Dear Sundari,
I have finalized the translation of your satsang text on identifying with our primary experience and this version could be added to the translation section of shiningworld.com if you wish.
I can only emphasize once again how wonderful this text is and how much I enjoyed translating it word for word. That’s how I opened up its meaning for myself step by step. It is a deeply spiritual/psychological text that gives me a wonderful tool as a sincere seeker.
Sundari: Thank you for this wonderful feedback and translation of the teaching on likes and dislikes. I am so grateful for it, bless you. I have decided to make the four teachings into a booklet, and am almost finished with it. I improved certain sections of it quite a bit. I will send it to you as it will probably make better material for a translation, if you so wish to revisit it. Let me know. I will wait to post this one until I have confirmation from you
German: As someone who has realized the Self, I can take the standpoint of the Self, always. That is perfectly clear to me. But of course I realize that there is a lot hidden in the behaviour and experience in the unfoldment of everyday karma that hinders the flow of constant happiness for the jiva. How often in the course of the day am I unaware of reactive patterns? The mostly self-condemning secondary reactions or denials quickly set in. I have looked at those reactions and spotted them as poison quite a while ago but did the usual thing Vedantins like to do, brush them off: “they will eventually subside” leaving me with a sense of incompleteness nevertheless. But I am 73! Have they subsided? No.
Sundari: This is a great point you make. I believe it is so true that most Self-realized people, myself included, have this struggle to a greater or lesser degree, with the remnants of inquiry and the residual jiva program. There is a subtle doer or ego that ‘survives’ moksa. It is true that the jiva will always be a flawed entity, and nothing will change its inherent nature that much, not even Self-knowledge. It is not the aim, though Self-knowledge will definitely improve it indirectly. Nonetheless, it is also undeniably true that if repetitive patterns of dissatisfaction due to un-neutralized likes and dislikes are active, it impacts our happiness and complete access to the bliss of Self-knowledge.
It is hard to truly live the Amor Fati credo, love your fate, which is really living one’s life as service to God. This is true humility. And though our nature is love, sometimes the way we need to respond to our fate and give love is as a sacrifice. Sacrificial love sounds so Christian and hard – you know, the saintly self-denial and obedience to God’s will, kind of love. Certainly Catholicism is full of this. My mother was a living embodiment of Christ like sacrificial love. She was a willing martyr for Christ and suffered a great deal in silence.
I think this is where we come a bit unstuck as Vedantins. Most of us have had an issue with the religious God and this kind of love. We know that our true nature is love – but what does that actually mean? While all love is a derivative of the one source, our true nature is neither the nailed on the cross kind of ‘spiritual’ love nor the rosy feel good feeling of human love. Love as our nature is something much deeper, and it contains, and overcomes, all opposites. It is powerful and not at all needy, so can seem cold or even unfeeling to those who do not understand it.
Amor fati is a very high state of mind, and a wonderful way to live when the going is easy. But when our life brings us some kind of Calgary, it is not so easy to carry our cross. Being a martyr for love is not what sacrificial love is really about. It is sacrificing the egoic doer on the altar of karma yoga. It is the full opening of the gates of love to flow without judgement. It is to allow life to be what it is, to see each moment as the gift from God it is.
German: The first level of renunciation is relatively simple and requires, above all, discipline based on understanding (because forced discipline, of course, quickly backfires).
Sundari: True discipline is when you are a disciple unto your Self, meaning, your highest good. It is not manhandling your psyche into submission, which as you point out, never works for long. This is living a dharmic life in accordance with your nature, with your karma, and of course, with your main value – freedom from limitation. This means we do what is necessary for the health of the body and the mind because sattva, peace of mind, is our main aim. Though as the Self we are the knower of the mind and therefore, the knower of all the gunas – only with a sattvic mind can we experience peace of mind. We can accept and accommodate to rajas and tamas when they are necessary, such as when we need to act in the case of rajas, or sleep, in the case of tamas. But we must manage the proportion of rajas and tamas in the mind because if we don’t, they tend to take over and obscure sattva.
German: But the level of renunciation that you call porosity here, which equates to a natural samadhi, if I understand correctly, goes further. (I find the classification of porosity into three categories very interesting and quickly realized which one I tend towards.)
Sundari: Porosity is more than a samadhi, much more. It is the true opening of the heart and mind as one, to Amor fati. Humility is a lived natural experience, not a spiritual high or ‘state’. It is a sattvic mind where rajas and tamas are managed, unencumbered by judgement about what life presents to it, and there is automatic surrender to God in the form of your life and all it brings. It does not mean that we no longer have desires or follow our nature.
If we we are not bound by our relative nature, we respond appropriately according to our values and karma, and nothing sticks in the mind. It is not what arises in the mind but the sticking in the mind part that causes suffering and dissatisfaction. To be truly porous, the mind has no sticking points. The emotional hooks that thoughts and feelings previously got stuck on, may still be there, but are easily overcome. They give way and bend like reeds in a river. They are burned ropes without the power to bind or hold.
German: And it seems to me that this level of renunciation is fairly obvious on the one hand, but that it is often avoided because it completely disempowers the ego. Very few people succeed in giving up the doer, not because it is not possible but because mumukshutwa is not yet fully developed. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Sundari: Yes, well put. As I point out in the teaching you translated (and I explained more fully in my booklet on the topic), the problem we all face in living the truth of who we are as the Self is the tenacity of the personal identity, or ego self. As unreal as it is, even for us who are Self-realized, motivated to Self-actualize, and know what the ego program is and how it operates, it is hard to fully negate it. Maya is hardwired!
German: Including the jiva unconditionally in bhakti yoga is the ‘order of the day’ for me. It’s the healing power. The idea of an “ugly ego” that needs to be banned and demolished and burnt in hell is so deeply ingrained or kind of pretending to myself to be standing above it – denial in whatever way. But this too needs to be understood, why it is so important. And that’s why I so much appreciate your work
Sundari: Spot on. Yes indeed, the spiritual world has the ingrained idea that we must destroy the ego. But that is not correct, and cannot be done, anyway. The ego is just an idea. We all need a functional ego as long as we are walking around in these bodies. Bhakti yoga is the healing power in the process of ego negation. Not because we must destroy the ego, only understand it, love it, and put it in its correct position. No longer as the boss of the mind, but as its servant. A devotional practice is essential for this, but it must include loving yourself. We cannot project love onto God and hope that will inoculate us from dealing with the parts of ourselves we cannot love or that won’t be loved. It does not work that way. All is love, no exclusions, no withholding and no excuses.
German: It is really so enormously helpful for me and many of us that you have dedicated yourself so much to this work, completely authentically. I am infinitely grateful to you and infinitely grateful to God for leading me to James and also for giving me the idea very early on in my life to translate what I hear and read into my language, because that is my way of keeping my concentration high and deepening my understanding. Deeply grateful, with love.
Sundari: Thank you. For all of us who have had the good grace to find Vedanta, and to find a great teacher like Ramji, we are very blessed. I cannot imagine a life lived any other way than in service to these priceless teachings, in whatever way Isvara requires and makes possible. I am so happy for you that you have found your voice, and your way to make that contribution too.
As humans, we are only really happy when our lives make a contribution in some way to the whole. That is why I love the mahavakya:
Lokahah samastah sukhino bhavantu
May all beings everywhere be happy, may everything I say, do and think in some way contribute to everyone’s happiness and freedom.
Thank you, dear friend. I am so happy to hear that these words from Isvara helped you.
With much love
Sundari
