CC: I think that we cannot read ourselves out of samsara because of fear – there are more reasons, subtle ones, but this is a battle and not an intellectual exercise only. It took me, i.e. mind/ person, a long time to even admit to having psychological fears, i.e. other than just instincts. To see this as part and parcel of Mithya does the job, but not from some intellectual rationalization – which is often nothing but a ‘smart’ way of denial. I often noticed that the threat, the sword of Damocles, a projection, is even much worse than the actual event. To stand up against it is also in-built in Isvara world.
Sundari: We cannot read ourselves out of samsara if we are wearing the blindfold of duality. I.e., our own ideas will be interpreting what we read according to our ignorance. It’s really amazing how good a job Maya does of fooling the mind. Isvara is a cruel trickster because it really only offers us one escape route from the Alice in Wonderland of mithya, and that is Self-knowledge. We can ameliorate the effects of ignorance with therapy and dharmic living, but nothing will remove us from the hamster treadmill of duality other than nondual knowledge.
CC: Not that long ago I found myself explaining to a bunch of people how to slay dragons. It came out spontaneously and this made me aware of what I had learned from depression and battling it. Experience having become knowledge.
Sundari: Experience can be a great teacher when the knowledge it was meant to impart has been assimilated – which is Self-knowledge. Experience does not transfer, only knowledge does. While we may gain life wisdom from our experiences, as you have, if all you are teaching is your experience, it will not help much. People we admire who have gone through a lot and found a way to survive and thrive are inspirational, this is true. You grew out of and from your experience, but where you are today is because you understood it in the context of nonduality, satya.
From the mithya perspective, there is not a whole lot of help on hand, as you know. The saying that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is true – but there is a lot of suffering in that. If you are one of the fortunate ones who have assimilated nondual wisdom and seen how it works when applied, there is nothing like it. To be able to pass it on in the service of the tradition when appropriate is the way we protect the teachings.
CC: It is difficult for a person to undergo apparent undeserved hardship and/ or being dictated by fears. Addictions/ self-doubts and so on are always its manifestations. I learned to see it as a call to wake up. We are ‘born’ with an internal set of weapons. Many people deny having them – often for the sake of being ‘good’ which is nothing but slavery. Or don’t dare to use them properly, afraid of being at fault when they use them. But this is an internal battle and our minds are equipped with weapons. To deny this is even more dangerous because they are active anyway.
Sundari: I am not sure if we can reliably claim that everyone is born with a set of ‘weapons’ to deal with the hardships of life and the slavery of ignorance. More likely, the opposite. We are born enslaved, which is a tough thought to take on board. It’s true that some people have a more auspicious birth and are born more resilient and/or into more favourable bodies and life karma. Grace is earned – even when it seems unfair.
Thanks to the operating system everyone is born with, namely human, it is tough being a person. Duality is a cruel master. Everyone is a member of the scar clan. The internal battle between system 1 (jiva) and system 2 (Isvara/Causal body) can only truly be won through the weapon of nondual knowledge, and the practice of karma yoga, neither of which are natural or innate for most.
CC: I cannot always relate to people’s specific fears but the universality is obvious and so the right to say No to Isvara is saying Yes to Isvara’s lessons. The dragons are there to be slayed, it is their function to die so to claim the gold – it is a gift of Isvara to Jiva; a reward in some sense – for the work done.
Sundari: You are right that it is in facing our fears that we neutralize them. But the real lesson is that the dragons are not real, and neither is their slaying. Sounds a little bit like a doer talking here, who is there to ‘claim’ the gold? All fears and desires are universal, whether or not we relate to them in ourselves or in ‘others’. Isvara produced a predictable range of them with the three gunas, and they are never much of a mystery once you understand how the gunas operate and bind.
The thing with reward is key. That is what everyone is after. The predetermined nature of our actions stems from how our brain processes rewards and motivates behaviour. The brain has distinct neural pathways which drive and motivate behaviour that automatically seek and evaluate reward . Guess what – likes and dislikes are built in! Your brain doesn’t care what you find rewarding—as long as it thinks the reward is potentially satisfying and within your grasp. You just have to take a very short look at the insanity and banality of social media , as well as the entertainment industry, to see this drive hard at work.
When presented with a potential reward, such as something we desire/like, the neurotransmitter dopamine (rajas) is released involuntarily and automatically, enhancing the urge to act. When you make progress toward the reward, whether it is to gain something (rajas) or avoid something (tamas), your brain wants more of whatever you crave. Which of course, in turn releases more rajas-fuelled feel-good dopamine, in an endless cycle.
The pattern of what we desire and what our brain wants/needs is based on evolutionary adaptations and past experiences, read inborn and developed binding vasanas. And as we all know only too well, craving anything is detrimental, even something deemed ‘good’. This is called bondage – repeated satisfaction of the reward urge inevitably leads to addiction – and, DISSATISFACTION!. Without Self-knowledge, we are all addicted to something. On the rare occasions my grandson is allowed to watch YouTube, even for an hour, he becomes a monster kid. It’s all about priming the reward system, but it never delivers. Nothing can, for long, other than Self-knowledge.
CC: I cannot ever be depressed again and not only that – I see/ feel the blackbelt as part of this jiva-suit, now making it capable of moving on to more subtle understandings of Isvara.
Sundari: Interesting metaphor – the black belt. Good one, in many ways, as to earn such a belt in most martial arts comes not only with committed and dedicated practice, but with a certain values based skill. Speaking as the Self, you are correct. You have never been and could never be depressed. But as the Jivatman, you are free to feel anything. Are you depressed if you know you are? You are no less ‘enlightened’ if you feel depressed but are not identified with the feeling. Depression is just a failed jiva reward system – meaning, you didn’t get something you wanted or avoid something you didn’t want. As the Self, it doesn’t affect you. So what?
CC: It is a prep to accept this aspect of God – the seeming darkness and the removal of the ‘why’ question. Dragon’s, weapons, gold metaphors ring the bell but then must become practical. To not accept smallness, is to accept the capacity to stand. It is better to fear and fight than to fear and hide. To question the ‘authority’ of fear, posing as if real and true, is critical thinking. It is the case that to ever develop qualifications for Vedanta/ sadhana one often must be able to handle one’s weapons. To ‘go beyond’ the person requires a person with some solidity first.
Sundari: The only weapon is Self-knowledge. There is no other with which to overcome smallness. There is and always has been much discussion on what is behind free will and motivation, with philosophers and thinkers weighing in for and against. Science tells us that the source of our motivation for doing anything is almost as biological as the colour of our eyes – it comes with the program we get handed at birth, or as we would call it, our vasana load. The idea that we do not have free will over our actions, while sometimes hard to believe, is supported and backed up by extensive neuroscience research.
Benjamin Libet’s famous brain activity experiments showed that a decision occurs neurologically several hundred milliseconds before a person becomes consciously aware of making that decision. This finding has been consistently replicated using many different types of decision making-tasks. In other words, given specific choices, neuroimaging shows and can predict which choice you will make up to 10 seconds before you make the decision. What seems like an ability to make personal decisions really is an illusion. Often described as intuition or “gut feelings”” responses are determined by a long history of heredity in combination with adjustments influenced by environment and culture – namely, Isvara/Causal body. Poor ‘System 2 Jiva’ is like David going up against ‘System 1 Goliath/Isvara’.
Yet, even though we are programmed this way, the bizarre thing is that one of the most disturbing feelings for most people is the perception of lack of control. When we feel helpless, or believe we have the inability to change things, we tend to surrender our will to outside forces, consciously or unconsciously, which makes us feel even worse. For some, this external emphasis is devastating because we are so conditioned to believe we have control of our choices and the reasons we make them. Such is the power of Maya, the ultimate sadist, we could call it! This is why karma yoga is so difficult for most people – who wants to surrender the results of action, good grief! All doers act only for results, and that’s ok. But to be identified as the doer makes life so difficult.
Yet the truth is, whether we are looking at how our brain works from the scientific, feeling or rational perspective, we have minimal influence over how thoughts and beliefs turn into action. We are just like puppets on a string. As a result, negative emotions (tamas) develop, and we could argue that this is understandable, even justified. Most of us are all too familiar with the awful voices of diminishment that are so hard to shut off. This is the plight of being ‘human’, and the signature of ignorance. So, are we merely slaves to Isvara, seduced by the illusion that we do have agency? Can we even make meaningful adjustments within the limits of our motivational destiny?
There is a way out, this we know, as Vedantins. But while we are all the Self, not everyone has access to Self-knowledge in a meaningful way, meaning, qualified for self-inquiry. Some souls are braver than others, true. It is very touching to see how people overcome their demons and heartache, to live and love anyway, no matter how battered and scarred. But sadly, without Self-knowledge and karma yoga, you are deep in the ocean of samsara, and have to make peace with turbulence, slavery and loss.
CC: I enjoy such talks, to see people’s eyes lit up, them sensing their courage. I feel such compassion and love when these types of conversations happen. Every bit of liberation counts. I could say a lot more about this, but the Bhagavad Gita says it all. And ‘ The price of freedom is eternal vigilance ‘.
Sundari: Yes, there is nothing more uplifting to be a harbinger and a voice for Isvara, to show someone where the lifeboats are, as it is for someone to hear about the Self, if they have ears to hear and are ready to be ‘saved’ from the ocean of samsara.
CC: You said (quote) – “The hard part is to live free AS a jiva. That takes retraining the mind that has been in bondage to fear all its days, to relax and take it easy. You know, like when a long time prisoner is released from prison, it feels terrified of freedom. The mind has been institutionalized by smallness, limitation, i.e., ignorance, fear. I emphasize this point in my teachings on neutralizing likes and dislikes, because Self-realization creates another problem – the confusion of how I am supposed to live as a jiva that knows it is the Self.”
This is different from the fire-fly stage – I assume? Isvara, Self has no likes and dislikes – which is the very reason to remove them, so the real me ‘gets’ actualized, which is actual. Preferences may remain – but as things non-binding. I read a recent satsang about this also.
Sundari: The Self does not ‘get’ actualized. It is what is actual. Likes and dislikes relate only to the jiva under the spell of ignorance. But living this, actualizing Self-knowledge, as a jiva is the hard part – hence, nididhysana. It does require training the dualistic mind to operate on a completely different operating system – nonduality, for freedom from and for the jiva to obtain.
CC: You said: ‘The litmus test of freedom is the growing decrease in worry and anxiety. If this is not taking place, Self-knowledge is still obscured by ignorance, and you are still in bondage to the limitations of being a person.’
Likes and dislikes, bondage – they come and go too. I think this is where doubt/ confusion appears in my mind at times. Doubts not about me or jiva but about this process. What you distinguish; to be free of jiva and to live free as jiva … so I have some more questions on this, but I’ve worked hard and have lot’s on my mind; my mind is too dull now to get it in words. Rajas and tamas are quite active lately. Nonetheless, I am happy because knowledge has been/ is bringing Isvara, Self and Jiva to one place, so to speak.
Sundari: Best let it sit. I have explained this before, and above. The both/and of lived nonduality is very subtle.
Much Love
Sundari
