Thank you for the Satsangs.

I read about karma yoga again and my notes on Sadhana which have both got me thinking. I was off to the gym after reading about karma yoga again and it made me realise how I say I hate the gym but I go anyway. So I thought of gratitude and that instead of hating the gym I am grateful for the fact there’s such a lovely empty studio there to practice in, I’m so lucky to have somewhere so close I can walk to it and I’m so grateful for it’s pool and sauna! So no more ‘hate gym’ and instead gratitude.

Sadhana gave me pause for thought. My notes talk about a disciplined practice that (amongst other practices) involves surrendering the ego. I need to work on this, so much! I appreciate this takes time and so much practice. I think perhaps catching oneself and letting it go? Recognising the Self and that I am only that, nothing else is real?

But putting it into practice is hard, before I know it I think I have to be right about something, or be seen to be a ‘good person’. I am beginning to realise that my point of view is not important and that in social discussions if it doesn’t come across it doesn’t matter, that does feel like a good release.

No worries about answering if you are busy Kate, as always, but next time we’re online I’d love to hear more about this.

(I have ordered Rory’s new book which will arrive today and look forward to being deep in it! )

Loads of love as always,

Kate: Great to read your words! A positive shift to gratitude, so much nicer for the systems, takes the “chore” feeling of everyday life. My mother is excellent at this.”Isn’t it great to be able to do it!” She would say for duties, washing up, gardening, painting you name it. It took me some time to really adopt karma yoga sincerely, now I’m even seeing Isvara ‘doing’ my actions, I take my lead from Isvara and manage the gunas accordingly (remember you can always say ‘no’ to Isvara!) This leads me into your questions which I think we can tie in…

My notes talk about a disciplined practice that (amongst other practices) involves surrendering the ego.

I would say it is the ego that needs practice. The Self is already pure and perfect. It’s for the sake of the Self you do anything. Think about it. Every action you do is to remove some sense of limitation. Eat to remove hunger. Work-out to remove lethargy. Read a book to remove boredom. Of course you can see it as adding energy and stimulation to the body/mind. It’s a both/and not an either or, a ‘no-sum’ reality. You see duality play out, ‘see how the pendulum swings’, therefore it can’t be real. For every gain there’s a loss and every loss there’s a gain, but what’s real, Me, the Self never changes.

However I understand where you’re coming from with surrender. One should surrender the mind / the ego to the teaching. These words are Isvara’s words, they don’t come from humans, they come to humans, they haven’t been corrupted and don’t have an agenda other than ‘suffering is bad’. All Isvara is saying is you’re totally great, just as you are. Follow the logic the teaching presents, pretty soon you’ll see it makes perfect sense! You can trust knowledge. Let it take care of your life. I think what you’re catching is the ‘knower/doer split’. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde. The knower knows what is good for oneself, the doer has all the clever justifications to procrastinate or sabotage. Everyone experiences this.

Recognising the Self and that I am only that, nothing else is real?

Yes and if you continue to take a stand in your true nature you’ll see how silly the jiva’s fancies and fusses are. Standing in your true nature you know wholeheartedly ‘I am what is good in every time, place and circumstance’ This heals the past and takes care of the future. See all beings as Isvara, this mighty reflection of myself, although most albeit temporarily bewitched by ignorance – not knowing the difference between what is real and unreal, they suffer endlessly in the ocean of misery.

I am beginning to realise that my point of view is not important and that in social discussions if it doesn’t come across it doesn’t matter, that does feel like a good release.

Yes good for you, so what if I’m ‘understood’ or not, how are we ever to know what goes on in anyone else’s mind, the best we can do is infer what they think or feel and even then, caring what others think of you is a waste of time. There are no ‘others’. If I see you as me, I won’t injure or hurt you in any way. Or fear you for that matter. That being said, no good deed goes unpunished or keeping in mind the law of unintended consequences. Say what you gotta say and let go of the need for any certain outcome. “All beings follow their nature. What use is control?” Karma yoga all the way, acting in accordance with my nature, appropriate and timely, with the right attitude. My words, deeds and thoughts need to be in yoga, harmony, less room for conflict. You want to make your jiva happy here, it’s a beautiful reflection of You after all. Let the sadhana, the truth be the centre of your life and ‘life’/worldly stuff on the periphery, not the other way round. Otherwise the tendency is to run off the old program which sees itself as separate and inadequate and doing lots of actions to complete itself.

Waking up as the Self, you wake up fresh every day. You’re the boss! No formula or prescription for the ‘perfect spiritual person’, (which there aren’t any by the way) you’ve affirmed, confirmed and validated – I’m already perfect as the Self! By default my program/jiva tunes in to what’s best to make myself happy, to my environment and its needs, I trust Isvara implicitly to unfold my journey every step of the way. Things may not always be smooth, no worries! I don’t feel obliged to do or not do. I don’t feel guilty if I do or don’t. Letting the teaching transform your life is the gateway to constant steady bliss. If anything practice doesn’t feel like practice anymore, but just a natural outpouring of love of the Self. Everything is a blessing. Truly. See this marvel of life here. It says in the Bhakti Sutras – the Yoga of Love something like this ‘How amazing Isvara is. How great the teaching, the teacher, that led me back to Me and freedom. How great I am for all my efforts, perseverance and understanding.’ Differences cease and I relax into is-ness, pure Being.

Hope this helps, let me know.

Always a pleasure to converse with you,

Love,

Kate

Seeker:   Knowing what you are and understanding what you are, are separate concepts. Understanding is a product of duality. In non dual state there is no understanding. Only direct knowledge of One’s true being. Knowledge is, however there is nothing about Truth to be understood.

James:  Knowing and understanding are separate words but not necessarily separate concepts.  How you see them is up to you.  I think you aren’t well-informed on the topics of duality and non-duality but I have no intention of getting in an argument with someone who seems very certain about his or her opinions.  You will need a bit of common sense to convince me.  

Consider this:  If understanding is a product of duality, why can’t it be a product of non-duality?  In fact duality and non-duality don’t produce anything.  They are just words that define knowledge and experience, which are non-different if reality is non-dual.  Insentient concepts can’t produce anything.  Only sentient entities…human beings…produce results.  Assuming that non-duality is a state…which it can’t be because the word “state” implies duality.  If you mean that your use of the word non-dual negates the idea of state, which I doubt, you are correct.  But there is no understanding “in” in any state because states are not capable of understanding anything because they are not intelligent as you and I are.  You and I are intelligent because we are conscious. And we are not “in” any “state” except perhaps a state of knowledge and/or ignorance. 

Anyway, back to your last sentence.  I think it needs an edit.  Although the words, “knowledge is” are obvious and true, perhaps you would like to explain how they relate to the idea that there is nothing about truth to be understood.  I think you are trying to say that you have knowledge of truth and that you know that there is nothing to be understood, although you present the idea that that there is nothing to be understood about truth to (presumably) be true knowledge.  There is something to be understood about truth…you can be the guru for that…for someone who doesn’t know what truth is.  If not, then why are you informing me?  You must be assuming that I don’t know what truth is and that I want to know what it is. 

I’m sure you are well defended, so I probably shouldn’t suggest that it seems to me that you are just regurgitating a bunch of ideas you have picked up on the internet and in books and videos here and there.  If not, and you wish to converse with me further, please refute the common-sense logic presented in this post.

I recently have had near conscious events that I was fully awake for several seconds. (Apparently this is common during awakening) But the world was truly a marvel to witness as an unformed, non dual environment. I have had this happen three times now I feel I’m on the cusp of staying there but….I must be patient. It was as if I was looking from behind my eyes, as if “I” was seeing things from the “person who isn’t my egos” perspective. Yes it was blissful and calm.

James:  Good for you. However, here is something to think about. Yes, the world is an unformed non-dual environment. I like this formulation. That in itself is true knowledge. It is not an “illusion,” although it seems to be. But I think you will have a lot of frustration if you try to “stay” there. Non-duality means that there are not two of anything in reality, although it seems as if there are. So there is not actually here or there, nor is there anyone other that you, existence shining as unborn whole and complete ever-present awareness, to “stay” anywhere. As you contemplate on these words hopefully you will understand that the one who would like to “stay” is the awareness that is yourself. How can you “stay” in yourself? Is it your experience that there are two of you? If there is, then how will you determine which is real and which isn’t? Non-duality means there is only one reality. You can only “be” yourself. In this case “being” is not a verb. If you came to the world in a body, then perhaps there is a “there” somewhere. But is that your experience? I don’t think so, although you may have subsequently incorrectly inferred that you arrived “here” on earth. But if you think about it you will probably realize that at some point in time a body appeared and you were fascinated by it, which goes to show that you, awareness/consciousness precedes the body. To be born, you have to have died, which means that birth and death are real. But two things that depend on each other for their existence are not real. At best they are “apparently real,” which is as good as saying that are non-existent, even though they do exist. What is real stands on its own. It does not require any support. This is why you are free and unborn. Dare I say immortal?

I deeply appreciate all the work you, James, and all the teachers put in. It’s a blessing to have these resources available to us.

Sundari: You are most welcome; we are only too happy to serve these priceless teachings as best we can.

Cliff: I’m in a bit of a confused state after reading The Vedartha Sangraha of Sri Ramanujacarya by S.S. Raghavachar for the second time. There are some very powerful arguments that go against the grain of Advaita Vedanta; namely the reality of the world, as embraced by his interpretations and Vishishtadvaita in general. Are there any compelling arguments to refute his ideas? Should they be integrated with Shankara—how, I can’t imagine? Any general caveats that could steer me in the right direction. Should his ideas simply be dismissed?

Sundari: This is a good question, Cliff.  We both weighed in on it below.

James: Yes, Vashistavata (Qualified Non-Duality) “goes against the grain of Advaita.”  It wants to have its cake and eat it too; meaning it wants to see both duality and non-duality as true.  But if duality and non-duality are different, which one is the truth?  There are many opinions about Truth but there is only one Truth.   Advaita means “not two.”  Because they don’t appreciate that a means of knowledge needs to be logic compatible, they are free to indulge their fantasies.

However, it doesn’t hurt to take “qualified” non-duality as a provisional teaching, although non-duality means there is nothing to qualify it.  However, if you think you are a born, created entity, then you will not accept non-duality because duality is all you know.  The world doesn’t teach non-duality because there is only duality from its perspective.  So, out of compassion Vedanta, which objectifies both for the purpose of revealing the Self, speaks to freedom-seeking people on the dualistic level, meaning it presents the two-self idea.  If a person has sufficient faith in the teaching, it will eventually “negate” duality without changing the experience of duality, while simultaneously providing access to the non-dual Self.

Both duality and non-duality can be true if both words refer to the same thing.  In this sense one might call it “qualified” non-duality with the understanding that nothing qualifies non-duality.  With this understanding the world is taken to be real, but not remotely.  It always appears as an object apart from myself, Consciousness/Awareness. 

And it is a simple fact that whereas what I see may be me, I am never what I see.  When it is understood in this way, duality “becomes” non-duality.  I see that I have always been experiencing non-duality, am experiencing it now, and will always experience it, appearances to the contrary not-withstanding.  It appears like a movie appears on a screen.  It seems there is an association as you watch but the association doesn’t remain when the movie ends.   To enjoy it I need to temporarily suspend the belief that I am watching a movie.  But once the experience is over, I default to my original self.  No harm done.  

Without the help of metaphor, here is a logical argument that points out that there are not two realities.  If there are two realities, we would experience two realities, but nobody experiences two realities at the same time.  Non-dual means there are no temporal divisions. Everyone is the same Self experiencing the world as myself.  That Self may be momentarily deluded and think that the world is different from it, but a bit of Vedanta will eventually disabuse it of this notion.   

It must be this way because if something is known, it is possible for it not to be known. The problem with the post-Shankara people is that they were never taught by a proper non-dualist.  No blame.  They simply weren’t lucky.

Sundari:  Yes. The subject-object split has not only never been dissolved by them, they work at maintaining it.  They do not see or understand the inherent contradiction because they do not have access to the complete non-dual teachings.  What they do not understand is that once the subject/object split is dissolved, then you enjoy the world for what it is, notwithstanding the apparent built in gains and losses associated with the inherent emptiness of objects.  If you see everything as you, the Self, you can be attached to anything and everything without loss or fear.  That is where love becomes life, and everything is about love, capital ‘L”. Not only as a legitimate unconditional non-dual feeling (parabhakti) but as non-dual knowledge too.

James: Duality is the icing on the non-dual cake.  It’s where the joy, the love is.  The Narada Bhakti Sutras point out this fact. 

Sundari:  Duality is a lot of fun when you know what it is, but it is cruel when you do not.  Dualistic bhakti through the lens of nonduality is worshipping and enjoying the world as it actually is, not as it appears to be.  Life becomes love, a devotional play.  Everything here is about love. 

James: Love is missing in this whole Ramanuja Vashistadvaita argument. These guys…dare I say it?…are emotionally challenged hair-splitting intellectuals.  Six centuries later Vidyaranya Swami put them to bed with a clever humorous statement.  He said that the world is “appearing non-existence.”  If you don’t get that you are non-dual love and the world isn’t different from you, you’re going to have problems.  What use is a philosophy, not that Vedanta is a philosophy, that doesn’t deal with love, the most important human issue?  

Sundari: It’s very difficult to make everything about love because to a dualist, there’s so much suffering that contradicts it.  But nondual knowledge takes care of suffering because the mind is identified with the knower of the apparent suffering.  The knower’s nature is love.

James: Yes, if the world is real then then suffering is real.  Pain is inevitable for the body-mind-sense complex because it is in the world, but suffering is optional.  Suffering is unconsciously added because people don’t know they are actually whole and complete uncreated existence shining as non-dual love, the Self.

Sundari:  For dualists life is an existential mess.  It’s pointless.

A Means of Knowledge

James: To beat suffering, you must accept Vedanta as a means of knowledge for the Truth. The qualified non-dualists came up after Shankara.  They couldn’t understand his brahma satyam jagan mithya jivo brahmaive na parah statement which means, “Existence shining as whole and complete Awareness (the Self) is real; the individual (jiva) and the Self are non-different.  Here’s the analysis.

Brahma satyam jagan mithya is duality.  It says the world (jagat) and the Self are different.  Satya means real and mithya means seemingly real.  But he removes duality with the qualifying statement, jivo brahmaiva na parah.  Jivo does not refer to the created living and dying entity we are conditioned to think we are, although it is certainly taken that way by everyone who hasn’t been taught non-duality properly.  If the world is mithya (apparently real), then the jiva is apparently real because all created entities are products created by the world.  But nobody thinks they are apparently real. They think they are produced by the union of a real sperm and a real egg manufactured by two differently gendered real bodies, a mom and pop.  So, the seemingness of the world is very difficult for people to accept.  

The jiva Shankara is talking about is not a created entity.  It is the non-dual Self momentarily deluded by the belief that it is the body.  Brahma satyam and jagan mithya are different but they are the same too.  To get your head around this idea, you need to include a third factor, the knower of both.

You Can’t Interpret a Means of Knowledge

The whole issue boils down to the fact that you can’t interpret a means of knowledge.  Vedanta is a means of knowledge because it stands on its own – beyond personal interpretations or beliefs.  You can interpret a philosophy or a school of thought, which are only the beliefs and opinions of individuals, or groups of individuals, and which only validate themselves.  They are not true for everyone.

They do not teach the seeker that he or she stands alone as Awareness, which is the message of Vedanta.  Most people familiar with Vedic thought, have the idea that there are six “schools” of Hindu philosophy of which Vedanta is one, or several different types of Vedanta, but Vedanta is not a philosophy.  It is a means of knowledge.  In fact, it is incorrect to use the word advaita with Vedanta because Vedanta is a dualistic means of knowledge that reveals the non-dual nature of reality by removing erroneous notions about it. 

Sundari: As stated above, the most problematic statement you make is how to interpret Vedanta with reference to Vishishtadvaita in general.  Everything should be worked out with reference to an impersonal means of knowledge, not the other way around.  A means of knowledge is scientific.  It can be verified by anyone.  Without science, meaning knowledge, the world would grind to a halt. 

James: Exactly.  You don’t throw out the testimony of the ears because the eyes see something differently, because the eyes are just seeing what the ears are hearing. They just express it in two different languages. 

Sundari:  So, the Vashistadvaita guys are just using their own words, the meanings of which are arbitrary, which is confusing.

James: Yes.

Sundari:  We need to establish common-sense words that point to the essence of our human experience and show how ignorance of the non-dual Self is producing suffering-producing words.  

James:  Vedanta is a word means of knowledge, unlike the sense organs.  It doesn’t produce non-duality because non-dual reality is not produced.  Non-duality is a fact, but it is a fact that is concealed by erroneous notions in the form of words: beliefs, opinions, biases, fantasies, etc. which we call Ignorance or Maya. 

So, these are the arguments that negate the Vedarta Sangraha of Sri Ramanuja by S. S. Raghavachar, Cliff.  You are absolutely correct when you say, “I can’t imagine how they can be integrated with Shankara.”

Finally, the arguments of the Qualified Non-Dualists are not powerful on their own.  Their power is generated by the nearly universal belief that reality is a duality.  People become defensive and naturally bristle with anger when they are told that the way they see reality is delusional.  They are happy to defend duality tooth and nail.  But these words lose their power when you have been properly taught non-duality.  A proper teaching is logic compatible.  So, qualified duality is one less idea you need to contend with.   Nothing qualifies the Self.

Love,

James and Sundari

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Vedanta is much more than intellectual concepts that give us the inspiration to cope with life.  It is living non-duality.  Inspiration without action wears off, keeping seekers seeking, whereas Vedanta ends seeking and provides a blueprint for joyous transformational living.  It is difficult to let go of seeking because, despite its downsides, seeker is often a comforting identity, a virtuous security blanket of sorts.  When you understand the value of Vedanta, the dream of seeking stops and your real waking life begins.   

For quite a while I was living in the dream that most long-term devotees of Vedanta were dispassionate and rational enough to recognize the dualistic mindset and were dedicated to eliminating it.  Backed by the Bhagavad Gita, my teacher made it clear that duality was the enemy and that the struggle with duality is the essence of our spiritual work.  It made sense so I worked hard on my mind every moment of every day for about two years.  It was satisfying work.  It wasn’t hard because I trusted my teacher, who had mastered his mind and I was completely fed up with the me-centered approach to the world.  Gradually duality lost its power and one fine day, the mind stepped off the samsaric merry-go-round.  The status of the world changed.  It was no longer real as it had once been.  It was real in a completely different way.  It was real because it was me, ordinary vasana-free existence shining as whole and complete unborn awareness, which is the teaching. 

As I shared what I knew over the years I also discovered that many seekers claimed they were working hard on themselves but were still cultivating the dualistic mindset.  That duality was a serious problem was only an idea that was at best partially assimilated, sometimes not at all.  Consequently, here and now, duality played scot-free in their minds! 

When you are not ready to let go of your fears and desires any  teaching can supply a rational for hanging on to them, particularly the idea the life is a both/and, not an either or.  If it’s a both/and, you can have your cake and eat it too.  You can say the world doesn’t affect me because I am the Self so I will just let things be as they are, which is only good if you more or less indifferent to your mind.

Unfortunately. When the Self thinks it is a doer, it doesn’t know that the world doesn’t affect it, so it keeps choosing this and that to make it happy.  And for its trouble it keeps going round and round on the samsaric merry-go round.  The doer likes options and if it knows that a particular path is going to limit them, it avoids it.  They call it human nature.  But the whole point of Vedanta is to put the doer in the position where it uses it’s free will to eliminate its sense of doership.  The only time it stops doing is the day the body dies.

Is Vedanta a Both/And or an Either/Or?

But if Vedanta is an either/or with reference to your choices, a wise person will cultivate a non-dual mind-set, since it prevents sufferings large and small.  It should be a simple rational choice. 

The hallmark of the Self ignorant Self is fear.  It thinks fear is smart.  So, it is attracted to the idea that that life is one big conspiracy.  It is to be sure, but not in the way it imagines.  Even though Vedanta repeatedly points out that ignorance is the only virus and Self knowledge is the only vaccine, these words still fall on the deaf ears of many good people who are not ready to let their fears and desires go and trust life…call it God if you will…to take care of them.  

Yes, fear can momentarily make the mind alert, but it can just as well make it dull and unsubtle.  Vedanta doesn’t use fear because using it inculcates it.  Unexamined fears of every sort spring up and attach themselves to events, keeping the mind that is not committed to constant vigilance of duality obsessively disturbed until one’s life becomes dysfunctional.  The mind should be aligned with the non-dual nature of reality, a friend, not an adversary. 

Fear-oriented people think they are covering their backsides, but they are actually living backwards, defaulting to duality when they should default to fearless non-duality.  They think they are clever, but they aren’t.  Sometimes they even try to convince me that non-duality isn’t smart.  “You’re living in a fools’s paradise, James.  The idea of trusting God is good, but you need to look after Good Old Numero Uno.”  They don’t know that trusting God is the only sure way to underwrite their happiness.   
All a proper teacher can do is make suggestions and hope that an inquirer is mature and subtle enough to pick up the idea that duality is a practical problem and run with it, which basically means taking a stand in the opposite thought.  “I am whole and complete.  Nothing can be added to me or subtracted from me.”  Practiced steadily with faith it kills doership and sets the doer free of samsara.     

Upcoming Seminar in Oss, Netherlands on Self-Actualiztion.

This seminar will be a continuation of the Sunday night satsangs, which are presently focused on the reflection teaching with the idea of helping individuals progress along the well-worn path to freedom and non-dual love.  For those who don’t attend regularly we are talking about Self-actualization in depth, using a mnemonic symbol…the dancing Shiva…to assist us in removing the dualistic mindset and establish the mind in non-duality.  You will like your mind very much if you can teach it to think from the non-dual platform.  Although the seminar is fully booked it will be live streamed and kept online for downloading.  For details write Georg at georg.shiningworld@gmail.com   

What isn’t God!  God is everywhere. It is omnipresent. Everywhere means everywhere, all pervasive is the word. Permeates is another.  God is the very fabric of our DNA. It fills the spaces between the molecules and atoms of the body.  This is what Paul pointed to when he said, “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28).

God spoke Creation into existence. This means He is the cause of Creation.  If there is only God, His words are not different from Him.  He is the intelligence that creates the words and the words themselves and the Omnipotent Power that shapes all the names and forms we see here. We…our bodies, minds and spirit…are created in God’s image. (Genesis 1:27)

When the Bible says God breathed life into Adam, the First Person, it wasn’t talking about oxygen.  It means that God breathed Himself into Adam. If Adam is inseparable from God and Adam is the first person, all humanity is inseparable from God. God and life are one too.  That we value life more than anything shows that we value God above everything.

Christ and God are not two different beings.  About Christ, Paul wrote. “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17 NIV). Everything, including you, is held together in Him. Colossians 3:11 reads, “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or freeman, but Christ IS ALL and IS IN ALL. That’s Scripture.

Doership

If this is true (and it is), then God is All Knowing and All Powerful. If God is all and in all, then he knows all there is to know and is the first to know whenever anything happens.  Also, since He is all pervasive, every law and principle governing the cosmos is God.  Nothing happens without His knowledge, will or grace. If this is true (and it is) you are not a doer God is the only doer.

If you believe you are a doer, you are claiming for yourself what only belongs to God.
God created “your” body and mind from His body and mind.  So, every action, thought, and feeling belongs to God, not to you.  How can you take responsibility for its own actions, thoughts, and feelings?  All you can do is love God for looking after you in every way.   

Ownership

You claim ownership due to ignorance of your inseparable oneness with God.  Honest analysis shows the most actions aren’t volitional but are due to conditioning.  Do you think before you think?  Act before you act?  Remember before you remember or forget before you forget? The answer is NO.  

The only place you are separate from God is in your imagination, in what you choose to believe.  But in reality, you’re not even separate from Him in your imagination. How can you imagine unless God gave you the ability to imagine?

Religion lies when it says you are separate from God. Yes, I said it. It is a lie. You can’t be alive and be separate from God. You can’t be conceived be and separate from God. God conceives you out of God.

Scripture says, “For all (who) have sinned fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The word separate is nowhere to be seen in that sentence.  Read it again without the lens of the lie you’ve been taught your whole life. The greatest sin is to believe you are separate from God.  Jesus was willing to die to expose that lie.  When you believe you are separate from God, you think you can live without Him. When you believe you are separate from God, you act in ways contrary to Him. When you think you are separate from God, you fall short of His glory.

However, when you know you are inseparable you depend on Him completely for your getting and keeping.  You turn to Him. You think of Him. You want to please and cater to Him.  No matter how sinful you think you are, you are good because God is good.  You are Him and He is you.  It is arrogance to think otherwise.  Sleeping and waking, do you cause your heart to beat, your lungs to breathe, your digestion to work, and your brain to function? Of course, you don’t. 

Satan is not a person.  It is ignorance of your non-separation from God.  God is your constant companion, your best friend.  Don’t blame your ignorance on someone else.  Stand tall in God and take responsibility for the only thing that doesn’t belong to Him.   This is the great and powerful truth that truly frees.

Now, let’s hear from Isaiah. “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:2 NIV).

What has caused this seeming separation? It says, “your iniquities, your sins.” However, this is not a real, actual separation.  It’s only an apparent separation. From your perspective, you are separate from God because your heart feels ashamed and guilty due to sin and iniquity. You don’t like yourself. You don’t feel good about your actions. So, you think God doesn’t like you. You think God has turned away from you. From God’s perspective, there is no separation. If there were a real separation, there would be no sinner to feel bad about himself because the sinner couldn’t be alive to sin if the sinner was truly separate from God.

From love’s point of view – and remember, God is love – there is no abandonment by God of the so-called sinner. This would be totally against the nature of love; however, God does not hear, not because he doesn’t actually hear, but because the sinner believes God doesn’t hear. Since the sinner is lost in his own belief system, disliking himself, and feeling unworthy, he believes God doesn’t hear and unknowingly cuts himself off from God, but it’s not a real separation or hiddenness.  From God’s perspective, God is continually showing love, grace, and mercy to saints and sinners alike by giving life and sustenance every second.

Read the words of Jesus again, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45 NIV).

You can believe the truth or not, but your belief doesn’t change the truth. The truth remains untouched and unblemished. May you believe the truth.  Even more important, may you Know the truth.  Amen.

I just wanted to restate how thankful I am for your swift and direct kick in the butt!  I don’t know how I fell so far off life’s bandwagon, got lost in all its stuff.  Even difficult things were easy until unsought circumstances landed very close to home, never letting up.  Ever thankful for my mentor!

James:  Always reluctant to accept occasional opportunities to kick, but when I’m forced, they inspire.  I felt like saying something over the years, but advice should be opportune, or it queers the pitch.  The wise should not unsettle the minds of the ignorant unless petitioned in a timely fashion.  Ignorance hides our duty to ourselves and God, existence itself. 

Sally:  This kick wrapped me in a huge warm homey blanket.  Since most of my “keeper” books (your books) are in storage owing to our move, I read postings on your website.  The old website was great but the new one is AMAZING!!!  I feast there daily.

It’s humbling to stop and reflect on how long it’s been since the truth has visited my mind.  For years it was on vacation and now it’s back.  The apparently existent self was real for many years and now it isn’t.  Thoughts and feelings arise and subside in awareness; they do not belong to me. 

James:  The upside of this non-dual reality lets us avoid wasting time figuring out if we are responsible for anything at all and gestures toward the totality of existence, without which even tardigrades and dandelions would never be. 

Yet one needn’t jet to unknown worlds when one gardens daily in the daily self.  Happiness is freely given, and we drown in it with every passing thought, sailing right through turbulent seas unshaken.  Chock full of useless childhood toys like materialist’s closets, drawers, basements, and garages, the hidden self hides the truth.  But knowers know they never sought or found it.  They wake up mornings pure as the driven snow.  Looking in the bathroom mirror they think, “It’s nice being me.  May God bless anyone who isn’t.”  Relaxed and present, they face the day.  Patterns emerge languidly from the shade and details refract brightly in the sun.

I spent over an hour figuring out how to install a new toilet seat yesterday, enjoying many failures.  The old wooden seat set up in minutes.  By God’s grace seat technology has moved on.  I’m humbled and amazed!  Sentient butts revel in warm water, warm winter air and wonderous pampering.

Ramji:  I’m gonna miss you too, Lianik!  I have to say that because its true on the non-dual level.   

However, please allow to your students express their gratitude and appreciation because we, as students and disciples are deeply connected with you, our teachers and lineage. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this gesture is part of the healthy student/teacher relationship and part of the process of honoring the teachers and the teaching. Gratitude, after all, is the highest form of yoga.

Ramji: You are most allowed.  It is also true that I will miss you on the dualistic level too.  I think of you fondly and often.  You are one of my favorite people. 

Ah, I almost forget! please don’t think we don’t study if our zoom seminars are paused, I study every day with your YouTube videos, website satsangs, VSNY and Swami P lectures. The teachings are there all the time and it’s a student’s commitment to continue with them even with this pause.

Ramji:  This one of the many reasons why I love you apart from the fact that I can’t help but love you because you are me and I am you!

I hope you have a great retreat and definitely will see you soon!

Much love to Ramji, Sundari and the teaching.

Ramji:  This one of the many reasons why I love you apart from the fact that I can’t help but love you because you are me and I am you!

I hope you have a great retreat and definitely will see you soon!

Ramji:  Look in your Heart and you can always see me shining there sooner or later.

Much love to Ramji, Sundari and the teaching.

Consequently, it skews, perhaps distorts is a better word, their personalities. Conspirituality is a manifestation of duality.

Non-Duality

Vedanta (self-inquiry), on the other hand, does not accept the idea that reality is a threat. It sees reality as non-dual and benign. If reality is benign, it can be trusted to look after one’s best interests, mitigating the need to control events and the attendant anxiety. Trust integrates the personality into a well-rounded balanced whole. Vedanta reveals the non-dual nature of reality.

Recently I read an essay by a woman who realized that her elitist dislike of a particular group was a red herring that demanded a scapegoat in this case the “rich,” which wokeher up to unacknowledged loathing and envy, which conflicted with her religious values. She realizedthat she was virtue signaling because of her identification with the idea of “justice,” a zero-sum principle if ever there was one. She believed that it was “unjust” for rich people to play golf while poor people don’t have pots to piss in. Evidently, she didn’t canvas the rich.

Justice Isn’t Real

But does any particular cohort, in this case, “the rich,” deserve contempt? From the non-binary point of view, no, because justice isn’t real. Something is real if it can’t be dismissed, which is to say that it is always present and doesn’t change. Anything that is dependent and subject to change may seem to be real but doesn’t provide a dependable foundation for one’s state of mind.  Justice depends on the idea of injustice. They aren’t the same, but they aren’t different. They support and reinforce each other. As such “the poor” are equally deserving of contempt. If you are unaware that yourself is non-dual, you will discover that you are riddled with biases. You will discover that you are a prejudiced person who disrespects people who think differently from you.

Here is the logic:

• Ignorance of your non-dual nature leads to
• a sense of incompleteness and otherness, which causes
• comparison, which morphs into
• competition and conflict, which gives rise to
• frustration, anger, and hatred, which eventually culminate in
• inner conflict, culture wars or real wars and
• the breakdown of society, which is not always desirable.

To avoid this slippery slope, the following comments will help you confront your shadow self.

Knowledge and Knowledge Bubbles

Knowledge, relative and absolute, is something that can’t be dismissed. The Earth always revolves around the sun, a fact that is always true and can be verified by experience or inference. Knowledge doesn’t come FROM the human mind; it comes TO the human mind. It is. It has always been. It is waiting to be uncovered.

Knowledge bubbles are generated when a person becomes focused and attached to a particular field of knowledge: physics, psychology, law, politics, art, sports, communication, ethics, and whatnot. They

eventually burst because relative knowledge is defective as a vehicle for lasting happiness. Once I discover the limitations of a particular branch of knowledge, I try to find satisfaction in another field. Once I get financial security, for instance, I may want to understand pleasure and love. Once I discover the limit of pleasure-seeking and/or relationship love, I will definitely seek something else.

Finally, information, which is easily confused with knowledge, is “me” sensitive. It is also unreliable in terms of happiness. Beliefs and opinions are subjective events that are usually taken to be knowledge and are almost invariably the enemy of truth.

My Full Potential

As long as I am encapsulated in a particular knowledge bubble, my growth as a human being is compromised, because all parts of myself only work together if I am a well-rounded person. Focus on a particular kind of knowledge or a particular aspect of a particular kind of relative knowledge, may be helpful for survival but not for actualizing my full potential. So, I must ask myself, “Am I only here to survive?”

Only steady concentration on “absolute” knowledge will actualize it. Absolute knowledge is simple knowledge of the unborn whole and complete Self, which includes relative knowledge but renders the quest for the identity of the apparent self obsolete. “Absolute” knowledge is knowing that you are that because of which everything exists.

Particular information-events—ideas, beliefs, opinions, desires, emotions, thoughts, fantasies, memories, etc.—may or may not refer to knowledge. Because they are “me” sensitive, taking information- events for knowledge will be revealed to be a mistake in the fullness of time. A knowledge bubble is caused by an innocent curiosity for a particular type of knowledge and generates a positive or negative bias as one investigates the knowledge field.

Echo Chambers

Echo chambers are the confirmation bias on steroids. I have a doubt about what I think and need others to validate it. They evolve because denial of my non-dual wholeness causes insecurity and low self- esteem. They are enemies of nuance, the anthesis of openness and the essence of duality, the belief that differences are real, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. They are the perfect psychological environment for dull gullible people, secular or sacred, who need to think they are “right” and “smart.” Echo chambers develop around every conceivable kind of knowledge, not to mention beliefs and opinions. They are the evidence of unacknowledged spiritual dissatisfaction and the number one enemy of growth.

An echo chamber is an obsessive dislike leading to distrust of people who are seemingly different in a myriad of ways from you and your tribe. It is a cult-like social group that aggressively and perversely grooms doubt under the aegis of certain knowledge. Evidence-contrary, it is hard, cold, and humorless, not fragile like a bubble. Echo chambers are unsubstantiated beliefs, opinions and impulses based on an uncritical attachment to a pernicious emotional impurity – fear. And what is the fear? Being “wrong,” discovering that you are a fool.

Ignorance, which is not solicited, makes fools of us all. Acknowledging and accepting one’s foolishness is the solid foundation on which successful inquiry and spiritual growth is built.
On the surface, it doesn’t make sense that individuals seek to reinforce negative emotions and cultivate relationships that buttress them.

However, insecurity is born out of denial of the benign nature of reality and identification with the belief that life, a consciously designed matrix, actively conspires to harm itself. Harm exists but only because the non- dual nature of the self is left undiscovered. And/or the conviction that it is an opportunity for growth.

Unbeknownst to votaries of echo chambers, beliefs and opinions are unreal because they depend on their opposites for validation. If I believe that something is good for me, I need to believe that something else is bad. That I prefer day to night depends on the undesirability of night. Caught in a twilight zone of knowledge and ignorance, I don’t realize that if something is bad, the goodness that negates it is also bad, since an effect is only seemingly, not actually different from its cause. If I don’t believe something is “bad” I won’t promote a “good” idea. It will be natural to me. What is natural only requires validation if my knowledge of my complete Self is incomplete.

The fact that I need to promote or attack a particular idea means that I have an unconscious doubt about the truth of it. A rich person who claims that he or she is free of the need for money, and who promotes his or her method for gaining it, isn’t free of the need for money unless he or she grants free access to his technique.

A living being is gender-neutral and only becomes a man or woman when he or she thinks of the opposite gender. Plants and animals have sex organs and sex instruments but are genderless because they don’t think. When I am not identified as a man or a woman I am just a human being. Except in certain gender-related knowledge bubbles and echo chambers, most of our me is occupied by non-gender related thoughts.

Although it offers a steppingstone to our limitless non-dual identity, even the idea that I am a human being sets me apart from other living beings, animals and plants for instance. Not only that, but it subjects me to further delusion and, as we see, leads to the destruction of our habitat and peace of mind.

Conceit being what it is, I may imagine that human status confers “dominion over fish and fowl,” to quote the Bible, because I am “the roof and crown of things,” to quote Shakespeare. But I have dominion over nothing in so far as everything that I value, acquire and possess comes from the world, which is not created by me.

If I think that I am a creator, I am only a creator of one small thing— my idea of myself and the world. My creation is only seemingly useful and therefore “my” reality is subject to cancellation by “your” reality. That I care that insignificant others cancel me is only a testimony to a lack of self-confidence. I am not indifferent to the opinions of others because I claim ownership of my reality only because of a need to cancel “yours,” which creates doubt about mine unless we are stuck in the same knowledge bubble or echo chamber.

Confronted with an opposing view, a person identified with a particular view immediately becomes fearful and may withdraw from or aggressively attack the person who holds it. When fear arises, he or she is unable to connect to the context—his or her gender-neutral human identity—not to mention our limitless non-dual identity—because negative emotions command attention like no other. “If it bleeds it leads” is the holy grail of news organizations, whose success depends not only on providing useful and entertaining information but on carefully invoking and grooming fear.

Positive information is cheap and easy to acquire if you just open your eyes and look around, yet the media feels inclined to prominently peddle negative information. The takeaway close, the foundation of many marketing and personal relationships…”I will only love you if you do what I want”…is based on the universal zero-sum fear of missing out. FOMO is zero-sum because the mind
is denied its natural bliss when it is fear-oriented. The bliss because of which I wish to live
in spite of many miseries is the nature of the Self, so it is always available and begging to be uncovered.

I want an endless stream of happy thoughts because a mixture of happy and unhappy thoughts is unacceptable. Unfortunately, I believe there is no way to control my mind—it spews forth the positive and negative without so much as a by your leave—when methods for controlling the mind as old as the hills are available at no cost. Ironically, beliefs are zero-sum because knowledge is always present for those who have eyes to see. If I knew this fact, I would abandon beliefs and opinions and convert the rest to hard and fast knowledge. Those who know don’t believe. That I am an incomplete inadequate entity is only a belief, which is only evidence of itself, not evidence of inadequacy.

Both thought bubbles and echo chambers are unreal. When you enter an echo chamber, whose sole purpose is to cultivate negative emotions under the aegis of “reality,” you are perversely taught by fear-oriented “authorities” that fear is smart, a message that makes you feel good.

You enjoy echo chambers because your sense of agency, not to mention your sense of righteousness, gets a much-needed boost. You think you are very intelligent and that nobody is going to pull the wool over your eyes, particularly the rich and powerful, but your happiness is simply found in the pleasure of joining a group of like-minded souls. Delusion loves company.

When everyone in my echo chamber is angry, somehow my anger is amplified and justified, which is one of the downsides of sloth, whose sole claim to fame is denial. That anger feels good is only because my attention has been moved to the belief that I am nobody’s fool and/or the belief that anyone who doesn’t think like me is “wrong” or different. I can’t accept evidence that negates my belief, or I will again become aware of my suffering, which is always unacceptable. I can’t tolerate differences because ignorance has separated me from the knowledge of my whole and complete Self.

The echo chamber leader’s authority, secular or sacred, is not based on objective knowledge, only on the intensity of his or her fear sanitized by anger, which lends it the appearance of truth. Fear sets the mind adrift like an iceberg separated from a land mass. Eventually, the individual sees his or her good nature dissolve into an ocean of unhappiness.

Reality transcends duality, the belief in the truth of differences. To understand this fact in a practical way is to “enter the kingdom of heaven” to borrow a phrase from a well-known Biblical parable.

Everyone knows that trying to point out the irrationality of fear as a helpful emotion to a normal person, not to mention an echo chamber denizen, is impossible. One can only keep one’s distance and love such people from afar. Because they are perversely irrational and deluded, echo chamber devotees migrate from one chamber to another when a particular obsession fails to deliver pleasure, as all thoughts and emotions eventually do. Sadly, in the process, they are denied the
benefits of the innermost self’s dispassion, which quarantines them from the benefit of common-sense logic.

Only with reference to fantasy can a mindless contrarian maintain confidence in beliefs unsupported by common sense. Because duality is temporal, people irrationally believe in me. The past is unreal because it depends on two equally unreal ideas, the future, and the present. Without the future where is the past? And where is the present without the past and the future?

Like an echo chamber, this kind of thinking imprisons me from womb to tomb. “The wrong side of history” is meant to prove that an opposing idea is false, but history refers to nothing other than memories, which don’t prove anything except themselves. If you think something is good or bad you need to know that the object to which these adjectives refer is value neutral, which is another definition of zero-sum. The zero-sum nature of reality is only a virtue for you when you know what it implies, which is freedom and non-dual love.

Is Vedanta a Knowledge Bubble?

Individuals caught in knowledge bubbles are not necessarily widely or wildly uninformed and may accept differing views backed by common sense logic, whereas echo chamber devotees are a hard sell. They usually only consider different views when they are laid low by personal tragedy, the loss of a loved one or the diagnosis of an incurable disease, for instance. And since they are suspicious by nature, it is difficult for an honest self-aware person to gain their trust. Basically, only saints have the patience to redeem them, in so far as they tend to be stubborn as mules.

To negotiate modern society, it is necessary to simplify and filter the type and amount of information and knowledge to which we are exposed. Knowledge bubbles, which are usually benign, become dangerous when they morph into echo chambers. Self-knowledge bubbles tend to be benign but can be dangerous because they may breed delusional self-confidence because incomplete Self- knowledge due to faulty listening often leads to a premature belief that the
incomplete self can’t be improved upon, which gives it free rein to do what it wants irrespective of the harm it generates. It can’t because it is not real, but in so far as I believe that the existent created me is inadequate, it is possible to develop a sense of adequacy by committing myself to unlock and actualize my potential with the help of Vedanta. Attachment to knowledge bubbles can be dismantled by practical experiments that reveal the adequacy of opposite points of view. Only a Self-knowledge bubble that is blessed with an impersonal means of knowledge and unbiased teachers is wholly benign.

Echo chambers (medical, dietary, financial, political, religious, spiritual, etc.) have rigorous selection criteria and use no-holds-barred tools to actively create distrust in their devotees. Members of the La Leche League distrust cow’s milk and mothers who “abuse” their babies with it. Cultlike leaders, secular and sacred, use manipulative code words to invoke latent childhood suspicions and hatreds to please their biased minions and convert them into powerful social forces.

They derive their power because life is a complex, completely dependent zero-sum organism dependent on death. It produces living beings and perversely instills in them a binding need to live and an ever-present knowledge of their own mortality. Because of modern life’s complexity, every bit of knowledge and information depends on long chains of interconnected experts.      A climate scientist analyzing core samples depends on the lab technician who runs the air- extraction machine, the engineers who designed and construct the machines, the statisticians who developed the underlying methodology, the programmers that generate the algorithms and so on.

Trust

Trust, however, implies vulnerability which inspires fear, which echo chamber leaders manipulate and amplify to gain and maintain control. Rather than think independently, cult devotees who are usually spawned in dysfunctional households with authoritarian fathers and compliant mothers or vice versa surrender their reason and place their trust in leaders who they choose to believe have their best interests in mind. Cult leaders are experts in propaganda, the sole intention of which is to misinform devotees as to where to place their trust. While surrendering trust is natural and rational in so far as we don’t survive unless we trust our parents, continuing to trust others out of habit as we age, even those who love us, is irrational in so far as you can only depend on yourself for happiness.

One simple emphatic, understandable but unhelpful heuristic opinion informs the echo chamber phenomena, “THEY ARE OUT TO GET YOU.” In fact, dispassionate analysis proves that life, guided by a logical impersonal means of self-knowledge, is a trustworthy teacher because it is a benign zero-sum matrix, not a perpetual threat. While it is rare to find a trustworthy human without a self-serving agenda, it is definitely beneficial to trust the eternal cycle of life, which brings us here and thankfully removes us in a timely fashion.

It was just unbelievable to read the title of my ex-teacher’s statement “even awareness will die with the body.”

Ramji: That statement is not called a satsang, keeping the good company of truth. It is called a kusang, keeping the bad company of ignorance i.e. samsara. She’s the last in a long lineage of diehard Rajneesh/Osho Zorba the Buddha hippies who are bound and determined to party hardy till the day they die. To be fair, however, a few of them struggled all the way to Vedanta and are doing good sadhana these days.  God bless them.

Henry:  Also, Mooji.  After many years I was shocked by his total nonsense.  Same with the Buddhists and their bodhisattva stuff, which is just a trap to give them more virtue by “I’m putting off my enlightenment until I’ve helped the whole world get enlightened.” 

It clearly showed me that Self knowledge has begun to sink in.  My vision of nonduality has grown these years with you.

Ramji: Well, karma always catches up with the unenlightened. Mooji, God bless him, who had the same guru as Mira, Papaji, is a shadow of his former self these days. Somebody sent me a link to a recent video, so I had a look. He seems to have come to some sort of realization, maybe a shock or something.  He lost his mojo and seems very tentative and confused.  I couldn’t really make sense of what he was saying.  The chickens of ignorance always come home to roost at the end of the day.  He never was the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I felt sorry for him. 

Henry:  I understand now that karma yoga means to offer ANY action, thought, or feeling to Ishvara.   And to look for blind spots like even my spiritual desire to see and know Ishvara and offer them too.

Ramji: Yes, offering all actions is the takeaway from our last satsang. Burning desire is good, as are the actions you put forth behind it, assuming they conform to dharma, but the result is always in Isvara’s hands, so there is no sense stressing yourself about moksha, not to mention that you are always free.

Henry:  I feel a strong release and more silence in again, understanding my mind much more clearer now. Without any doubts about anything, I feel so fresh and young. I didn’t experience that for some years. That must be sattva.

Ramji: That’s sattva.

Henry:  Today one thought is all the time present; “Ishvara is doing me,” not “I am doing Ishvara“.

Intellectually I understand that this jiva is also only Ishvara, the 3 Gunas playing, but it’s not enough deeply absorbed, because it’s still the experience of a person, the me-ness.

Ramji: It may not be enough, but it is enough. You, Awareness, don’t need to absorb anything because you are free of duality, which in this context means the idea of “enough/not enough.” As far as Henry is concerned, however, the more absorption in I AM the better, so it is all good.

Henry: As you said, nothing will change, nothing will be different, while at the same time, everything is different, because that jiva is not real.  I have nothing to do with the jiva called Henry.

Ramji: Henry is definitely getting more flexible switching from the jiva to the Self and backs.  Crows are often used in Vedic symbolism as examples of Self actualized people because they are monocular.  Unlike humans, they cock their heads from side to side because their mind has only one organ of vision.  Through one eye they witness the upside and though the other they see the the downside of life, remaining always as the witness of both.

Henry:  Honestly, speaking as a jiva, I was thinking I can be in the world with samsaris, a normal guy secretly studying Vedanta getting my fingers burned again and again by life. Whenever I touch samsara, I get disappointed. Still, it’s not easy to let samsara go, the Jiva still thinks something must be there in Babylon, some satisfaction, just something…but, as you showed again, and remembered me, it’s all just a zero-sum.

Ramji: It is easy when you realize how painful it is. Anyway, the suffering is good because it makes you doubt your involvement with the samsaric state of mind.

Your jiva has a proud and a stubborn streak…tamasic is the right word, like Ganga Mira, who has a terminal case of enlightenment sickness. She makes completely ignorant statements and passes them off as knowledge to her crew of stoned hippies. Too bad there isn’t hospice for Neos so they can die peacefully.  When you think about it, however, they are as good as dead anyway because they are incapable of thinking clearly, so what does it matter if they are comfortable in their old age. But there’s always hope for losers. See how the mighty Henry, like the mighty Arjuna, stood up and fought once he heard the unparalleled teachings of Vedanta!

Henry: It’s one thing to say there is no joy in the object and there is nothing in the world for you, but it’s another thing to really realize that the world is empty, is only suffering, and that you are out of it. It’s pretty stupid to try to make a dead horse run.

So, I am scared to write too many emails to you, I know how busy you are…and how crazy some of my mails may sound. So, I will send an update in some months and join some Sunday satsangs. I have some free time off work on Sundays coming.

Ramji: That’s a thoughtful reasonable fear, Henry. I was about to suggest that you take it easy with the emails because you’re good to go.

Henry:  Thanks for letting me check my Karma Yoga Sadhana, being available, I feel I understand it again better. Somehow lost the track, regardless of how often I was listening.

Ramji: Your mind is getting more sattvic which is proof you are doing good sadhana.

Henry:  Shingworld, you and Sundari are the center of my life, the most important thing ever; it’s an eternal relationship.  And I take you by your words, I quit worrying!

Much love, Henry