Karen: At this stage of my life, I feel the importance of being guided and share my situation with more frequency. It’s really a gift of Isvara put me in contact, and give me the trust, to ask it for Ram Ji and you. Even though I work every day, I’m also studying and contemplating the teachings a lot. It seems that I don’t have much more to do, just keep going and leave everything to Isvara.
Sundari: It is natural to think that we have ‘nothing more to do’ when we have a genuine commitment to self-inquiry and have understood the teachings. It does not necessarily mean that we have assimilated them though, or that Self-knowledge is firm. Everyone needs a qualified teacher to assist them with self-inquiry, there are no exceptions. If it is part of your karma, the right teacher appears, and if you are a qualified student, you will understand the value of having a teacher. I am glad you do and that you are sticking to your sadhana. The second stage of karma yoga, karma jnana sannyas, means you have negated the idea of doership and have totally submitted to Self-knowledge to ‘do the work’ of removing the last vestiges of ignorance. While ‘doing’ continues in the application of the teachings, the student knows the only doer is Isvara and trusts the teacher as Isvara. It is a subtle and difficult process to fully objectify the ego because very often it’s the ego trying to objectify itself. More on this further on.
Karen: There are two things related to it that I want to clarify.
One is “How much I should work and be interested in doing things for the world”. As I told you, I run a center and also give courses on meditation and self-knowledge. I really love it, but sometimes it’s a lot of work. The question that comes and I want to investigate is if I’m spending my time right.
Sundari: Who is ‘doing things for the world’? The world does not need you to do anything for it because Isvara takes care of the whole. Isvara gives us certain predispositions and karma to make a contribution in some way, but it is only ever Isvara ‘making a contribution’. Perhaps you think it is Karen? If you do not think it is Karen and truly do understand you are not the doer, why not do what you do, or not do what you do, in the spirit of renunciation? We never make mistakes or ‘spend’ our time wrong if we live surrendered to Isvara.
Karen: And the second thing is about the motives and the interest in the results behind the work. It’s related to the way I act, normally with some degree of dependency for the outcome. I know it is all to do with Karma Yoga, but really a subtle point has to be internalized.
There are two types of karma yoga:
1.) Secular Karma Yoga: Karma yoga with desire.
For worldly people not qualified for self-inquiry and not going for moksha. A karmi yogi applies karma yoga to accomplish things in the world and get what they want or avoid what they don’t want. It is also preparation for entry-level inquirers to minimize the pressure of likes and dislikes. But the desire for objects/results (though they may be more elevated) is still present.
2.) Sacred Karma Yoga: Karma Yoga without Desire
Karma yoga without desire is the renunciation of the idea of doership. It is for more qualified inquirers—people who have realized that there is nothing to gain from objects and have surrendered the results of action to Isvara. At this stage, you have given up needing anything. You are not after ‘God’s stuff’. You are after God. It’s not that you no longer have desire, but all desire is not contrary to dharma and directed to the Self.
The renunciation of desire, happens in three stages:
Step 1: Renunciation of Desire
Taking a stand in Awareness and managing thoughts and emotions through the surrender of results to Isvara in an attitude of gratitude. Consecrating each thought, word, and action on a moment to moment basis and no longer initiating any gratuitous actions. This does not mean that we do not continue to follow our svadharma and do what is dharmic for us, but we do so with karma yoga in the spirit of renunciation. We are no longer chasing anything in the world, and do not require validation for whatever we do. We have mastered most of the qualifications for self-inquiry and apply Self-knowledge automatically to discriminate satya from mithya. But though at this stage we know our conditioning does not belong to us, we are not completely free of it either. Unless we understand and practice triguna vibhava yoga in conjunction with karma yoga, many highly qualified inquirers get stuck here because there is still an ego invested in ‘getting it”. What also tends to happen at this stage is the identification with sattva as ‘enlightenment’. Many inquirers wrongly believe that if they are not experiencing sattva, they are not ‘enlightened’.
Step 2: Karma Jnana Sannyas
Through continual discrimination and application of the teachings to our lives, we assimilate the knowledge that we are actually the Self, limitless Awareness, and not the person. It is the full negation of the idea of doership with the knowledge that we can act but Isvara is the only doer. If Self-knowledge has fully removed the ignorance of your true nature and rendered all binding vasanas non-binding, then you know without a doubt that you are the Self and beyond ALL the gunas. This is moksha, direct Self-knowledge.
Direct knowledge is spontaneously discriminating the Self, Satya (that which is real, always present, and unchanging) from the not-self, mithya (that which is only apparently real, not always present and always changing) at all times. There is no thought involved in this anymore. You do not need to take a stand in
Awareness because you are Awareness. At this stage karma yoga is no longer a practice as such, it is just knowledge. However, duality does not disappear once you know what it is. Maya/Macrocosmic ignorance continues even though Self-knowledge has removed personal/microcosmic ignorance.
Step 3: Self-Actualization: Nididhysana
Unfortunately, even though Self-realization is firm, more often than not we still have work to do on rendering binding vasanas non-binding, i.e. purifying the mind of identification with the jiva program. Some qualifications may not be fully developed. Here Karma Yoga becomes a different kind of mind management, nididhysana, the transformation of our remaining binding mental/emotional conditioning into devotion to the Self. This period can take many years for most inquirers and it requires the continued application of karma jnana sannyas until the jiva identity is fully dismissed.
Nididhysana is managing the mind’s involuntary thoughts as well as our habitual thoughts and feeling patterns, which are bedrock duality and can survive moksa. Without self-objectivity and mind-management, these patterns can still hijack the mind without a moment’s notice, denying it access to the Self in the form of Self-knowledge. There is nothing inherently wrong with involuntary thoughts, but they tend to immediately morph into actions which are liable to create unwanted karma in the form of obscuring thoughts and emotions.
Karen: It also brings to a third point, which is the way I relate to myself when I see that I’m not doing really perfectly right! What happens is that in the process of purification and cleaning up vasanas, I can see some mistakes in how I “see” things distorted, and not perfectly conforming with the teachings. It’s like even though I know the correct way to think and act, some patterns of the old “view” of the world are still there interfering. When I see the Jiva operating from the “personal” standpoint, some feeling of shame is born. To see my relative self as jiva acting from its egoic condition, may be funny sometimes, but it’s also painful. Mainly because of the consequences that I know it brings together, and of course, because I still have an identification with it.
I think I have something to learn in how to relate with the “mistakes” of the Jiva, not judging and blaming it, but not also accepting it, may be just understanding. This is one thing that I would like to talk.
Sundari: See above. It sounds like it is your tendency to ‘do things by the book’, and you have a vasana (maybe an ego-investment) in doing things perfectly. You shared with me a little of the relationship with your mother, who sounds like a strong and domineering character. Perhaps you have had to work hard to get her approval? I can understand the desire to want to achieve things on your own, and you have done very well. In any case, most people require some outside validation, which is the nature of duality. There is nothing wrong with that and nobody is doing anything anyway. It is only a problem when you do not see the program running the mind and you take the ego to be real. It was clear to me and Ramji from our discussions with you that you are very committed to and serious not only about moksa, freedom from and for the jiva, but also how to teach Vedanta correctly.
It is good to view the jiva critically as a program, but it is not helpful to criticize or censure it, which I think you do. Whatever our jiva program is, we did not give it to ourselves. One of the hardest things is to accept the jiva as an imperfect program that belongs to Isvara. It is impossible to perfect the program because it’s not real. But the essence of the Jiva is perfect because it is Atman, which is untouched by the jiva’s mithya program. There is no need to perfect the jiva to appreciate that. In fact, trying to do so is a guarantee that we will never be free of the ball and chain that is the jiva program and we will not take our full identity to be the unlimited Self.
Remember this beautiful chant, my favorite:
Brahma Sathyam, Jagan Mithyam, Jivo Brahmaiva Na Parah
I, the Self, am limitless Consciousness and the Jiva is non-different from me.
Another important point to bear in mind is that taking a stand in Awareness as Awareness can be more than a little tricky because it is so subtle. The split mind watching itself has a slippery tendency to claim to be Awareness. But is it ‘unfiltered’ Awareness or is it an ego claiming enlightenment? How to know, and how to deal with that? Taking a stand is done with the mind and can lead to a kind of self-hypnosis that makes the Jiva think it is the Self without the full understanding of what it means to be the Self. Of course, based on logic alone, (is there an essential difference between one ray of the sun and the sun itself?) the jiva can claim its identity as the Self—but only when it’s knowledge of satya and mithya is firm.
The practice “I am Awareness” does not give you the experience of Awareness or make you Awareness. It negates the idea “I am the jiva.” When the Jiva identity is negated the inquirer should be mindful of the Awareness that remains because negating the jiva only produces a void. Nature abhors a vacuum. Many inquirers get depressed here if they cannot take the next step, which is the knowledge that the void is an object known by the fullness of the Self, the ever-present witness. Or, at that time, many inquirers ‘start’ to experience as Awareness and make a big fuss about it even though you have only ever been experiencing as Awareness all along!
So, the discrimination between Jiva’s experience of Awareness and the Self’s experience of Awareness is essential. The Self’s experience of itself is qualitatively different from the jiva’s experience of the Self as an object or as objects. It is one thing to say “I am the Self’ as the Self and another to say it as the jiva. This realization may well be a painful moment for inquirers who are very convinced that they are enlightened without knowing that they are only enlightened as a jiva, or as an ego, not as the Self.
Karen: I hope I could be clear on expressing myself. Thanks for everything.
A big hug to you too Karen and feel to write or contact me anytime.
Much love, Sundari
