Hi James,
I noticed that I had never read the very last chapter of your book concerning Neo-Advaita. You write: “This discrimination between what is real and what is apparent is the signature of an enlightened person”. This is where I originally “clicked” from skepticism to an openness to Vedanta. Two lines later you write: When you superimpose the notion of non-duality on multiplicity you add a belief that will eventually have to be discarded at some point. This kind of spiritual belief, which is just ignorance, is exceedingly hard to investigate if it is taken to be the truth. I observed (in the past few months) that my whole delirium concerning “integration” was completely erroneous. Indeed, how can awareness possibly integrate itself on the relative level. Awareness is just awareness. It can’t be integrated unless one separates oneself from it. In other words, the notion of integration is just another delusion.
James: As you rightly state awareness can’t integrate and whatever it might integrate into is not real. The world is just a dreamlike appearance, the product of ignorance. So ‘integration’ is not the right word because it makes it sound like there is somebody doing something. You might say that self-knowledge brings peace, contentment, etc. to the mind because one’s desires are known to be unreal.
Pierre: You also say: “Non-duality, non-difference, does not mean sameness. It means that from the self”s perspective there is no difference, but from the level of the body and mind there are only differences. I follow you 100%.
However, I’m not entirely sure that I follow the former quotation. When you write – “When you superimpose the notion of non-duality on multiplicity, you add a belief that will eventually have to be discarded at some point.” I interpret that you are aiming at the “Everything is consciousness” pseudo-teaching touted by the Neos. Notwithstanding that everything is consciousness, the problem with the Neos is that they use this teaching at the outset in an attempt to cancel out effort, doership and common sense. They are putting the cart before the horse; very often to consolidate their fatalistic perspective that justifies their “anything goes” form of peudo-morality. So, do I read you correctly?
James: Yes. They have no sadhana, no means of attainment, so they have to pretend that this world does not exist. It exists all right, it just isn’t real. They do not understand the satya/mithya concept. The whole Neo-Advaita thing just evolved without any inquiry. None of their heros like Krishnamurthi, Osho or Papaji were scripturally astute. They read scripture but interpreted it according to their own ideas. None of them were taught. So there is no logical rigor in their teachings.
Pierre: What I’m uncertain about is that “everything is consciousness” is a superimposition of non-duality on multiplicity. What I read is that though everything IS consciousness, you mean it in the context of self-knowledge as opposed to behavior (or action) in Maya, correct?
James: That is right. When you don’t understand what it means to be awareness, you may use the idea that it is all awareness to justify your behavior. But a person with Self-knowledge has nothing to gain by non-conforming to dharma. You do not see the idea of dharma in the Neo teachings. By dharma I mean the dependence of the individual on the field of life. They just dismiss the field and some behave like greedy samsaris. The idea is that it’s all OK because I am “not here” or the world does not exist. Krishna addresses this issue in the Gita when he provisionally accepts a separate doer and says “I am the desire that is not opposed to dharma.” This means that the individual will naturally have as much concern for others as he or she has for his or her self…because there is no difference.
Pierre: But why is it a belief that will have to be eventually discarded?
James: Because the apparent reality and awareness are not equal. One does not cancel the other. They in different ontological categories: one is real, the other isn’t. There is no connection between them. They are saying that awareness cancels Maya so Maya does not exist. But Maya exists all right. They are in Maya saying Maya does not exist. If they had Self-knowledge it would be apparent that there was no relationship.
The proof of their ignorance is indifference to dharma. Vedanta says, Brahma satyam, jagan mithya. Mithya (apparent) does not mean non-existent. All is consciousness means that the world is actually consciousness. This does not mean that the world does not exist. This means that whatever existence it has is borrowed from consciousness. Any quality inherent in the clay will appear in the pot. It will not belong to the pot. It will belong to the clay. In so far as it is taken to be real, to say that the world is awareness means that it is a consistent lawful creation because the self is one. It was only created in one way. All the patterns and principles (tattvas) that make it up are just the self appearing here.
Freedom is not license. Freedom for the individual implies a sense of responsibility. When Eli, Gangaji’s husband, got caught with his pants down and the cooked-up Gangaji lineage was exposed as the hypocritical business it is, it shows that they did not understand the relationship of awareness to this world. Gangaji got inspired by an idea and inspired others and they just went on parroting the half-assed nonsense that she picked up from Papaji without thinking about it. Neo-Advaita is a self perpetuating incestuous little world of its own. It resembles one aspect of truth but it is only partial. It is good enough to snare neophytes but that is about it. However, it is not the kiss of death because people eventually realize that the emperor has no clothes and move on. If Papaji had been a proper teacher this would have never happened. These export gurus in general are not gurus at all. They get inspired by some kind of epiphany, start spouting off, collect people and pass on their ignorance as if it was understanding. The fact that the only thing that Papaji is revered for is that he could induce an fleeting samadhi by verbal shaktipat and not for his wisdom, speaks volumes.
Pierre: Or do you mean in the sense that before enlightenment there are rivers, valleys and mountains and after enlightenment there are rivers, valleys and mountains (or something like that)?
James: Yes. The world does not cease to exist. It just exists in a different light.
Pierre: In the first of your most recent satsangs to me you emphasize that we live in a benevolent universe. I can only agree from my true/real perspective. From Pierre’s eyes, however, it seems the complete opposite. (I’m not disputing that my needs are all taken care of and that I’m extremely fortunate in this and other respects. It’s what Pierre sees as plague upon plague of human misery around the globe that I would be hypocritical, if not naïve, to qualify as benevolent. To take Haiti as one small example is to witness the endless accumulation of insult upon injury. Are their needs taken care of? Can we just brush it under the carpet and classify it as karma? From the level of mithya, just about everything – work, relationships…you name it – appears to be governed by duality) to say a sense of war. Even on cosmic black holes of galaxies are constantly devouring each other as the process of creation, maintenance and destruction never ceases. In fact, from all levels of relative life, each creation ends in destruction, whose fruits are in turn the seeds of the next creation. That this is the natural order of life and that some see this as serving the self doesn’t seem rigiht. How can the self be served? or integrated?… the self is just the self and anything we come up with is only an interpretation but to tell that to an ignorant person dying of hunger, cholera and laying in squallor in Calcutta?!!! A sense of benevolence can only come from the bigger picture, which is ultimately the prespective of satyam. Again, am I reading you correctly? Please feel free to destroy the above with your comments if I’m off the mark, James.
James: This is true, but this does not mean that awareness is responsible. The creation is pure and perfect as it is because it reflects the nature of the self. Ignorance is responsible for this problem. Ignorance means not understanding the self. When you don’t see what is (the rope) you see a snake i.e. a dangerous threatening world. As soon as the rope is known, the world is revealed in all its beauty.
James: Finally, this brings me to what you write about the confusion surrounding Vivekananda’s arrival in the West and the so-called yogas popularized as bhakti, karma, dhyana and jnana yoga. I had also come to the same observations from past readings. Though I am aware of the same classifications as some sort of accepted truth in the contemporary world of yoga, I still don’t understand how jnana can be accepted as yoga from the standpoint of Vedanta. Maybe a path or teaching …but a yoga? Yoga is for doers and jnana or the process of self-inquiry is an understanding, n’est-ce pas? Or do you simply mean yoga in the sense of the self-inquiry techniques that are suggested by Vedanta?
James: Yoga has two meanings. One is to connect or join. This is for doers. It also means ‘topic.’ This is for doers who are seeking knowledge. The topic of knowledge, the topic of karma, dharma, gunas etc. If you will notice at the end of every Chapter of the Gita it says, “Now the yoga of karma, bhakti, suffering, the gunas, knowledge, etc. has been unfolded in the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna.’
Pierre: Wishing you all the best James.
