Dick: I have an area of enquiry that persists and really appreciate any advice you may give. Regularly as I go to sleep, I sometimes observe a dissolving of the “I” which during the day, especially if busy, can be involving. It’s like the end of a stage show but instead as sleep seems seconds away all the actors stop abruptly mid-act.
James: Yes, Dick can’t get to sleep unless Isvara deconstructs him, which means that Dick doesn’t go to sleep.
Dick: The thing that is new is even the one I thought was the observer in the audience just melts like steam almost exactly the same as (more commonly observed) waking up and a powerful dream just dissipates. It’s like the exact reverse.
James: Yes, the reflected awareness, the subtle body, the thinker, dissolves and Isvara produces another jiva entity – the deep-sleeper – who experiences limitlessness and bliss. The reflected awareness returns when Isvara, i.e. your karma, deconstructs the deep-sleeper and generates the waker Dick and the waking state. The three states and their three experiencing entities are continually appearing and disappearing as your karma stream unfolds. There is only one day. You wake or you sleep, perhaps you dream. The fact that there is no permanent experiencer apart from you, awareness, means that Dick is not real, momentarily existent in waking and dream, then potentially existent in sleep, but just a construct, a bunch of ideas.
Relationship
Dick: Related to this is in the last months, I’ve considered the idea of a relationship again after years of being single, but as soon as the idea comes up it seems, with all due respect to a prospective partner, absurd, like two plays which get cancelled every day then wake up again the next day.
The absurdity is that loneliness can be observed and is *still there* even if another is there with her arms around me. It is not “cured or gone” by the other. Like loneliness “is” regardless of companionship.
I know this must really sound sad but it’s not at all; it’s mixed with contradiction and embarrassment. I’m just genuinely trying to find out more about what’s happening and whether this just goes on like this repeating over and over, or do these emotions subside?
They might be vasanas or emotions but it seems loneliness is hardwired regardless of vasanas. I really may be wrong there. I can’t imagine Swami Abhedananda Bharathi felt loneliness; he appears as the living opposite even though as far as I know he was alone!
Clearly it may not be my dharma to be a sannyasin nor a swami but the predicament remains. I’m fairly content to just let it run out even though it appears sad. Any advice or direction would be most helpful, thank you.
James: The problem is only the word “lonely.” The right word is “alone,” meaning only only one or, better yet, “not two.” The presence of another body doesn’t change the experience of your existence. Nothing can enter you, existence, and change you in any way. It doesn’t change you, awareness, either, only the type of thoughts that present themselves to you. At one time the “I am lonely” thought appears and at other times the “I am with someone” thought appears. The I remains unchanged. Maya adds the feeling of lack to the direct experience of the Self. And it adds the feeling of completeness when you are with someone. Both are just insubstantial feelings. So whether you are “in” a relationship or “out” of one doesn’t change anything fundamental. Aloneness seems boring from the waker’s perspective so people try to distract themselves with a bit of excitement, hence the relationship idea. When you understand that the waker is not real, relationships can be quite entertaining. Even if you think you are a waking-state entity, they can be an opportunity for growth if they are viewed as karma yoga sadhana. But from the way it sounds, you’re beyond taking them seriously.
Dick: Thank you so much for this work. It brings clarity in many areas at once.
Vedanta and the skills of your teaching are so precise. I can understand perhaps why the “Neos” find it difficult: what they might say is intellectual is actually the reverse. It requires real application, diligence (work, basically) to get it, not that they don’t try, and I’ve been there myself and mean all well. Just, as a wise man must once have said, “A long way you may go, for nothing.”
On all fronts Vedanta requires cold logic to discern the subtleties of feelings being apparently real and taking a stand. It’s where the buck really stops forever!
Like feeling one’s way around objects in a room with a blindfold, which gradually lifts and the room itself becomes like misty clouds in the morning sun.
These things were so real once and caused such grief but are now barely just ghosts. They can hardly even stay consistent and are no longer convincing.
Thank you, thank you.
~ Much love
