Note from sundari: This is a satsang between German and one of his students.
Good evening, dear German,
I am currently reading “The Sermon on the Mount in the Light of Vedanta” by Swami Prabhavananda—a book that you and Klaus recommended.
Together with reviewing the 13th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita (from the home-study course), this has provided me with some profound insights:
I had forgotten the First Commandment —”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”— in the course of my daily life.
It took your teaching for me to realize that I need to incorporate this First Commandment into my meditation. Your suggestion regarding “manasā-puja” (worshipping the omnipotence of Ishvara and offering all my actions to Ishvara) has been very helpful.
On page 77 of Swami Prabhavananda’s little book, it states: “The desire for a truly moral life and for the performance of spiritual practices only awakens within us when we attempt to live according to the First Commandment—that is, when we learn to love God and strive to know Him.”
This has only become possible for me through the Vedantic perspective that “everything is God.” I am infinitely grateful for this.
Writing these thoughts down to you helps me a great deal; it means I am not alone with them.
Wishing you and your wife a wonderful weekend.
Warmly yours …
German: It is wonderful that you are reading this little book. You do need to read it with care, however, as the language occasionally slips into dualism.
Regarding God and the first commandment: you are certainly not alone in this. I have struggled with this a great deal. Without an understanding of God, it is truly difficult — In fact impossible — to fully commit to loving God with all one’s heart. This is a fascinating side effect of Vedanta, that one begins to gain a better understanding of other religions.
Yes, learning to love God is such a crucial step; without it, progress is simply not possible. I have found that, otherwise, my spiritual search remains superficial, stuck at the level of mere “intellectual understanding.” It easily happens that one reaches a point of frustration and gives up entirely, simply because we have “dried up” and failed to blossom from within. It’s Ishvara that nourishes all the way and presents you with the fruits of yoga.
Living and learning without Ishvara, we remain at the mercy of the critical “I” — the part of us that is never satisfied, that constantly compares and evaluates how well (or poorly) we have grasped what we have learned. In other words: I am unwilling to relinquish control.
Yet this misconstrued “I” can never be truly free. The “I”—as the ego, the body, and the mind—is fundamentally misunderstood. And yet, the “ego” and the “witness” are so close to one another. The former “I” claims everything for itself and is, consequently, forced to constantly grapple with the outcomes — the very antithesis of “prasāda buddhi” (an attitude of accepting all results as a gift from the Divine). The witness — or the witnessing principle, pure consciousness — simply observes what is. It is this mode of observation that I wish to cultivate.
Recall our last conversation, when you understood that God is everything. If God is indeed everything — and if I love God, including all the limitations that seemingly exist — then I have no choice but to love myself as well. My previous response was not complete and not entirely correct concerning self-diminishment. For, fundamentally, self-condemnation — feeling “stupid,” as I put it — is a genuine obstacle to realization. This sense of inadequacy is not legitimate; rather, it is an expression of ignorance. What is required, therefore, is a clear distancing from this sense of inadequacy — not its acceptance. Someone who is overly critical of themselves will never be able to say “I am Brahman” and will always postpone the identification with their true nature.
Acceptance should be directed toward “prasāda Ishvara” (the grace or gifts of the Lord), not toward self-rejection.
And to answer the question more clearly than I did before of “when” this might finally come about (“It will take the time that it takes”) — a topic we also discussed – Vedanta clearly states that in fact Moksha (liberation) is not an event, and certainly not a future event. It is something I must constantly remind myself of: I am, I was, and I will always be free. The question “when” is therefore misplaced, because I was never bound. What comes to an end is not bondage — which never existed in the first place — but rather a case of mistaken identity. Limitation is not a fact; it is merely a notion.
I wish you and your husband a wonderful weekend. Our dialogue continues.
Be well,
German
