Inquirer: I experience preoccupation with death to the point that all human life seems to lead to it. But I don’t experience, and will never experience death (being dead). So in all practicality, death is a fiction.
I’m going to “die” in the sense that I’m acting along the drama of my own supposed death; but I’m not going to die in the sense that I’m never going to be dead.
Maybe if newborns could talk there would be some drama about the state of not being born yet, but they don’t, and there isn’t even a word for that state at the other end of human life.
It seems like I’m a body moving between these two fictive states. But in fact I’m intemporally in awareness and forever stuck in this body and on this time segment until I find a way out.
The real life that I’m living is not a movement in time. It’s a movement of awareness orthogonal to time.
The topic that we’re not going to die is not new, and I read it in Nisargadatta and others earlier. But the practicality of that statement gently poped up yesterday morning and I don’t quite yet measure it or fully integrate it in my thinking. So I was wondering if others resonate with this.
Sundari: Epicurus said: ‘why worry about death – when you are alive you are not dead and when you are dead, you will not know it’. So, like Epicurus, who did not know about the nondual Self it seems, and was identified with himself as a person, which ‘I are you talking about?”
You have some of your thinking correct, but with some confusion relating to that which is unchanging and always present (whether or not a body/mind is present) i.e., the nondual Self/Awareness, and that which is not always present and always changing, i.e., the impermanent person/body/mind.
If by ‘I’ you mean the body/mind, you are correct. That ‘you’ will not know it is dead; the mind or Subtle body returns to the Causal when the body dies. If personal ignorance (avidya) of your true nature as the ‘I” that is unborn and cannot die still obtains at death ‘you’ as a seeming person with your likes and dislikes (vasanas) will be ‘reborn’ into another Subtle body. ‘Another ‘you’ will then have another opportunity to work out its karma and realize the Self.
But if avidya has been removed by Self-knowledge when the body dies, you as Awareness, remain as you always were and will always be, the unborn undying nondual Self. The ever-present, unchanging knower or witness of the apparent ‘I’ (person/body/mind) coming and going, being born and dying.
You cannot ‘be intemporarily or temporarily in Awareness’, because Awareness is never not present, and there is nowhere it is not. As reality is nondual, and all you are ever experiencing is Awareness, there is nothing other than Awareness, which is all pervasive. But to understand what this means with respect to your question requires the understanding of nonduality – which is the discrimination between Awareness/Self and the person/body/world. What is the same, and what is different about both.
This explanation by James Swartz on the difference between avidya and Maya should help you –
Maya and Avidya Experiential Liberation is No Liberation
Inquirer: I need some help to figure this one out. According to some, you must be “incarnated” (“in flesh”) to be enlightened and liberated from the karmic game. As a Vedanta student, I don’t believe in incarnation, but I think that I (my jiva) am trapped in a matrix called Maya where I think I am this body and this mind bombarded with thoughts. Enlightenment is therefore an identification problem and full liberation is on when perfect discrimination is complete.
James: You don’t understand the difference between Maya and avidya. I will explain it. It may take a while to assimilate this teaching because it is complex and very subtle. Don’t feel frustrated if you don’t get it the first time.
If your jiva is trapped in the Maya matrix, it is incarnated. Maya seemingly manufactures matter…the Gross, Subtle and Causal bodies…out of existence shining as awareness. You…existence shining as unborn whole and complete awareness…are never actually trapped. Maya traps you by causing you to identify with your material sheath, the three bodies. Enlightenment, always a pesky word because it implies an event, which is to say karma, is the perfect satisfaction that arises when you cease to identify with the material matrix. The material matrix is a mixture of sentient flesh and insentient matter. Your fingers are conscious, but your fingernails aren’t, for instance.
Inquirer: Why should I (my jiva) then need this body to be able to discriminate the real from the unreal?
James: It depends on your definition of jiva. Vedanta says there is no difference between the Jiva and the Self (jivo brahmaiva na parah). If you define the jiva as your material “portion,” then discrimination is necessary because it causes confusion; am I a conscious and aware spiritual entity with material tendencies or a material entity with spiritual tendencies? Which seeming part is real? Awareness is neither spiritual nor material. You will need the help of scripture, which is the testimony of competent witnesses over many thousand years, to inform you that you are the former.
Inquirer: Why can I not be liberated when I’m “dead” with just a causal and a subtle body (my intellect being there) but without the gross one? And if I do need a body, why can I not be liberated during the sleep state for example?
This doesn’t make sense. Thank you in advance for your help.
James: It’s a word problem. You are momentarily freed of the physical body when it dies, but if you are not liberated from the causal and subtle bodies when the physical body is present, unbeknownst to the jiva, the causal body will cause the conscious entity to identify with a “new” subtle and physical body. This re-identification is called reincarnation.
The complete you only exists potentially when evolution is incomplete, meaning when a causal and subtle body are present. It “becomes” complete when the creation formula (as unfolded in the tanmatra teaching) evolves the five elements, which cause the perceptive organs, the autonomic nervous system, the active organs, mind, intellect, ego and memory to evolve. When evolution has reached this stage, the fleshy part (incarnation) is complete. To say it is complete means that all the factors required for it work out and neutralize the tendencies (karma) in the Causal Body are in place.
You are liberated experientially when you sleep but experiential liberation is no-liberation because you experience bondage when you wake up. Why? Because avidya (your “personal” ignorance) reappears, thanks to Isvara, the macrocosmic mind. It is the microcosmic subtle body that attains liberation. If it isn’t present in the deep sleep state…the deep sleep state is free of the subtle body by definition…how can it be liberated?
Most everybody assumes that Maya and avidya are the same. They are, but they are also different. Maya is total ignorance and avidya is personal ignorance. When Self- knowledge removes identification with the three bodies, as it does for “enlightened” people, other people’s identification with their subtle and gross bodies remains. Maya applies to the enlightened and the unenlightened alike but avidya only affects individual subtle bodies.
In what sense does Maya apply to enlightened people? Is there no world for them? Do they wander around in an infinite state of knowing or unknowing, unaware of the world? No, they don’t. The world remains the same. A tree is just a tree, others are still others. Only the status of the world changes. For them it has graduated from real to unreal, so they don’t identify with it. If you don’t identify with the worldly part of you, it is as good as non-existent. In other words they are discriminating people.
