My name is Marlon, I am 21 years old and I come from Italy. I discovered Shiningworld after watching videos of Rupert Spira. I was looking for a different point of view and I found a post on your website where you said Rupert was wrong about certain things and that he was only offering a tiny slice of wisdom.
I’ve been seeking truth and peace my whole life and as you perfectly described it, it has been stabs in the dark leading nowhere.
My question is how do you know what is the truth and what isn’t ? If I take Rupert as an example, he seems to be sure of what he says, but you can find people that criticize him and have different teachings and approaches, but then you can also find people that criticize them, it’s an endless circle where everybody seems to have the truth, but by the same token nobody seems to have it. I am lost in this turmoil and I have no idea where is the light.
I grew up in a catholic school with atheists parents. I was always questioning the teachings we had and couldn’t believe in god and in an afterlife, mostly because of how the other kids were absorbing it without any questioning. I always thought religion was a way to keep people from hurting others using hell as a threat and calming death anxiety.
Growing up I was materialistic and thought that I was just a bunch of atoms and someday those atoms would disassemble and that would be the end of me, but then I thought if that was true then why would I have been granted the ability to feel, if I was just atoms then I would have no reason to experience things I could just be some kind of robot that performs tasks mindlessly.
I took a more open minded approach to spirituality and was willing to accept various approach to life and existence. The problem is there are many fraudulous people that claims to offer teachings but are only interested in money.
All this turmoil causes me great confusion, it seems truth is out of reach, it removes meaning from life and is quite dulling. I understand that the path to enlightenment is one that must be found within yourself but I was hoping you may nudge me in a direction, I lack the ability to discern truth from non-truth and blatant fraud.
I thank you very much for dedicating yourself to helping others, I hope you deem my request worthy of a response.
Sundari: I sympathize with your frustration. I have no doubt you are sincere, and your questions and doubts are very reasonable. Vedanta is a radical teaching and counter-intuitive and it has come to you early in life. This is a blessing as with the correct understanding of reality and the ability to discriminate between what is real and what is apparently real (explained below), you will have a fabulous life, ‘crack the code’, so to speak. But it also has its difficulties because there is much still to experience from the personal level when young.
For inquirers of any age, trying to navigate the spiritual world with all its multitudinous paths and claims to truth is like traversing a minefield. There are many frauds out to delude, and many well-meaning people who have part of the truth who delude without knowing it. Others promote their subjective version of the truth as the truth and who don’t know what they are talking about. How to discriminate what’s what in this lot? It’s no wonder you are perplexed and confused.
Even with the spectrum of what passes for nondual teachers, there is a great deal of misinformation. Rupert Spira is a good person, and he does teach Vedanta, but only part of it. He leaves out the most important part, being the relationship between mithya, the person (jiva), the creator/creation (Isvara), and satya, the Self (Consciousness/Awareness). He does not teach karma yoga or triguna vibhava yoga, the two most important tools available to understand and manage the psycho-spiritual nature of life. Without these tools, while you may know about the difference between what is real (always present and unchanging, i.e., the Self/satya) and what is only apparently real (that which is not always present and always changing, i.e., the body/mind/world/mithya), but it is almost impossible to actualize what it means to be the Self.
If you are trying to find a flawless answer to all existential problems within duality, you will at best, get parts of the truth. Maybe if you are lucky, you will find enough guidance on values to live a good life, and some inspiration to keep you on an even keel with all that life throws at us. Religion, philosophy, psychology, and science work here, for some people. But the problem with all those systems of thought is that they try to explain what is going on in life (the apparent reality or dharmafield) from within the dharmafield. Within the box, so to speak. There is no ultimate answer to the meaning of life to be found there because the box is in duality. To step out of the box (duality), you need a nondual teaching capable of revealing your nondual nature, which is not an object of perception. The Self (Consciousness/Awareness) is the non-experiencing witness, the subject, and the body/mind, the experiencing entity, is an object known to you, the Self. How can the object know the subject, which is subtler than it? It cannot, without help in the form of teaching capable of revealing your nondual nature.
It’s not that there is anything wrong with other teachings essentially, except the ones that are out to manipulate and delude innocent people. But for reasons explained above, they have no fail-proof tools for discrimination. You may get all inspired knowing you are the Self but that alone changes nothing. There is no other teaching available that has a completely independent and valid means of knowledge capable of revealing the Self to a purified mind and explaining what the world is and the forces that govern everything in it.
Many neo-Advaita teachers like Spira teach that you are the nondual Self, so it is possible to realize the Self through their teachings. But Self-realization is where the work begins, not ends. Neo-advaitins having no means of knowledge for the inquirer to understand and reveal their own ignorance, gloss over the person and the world because they claim it is not real and does not exist, so why bother with it? But while the person and the world are not real, they do exist because you experience them.
The world and the person do not just disappear because you proclaim them unreal. It does not work to deny mithya and jump straight to the Self, satya. To be free of the identification with the body-mind, what conditions the person, requires a full understanding of the forces that govern and create the person and their world. Without this, you are up the creek without a paddle. You may know you are the Self, but so what? How does that free you of the person and their suffering? It doesn’t. You are still in the box of duality with no way to get out.
Vedanta is the knowledge that ends the quest for knowledge. It is the end of the road, where a qualified inquirer ceases to be a seeker and becomes a finder, permanently. Vedanta answers all questions and removes all doubts. But Vedanta will not work for you unless the mind is purified (qualified) and has faith in the teachings. You will not proceed with self-inquiry without faith, and by faith, we do not mean blind faith. We mean faith pending the outcome of your investigation.
You cannot mix Vedanta with other ideas; it does not work. While there will be similarities because most teachings are a mixture of ignorance and knowledge, unless you have a valid means of discrimination between satya and mithya, you will not be able to tell the difference. You will continue to confuse ignorance with knowledge and suffer. To be free of mithya, you need to understand what it is and why it affects the jiva the way it does. If you are truly after freedom from suffering caused by the hypnosis of duality—the idea that I am separate from everything, that I am the body/mind, that I die, and that I need to chase objects to make me happy–then the whole methodology of Vedanta must be unfolded to you by a qualified teacher of the Vedanta pramana or means of knowledge, assuming qualifications.
Herein lies a problem. Vedanta is not really a teaching as such, though it has a valid means of knowledge for Consciousness, it is the truth of who you are. Vedanta does not give you anything. All it can do is take away the ignorance (Maya – duality) standing in the way of you appreciating who you are. Vedanta tells you upfront that you are whole and complete, non-dual Consciousness, the Self. There is nothing wrong with you, nothing you need to complete you. Your only problem is an ignorance problem. The basic message of Vedanta is that bliss, non-dual love, is your nature.
Ok, so you are the Self. But what does that mean? Unless Self-knowledge translates into your life as a person, what good is it? Most inquirers who come to Vedanta have a ton of indoctrination from other teachings to work through. In addition, they usually have work to do to develop all the qualifications required for Self-knowledge to stick. The biggest hurdle is that Vedanta requires qualifications. These are well explained on our website and in many of our writings. If you have not read them, I strongly suggest you do. For Self-inquiry to work for you, you need to understand the methodology and the requirements or self-inquiry will not bear the fruit of Self-knowledge.
The best book to start with here is James Swartz’ The Essence of Enlightenment. I have attached a satsang for you which condenses the steps to self-inquiry. Without all the necessary qualifications present the mind or ego will be suspicious of the teachings or confused, as it will not have the requisite faith in them to put aside its own opinions, biases, and beliefs. It will keep comparing them to other thought systems. Non-duality is not a theory in practice, it is not a philosophy nor is it the fabrication of teachings based on a prophet or mystic.
Vedanta is called a “brahma vidya” which means the science of Consciousness. It is an objective and scientific analysis of the true nature of reality and your experience, based on the facts. It is the logic of existence, and it is fail-proof. Like any other science, it is not personal, and it has a methodology which, if followed with great dedication and commitment, will provide irrefutable knowledge that is moksha, if the student is qualified. Vedanta is simply the truth about you. Not your truth or my truth or anyone’s truth: The Truth.
Vedanta is also called apauruseya jnanam, meaning not the philosophy or experience of one person like a prophet or a mystic, as in the Buddha, Jesus, or Abraham. It is not a belief system or religion either. Vedanta predates all known religious or philosophical paths because it is the pathless path that underpins all other paths. It is an independent teaching or sruti, which means that which is heard. It is also called Self-knowledge.
Self-knowledge, unlike object knowledge, stands on its own and is always true because it is true to the Self; meaning it cannot be dismissed or negated by any other knowledge. Self-knowledge is different from knowledge of objects, which is object-based, not subject-based. Knowledge of objects is not knowledge unless it is true to the object. If I am looking at a dog and my eyes and mind are functional, I will not see a cat. If it is “my” knowledge, then it is my interpretation of an object (pratibasika or subjective reality), which is not necessarily knowledge. Ignorance (or my point of view) causes me to see or experience objects in a certain way because of “my” conditioning. People believe that ignorance is knowledge because they believe that what they experience is knowledge. It may be knowledge, but it may not be. Self-knowledge is neither confirmed nor negated by anyone’s opinions or experience.
Vedanta is revealed to the mind of man, not thought up by man nor the result of any action on anyone’s part, therefore you can trust it. So, what do we mean by revealed? Don’t all religions claim this? What Vedanta means by revealed is simple. A good example of revealed knowledge is Einstein’s ‘discovery’ of the law of relativity and gravity or Thomas Edison’s discovery of electricity. To discover the means to uncover something that was there but previously unknown. Relativity, gravity, and electricity describe how the world works according to the laws of physics, not according to Einstein or Edison. Gravity, relativity, and electricity do not care if you believe in them. They operate the same way whether you understand what they are or not.
It is the same with Awareness. Awareness does not care if you have realized your true nature or not because it is unaffected by knowledge or ignorance. Liberation from ignorance is for the apparent person who lives in the apparent reality. As Awareness, you have always been free, which is why moksa or freedom is discriminating you, Awareness from the objects that appear in you, in other words, dis-identifying with the person as your primary identity…AND knowing what that means so that Self-knowledge translates into all areas of life. Vedanta is freedom from the person and for the person.
To proceed with us as your teachers (and you do need to be properly taught or you will interpret the teachings), you need to sign on to the logic and stick with the methodology. You cannot read your way to moksa because it is impossible for the jiva or ego to ‘get enlightened’. Vedanta removes the ignorance of your nature through Self-knowledge, nothing the ego does achieves that because the ego or ‘doer’ is the problem. You need to put on the shelf ALL your other ideas. At least temporarily. If you like them much better, you can always take them back.
My suggestion is this. You need to start at the beginning of the teachings as explained on our website. We offer three free courses, from beginner to advanced, and they offer the complete teaching from start to finish. Begin by conducting a fearless moral inventory: What do you really want? Next, make a list of all the qualifications and track yourself on them on a moment to moment basis. We have tons of material available for you on our website, most of it free. Follow the instructions for self-inquiry, if you decide you want to remove ignorance of your true nature above all else.
I am happy to help you. Please note that the satsang I attached contains some repetition contains some repetitions of what I wrote here, but it bears reading the whole thing as it gives you the background to Vedanta and the steps to self-inquiry.
Much love, Sundari
