James: This email came from a long-time inquirer who was recently diagnosed as an Asperger’s sufferer. If you are having trouble making sense of the context of this document refer to Wired Differently – Svadharma 1.
Seeker: Being brutally honest is an Asperger’s trait. I’ve always found it vital and unavoidable to just say things as I see them or even as they are. And it’s not always okay to do that. It feels “right” but it can hurt or upset people. So that alone is something I must work on refining, and only acting on when appropriate (I think – correct me if you disagree, please). But this ability or tendency to be honest or to prefer brutal honesty is not something I take credit for. I know it to be from Isvara.
James: Being brutally honest is for the birds. It should only be reserved for extreme situations. It is from Isvara but since you are the Self you should override Isvara in daily situations and be smart (invoke sattva). The Gita says, “Let not the wise unsettle the minds of the ignorant.” Nobody needs to know what you “really feel.” Cultivate diplomacy. However, when some lie consistently generates conflict, then brutal honesty is dharmic. People will be hurt but dharma requires it.
I found your Asperger’s diagnosis very interesting. It’s definitely Vedanta-related. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the clarity of your insight into the nature of your mind is due to your dedication to Self-inquiry.
Seeker: I absolutely agree. I was too identified previously. I came to a distancing of Self from jiva, a few years before we crossed paths, but the teachings have continued to enable me to observe from a neutral place. One thing to say on that and that you may be able to help me with is that I’m very, very literal. That means that when I hear or read things that have a subtle meaning, I can only understand the subtleties once I understand the concept being alluded to. (This is probably true for all minds, but this mind is particularly “dense” or slow to catch on to implied meaning if it isn’t a meaning I’m already acquainted with. So disentangling the double-speak of self and Self and myself and Myself has often been troublesome. Sometimes when I listen to you teach I almost want to interrupt (interrupting is a common Asperger foible) to ask if you may have made a mistake in what you said or if you meant exactly that. The literality of a misunderstanding perhaps due to a grammatical error or slightly incorrect pronoun or whatever catches my brain and it gets hung up there. Never mind. ☺
James: Taking things literally is a tamasic trait. It is actually the social norm. It is fine when you are dealing with other literalists. But not everyone sees things “as they are,” meaning as you see them. So you need to figure out who you are interacting with. When you are sattvic you can appreciate implied meanings.
I, for one, find literalists boring, no offense. If at 4:55 someone asks me what time it is, I will round off. I will say it’s 5:00. But a literalist will correct me. He or she will say, “Why did you say it’s 5:00?” as if there was something wrong with me. When you are under the spell of the rajas/tamas syndrome you have no imagination, no sense of humor.
However, if you are “serious” about actions and results in the transactional reality, i.e. daily life, you need to be a literalist. If the bureaucracy wants a document signed in blue ink, you need to sign it in blue ink. You can’t say, “What’s the difference?” To you the important fact is the signature, not the color. But to a literalist the color is the issue. When the mind is rajasic or tamasic, it is not subtle.
The objectivity you gained from this diagnosis shows that you have assimilated Self-knowledge to a considerable degree. From the beginning I felt that you processed information differently from most people. I saw it as a kind of “blind spot” and took it as a classic case of denial.
Seeker: I’m very curious to know what you thought was the blind spot or denial. Please be direct with me on this, as it’s something I just don’t see or understand, when others mention it.
James: The Aspergers is the blind spot. It “denies,” i.e. doesn’t understand, the views of society. Aspergers people just come in with a very strong tamasic component by no fault of their own. But they are very self-centered, i.e. only concerned with what they want. They are not pretending to be ignorant, at least when they are young. Later, when they start to mature and develop some objectivity, they may feign ignorance because it suits their fancy. But usually, they are well taken care of and have little incentive to question the feeling of difference. Take the case of a sex worker, for instance. If he or she were differently employed there would be no problem fitting in. “Normal” people don’t do sex “work.” If, he’s honest and says, “I’m a gigolo. I fuck rich ladies for money,” it is going to create an instant judgment and make a possible relationship very difficult, unless he’s speaking with a rich old gal who wants sex. Even then he can’t really say it; he needs to pretend that he cares about her. If you have a secret – any secret – known or unknown – you avoid contact and feel bad because you can’t be honest. This may not be the reason you feel uncomfortable – it’s probably just the Aspergers – but I picked up on the guilt right away when we first met. But I didn’t make a judgment. I just wondered what it was about and why. If you had felt judged, you wouldn’t have opened up to me. I’d have been just another bigoted person to avoid. But obviously the point is that your wiring – your svabhava, in Sanskrit – is just different. Now that you have this kind of clarity, it will be much easier to negotiate your interactions with others.
Seeker: Yes, yes, yes. For now I’m still just taking stock, but once things settle a little more, I know this will be the case. Already I feel so much less charged around interactions that I have more recently been so reactive to. I think I reached a tipping point, that precipitated the recognition that it’s actually the wiring. I became more vocal about not being able to or willing to do what was expected of me (e.g. make small talk when I can’t and don’t want to).
James: The problem of fitting in is due to a very pervasive ever-present thought: my self-worth is defined completely by how close my behavior conforms with what is considered “normal.” In terms of the social construct, behavior can be symbolized by a bell-shaped curve. Most behavior falls in the middle, which is defined as normal, whereas the behavior on either end is considered abnormal. But the problem lies in the simple fact that one’s behavior (svadharma) is a result of one’s nature (svabhava) which we call one’s wiring, or programming. It is a problem because we don’t wire ourselves, we are wired by “God,” i.e. whatever wrote the program. Understanding this means that whatever guilt you feel for not conforming to the norm is completely gratuitous, which means that you should be comfortable as a misfit.
Owing to the internet the world is in the process of atomization so society is starting to recognize that people have their own “truth.” So the pressure to conform is much reduced. In any case, you are free to let go of the belief that people who are wired differently are qualified to evaluate you. Whether you have a name like Aspergers or not, there is always a fraction of every society that is wired differently. The good news is that they don’t burn us at the state or crucify us as they did in the good old days.
Seeker: This is the part that I’m not fully grasping. How is an individual dependent on society as such? I get the vice versa because society is composed of individuals, but individuals? Are they dependent on the collective? Sorry to question this, but I’m wanting to really get my head around what the non-dual implications really are. I feel as though something about the non-dual nature of reality hasn’t fully landed for me.
James: Everything you have comes from others, doesn’t it? You want things because someone or something else has them. You want money. You don’t print it. You need people to give it to you. Society is people with gunas. At the same time you need to give what you have to society or society, i.e. people will not take care of you. There are no non-dual implications. The Self is beyond the individual and beyond society. The issue of normal and abnormal is pure duality. If you identify as the Self, Isvara will see to it that society takes care of your “getting and keeping.” In other words, you won’t care if you are “normal” or “abnormal.”
Seeker: There is definitely something to that – if one wants to be valued, accepted and loved from without – one needs to conform. I get that the aim is to shift from dependency on that “normality” in society. But I’m struggling still, to distinguish the ordinary psychological concept of loving and accepting oneself, from what Vedanta says, i.e. if society and the individual are one and the same (non-dual), then it would seem that society needs to love the individual.
James: You are confused about the relationship between the Self (satya) and the world, i.e. society (mithya). There is no difference between Vedanta’s idea of loving and accepting one’s self and the normal psychological concept. Love is love. It is the nature of everyone, whether they are into Vedanta or not. Even rank criminals love something, if it’s only life. But since most people are rajasic and tamasic the love gets is perverted because it is filtered through the gunas. Your parents thought they were loving you because they knew you would have a lot of problems when you grew up if you were “different.” You just didn’t appreciate the reason they abused you.
There is only one Self and its nature is love (ananda). If you think you are a unique person, you are ignorant. You are actually the Self.
James previously: “In terms of the social construct behavior can be symbolized by a bell-shaped curve. Most behavior falls in the middle, which is defined as normal, whereas the behavior on either end is considered abnormal. But the problem lies in the simple fact that one’s behavior (svadharma) is a result of one’s nature (svabhava) which we call one’s wiring, or programming. It is a problem because we don’t wire ourselves, we are wired by “God,” i.e. whatever wrote the program. Understanding this means that whatever guilt you feel for not conforming to the norm is completely gratuitous, which means that you should be comfortable as a misfit.”
Seeker: Ah – I think I’m beginning to see something. The range of misfits is far broader than conventional society would previously have said. So the misfits and the mainstream individuals are the whole. Is that what you have been meaning?
James: Yes. Both the so-called normal people and the misfits are part of the whole. Normal people aren’t “normal” unless there are misfits. Or, to put it differently: if there were no misfits, there would be no normal. Duality (normal and abnormal) is purely conceptual. Both normal people and abnormal people are people first and foremost. If people related to each other as people first, there would be common ground and a lot of the conflict would stop. But when you ignore the people part of you and focus on the normal or abnormal idea, you have an unresolvable situation, i.e. suffering.
