I agree with what you had to say about drugs but there remains a nagging desire to shake the snow globe of the brain.
Sundari: That’s best done with Guna knowledge!
Don: I recently came across this statement, “after surveying late 60s counterculture, he warned that without the grounding of long-term spiritual practice, psychedelic drug use amounts to, at best, a ‘religion of religious experiences,’ a series of mystical wows decontextualized from personal and community health.” This summarizes my thoughts. I think you’d agree.
Sundari: I do agree, well put!
Don: There is something you said that keeps coming up at times. You said “you are the knower of the experience”. I know we’ve been over this many times, that’s why I say it keeps coming up. When I read that, two thoughts immediately came to mind. First was, how can the Self be the knower when being non-dual there is nothing to know and besides, there is no means to know.
Sundari: We have been over this many times, but it is a sticking point for many. When Maya appears and with it the apparent reality or creation, it seems like there are objects for the Self to know. But the Self does not ‘know’ anything the way jiva does because it knows only itself.
The Knower and the known are also called the witness and the witnessed. There are two witnesses; the “opaque” and the “transparent witness”. The opaque witness is the jiva with qualities looking at Awareness through its conditioning – the opaque witness. The transparent witness is pure Awareness with no qualities conditioning it, and it is the witness of the opaque witness.
The word ‘witness’ is applicable when there is an object to be seen, i.e. known. Then it is duality. The truth lies beyond both. Consider the sun analogy – the sun is necessary for daily activities. It does not however, form part of the world of actions or forms; yet they cannot take place without the sun. The sun is the witness, the knower, of the activities, the known. So it is with the Self.
Talking of the ‘witness’ should not lead to the idea that there is a witness and something else apart from that which is witnessing. The ‘witness’ really means the light that illumines the seer, the seen, and the process of seeing. Before, during and after the triads of seer, seen and seeing, the illumination exists. It alone exists, always., whether or not there are apparent objects ‘to be seen’.
It would be more appropriate to say that the Self, seeing only itself, is that which knows the seer with reference to the seen only when Maya is operating. The self-aware Self appears as a seer; but it never actually is a seer (or knower), unless seeing/knowing refers to its own Self. When ignorance is operating the jiva thinks that the seer is different from the seen, that the subject and object are different. The seer, Isvara is also known as saguna brahman and because it operates maya (the gunas) they never delude it, i.e. it is pure sattva. When tamas and rajas arise in saguna brahman, then awareness apparently becomes a jiva and is deluded by Maya.
Don: But then almost simultaneously, the awareness of the ego claiming the thought to itself arose. But how can it know, it’s insentient. It had to be ignorance. Then in a moment of reflection, a third thought arose, “I the knower of the experience” is the reflected I. Edwin Faust says in his commentary of Raman’s Upadesha Saram, “to know our divinity while in the body requires that we turn the world inside out….. that the subject (jiva-my addition) is merely a way of describing awareness in the presence of apparent objects.”
Sundari: Taking a stand in Awareness as Awareness sometimes turns out to be more than a little tricky because it is so subtle. The split mind (ego) watching itself has a slippery tendency to claim to be Awareness. But is it ‘unfiltered’ Awareness or is it an ego-delusion? 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 its knowledge of satya and mithya is firm, meaning, direct.
The practice “I am Awareness” does not give you the experience of Awareness or make you Awareness because you are Awareness. It negates the idea “I am the conceptual jiva.” When the conceptual jiva identity is negated, the inquirer should be mindful of the Awareness that remains because negating the jiva idea often produces a void. Nature abhors a vacuum. Many inquirers get stuck here and depression can set in if they cannot take the next step, which is understanding that the emptiness of the void is an object known by you, 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 egoic 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 (ego). 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, as an ego, not as the Self.
Don: You have said to me, “Brahma satyam jagat mithya, jivo brahmaiva naparah”. In addition, the scriptures say Atman and Paramatma are the same. Anyway, with all this in mind, I thought I’d see what Isvara had for me and I went to the satsangs, typed in satsangs by date, and low and behold. up came yours dated Oct 31st, 2023, Cultivating A Dualist Or NonDualistic Mindset. Perfect!
Sundari: Glad to hear it! The non-origination teaching makes it clear that this is a nondual reality, so ultimately, everything is you, the Self, including the Jiva. Once the subject/object split is resolved in the mind, you have no problem with the continued existence of the body/mind (conceptual jiva) and its Isvara given persona. It no longer troubles you or causes trouble for you. But, understanding, assimilating and living what that really means is the hard part.
Don: My takeaway is that my understanding is in line with the teaching, but the ego (ignorance} likes to claim everything to itself so I’ll trust the teaching to take care of it. Isvara will have me read and re-read James’ satsang many times. As James says in Inquiry into Existence,” Beautiful intelligent Ignorance”. I so appreciate both you and James.
Sundari: Thank you, Don. Yes, ignorance is very subtle, and permanently discriminating you, the Self, from the objects appearing in you, is ongoing until it is no longer necessary. There is a satsang I wrote posted on this topic and talked about last Sunday, titled Has Self-knowledge Transformed the Life of the Jiva. It’s where everyone gets stuck.
You seem to be doing great, good for you!
Much love
Sundari
