Sundari Satsang
Tonight’s’ talk is on a satsang I recently posted which briefly unfolds the difference between the Cause and Effect and the Non-origination teaching. It is titled not the same but not different, which is typically ambiguous Vedanta terminology! In essence, this is the same as the reflection teaching we have been touting for a while now, which is understanding the difference between personal conscious awareness that humans are endowed with, and impersonal universal nondual Awareness as our primary identity, and that of everyone else.
I recently had several satsangs on this topic with Shay, both on Zoom and posted on the website. I must just say here, Shay, that I commend you for being willing to do so without requiring anonymity. That shows dispassion on your part, and understanding that ignorance is not personal. Everyone struggles with the same issues. There is nothing unique in anyone’s ignorance. Duality works the same way for everyone, more or less.
The main issue Shay had, one that is common with inquirers, is the belief that once you have understood the foundational teachings of Vedanta, you have gained knowledge, and moksa follows as a matter of course. Sadly, this is not the case, ignorance being as subtle and tenacious as it is. Shay was hugely disappointed and dismayed to hear that he was wrong. He really thought he had done everything he needed to do, and felt cheated because he had been such a dedicated inquirer for 25 years. What he had not yet seen was that the dedicated inquirer had expectations and was in the way of moksa.
It’s fairly easy to say I am the Self because that is logical if you think about it, and it’s incontestable. The Self/Consciousness is the only thing that cannot be negated. But to truly understand what that means so that Self-knowledge transforms the life of the jiva is another matter. This transformation is simply one of knowledge, though it can and usually does manifest in a great improvement in quality of life for you as a jiva. In fact, even though moksa is not about improving the jiva, if this transformation does not take place, it is likely that there is still work to do on remaining ignorance.
Once the mind no longer needs to affirm its identity, and ceases doing so as both verbalized and cognitive knowledge has served its purpose, Self-knowledge has assimilated. Not as an object gained, but as in ignorance removed. Then we are established firmly, directly and ineffably in the Self as the Self. There is no need or desire to go around spouting Vedanta. If the knowledge is needed at any time, it is directly available to the intellect.
Then the practice of discrimination between satya and mithya has become automatic, since it is now just knowledge. You no longer need the principles of Vedanta, they are a means to an end – freedom from and for the jiva. They can be discarded. What few people register and Vedanta tells you upfront, is that the teachings of Vedanta are a set-up. Ramji makes a point of this in most of his teachings and seminars, yet it does not land for most people.
The tricky part of inquiry is that for Self-knowledge to assimilate so that it translates to direct, automatic and permanent discrimination between satya and mithya, we must start with the Cause and Effect teaching, which explains the nature and identity of the creator, Isvara, the created, jiva and the creation, the field of Existence. I.e., it explains duality, with reference to nonduality. To negate duality you first have to know what it is. These are the foundational teachings of Vedanta, and with it come the practices to apply, such as karma yoga, devotional yoga, and guna yoga.
Once this knowledge is understood, and these practices are part of our life, it gets us to the door of nididhysana. Here we get to the next and final stage of inquiry: to negate duality involves negating cause and effect as mithya, also called the non-origination teaching. This requires fully dissolving the subject/object split, which also involves dealing with the jiva’s remaining mental and emotional issues. Many inquirers get stuck here, which is why we say that the ego survives moksa. At this stage, while the inquirer still needs some guidance from the teacher to stay on track, nididhysana is something the inquirer must do alone, with reference to Self-knowledge.
The inquirer already has the teachings, and the teacher cannot help them in applying them. That is up to each on of us. The teacher can spoon feed the inquirer but it will not help them. Its our coming of age as inquirers; we are no longer children seeking guidance. We are mature finders, and we have found the answers to all of life’s problems. We just need to apply them.
All Vedanta teachings are based on words which are based on Self-knowledge. But all words are mithya, they are the finger pointing at the moon. They are not the moon. So while it is very important to study Vedanta and to memorize the foundational teachings, and certainly you will not progress without this, that is not what will set you free of limitation. Moksa is up to the grace of Isvara.
This is not a cause for concern because if you understand the value of the teachings and the importance of faith and surrender to them, you know that they will ‘do the work’ of removing the remaining ignorance. The teacher cannot do that for you, nobody can. Certainly, your ego will not. A helpful reminder at this stage, especially for inquirers who still have expectations as to how the teachings ‘should’ work for them, and who get frustrated, is one simple mantra:
I am never not the Self.
Not the Same and Not Different
Sam: It’s funny, I feel like I understand what you or Ramji say when you say you are speaking about the cause and effect teaching, but my mind feels like a sieve when I ask myself the question “what is the cause-and-effect teaching?” I’m not certain what the block is or whether there is one, but I am most certainly going to keep my attention on it until I feel comfortable that I can answer that important question.
Sundari: The cause and effect teaching in Vedanta is an entry-level teaching and not that complicated, but it is subtle. In some ways it fits the religious narrative: there is a creator and a creation subject to it, and the creation is intelligently run by natural laws which cannot be transgressed without consequence, i.e., cause and effect. However, the Vedanta perspective on cause and effect, of course, differs in important ways.
Isvara, the impersonal creator, is Consciousness wielding Maya, not a personified deity. Unlike the religious creator, Isvara does not punish or reward but is simply the facilitator of karma. So, in truth, as Maya is the three gunas, it is these three forces that bring everything into manifestation, including the jiva construct or Subtle Body—i.e., the individual and its field of experience. There is no actual creator except beautiful intelligent ignorance. The creation seems conscious, intelligently designed, and run because the light of Consciousness shines on it, but it has no light or intelligence of its own.
As stated, the first stages of self-inquiry require investigating and understanding the creation, meaning the creator (Isvara), the person (jiva or Subtle body), and its field of experience (the world- jagat). Not to perfect the person in order to attain salvation for it in some hereto perfect heavenly world beyond the imperfect material world, but to negate both the person and the world in light of jnana yoga (Self-knowledge). To take a stand in Awareness as your identity and develop devotion of Isvara (as the Self, not a deity), to whom the jiva entity (person) owes everything.
But that is not the whole story because if this is a nondual universe, which we know it is, the cause and effect teaching is duality and Vedanta is about nonduality. The two never meet. Vedanta provisionally accepts duality because it meets the beginner inquirer where they are coming from – duality. It is a radical paradigm shift from duality to nonduality, so the teaching slowly builds the foundations for that essential liberating leap that the inquirer must make to progress to the next stage of self-inquiry, understanding the Isvara – jiva identity.
Unlike religion which places an all-powerful deity infinitely above and beyond the mere mortal, Vedanta reveals that as this is a nondual universe, there is essentially no difference between Jiva and Isvara except in two ways: Isvara as creator is omniscient and the jiva only knows the objects it has contact with. Secondly, in their capacity to create. Isvara creates all objects, subtle and gross, the objective world, and Jiva creates its subjective world, its world of thoughts and feelings—which also come from Isvara, the gunas.
The next all-important question to be answered arises here, which is: if Isvara and Jiva are both Consciousness, what is real, and what is not real? Vedanta defines real as that which is always present and never changes, which cannot be used to describe the creation because we can negate it with Self-knowledge (jnana yoga). The definition only applies to Consciousness, the one, and only non-negatable, invariable, ever-present, unchanging witnessing factor. Vedanta calls the creation apparently real, which means, it owes its existence to Consciousness, it does not have a reality of its own. It does not stand alone because it is always changing and not always present.
That ‘something else’ is at the heart of inquiry, not as a subjective notion but as an identity issue. What, not who, I AM. The whole point of self-inquiry is to discriminate satya, nonduality/Consciousness, from mithya, the effects of Maya, duality. Vedanta is a progressive methodology so by eliminating all the inconstant variables, the common identity between Isvara and Jiva can only be Consciousness, so the person is an object known to Consciousness, and you cannot be what you know. Thus, the cause and effect teaching forms the bridge for the next step: The much more difficult non-origination teaching, which is about as subtle as any teaching can be.
Assimilation depends on whether the inquirer has the requisite qualifications, is properly taught and has a thorough foundation in the first stages of inquiry. Though the inquirer may well have understood that they are the Self at this stage, as we often say, Self-realization is where the ‘work’ of self-inquiry begins. A common occurrence among inquirers is that they jump ahead before completing some of the important foundations for self-inquiry. This always catches up with them and holds them up in their quest for freedom from limitation and dependence on objects for happiness.
The completion of the steps of self-inquiry means assimilation, not being able to parrot the teachings. Some inquirers who think they must ‘learn’ Vedanta, miss the point that Vedanta is purely a means to an end: moksa. Once you know you are the Knowledge you no longer need the means. Others, like the Neo-Advaitins, deem the first stages irrelevant and just skip mithya entirely, heading straight to satya. Sadly, it does not work to impose satya onto mithya. To kill the beast of duality one cannot pretend that it does not exist. It does exist because you experience it; the question is, what is it? If there are still the remnants of a doer lurking it will stand in the way of an independent mind free of the suffering caused by duality.
For moksa to attain, duality must be negated entirely, and to do so we must understand what it is, there is no other way to establish your identity as Existence (capital E). Only then can assimilation of the non-origination teaching take place, without which Self-realization remains an intellectual understanding, it is not actualized. Moksa does not obtain. Many inquirers understand both the cause and effect and non-origination teachings quite well. But there is somehow a disconnect in their discrimination of the difference between them, usually because something has not been assimilated, or there is still some jiva purification in the way.
It helps to think of the cause and effect teaching not as a means to explain the cause or the creation (though it does do both) but as a mechanism to negate duality (the doer) by removing the non-essential variables. These are anything other than you, the Self. Here is a recap.
As I am the Self, I am non-dual, limitless. whole and complete, without parts, without beginning or end. Anything other than me is impossible because non-dual means just that: nothing other than, no divisions, no parts. But as I am limitless, I contain all powers, even the power to apparently limit myself: Maya – beginningless ignorance—the cause, which makes me, the causeless changeless ever-present non-dual Self, appear to cause, to change, and to be many. I.e., it makes the impossible possible and seems to make me ‘become’ the effects of ignorance, Maya.
This is not an actual change like milk becoming cheese, which is irreversible. It is an apparent change because I, the Self, cannot cause or become anything being a partless, changeless whole. To do so would mean I have to become something other than me, which is impossible. There is only me. So, I never enter into the apparent creation, the effects, even though the apparent creation only exists because of me.
Think of it like this: Just like a movie director/producer and cast do not enter into a movie onscreen, even though the movie exists because it was produced/directed and acted by them: they ‘caused’ the movie, the ‘effect’. But the movie is not real; it is just a projection, a trick of light on a screen. It cannot affect (modify) anyone other than psychologically. It’s all in the mind, as the saying and the teaching goes, which of course, is where everything ‘happens’!
I, the Self, am not your mind or in it, which, like all effects, is an object known to me. Nothing affects or modifies me. So, though the Maya movie is me, I am the producer/director/actor, the apparent indirect ‘cause’ of it, but I am not it. Confusingly, unlike the producer/cast of the movie, I am not the actual cause of it. There is no cause in me because there is nothing other than me.
You can’t get something out of something that is incapable of modification–this is how the logic of the non-origination teaching destroys duality (assuming qualifications and assimilation). It answers the logical question:
How can Sat, Consciousness, be the basis of the material creation if it is non-dual Consciousness? The material creation is not material. It has no actual substance; it is a mirage. The deeper you delve into it, the further it recedes. Just like a movie, the creation is a projection caused by Maya, which is not the same OR not different from Sat, Existence/Awareness. Very important distinction, not the same and not different, essential to nondual vision, i.e., discriminating Satya from mithya.
Who then, is the witness, the knower of the creation, you may ask? I, the Self, am also called the non-experiencing witness or knower of the effects of Maya (ignorance): the Subtle body, or jiva/experiencing entity and all objects. But in truth, I am not a witness to anything as there is only me to ‘witness’ me. I am only a witness with reference to the witnessed when Maya is operating. When Self-knowledge removes ignorance of me from the Subtle Body (mind), there is no Maya in the mind anymore. Non-dual vision is permanent. Self-knowledge is not an object to obtain, it is who I am, so once moksa obtains, both ignorance and knowledge are then just objects known to me.
Cause and effect are, therefore, words to describe Isvara (me plus Maya), and the doer, the effect (me apparently under the spell of ignorance…note apparently). Both Isvara and Jiva share their identity with me, which is real, but neither the Isvara nor Jiva construct is real, though as stated the cause/creation appears to exist just like the movie onscreen.
When Self-Realization is not indirect intellectual knowledge but a direct experience of Existence As Your Identity, Self-actualization obtains and you see everything as just ISNESS, the Self. You. There is no longer the need to take a stand in Awareness because you are Awareness, there is no ‘stander’ left. The reality of Maya, ignorance/duality, is no more, though duality still apparently exists, and you can enjoy it for what it is, it is as good as non-existent. As Maya no longer deludes, you never confuse ignorance with knowledge again, confusion and suffering for you are over. Mithya ‘becomes’ satya because there is no other option.
Much love
Sundari
