Dear James,

When I surrendered to you as my teacher, I felt a washing away of my ego as I had known it, which I had been focusing on for many years. I think you teach that surrendering the ego is not a step toward realization. Or do you say it cannot create realization? Is it a step toward qualification, or is there another way to express the change in the ego? I see the change in that it no longer cares about results, which seemed to be its major role prior to surrender. Also, when one lives by the values, the ego is no longer prideful, etc. Some teachers say it must be annihilated, but that is dualism, right? I have thought… you can’t kill it, but you can train it—give it duties that serve the Self.

I have many questions about “surrender” and ego. I feel I have knowledge about both, yet because they are referred to differently by different teachers, I wanted to know your stand. Would you clarify for me when you have a moment? I know I am VERY different since Self- realization, and it seems that surrendering was what made it possible to learn from you. It’s on the back doorstep, for sure.

James: Good email. It brings up several nuanced topics. Let me see if I can help. The ego is the part of you that wants results. Karma yoga is surrendering the results to God, aka life. By surrendering the results, you remove the anxiety that distorts and disturbs the ego. Nobody wants to surrender the ego or the results of their actions, nor should they. Because without an ego, who is there to enjoy the results of the surrender? If you say Awareness, you would be wrong because there is no action or results for the non-dual Self. The ego is the part of you that performs actions to enjoy results, but if there is no ego, how will it surrender or enjoy the result of surrendering? You feel high and happy because you have surrendered the results, not surrendered the ego. Ego is a good thing.

You seem to acknowledge this fact when you say, “a washing away of my ego as I had known it,” the implication being that it is still present. If the ego follows dharma and leaves the results to God, the ego is fine. Karma yoga and knowledge yoga (jnana) are duality. A surrendered ego is dualism. It is good if you understand the big picture as revealed by Vedanta. The “you” that is training the mind is a dualistic ego, looking for a result, i.e., a trained mind. Why? Because it will make the ego happier—or so it thinks. If your ego is dynamic, then keep it busy doing its spiritual practice. The ego dies the day they put you six feet under, so there is no getting rid of it. Egotism—masturbatory levels of self-regard—needs to go if you want to grow, however.

If you want to surrender your ego, there is only one way: jnana karma sannyas, which means the surrender of doership by understanding the nature of Isvara, the laws operating in the field of karma. When you appreciate the complexity of factors involved in producing action, you let go of the idea that you are a controller and accept what happens with a glad heart. You are free of the doer. Your ego is alive and seemingly happy, and you are identified with it. It has been blessed with a means of Self-knowledge and the motivation to practice it.

Wendy: Wow. I knew I shouldn’t have written you when I was so tired and rambling. I thought I would get more compassion, but I guess I just needed a kick in the butt. Self doesn’t need compassion… Self is. This letter is from my heart.

Ramji: I don’t see it as a kick in the butt. The upside is that you learned that you can’t express yourself clearly when the mind is dull. I’m not sure what compassion has to do with it, insofar as holding your emotional hand is not part of my job description. I say that a person who helps unconfuse another person is compassionate. Anyway, I’m here to help you understand the nature of reality, a topic that requires a mature mind. There are always many so-called gurus that will schmooze you…for a price.

Wendy: I understand more than is coming across, but you are the Guru, so I am listening.

Ramji: Listening is always good depending on what you understand, but how is anyone else going to understand more than one lets on, except by words and deeds? I assume that you want Self-knowledge, which requires analyzing your thinking and letting go of beliefs and opinions that are not in line with it. You have an academic background and have received thigh honors, so it is understandable that you approach Vedanta from an academic point of view. However, Self-knowledge is completely counterintuitive; we use language differently from the general population. Our aim is to teach the intellect to think from the non-dual platform, whereas the general population, including academia, is not aware of the value of non-dual thinking and thinks only from the dualistic platform.

Wendy: Here’s what is happening for me: I want to spend all my time in devotion, and I am letting “duty” interrupt my practice, as I tend to think that teaching, etc., are my duties.

Ramji: It doesn’t matter what you do or what you want. You’re a good person with good values. It matters that you do what you do in the right spirit (karma yoga). Karma yoga is devotional yoga. It is worship of God by offering actions and their results to God. You evidently believe that some activities are more spiritual than others, which they are from one point of view, but if you love God, you won’t do self-insulting or God insulting actions. God is not just Awareness; it is a moral force if you take the world into account. You have karma, you like doing karma, so do it in the karma yoga spirit. When you discover what you are with the help of Vedanta, you lose all karma. You act as the Self from that point on. If you want to do something, just do it. Nobody has a gun to your head forcing you to “teach.”

Wendy: That is where my confusion was. My confusion does not lie in not understanding Self.

Ramji: You’re right; the Self is the easy bit. But what good is understanding the Self if you don’t do karma yoga properly? You invite aggression and dullness into your mind. Karma yoga is how the self-knowing Self acts in the world when it is in a human body. If you wish you can thing of Wendy as an instrument of God or the Self. The point is that there should be no sense of doership, or if there is you should know that the doer is a seeming entity cooked up by ignorance of your wholeness.

Wendy: I know how I am different since studying Vedanta, and I know that I am burned out and need to recuperate. I don’t know that this upcoming trip will help with that, as it seems like a duty as well, to family.

Ramji: OK. If you see your family as God, it will be a pleasant trip. Anyway, appreciating Vedanta has a very positive, long-lasting impact on the mind because you discover that freedom and non-dual love are within reach. In any case, freedom is not only about your ego being different. It is about freedom from the doer/enjoyer entity, the born person. Freedom is knowing without a doubt that you are unborn. You are inspired by Vedanta, but inspiration only goes so far without a clear understanding of the teachings and the right lifestyle. You are still not clear about your priorities. If you were, you would not have this conflict.

Wendy: There is no way I can stop studying Vedanta. It is the essence of my devotion and my practice.

Ramji: Vedanta is about you. It is not an academic discipline. You can’t study it anyway; you must be taught, assuming various qualifications.

Wendy: I am very new to it in comparison to other teachings, so I don’t feel confident teaching it. Yet, when I teach it, I trust myself and my students respond to it. I was asking for guidance from you when I should have just trusted my Self.

Ramji: If you teach properly, people have no choice but to respond positively because it reveals the one unborn Self to be a steady current of bliss. You have no business teaching it if you don’t understand it and your life doesn’t model it. What would your students think about the last letter you sent? You don’t have control of your mind. It operates on its own. Meditation (upasana yoga) is for refining, concentrating, and controlling the mind. Subconscious forces (gunas) are running you. Anyway, it has nothing to do with others, only with how your mind interacts with the teaching.

Wendy: I know neither moksha nor Self is an object, Ramji. Moksha is freedom. Self is sat-cit-ananda. When I say I have moksha, I mean I am free. I know everything is working out perfectly, and I know the Self doesn’t need taking care of. I believe you are right that this transformation has been a huge wake-up call, and my mind has moved from rajas to sattva most of the time. I also believe that I have created burnout from enthusiasm around serving, learning, and becoming free.

Ramji: Yes, this is an accurate statement of your thinking. But right thinking is more or less useless unless you control your actions. If you were confident with the knowledge in your statement, your mind would remain focused and controlled; you would have seen this coming. Rajas and tamas are doing you. No blame. You are burned out. Karma yoga is burnout insurance.

Wendy: You beautifully clarified and reminded me that Isvara is in charge. I know that, and that’s why I keep doing what I am asked to do. Something happened energetically this week that made me realize I don’t have inexhaustible energy.

Ramji: Better late than never.

Wendy: So, Isvara is slowing me down.

Ramji: Isvara is very compassionate.

Wendy: Through you, Isvara is also making me look at what I do and don’t know as my essence. I ask myself… is this just my intellect? And I get, “no”… the foreground has become the background. I am just having a hell of a day/week.

Ramji: You get “no” because you need to hear “no.” It’s hard to understand you because you’re tired, but snippets of truth come out. For instance, “the foreground has become the background,” which means that the relationship between your Self, which you previously thought was an object, has been reversed by Vedanta. Isvara is reminding you that the Self is the subject and Wendy is an object. All along you thought Wendy was the subject, but Wendy is just a conceptual identity cobbled together from various real and imagined experiences.

Wendy: Again, I wish I hadn’t written in my early morning confused state. I am gathering a sense of humor about it now and will take in all you have said. My letter was from a different person who was temporarily lost. I am not willing to wait to get back on track. I am back on track.

Ramji: I’m glad you did. Regrets suck. It’s totally ironic. But the irony wasn’t there when you wrote. In any case, you didn’t write. Isvara wrote so that I could see that you are ahead of yourself spiritually. You’re doing fine. Stay humble.

Wendy: You can give up on me, but I am not giving up on Vedanta even though I know I can be a fully happy person as a karma yogi. We are having a satsang today with Rod and Mary… I’ll see where that takes me.

Ramji: Yes. If you know what it is and live it, you will be happy. However, the next step is to find out what’s beyond happiness. People come to people like me when they realize the limitation of happiness. However, it’s not the kiss of death.

Who said I was giving up on you? But I am suspicious of statements like, “I’ll see where it takes me.” I honestly don’t think you are the one to evaluate where you are at. It seems to be small self-referential, although you are doing your best to listen to me. Most strong-willed people would have picked a big fight and cooked up an excuse to write me off by now. So good for you.

Wendy: I have an automatic donation to you every month. We are happy to help in any way we can. I won’t refer to you as my Guru anymore if you don’t want me to, but you will always be the teacher that allowed me to surrender my ego to Self, and I am forever grateful.

Ramji: It is not up to me how you think about me, or what you call me. I just try to reveal the teachings. Vedanta goes to great lengths to explain the whole sadhana from A–Z so you can evaluate yourself. You do not understand the complete teaching yet, but bits and pieces of the puzzle slowly come together to get the big picture. You’re doing fine. Thanks for the donation to ShiningWorld. The money doesn’t go to us. We use your donation and our own money to propagate the teachings.

Wendy: Yes, I am back on track. I woke up as Self and meditated and read and had some major insights that correlate with what you have written. First, this is the first “overwhelm/confusion” I have had in years, so I know it was important. I will not slip back again. In my meditation I saw how this burnout began, and it had to do with me feeling like people were seeing me diffrently and projecting expectations on me which I did not feel comfortable with—so a slow sabotage began.

The Takeaway

Here’s the big thing that I got, which is kind of exciting in a weird way: I could not get comfortable with the “realized” label. My ego wanted it to mean I was different, and my heart knows I am not. I needed this humbling experience, and when I woke up this morning, I really felt different in the sense that Self is Self without any separation or difference no matter where someone is on the path. I “knew” that before, but I GOT it through this experience, and I feel much more attuned.

I want to clarify that I was not talking about teaching Vedanta. I know I am not knowledgeable enough to teach, but I can participate well in satsang. What I meant was teaching the dream work with touches of Vedanta, and the ego is a big part of dream work, which I love. I wanted to use your words, not Chinmayananda’s or anyone else’s. I have been asked by many women to teach Vedanta, but I told them I am not ready, though I can study with them. I also recommended they take your seminars this summer. They also want to do more study of the dream work with me, and I feel fully qualified in that, along with the amount of Vedanta that complements it.

I am feeling now that I had a “folly of the mind,” which has been resolved, thanks to your honesty and patience. And contrary to my previous “reads,” I actually do like what I am reading from you. It is a great relief to let go of who I thought I was. Because I always had discipline and pretty good vasanas, I see where I had a sense of arrogance around people who were less disciplined, etc. That feels washed away and replaced with deep humility and compassion for myself and others on this journey. So, I am really, really grateful that this episode happened. The fact that I was half-asleep when I wrote it and was barely coherent makes me laugh at the brilliance of Isvara/Maya. It saved me from myself! I do feel awkward in that it put so much on your lap, and I am so grateful that you are hanging in there with me. I think all the knowledge I have gained from study of the scriptures, etc., will be absorbed more deeply now, as I can see that Wendy was translating what she learned through her long history of devotion and multiple teachers.

I love learning, and I feel more open to the guru connection now. I think I was being defensive without being conscious of it. Ego at work. “The glory of life is not in never falling; the true glory consists in rising each time we fall.” —Chinmayananda

So here I am, standing again, dusting myself off, and surrendering to Self with great humility and gratitude.

I love you, Ramji.