Why would I give thanks to ishvara for things like war or suffering?

Good question, a common dilemma.

There are two parts to this question … a) about the result of action to me personally, and b) suffering in the world.

About “a very terrible result”

As discussed in the previous article on Karma yoga, my contribution to an action being performed is only about 10%. Implied is the fact that 90% is from factors other than my conscious contribution. There are unknown factors within myself like my conditioning from childhood and current conditioning, my personal tendencies, etc. There are unknown factors in my environment like events in my society, in the world, etc. There are unknown factors further afield, like the three forces in nature, the Gunas, solar flares affecting the Earth, floods and fire, etc.

When there are so many factors other than my contribution, it should not be any surprise that I am not in control of the results of action. All these factors influence the outcome. It is the experience of everyone that not all expectations are fulfilled, not even for the most successful. There is always some disappointment, some failure, unexpected negative outcomes and complications. This is the duality of life we face, like gain-loss, success-failure, pleasure-pain, health-sickness, birth-death. Everyone without exception experiences both swings of duality.

As stated before, the results can be as expected which is pleasing, more than expected which is exhilarating, less than expected which is somewhat disappointing, or the very opposite of the expected which can be very disheartening. Any of these outcomes is possible and NOT in our control. This is common human experience.

So, the result of action is that any of the stated outcomes is possible. There is no problem managing positive outcomes. How negative outcomes are handled depends on the maturity of the individual experiencing the outcome. One does not have to be ‘spiritual’ to understand outcomes and manage the reaction. Even with some psychological maturity, a reasonably mature person understands how results happen, experiences the positives and negatives and is able to manage any reaction in a productive way, even a result which is “something very terrible”.

A highly successful CEO was asked the secret of his success. The conversation went as follows:

Interviewer: What is the secret of your success?

CEO: Making decisions.

Interviewer: What kind of decisions do you make?

CEO: Right decisions.

Interviewer: How do you make right decisions?

CEO: By previously making wrong decisions!!

It all depends on how we manage negative outcomes, even terrible outcomes. Failure, even terrible failure, can be interpreted, understood and managed in such a way as to have a productive outcome. It depends on one’s personal maturity, knowing the facts about action and results of action, supported by one’s experiences in life. Of course, having a spiritual understanding gives one an edge in managing results, especially negative outcomes. This is the benefit of the Karma yoga attitude.

About “Why would I give thanks to Ishvara for war and suffering in the world”

Ishvara does not order events by whim and fancy to produce war and suffering in the world. We humans do. We have been given intellects with which to think and make appropriate choices and proper actions.

Every human being acts instinctively to avoid being hurt and instinctively knows that the other does not want to be hurt. Every human being acts instinctively to have good happen to him/her and instinctively knows that the other also wants good to happen. “Do unto others what you want others to do to you. Don’t do to others what you don’t want others to do to you.”

This is a principle inbuilt into every human being and does not need to be taught. It is beyond societal norms, legality and even beyond religion. It applies to every human being irrespective of race, family, society, nationality, religion. If every human being on the planet followed this simple principle, there would be immediate peace in the world. There will be an immediate end to war and suffering.

Then, why is there war and suffering? Because this basic principle is overridden, disobeyed, discarded. Who makes these decisions? Not Ishvara. It is human beings who have lost or suppressed or don’t believe in this principle.

It is not about ‘thanking Ishvara’. It is about us human beings taking responsibility for our actions and doing the right thing. Take for example, climate change and the harmful events that follow. Is Ishvara to blame? Or us humans with the choices we make?

Ishvara is like a computer. Put negativity/garbage in, we get garbage out. Put in good, we get good in return. Ishvara is the sum total of all the forces, powers, principles, laws, energies, matter, etc. which govern the universe. The universe is benign and is supportive. Ishvara is benign and supportive. If we humans are benign and follow the principles of right living, there will be peace. If not, we can expect war and suffering to continue.

Ishvara cannot be blamed for war and suffering. We humans are responsible.

We had this discussion previously but it seems you forgot the distinction between suffering and pain.  Pleasure and pain, one of the basic features of human beings, is produced by karma and is directly experienced by the physical body.  Suffering, on the other hand, the main feature of your reply to my question, is directly experienced by the mind, the subtle body.  Both the physical and the subtle body are insentient matter.  You, awareness, does not experience pleasure and pain.  You observe it as it comes and goes according to the law of karma.

There is no difference between you and me as awareness.  You are aware of your karma and I am aware of mine.  But there is a difference between your karma and mine.  Only people with my type of karma experience an almost total absence of pain all the time, whereas people with your type of karma may not be so “lucky.”  Pleasure and pain happen on a scale from 1% to 99%.  Luck is earned by karma (the way you live your life) which is determined by the circumstances that supplied you with a physical body.  A good strong healthy body is caused by an accumulation of dharma or merit.

For unknown reasons I was born in very auspicious circumstances and picked up the aristocratic attitude of my mother toward hard work and the cheerfulness of a karma yogi from my father.  I learned to work smart, not hard.  Or, if life gave me an unpleasant task, I did it cheerfully.  I am not attracted to doing dangerous, difficult exciting things.  Excitement is empty calories.  Most people think that hard work itself is virtuous, that it is the only way to work but they are misinformed.  You can achieve the absence of pain, which is called pleasure, for the physical and subtle body if you work smart and not too hard.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.  From what you shared previously, like most people you have a mixture of good and bad karma. 

You have the good fortune to have a spiritual vasana but the misfortune to depend on hard physical labor for your livelihood.  This is quite fine if you are young and have a strong constitution, not so fine if you are older and have injured your body in various ways over time.  The karma stays with the body and produces pain and suffering…in your case worry.

Good karma produces pleasure and bad karma produces pain.  Mixed karma produces pleasure and pain.

Awareness (you and I) does not have good, bad or mixed karma.  It is karma free.  So what?  You will experience pain and suffering to the degree that you identify as awareness, which doesn’t experience pain or suffering.  When your identity “with” awareness “merges” into awareness you no longer experience pain or suffering.  Do you experience pleasure?  Yes, because you experience bliss, the other option.  The three “features” of awareness are existence, awareness and bliss.  Pain and suffering belong to karma and bliss belongs to awareness. 

My brother, who was born in the same circumstances, has chronic pain because he was not careful with his body throughout his life.  He liked extreme sports and had many “accidents.”  He enjoyed tamasic and rajasic food.  Accidents are due to lack of appreciation of the conservative nature of the body and mind.  I had a few accidents when I was young but quickly realized that I didn’t like pain and quit taking unreasonable chances, so my bad karma gradually disappeared as I replaced it with prudent well-considered good karma.  For instance, I always avoided dangerous things, including causal readily available sex, even during the sexual revolution.  The law of karma cannot be contravened without unwanted consequences.  It’s a law as inexorable as gravity.  

I radically changed my diet when I was twenty-five and managed for a healthy balance of sattva, rajas and tamas for the last fifty-eight years.  The doctors can’t understand my cheerful jokey attitude as I stand at death’s door with heart disease and blocked arteries.  They think I should be worried and depressed.  But what good would that do?  I’m not living in a fool’s paradise.  I created this situation patiently over the years.  What happens to the body and mind doesn’t happen to me.  I don’t have karma.

You suffer because predominate rajas determined your karma.  You worked your butt off physically for low wages and didn’t squirrel away enough get-out-of-jail money to afford yourself leisure and a nice cushion to sit on in your old age.  I did, but not because I “got enlightened.”  I lived like a sadhu since twenty-five and saved every blessed nickel and dime that came my way.  I can easily ignore the impulse buys at the checkout and put the “savings” in my piggy bank, as I’ve done since childhood.  So, you’re worried and I wouldn’t be surprised if you think that I have some kind of magic mantra that takes care of my pain and worry.   

There isn’t one, or if there is it’s a clear understanding of the relationship between experience and Awareness, as I mentioned already.  There is nothing wrong with hard work but without hard and fast knowledge I am Awareness, the pain and suffering pain keep coming.

Is it too late to do anything about the pain and suffering?  Yes and no.  No, in the sense that what is in the pipeline is going to play out on the body and mind levels.  Yes, in the sense that you stand as awareness and “endure” the pain while you are building good karma which will chase out the bad karma, as Krishna says in the second chapter of the Gita.  The law of karma is common sense.

The “magic bullet,” which isn’t magic…it’s a law too…is this teaching, nothing else.  However, there is no law against keeping a cheerful attitude.  My ex-wife, who suffered like a dog, embodied the right spirit and had a casual rejoinder when I scolded her for some small sin.  “I fucked up. So what?”, she said.

Love,

James 

Just learned about David Godman who claims that he got established in the Self when seeing Papa Ji.  Do you know about him?  If you do maybe you can talk about him in next week’s meeting.  He seems like an interesting person. 

Definitely not.  I know him well enough and I don’t have a high opinion of him.  David is basically a hagiographer.  He is supposed to be an expert on Ramana but evidently didn’t understand the import of the two texts Ramana wrote that have been accepted by the Vedanta sampradya as having the status as the Upanishads, Upadesha Saram and Sat Darshanam.  Both unequivocally point out that self inquiry removes ignorance of the already accomplished self.  If the unborn Self is your nature, how can you be established in it? 

Anyway, he conveniently assumed that Papaji was actually a disciple of Ramana, not just a person who “got it” during a brief conversation.  David is actually the father of the modern Neo-Advaita movement.  He assumed that all his establishing was actually sadhana and qualified him to speak about liberation but establishing yourself in the Self is impossible because you were never not the Self in the first place as noted above.  He may understand that intellectually, but you are only doing sadhana if your life conforms to dharma, among other things. 

If you want me to continue to teach you, you need to quit trolling around the internet listening to the Neos.  Yes, there is a small upside, but there is also a pernicious downside, which is a basic confusion about the experience and knowledge topic.  Once you have heard Vedanta properly and have understood why the traditional Vedanta sampradaya has accepted Ramana’s teaching as a modern Upanishad, then listen to the Neos all you want.  Unfortunately, you won’t listen long because they only offer a few crumbs, not the full loaf.  They have one small bit right…”I am That”…which is totally easy in so far as the Self is actually known to everyone in the form of the ever-present, ever-experienced “I,” as Ramana says.  Who doesn’t know they exist and that they are conscious?  

Speaking of dharma, which is not David’s strong suit, he once asked me to make a cover for a book he had written on Annamalai Swami, one of Ramana’s disciples who was a jnani and a karma yogi.  He wanted me to do it as “karma yoga,” meaning free.  David is notoriously cheap and hasn’t clue what karma yoga is.  If you do karma yoga properly are remunerated handsomely. In any case, you can equally do remunerated work as karma yoga, so I told him that I would do it for the going rate for graphics work.  He didn’t like that idea so he kept pestering me until I agreed to do it for 2000 rupees, which was a small fraction of the going rate at the time.  I had just finished a commission for $2000, which would keep me afloat in India for a long time in those days.  Normally I would have done it for nothing but I was involved in writing How to Attain Enlightenment and didn’t want to take time out from that project. 

Anyway he agreed to pay 2,000 rupees and I did the cover, which, as usual, was a lot more work than it appeared to be.  In any case, I did it as karma yoga anyway, and it was a good cover, but he didn’t honor his agreement.  Six months later our paths crossed on the stairs of an internet shop…me going down and he coming up.  He had no escape so I asked him why he didn’t honor his commitment.  He said, “Oh, that was karma yoga!”  It took considerable will-power not to send him flying down the stairs.   

I shared the story with my friends and others in Tiru and several of them added similar stories to mine.  That was a long time ago and over the intervening years, I didn’t have another thought about him.  Isvara takes care of people like that in Its own way, usually by patiently frustrating their aspirations until the light in their eyes goes dim.  As it says in Handel’s Messiah, “He makes the rough places plain.”   

Your email came in yesterday by the Grace of God and In the Name of God, who is the King of Dharma, I am not only delivering Vedanta’s message on the knowledge and experience topic this week once more, but I am am delivering this small story about David for the benefit of seekers everywhere.

People can claim whatever they want to impress others and thereby impress themselves.  Sometimes there is a basis for those claims and sometimes not.  David has a strong spiritual vasana and he promoted his gurus, Papaji and Ramana, as karma yoga, hopefully for different reasons, so he gets credit for his guru bhakti.  And yes, he deserves love as do all sentient beings who are resolved to know what they are irrespective of how they behave, as the Gita says.  And as Christ said, “Hate the sin, not the sinner”  That sinner is the Self momentarily bewitched by Maya, ignorance of Its unborn wholeness.  

Love,

James

Ramji: OK. If you’re my disciple, then please reply to my comments to this email. I think my ideas will save you a lot of time and worry.

You have changed the way I look at the world.

Ramji: That’s great!

I’m a householder so it becomes very hard to get rid of my ego. I sometimes try to practice karma yoga but am not good at it.

Ramji: Getting rid of your ego is not possible. You need a good healthy ego to manage the householder role. Karma yoga is the perfect philosophy for making family life beautiful. You probably need to know more about it because it is a really enjoyable practice. We all have karma until the day we die and karma yoga is the best solution for a happy life. Karma yoga gives the ego a sense of purpose and teaches it how to intelligently manage necessary karma, eliminate unnecessary karma and cultivate good karma.

I know I need to practice hard to get rid of my karma.

What karmas (activities) do you need to get rid of? Before you set out to get rid of something it might be wise to figure out how you obtained it in the first place. If you don’t, you will just create more unwanted karma.

I hope in my next life I get a guru like you in my early years so that I have only one purpose in my life and that is to realize that “I’m that”.

Ramji: More good news, Rajiv. There isn’t a next life. Only this one. Even if you die you come back to this world and I will still be here waiting. So let’s solve this problem now.

So what is your purpose in this life? I’d say it was trying to get free of the idea that karma is limiting you. Vedanta proves that you are actually not affected by karma (what happens) even though it feels as if you are affected.

A guru is someone who removes ignorance. Ignorance of what? Ignorance of one’s self. So you can do your karma in the karma yoga spirit and pursue self-knowledge at the same time. I’ll let you think about it for a while. Let me know your thoughts.

Here’s what one of my disciples who discovered what he really is said to me today, “The devotee gets a gift that keeps on giving: a simple love that reveals itself as a beautiful, part-less, solid never-ending subtle sense of bliss and peace that cannot stop ever because it is nature itself revealing her majesty through one’s seemingly limited self.”

I was really touched when I got this email from you.

Ramji: I was equally touched by your beautiful bhakti for me. You are like Arjuna who says to Krishna, “Please teach me. I surrender to you.” Krishna teaches him karma yoga when he asks, What is karma?”

I never thought I would ever get to talk to you even through email. So this is really a wonderful moment for me. Thank you so much for being there and thanks a lot for your love and blessings. It means a lot for me.  My pranams to you and Sundri

Ramji: You’re most welcome, Rajiv. It’s my duty to serve devotees like you. Pranams you to also, You are indeed not different from me.

Om and Prem.
Ramji

Hi Kathy, 

The Retreat was fantastic, the best ever.  You must be psychic; I am not waiting with baited breath for your views on the vaccine.  However, I am mildly interested in why my preference is interesting because we go back a long way, when the virus/vaccine topic was a non-existent cultural meme.  My view, then and now, is that there is only one virus, ignorance of our unborn wholeness, and only one vaccine, Vedanta, which inoculates against suffering caused by beliefs and opinions that are exempted from rigorous self-inquiry.  If there is only one immutable Self, then viruses, which are eternal and the quest for remedies, which is also eternal, is a real non-starter. in so far as you are that immortal Self and not subject to sickness, old-age and death, as the Buddha reminds us. 

A man in financial distress asked a holy man, who supposedly knew everything, for investment advice.  The holy man was reluctant to give him what he wanted but under his devotee’s relentless pressure, he acquiesced.  When the devotee lost his shirt on the guru’s advice, his wife forced her husband to complain and seek restitution.  The holy man said, “If you want knowledge of the stock market, go to a financial adviser.  If you want knowledge of God ask me.”

So my question is, doesn’t the subtext of your hectoring on the dangers of the virus imply that I am ignorant and in need of life saving information on said vaccines?  Yes, it’s lovely that you care for me and want me to avoid suffering, but you should probably know that only one thing concerning life here is certain.  

We are all going to die one fine day by the grace of God, so the only issue is when and by what means.  If the vaccine or the virus is going to do me in, so what?  In the meantime the beautiful blissful life that we value so much that we want to live another day even when we are suffering greatly, goes on.  Shouldn’t appreciation of that fact totally dwarf the mind’s small worries?  Or should I say the worries of small minds? 

Anyway, I feel the urge to scold you for wasting my time on such a dumb topic and chalk it up to tough love, but I can’t bring myself to chide someone I love so much, so I will leave you with a few scriptural quotes that may be of interest.  

“The enlightened person is emotionally tolerant, free of arrogance and anger.  He or she does not disapprove of those who do not conform his or her values”.

“Wise people see everything equally because they know there is only one Self.  They do not try to change themselves or others because they don’t think they are imperfect entities.  Therefore they are unconcerned with karma.” 

“One universal impersonal non-dual value, compassion, leaves no room for values born of fear and desire.”

Here’s good advice I got from Nancy Reagan, “Just say no” to the urge to be right.  Or as Krishna says repeatedly in the Bhagavad Gita, “Let the wise not unsettle the minds of the ignorant.”   

Much love,

Ramji

In Chapter 11 of the 2018 Gita videos I heard you say  Isvara came way before the intellect.   If that’s so, then how could the first Jivas have any  Karma to work out (karma definition I’m using = results of appropriate and timely action)?   

James:  Karma yoga, not karma, is appropriate and timely action unless a person intentionally tries to produce unwanted results, which no one does.  Karma, particularly karma done without considering dharma, produces plenty of misery. 

Anyway, to answer your question Ignorance (Maya) takes care of it, Joe.  When the jiva becomes self-aware at some point long after the material universe has generated the conditions necessary to support human life…billions of conscious beings (jivas) predate the appearance of human jivas…it doesn’t realize that its pursuit and avoidance of objects is generated by ignorance of its wholeness.  So the karmas start automatically.

As soon as it does an action in the binary field, it generates a hidden reaction…a vasana…which appears instantly in the mind as a desire which reflexively generates another gross action.  Thus the wheel of karma (samsara chakra) is born.  There is no karma for jivas with rudimentary intellects and for those whose intellects are not introverted.  Karma is a word for people who realize that there is some connection between what they experience and their previous self-motivated action.  Many actions non-karma yogis do without attachment to results don’t produce binding results.   Karma yoga is the way a jiva unwinds its karma bit by bit.  Worldly people who don’t realize that their own desires produce unwanted results are little better than animals.  When they get an inkling that they are responsible and stop blaming objects, they are candidates for karma yoga. 

One sentence of last seminar continues to trigger:

The Self is defined as Sat Chid Ananda: Sat and Chid are ever obvious. And Ananda, Bliss is that “aspect” of the Self that makes the Jiva search for happiness. 

From the perspective of the Self, Sat and Chid are equal to Bliss, whole, infinite and complete as it is. The Jiva, though ignorant, has no difficulties to recognise it exists and is conscious, but doesn’t realise that its never-ending search for fulfilment is due to the already ever present Ananda. Therefore, ignorant of its wholeness, it starts looking for bliss in the world and believes it will complete it. 

Can we state that although Sat Chid and Ananda are nirguna, in maya Sat Chid Ananda are undergoing the influence of sattva, rajas and tamas, and especially Ananda stimulates the rather rajasic (burning) desire for moksha?

Ram:  You can say that the satchitananda atma is apparently under the influence of the gunas, owing to its seeming association with the Subtle Body, which is the three gunas.   Apparently means it isn’t under any influences.  All influences are “under” it.     

You can also say that the same ananda motivates the search of samsaris for experience-generated reflected bliss and it also motivates varying degrees of desire for liberation in spiritually-inclined individuals.   

Well, while writing this, I realise that this applies to me (Mary), but maybe not to everyone.  

Ram: Well, actually it doesn’t apply to Mary, unless the word Mary refers to the satchitananda atma.  There is only one me.   Your statement implies that the seeking Mary is conscious but “she” isn’t.  She’s an It, an insentient idea incapable of seeking.  Isvara is doing the seeking.  The jiva never seeks because it is the satchitananda atma before, during and after the idea of seeking appears as an object within the scope of its panoramic awareness. 

One’s desire for moksha may be sattvic or tamasic too… Obviously if the above makes sense, it clarifies all my past issues and conditionings, my rajasic behaviour and reaction every time joy was involved in life, it explains my insomnia since childhood, and it shows the path out of this wrong conditioning. I must have known and experienced since forever that I’m pure bliss but because of maya and rajoguna, I couldn’t handle “additional” material and universal joy. I already was the fire of joy but vasanas and samskaras made me continue to stimulate the burning desire for knowledge and life.

Ram:  Yes, you always were pure bliss but maya made you think the bliss was in objects, in this case an event called moksa.  There is no moksa because you were never bound. 

And now, thanks to Isvara, Mary is “burned-out”, left with some nasty work of deprogramming wrong conditioning and habits, but totally convinced there is nothing to search for, and certainly no reason to set life on fire just because I’m bliss!

Ram:  Yes, there is nothing to seek.  But there is also no reason why you have to get rid of the bad habits unless you think they are real.  Even then you can’t get rid of them because you can’t get rid of something that is real or unreal.  If you stand as non-seeking awareness…the only me…they will fall off effortlessly.  You needn’t carry the Mary idea forward.  But if you do, then you can give the imaginary rajasic Mary entity the nasty job of cleaning up her imaginary mess.   The mess is Isvara.  Leave it to Isvara.  You’re fine.  Smell the roses, watch the grass grow. 

I pray to Isvara to help me to dissolve the attachment to this useless intensity. 

Ram:  As long as you think you are Mary, then you need Isvara to make messes and clean them up.  Let Isvara be Isvara.  You’re the satchitananda atma.  You are not a mess.  You’re the knower of messes.  When you accept that, the intensity will abate and you will cool down.  Think of it as moving from the burning sunlight to the cool moonlight.  Light is light, hot or cool.  

To repeat.  There was only a Mary because you thought there was a Mary.  The gunas have no influence on you.  It’s time to let the Mary thought go.  From now on the word Mary points to you, the ever-present atma, as it always did.

Love and gratefulness for the non-ordinary teachings about this ordinary existence… 🙂

Om and Prem,

Your own Self

Dear Ram-ji,

Waw, this was a hard nut to crack!  I feel like in a “bubble-shoot” game: You keep shooting on bubbles your whole life, and every time you hit a few vasana-bubbles, some new ones appear. But once you hit the Big Bubble, the one that has a name and a form and that appears to live in a world, then all the bubbles drop off together: the karma-bubble, the dharma-bubble, the punya/papa bubble, the moksha bubble, the body-bubble, the free-will bubble, the waking state-bubble, the sleeping-state bubble, the story-bubble… All gone! End of the game!

You’re so right to point this out, it’s time to stop thinking there is a Mary. Shoot off this one Big Bubble, so that the one and only Sat Chid Ananda remains as shining.

Thank you for the right shoot! You made an ace! 😉

Ram:  It seems the empty bubble was full all along.  Love you, Mary!!!

The third verse of the last chapter of the Patanjali sutras says, “Good deeds or bad deeds are not the direct cause of transformation but they remove obstacles to natural evolution just as a farmer clears obstacles to the irrigation ditches in his fields.”  Only if you have time can you explain the meaning?

James:  It’s interesting that you should pick out this verse because I just finished commenting on a few days ago.  Here is the commentary.  Keep an eye on the website because ShiningWorld will soon publish the Patanjali Yoga Sutras under the title, “Yoga and Vedanta,” subtitled “Not the Same but Not Different.”

            “Patanjali points out that life requires a material basis before it can appear, a view shared by both Vedanta and modern science.  Life on earth existed in potentia before the first unicellular organism appeared because consciousness was present although unmanifest.  Once it divided and complexified but before the mind, reflected consciousness, became self-aware and could be called human, many extroverted rudimentary life forms appeared and disappeared.  Until the human animal became self-aware it merely followed the impersonal species blueprint imposed on it by the Macrocosmic Mind, but once it became aware of the consequences of its actions the value neutral law of transformation, which only takes physical survival into account, became a moral law, which is synonymous with free will. 

            Other conscious entities go through the their programmed changes ad infinitum.  Their forms change but their minds don’t assimilate experience so they don’t evolve or devolve.  They are not interested in freedom because they are not aware that they are bound.  Although action itself is value neutral, certain actions assume the status of “good” and “bad” in so far as they accord, or not, with an individual’s likes and dislikes, which are memories of previous experiences.   Humans are animals capable of learning, in which case they have a certain degree of influence on their destiny.  But these positive and negative values themselves become obstacles to the natural unfolding of the eternal desire for freedom.  Actualizing the innate desire for freedom through samadhi, Yogic or Vedantic, is the goal of evolution, which is not going forward but returning to what we essential were before we were born.      

            One’s likes and dislikes hinder the natural movement of life toward its source, ever-free unborn existence shining as consciousness, which is likened to the flow of water in an irrigation ditch.  If the waters of consciousness are going to irrigate one’s life, a karma/dharma field, and produce food, which is to say satisfaction, one’s attractions and aversions need to be removed or the water will be diverted and not arrive at its intended destination.     

Love,

James

If neither the body nor the mind is mine, why should I take any responsibility for it?

James: If you are willing to take whatever karma is due the body and mind with a glad heart, there is no reason why you should take responsibility. But if you don’t get your thinking to align with What you are, i.e. awareness, then your body-mind will default to its present program and will suffer and enjoy accordingly, which is to say that you will just get more of the same. So if you want the subtle body to grow in light and love, you are free to manage it for predominant sattva. Generally, if you ignore your equipment entropy, i.e. tamoguna, it takes over and your apparent life degrades.

Questioner: And another side question, it is often said that, what happens is one’s karma, but whose karma is being alluded to here? Since the body-mind is a product of this life’s circumstances, to what or whom does karma accrue?

James: It accrues to the account of the doer of the karma. The “who” is the subtle body, the sentient human being. If you want to beat karma, then you need to identify with the What, i.e. awareness, since it is unaffected by karma.

Questioner: According to the scripture, it’s the subtle body that transmigrates, but even if this is the case, the subtle body doesn’t have any identity of its own.

James: That’s right. The subtle body is a material instrument. It is not actually sentient, so it can’t do karma. Only the Self under the spell of Maya can do karma.

These are my thoughts.

My cancer is almost at the highest-risk level but shows no evidence yet of metastasis. Now, is the goal to live long enough (with the risk of increased physical issues to deal with) in order to die from some other cause before I die from it and to have more time to do something, accomplish something? That would seem the traditional response, but since Vedanta, things are not so traditional. From the “Eastern” perspective, is the purpose to let my past actions play out and stay focused on the Self as the body goes through whatever it will OR choose to take treatment to try to achieve “more time” and deal with the consequences? What action is necessary to experience the fulness of the Self? Thank you for the opportunity to share with a friend.

Is it action to let karma run out or action that could produce more karma as a result of wanting to attain something, i.e. more time? Since being exposed to the teaching through you, I have found such relief from seeking through experience. It seems like the jiva’s purpose for being has been revealed.

James: Dear Confused, you have analyzed the issue carefully. You are in a pickle. And you have finally asked the most important question: “What action is necessary to experience the fullness of the self?” My answer is a question.

When are you not experiencing the Self? You (and 99% of seekers, so don’t feel bad) missed the most important teaching, which we always present right at the beginning. Which is? The Self is not an object that you can experience. The Self is the essence of the experiencer. It is the witness of the apparent experiencer, Jack and Jack’s experience. When you understand this you can then ask the right question. I won’t tell you what it is. You need to tell me. The answer takes care of the mortality issue.

~ Love, James