Simon: I hope all is well wherever you are right now. America/Bali ?
James: I’m in America gearing up for the 20th Annual Trout Lake seminar. If things get any better I don’t know how I will stand it!
Simon: Such as it is, amidst the endless distractions and the numerous chores of life, the Vedanta that I do lives on the test bed of the everyday. I do not set it up on a pedestal as a discreet, exclusive ‘go to’ in a crisis alternate reality. So here are a few examples of its day by day application, thereby its usefulness.
James: The proof of the pudding…
Simon: I’m sure you have your own views on the Boris Johnson story, but this was a submission to The Times (they never publish anything I send them).
“The four basic human motivations of Indian Spirituality (Security, Pleasure, Virtue, Liberation) serve to untangle Johnson’s flawed premiership. To an incorrigible pleasure seeker like Johnson, the important thing is to make oneself and others feel good. Security, Virtue, and Liberation were always going to come a distant second if at all. Administration a dreadful bore for pleasure seekers. He is certainly not alone. Multitudes of entertainers, salespeople, fraudsters, seducers, male and female, succeed through the simple strategy of addressing peoples’ emotions and making them feel good. Indeed given the lemming-like manipulation of human beings through social media, one could argue that creating the feel good factor is the 21st century weltgeist, which creates the billions prized by security and pleasure seekers. Virtue seekers like to tell people what they ought to be doing, but “populism” is merely about giving people what they want, or want to hear”’
James: It’s not surprising that the world on its merry journey down the yellow brick road is uninterested in hearing about “the man behind the curtain” aka ignorance, that generates human motivations. In any case, that empty-suited superannuated schoolboy is a person of little to no consequence. It’s hard to imagine a more fitting example of the zero-sum nature of reality than Brexit.
Simon: On the issue of online fraud, fake news and the reality deniers, I am wont to comment…
“Since the dawn of time, we’ve always had to use our discriminative faculties. By including in its practice, vichara, the faculty of discrimination, the Indian spiritual tradition acknowledges that for someone who wants to enjoy limitlessness, one of the fundamental battles in life is discriminating between what is real and what is unreal. Of immense value in the online era, needless to say, a clear mind is an essential prerequisite”’
James: It seems wiring the human nervous system takes more energy than God possesses so it is unlikely that vichara will become a populist phenomenon in the foreseeable future. On this topic I attached a satsang I recently wrote entitled “Self-inquiry, Knowledge Bubbles, Echo Chambers and Consprituality” for your enjoyment.
But the idea that I have used most often in recent times riffs off your frequently mentioned phrase “limited identities”. In fact I go out with a stronger version : “All identities are limiting”. As “limited” is a non-moral concept, it is so manifestly obvious that an identity limits a person, that it is virtually incontestable. This is how I have put it in different contexts in the last month or so.
James: I’m with you there, except concerning the statement “I am,” in so far as the self is limitless unborn ordinary ever-present existence shining as consciousness. The ignorance that creates the worlds of individuals is a strange phenomenon. That I exist and that I am conscious is self evident, but that that same I is limitless, isn’t. More’s the pity. As you pointed out once, I am a what not a who.
Simon: The point Krishnamurti makes focuses on the relationship between separate identities. Though well put, the point being made here is a slightly different one. That the separation is not between separate identities but between one’s adopted or inherited identity and one’s real (universal) self. Hence limited identities.
James: Yes, Krishnamurti didn’t understand the real self, much less that he was it. He was never properly taught. He was the creation of two very limited “aristocratic” “spiritual” do-gooders out to save the world, Colonel Ledbetter and Annie Besant. He was one of the most angry adharmic people I ever met. In the fulness of time he won’t even rate a footnote in the history of spirituality. Of course he can’t be blamed for his karma; that lies with Isvara. One should feel sorry for him. But as you perhaps know, Isvara is dharma and adharma, so his fame was Isvaras’s way of deluding many sincere spiritual people. Fortunately, those who had good karma moved on by Isvara’s grace and perhaps were guided to a viable path and the rest have mostly died off. Having said that, there is still no shortage of pernicious dualistic teachings masquerading as non-duality.
Simon: All of which is to say that I bear these things in mind – they pop up whenever the relevant situation arises.
James: Which means they bear you in mind…great! You’ve been doing vichara for a long time now and it has become second nature. Give your not-self a little pat on the back for a job well done.
Love,
James
P.S. You are always welcome to visit.
