Last Sunday, Ramji’s talk on AI and sentiency was captured in his opening statement, and was perhaps much more powerful than most realized. He said that as Self-realized people, there is no past or present. There is only the future. Think about this statement because it has great bearing on freedom from and for the jiva. The past is the past and so is the present. We cannot really be in ‘the now’ other than being present as the unchanging witness of the ever changing nature of the apparent reality as it zips past ushering in the future. Time never stands still. Even though we take time to be real to function in the world, as Vedantins, we know it’s not, that nothing ever really happens from the Self’s perspective. While the past, present, or future in this case are of equal unimportance, for the jivanmukta to remain a jivanmukta depends on how much past is in your present and your future. If there is still a lot of past, your future will be you past as there will still be an ego with likes and dislikes behind the scenes.
The problem is that whether Self-realized or not, for most people, the past lives on in the mind and “creates” our now, moment by moment, and projects it into a desired future. What conditions the mind, the past experiences positive and negative that have shaped us, our adaptive child program, our likes and dislikes, colour every new experience presented to us, making every fresh moment old. Our past is never past. Our future is our past.
Though life is one continuous expression of the endless possibilities of the new, and in every moment of our lives we have the choice to step into it unburdened by the past, we are continuously experiencing our now as though it is the past, which never leaves us. It is an automatic and unconscious choice. It could be said that as we keep our story alive, we are the sum total of everything that has ever happened to us, locked into a never-ending feedback loop. And that’s how we live, day by day, moment by moment. And that’s how most people die.
It’s like we are driving our car looking only out of the rear view mirror, never out the front window, at what is actually there, in front of us. How can we not come to grief? Imagine if you really drove your car like that! Apart from whatever karma we have had to cope with coming into this world and whatever life delivers to us, think about a negative experience you had with someone. It can be minor, like a perceived slight, or more serious, an injury of some sort. How that stays with you and influences every transaction you have with that person henceforth.
No matter if you are right or wrong to feel that way, you never again have a ‘clean’ interaction with that person. Yet, we always have the choice not to be burdened by the past. We make the choice over and over again, as though it is unavoidable. But it is avoidable, providing you bring your attention to it. It’s not easy to live free of the past, but it is possible. It just requires making a difference choice and sticking to it. What price happiness and peace of mind?
What would your life look like if you just dropped it all, or better still, nothing stuck, and you started anew, in every moment? Your life would be a lot easier and a lot happier, that’s how it would look. I am not suggesting that we throw caution to the winds and not make use of the benefit of experience, that would be foolish. There are certain situations that require applying lessons learned with certain people. But we don’t have to carry negative things forward if we are always prepared to keep an open, clear and porous mind. Life and people may just surprise us, when we do.
We don’t have anything to lose when we are prepared to live this way. Each new moment is a God given opportunity to experience life anew, one that will never come again. If we impose our life story and experiences onto it, even if they are not negative, we experience life as we are, not as it is. Our mind is stuck in the past so we miss the sacredness and the new potential of each new moment. We are not present as the unaffected witness in anything. Our mind is firmly in bondage to the ego, dragging the past with us. Is there a cure? Lucky for us as Vedantins, we know there is. But it requires being put into practice, and negating the doer entity.
The Curse of the Past
There is a single basic thing we can all agree on and that is that none of us wants to suffer. Nobody enjoys suffering. We do not need to learn this, it’s natural. But the problem is that most people are not very good at not suffering because most of the suffering we endure is self-inflicted. Sure tough, challenging, even terrible things out of our control happen, apart from the daily pin pricks of life, which can be shattering. But big things are not the norm. Most of our dissatisfaction and psychological suffering comes from the daily pin pricks of life. And the reason most of the challenges of life range from pin pricks to full scale mental and emotional devastation is linked to our past. Our past is one small word that encapsulates all our problems.
If Isvara had to wipe out our past with amnesia, or God forbid even dementia, we would have no problem with life. But we would also not have a functional mind, so we wouldn’t know it. While that is hopefully not going to be our fate, living free of the past moment can be difficult because our minds are programmed to store memories of experiences. The brain is an information storing machine. We need this function or we would not know who we are and therefore, the brain/intellect would not be functional. This is called dementia.
But we can live this way with a functional intellect, and the choice Self-knowledge gives us. With it, we know that the past is just a story in the mind, something the ego has concocted. Which means all our problems are all only in the mind, which is very good news. It means we can do something about it. Maybe you cannot change your circumstances but you can certainly change your mind about them by dropping the gravitas and grievance of the past. If we cannot, our entrenched likes and dislikes, our ego persona, dictate how we respond to what is. We never meet the moment as it is. We meet our past. No peace of mind there.
The truth we all need to see is that our suffering is not due to how life actually is. Most of our suffering is due to how we see what is and how we want things to be. And the doer wants life to meet the demands of its likes and dislikes. This is called going up against Isvara, and it is how most people live because life is so hard, as though it is inevitable. But life is hard not because it’s hard. People experience life as hard because we we cling to the past, we resist surrender to Isvara and we refuse to go with the flow. The doer is always the problem. And the problem is, Self-realization does not always end doership. The doer survives and becomes far more subtle.
Wanting Things to Be Different the Cause of Suffering
Accepting life as it is in every moment of every day is living a sane God-filled life. Another great bit of news is that we can do this even if we have not actualized Self-knowledge. We do not have to wait twenty years if we are fully aware that wanting things to be different is the recipe for suffering. If we can greet every experience generated thought/feeling, good or bad, as God visiting us, showing us something we need to see, without judging it, or letting it stick to us, every moment of our lives is a new, sacred moment.
There are no exceptions here, even for the good or the hard stuff. Each moment contains a gift that has never happened before and will never happen again. Whatever life presents to us, whether we choose to act on the like or dislike or not, if we acknowledge what life brings, honor it, and let it go, it will not stick to us. We remain a tabula rasa because we are the witness, standing as Consciousness. Love rules as I identify with my primary experience as Consciousness, not the secondary interpretation of my subjective human reality, with its life story, the ego identity. This is how our ego identity gets transferred to the Self.
This is probably the most important realization we can all have, if we want a peaceful mind and a happy life. It certainly was for me. And it’s not easy; the ego resists this like crazy. In fact, it is where the rubber meets the road. It’s where the true inquirer stands apart from the lifestyle inquirer.
Being Truly Happy is A Serious Business
To be truly happy requires a sattvic mind that has objectified its mental/emotional landscape and personal identity, and lives in harmony with life, with Isvara, the intelligent principle responsible for our field of experience. In such a mind, Self-knowledge has negated the past – not ‘dropped’ it. If you ‘drop’ the past, there is a ‘dropper’ who could become a “picker upper” again. But if Isvara does the dropping, the past is a burned rope. We all want to be happy, right? That is Vedanta’s one agenda: happiness is your birthright and suffering is only due to ignorance. I.e., it’s all related to your egoic identity born and bred by your past.
Self-knowledge aside, let’s look at some happy person pointers.
Happy Person Pointers
1. ‘Happy’ people tend to refrain from comparing themselves with others;
2. They have more positive perceptions of themselves and of others;
3. They seldom complain as they have found ways to be satisfied with a range of choices. In other words, their likes and dislikes are managed, flexible.
4. Happy people do not dwell on the negative. They are the glass full instead of glass half empty kind of people.
5. Happy people do not spend too much time focusing on dysfunction and instead foster what brings life satisfaction.
6. They have good values, and cultivate the most positive qualities: optimism, fortitude and courage, work and personal ethics, fair-mindedness, dispassion, interpersonal skills, the capacity for genuine pleasure, insight and social responsibility, to name a few.
7. They have meaningful connections and get on with others. Surprisingly, there has been much serious research done on what makes people happy over very long periods of time, with little consensus. But there is one thing most researchers agree on that comprises 95% of what makes people happy. It comes down to people feeling more connected to other people. Why not get on with our fellow human beings, make someone happy, if you can? Why not? You will be happier, if you do. It doesn’t matter if we don’t have anyone special in our lives, or if we come from dysfunctional families. We need to connect with others, in some way, even if they are ‘strangers’. If you still believe that such a thing exists. So there are ways to have a relatively happy life, even without Self-knowledge.
Nonduality Clarifies Happiness
But while everyone aspires to feel-good existential happiness, as a non-dualist, being happy is no longer something we chase. It is known to be who we are. Happiness feels like a good feeling and it is a good feeling. But as good as it may be, all feelings come and go. Nobody is happy all the time because the nature of the field of life is always changing. Life can be challenging. When you know that you are not the person who is happy or unhappy but the knower of both, then you are the source of happiness. The bliss and quiet confidence of the Self is always available to you.
No matter what is or is not happening in your mind or in your life. When the realization dawns that subjective happiness responds to circumstances and seems caused by them. But, basically, it is internal because we can be unhappy in very positive circumstances and happy in very negative ones. The happiness everyone is seeking comes down to perfect satisfaction, and that only comes with freedom from and for the person. Disidentifying with who you are as a body/mind, transferring your identity to the Self, and living it. Nobody can add to or take away from that.
Vedanta’s One Agenda
The teachings of Vedanta are essentially about happiness and well-being, what stands in its way and what creates or maximizes the conditions for it to flourish. It is not about denying our humanity, but understanding it. Living life well is a complex business and means different things to different people; Vedanta shows us what is required to live a good life, but it is not prescriptive or proscriptive because everyone’s life karma is different.
Both Embrace and Objectify Our Humanity
We must both embrace our humanity, and objectify it at the same time, with reference to Self-knowledge. In doing so, acceptance of the inherent limitations of being human, without self-judgment and condemnation, is possible. Nobody makes themselves the way they are. We all have more or less the same potential for both positive and negative tendencies. Remember that vasanas, our likes and dislikes, while they play out seemingly uniquely in us, are universal. There really is only one jiva, and one ego, and we all share it. And we all absolutely have the choice to drop our past. It just takes acknowledging how it plays in the mind, and to switch that channel off. You may have to do it repeatedly for a long time – eternal vigilance is the key.
The gunas affect everyone in the same way, with different results. Knowing how complex and sensitive your inner world is, use this knowledge to have compassion not only for yourself, but for everyone else. Be kind to yourself and everyone else, cut yourself some slack, leave some wiggle room. Not too much mind you. We still need to maintain vigilance of rajas and tamas if we want peace of mind to reign as they have a tendency to sneak in and take over. So how do we know if the past still conditions our experience, if we are living or just talking about nonduality? There are very clear pointers, fortunately, that you can track yourself on.
Self-Realized or Self-Actualized?
Being Self realized means we know we are the Self, that is our primary identity. We have objectified the personal identity and it no longer has the power to trap the mind in its conditioning and therefore, the past. Moksa is freedom from and for the jiva. Which means, freedom from our past. Our story. Is this true for you, all the time? Can you imagine living entirely divested of your past, like a new born baby, a tabula rasa, in each and every moment? Living like this has a name: amor fati. Love your fate because to do so means you are free of it. This is living the future and free of it. I know it is not easy when terrible things befall us. But it is more important there than anywhere. If we cling to hurt, whether minor or major, it defines and owns us. This also allows for the choice to ‘rewrite’ the past, in the light of Self-knowledge, acknowledging that prarabdha karma must play out, for reasons we may never understand.
You may be Self-realized, but if Self-actualization has not obtained, this won’t be easy and probably, not true for you. At least, not all the time. Your mental emotional subjective reality can still block access to the bliss of Self-knowledge, and therefore, the freshness of each new moment. You will have a hard time loving your fate. As soon as the past is back, the future is the past, and so is bondage to the egoic jiva identity and its story. We are stuck in a loop of our own making.
This is why truly free people are so attractive and so luminous. The screen of the mind is free of the debris of the past, in every moment, and the future does not stick to it, either. They are unburdened by life, and because they are free, they laugh a lot. This is such a powerful, liberating realization. Yet, why do we cling to our past, even when Self-realization has obtained? Because the ego, born in and shaped by ignorance, does not know how to exist without its past because it is the past. I can guarantee you that if anything upsets or excites the mind, it is related to your past, even if it is something you anticipate or long for in the future.
The ego clings to the past not only because its very existence depends on it, but because it cannot imagine life having any meaning without its life story. Why or how would we go forward towards anything if the past was not propelling us? Thus, true freedom does not appeal to the ego at all. This is why Self-realization and the zero sum idea can induce the depression of ‘the void’. That nothing matters, there is no meaning to or in life. The ego becomes rudderless and unhinged when it cannot tether itself to anything. It needs its story to survive, quite literally.
Who am I without my story? Am I nothing? The ego thinks so, when in fact you are the Fullness that is the knower of nothing. You are the Self and the Self has no story. For Self-actualization to take place, your story must be done with you, as well as the other way around. If this is true for you, there is only the untrodden snow of the future. God is your destiny no matter what, and you are in good hands. No more clinging, to anything, no more anxiety about falling or losing. God manages your life perfectly. To the ‘normal’ ego, living like this, without desire, sounds terrifying. It’s like living with no purpose, no meaning, no value for anything. And it is. Except, it’s not an empty purposeless and value because you, the Self, are the purpose and the value. You do not need to add value to or for anything to give you value. And nothing takes the value away. Can you imagine living like this? Do you?
So, does Self-actualization mean we become a neutral blank slate, devoid of feelings, of character, of desire, or becoming an annoying bliss bunny? Yes in essence. But also, no, it does not, if actualization is genuine. If you are truly free of the egoic jiva and its past, you are free to feel or think anything. You honour your life jiva story, you can even talk about it as though it’s real and ‘happened’, but you are no longer attached to it. You know that nothing ever happened. The past does not define you because it has lost its power over you. You will still transact with life as ‘normal’ people do. But how you meet life will no longer be dictated by your past, so each moment will be new and fresh.
Self-realization / Self-actualization:
Individuals are said to be Self-realized when they understand that the experiencing subject, meaning the jivanmukta, and the objects of experience, are non-separate. That there is nothing to gain or lose in life because I am whole and complete, unchanging and unchangeable. I am Awareness, the ever present witness, that is my primary identity and experience in each moment. The person I previously took to be my identity, with its thoughts, feelings and attachments and its past, is an object known to me, my secondary experience, and not me. Its existence depends on me but I do not depend on it, or anything. I Am Existence, Isness, itself.
Self- realization is brought about by Self-knowledge, which is the fruit of Vedantic teaching, and Self-actualization is accomplished by the application of Self-knowledge to one’s life, in every moment of now. If a Self-realized person is fully qualified when Self-knowledge dawns, he or she immediately becomes Self-actualized, though this is very rare. The difference between the two is that Self-realized individuals know they are free, but enjoy varying degrees of attachment to objects. The vista in front of them is not entirely free of past influences, though depending on qualifications and application of Self-knowledge, there is far greater likelihood of “clean” experiences because their likes and dislikes are managed, their story does not have as much pull.
Whereas individuals are Self-actualized when their sense of doership entirely disappears and their identity is permanently established in the Self. They don’t depend on objects for their happiness in any way or at any time. They are perfectly satisfied with themselves as Existence/Consciousness and are equally satisfied with themselves as created individuals. In other words, the past has been expunged from such a mind and has no power to dictate a conditioned response. It’s not that you stop caring about people and things, it’s just that your mind is free of the jiva’s past and its likes and dislikes, so you meet each moment fresh, without bondage. You live the future as new. It can make you seem detached and uncaring to some, but actually, it is the opposite. You care but you are not invested.
Self-realization is easy because it’s logical, right? But Self-actualization, living permanently and spontaneously as the Self, is not as easy as it sounds, as we all know. The past has a tendency to stick like glue to the mind.
Where and Why Is There a Problem?
The internal battle between what we call system 1 (dualistic personal egoic identity, likes and dislikes) and system 2 (unlimited identity/nondual Self) can only truly be won through the weapon of nondual Self-knowledge, and the practice of karma yoga, which is surrender of doership, neither of which are natural or innate for most. Nothing else will totally remove existential anxiety, no matter how fortunate our karma or how psychologically healthy we are. But it is in the fine print of negating doership that all our obstacles lie in actualizing Self-knowledge. With regards to karma yoga, what you need to assimilate is that negating doership is not only about surrendering the results of action and living in gratitude, though that is a big part of it. It is about surrendering all that is (apparently) done to you, automatically, on the altar of karma yoga. In other words, it is also about negating all karma altogether. Which means negating the past.
Meditation With Your Jiva
Visualize yourself, meaning your ego identity which incorporates your body, mind and its subjective mental/emotional interiority and life story, sitting opposite you. Give your ego a cup of tea and a cookie. Sit in silence with it. Look, really look at this entity sitting in front of you, both as the Self would look at any value neutral object, with curiosity, but without judgement or censure. Also look at your (not) self as another person would look at you. What do you see, what would they see? How much past is still clinging to and defining you? How strongly entrenched its your story? Be honest.
Can you really be objective about who you are looking at, even though Vedanta tells you upfront that your ego is just an idea appearing in you, the Self? It’s not real. So, who is looking and what are you really looking at? You, the Self, exist in one order of reality, and the ego/mind exists in another order of reality, and these two realities never meet. Yet, these two orders of reality are not separate, either, because this is a nondual reality.
Just as our eyes cannot see themselves yet make seeing possible, the seer, seeing and the seen are non-separate from you, the Self. You make it all possible. But it would be more accurate to say that you, the Self, seeing only yourself, ‘become’ a seer only when Maya (hypnosis of duality) is operating. Then the mind/ego, under the spell of Maya, duality, believes that the subject/object are different, identifies with the body/mind/ego, and suffers. Negating doership is negating your ego identity, and its past.
Now, let’s go with mithya. Ask your ego: what is it that I, as an ego, cannot see about myself? What am I clinging to, or hiding from myself and most don’t want to see, or others to see? What is my jiva mask? You don’t have to tell anyone, but be completely honest. Remember this is about freedom, nothing else. As long as you are identified with the ego and its many masks, you cannot transfer your identity to the Self.
See the many layers of value judgements that colour the way you see people, places, things, coming from your past experiences. See how heavy they are to carry. What a beast of burden they make of you. See the hidden places of your ego’s entitlement and privilege, or the opposite, low self-esteem and debasement. How often do you need to let people know your credentials, how smart, how educated, how whatever you are, because you need validation to feel superior?
Or, how often do you pretend that you are unimportant or inadequate, and hide your light from others for fear of ridicule? Just see it, that’s all. It doesn’t really matter which one you do, inflation or deflation, it’s just how the ego works. And the reason is always the same: the ego persona is alive and well. Whenever you catch yourself doing either, remember that ignorance, doership and karma, is alive and well. But as important, despite what you come up with, remember that there is nothing wrong with you, as a jiva.
Facing the Demons: Likes and Dislikes
It is said that it is in facing our fears and desires, which are just our likes and dislikes dressed up, that we neutralize them and ‘slay the dragons’. This is true. But it is not enough just to face the dragons because they tend to come back. How to slay them for good? All fears and desires, likes and dislikes, are universal, whether or not we relate to them in ourselves or ‘others’. The real lesson here is that the dragons cannot be slayed because they are not real. Real, as we should know by now, is defined as something that never changes and is always present. Only you, the Self or Consciousness, are always present and unchanging, therefore, you are what is real, not the person and their dragons. You are the knower of the person, and you cannot be what you know.
Isvara, the creator, produced a range of dragons (tendencies, likes or dislikes, or engrained patterns of behaviour) with the three gunas, and the endless permutations of the thoughts and emotions they give rise to. Once these energies are understood, it is never much of a mystery how they operate and bind because they are totally predictable. When you do understand, the game is over for the dragons. They are exposed for what they are: paper dragons.
If this has not taken place, your egoic identity has not and cannot shift permanently to the Self. It is still, at least partially, glued to the ego, the past and its story. Usually because the protected part of the ego is based on a deeply buried and unconscious samskara. It is like radioactive waste in the unconscious, but they are terrified of looking at it because of what that would entail – the collapse of the ego edifice. They have constructed an entire personality around it which they will defend with much emotion and righteousness. To deconstruct this is not much fun for the ego, which is why it resists it so much.
As much as that identity is not real, it doesn’t work to ignore it either. The past does not disappear when we wrap it up in brown paper and stick it on a shelf where we don’t see it. It doesn’t work to adopt the false happy go lucky persona, or any other pretense. To be free of the past we need to see it and understand it with reference to Self-knowledge. Hard bits only let go of their grip on the mind when we bring love and acceptance into the equation.
Vedanta is not about becoming a better person, we cannot emphasise this enough. But there is no way to be free of the person until you see and understand their conditioning – with uncompromising honesty, minus the Advaita shuffle. You know – “’My vasanas don’t belong to me and are objects known to me so why bother’? Or, ‘I am free to act any way I want as I am the Self. No rules apply to me’. Or, the most subtle one: they think they are discriminating between satya and mithya, and maybe they are, to some degree. But they are doing so as an ego, not as the Self, and this fact is hidden from the mind. This is what we call ‘enlightenment sickness’, when the ego co-opts the knowledge under the guise of freedom.
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