book, “The Power of Know,” subtitled “Not the Same but Not Different” which is commentary on the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, the goal of which is samadhi. You will recall an early discussion on samadhi. And to be fair, I can understand why you may have concluded on the basis of a lot of evidence to the contrary that I am a cranky, disagreeable person. I believe I called you pig-headed and selfish, which nobody likes to hear, but which all whos suffer with reference to their pet samskaras. In fact, mutual acquaintances at the time used similar words when we gossiped about Herr Director. I never wrote you off because I love you and you are a sincere inquirer. The what has no choice but to love because love is its nature.
At the same time you visited me and continued to invite me to visit you and bring up various spiritual topics, like dharma and karma, and I more or less accepted your invitations until recently when fame struck and directed the lion’s share of my attention to the collective at the expense of some individuals. You are not one of those individuals.
Anyway, why would a person think that I was a disagreeable old fart, when the preponderance of evidence indicates otherwise? I have a folder of about three hundred inspiring emails, culled from a much larger sample, that more or less testifies to the perception of me as a laid back, kind, serving do-gooder. The list of naysayers is conspicuously minuscule.
Be that as it may, it is instructive to ask why my insistence on the absurdity of actualizing your knowledge of yourself as consciousness, which is the final step of whos that are committed to freedom, seemingly fallen on deaf ears? Vedanta’s argument, which I completely accepted before our initial meeting is that the self is not a doer because it is not endowed with instruments of action and knowledge. It only gains these instruments when ignorance of its nature causes it to unknowingly identify with its instruments (the body, mind, ego and memory which are supplied by material evolution, not consciousness). Ignorance (Maya) makes the impossible possible! Therefore a teacher who has been taught (I realized after several years of seeking that I was never going to figure it out on my own and surrendered to Vedanta and Swamji) is required to remove this doubt. The eyes can’t see themselves without the help of a mirror. Vedanta, a word mirror, works.
While you did listen to me on the who/what am I topic, which is not the only topic of interest to me, in some way a part of you obviously didn’t listen because it makes perfect sense. Lesser intellects than yours have had no trouble getting it. I’d say that part was the part that is wary of larger than life personalities like your father and brother and perhaps me. Having been neglected and abused for a sensitive spiritual nature, perhaps you understandably committed yourself to going it alone? The Bhagavad Gita, which is the essence of the Upanishads (Vedanta) starts with a rajasic person in crisis who asks his friend, who looks like a who but it actually a what, for help. Hence the teaching. Of course one is free to let ignorance (maya) teach but the lesson is always a bitter pill and a very short scripture. To whit: “Life is zero-sum. Suck it. up”. Having said that, a person who is completely committed may eventually come to non-dual whatness without the aid of a formal teaching. Vedanta, however, evolved for smart people who are not bothered with personal issues and trust the authority of competent witnesses. Arjuna, who eventually discovers his whatness, admits his limitations and asks for help, hears the complete teaching, takes up his sword and slays the pigheaded self that is not his friend and lives happily ever after. It is a fairy tale ending that isn’t a fairy tale.
Be that as it may, good luck with your new student. And a bit of unsolicited advice, “Keep in mind that the results of one’s actions are not in one’s hands and enjoy. “
Much love,
Jim
