Mike: Dear James, a spare moment to write! I’ve just returned from two months in Tiruvannamalai but I hit a sort of plateau. Tiru has changed enormously, noisy motor bikes and people everywhere and the most revolting Westerners you could imagine, fat cigarette-smoking Russians, etc., etc. (all God’s children, no doubt). The place was full of spiritual healers, really young people who seemed to be going through the motions without Being there, but probably on the right wavelength to help the fat Russians!
I did a lot of meditation, day and night, in the hotel, Ramana’s ashram, listening to the monks chant Sri Rudrum, everywhere I could. After going round and round the lingams, I fell into the shaft of light, so to speak, and Shiva’s still dancing in the ajna chakra when I look. It’s been a great experience. The ocean of bliss is where I take my daily bath now, it feels like jivanmukti, so I just need to stay focused going forward. I see now that my problem is (has always been) an overactive mind, and I need to stop it to be awareness-consciousness-peace, being right here and now.
What I do now I have no idea (suggestions appreciated). I don’t really want to do anything, all material effort is vain, but I am not over keen on travelling any more (maybe an age thing) and this place is going to get physically too difficult to live in within a few years. I need a temple near a decent healthy restaurant and not too many people, very hard to find!! I know, the biggest temple in the world is in your heart. I could write forever, this will have to do for now.
James: Hi, Mike.
Yes, I’m done with Tiru for various reasons, not the least of which is the noise, filth, fat Russians, guruwannabes, etc. Also, I’ve become too famous. Last time I had to bribe the cops and overpay the venue owner, and three days after I left the state tax man came looking for his bakshish. Fortunately, I am the Shaft of Light so India accompanies me as I enjoy the pleasures of European culture.
Okay. Suggestion department. Remember, you asked for it. ☺ A mind can always do with less activity, unless it is helpful activity. It can also benefit from laser-like focus on a beneficial topic, to wit: What am I? In deference to your prodigious intellect, I will not get into the details; I’m sure you can work them out on your own. But let me analyze the following paragraph in light of the teachings of Vedanta, please.
You say, “I did a lot of meditation, day and night, in the hotel, Ramana’s ashram, listening to the monks chant Sri Rudrum, everywhere I could. After going round and round the lingams, I fell into the shaft of light, so to speak, and Shiva’s still dancing in the ajna chakra when I look. It’s been a great experience. The ocean of bliss is where I take my daily bath now, it feels like jivanmukti, so I just need to stay focused going forward. I see now that my problem is (has always been) an over active mind and I need to stop it to be awareness-consciousness-peace, being right here and now.”
This statement speaks to the knowledge/experience issue, the resolution of which is usually responsible for considerable happiness because meditators of various types eventually discover that meditation is an activity subject to the zero-sum law governing the nature of human experience. To put it simply, if you “fall into the shaft of light,” you will fall out of it at some point. Law of karma. Furthermore, if Shiva dancing in the mind is a desirable experience, it seems it is not desirable enough to command constant attention but is interspersed with other experiences? If you argue that less desirable experiences hijack your attention, it stands to reason that you would immediately refocus on Shiva and stay in the shaft of light. This logic is contradicted by another law: experience, which is you, consciousness (aka the light that is not a shaft), plus the content of your mind is not under the control of the individuals (who usually think they are generating it) but is created, regulated and destroyed by the Total Mind, which religious people call God and Vedantins appropriately call the causal body, which is boils down to your karmaoutpicturing as your life. You’re probably aware that Vedanta calls your approach yoga, which is not the kiss of death, but keeps the doer/meditator on duty endlessly contacting and recontacting the light, which is actually not the limitless light of existence/consciousness that you are, but a reflection subject to the action of all material forms, i.e. the three gunas. Sometimes it shines brightly and clearly. Sometimes it shines as if through a glass darkly, and sometimes it shimmers as it dances enthusiastically. To state this argument bluntly: gaining more experience, even experience of shafts of light, doesn’t solve the problem it purports to solve.
So what is the solution? Convert the desire to experience the Self into a desire to know the Self. Why? Because you are already the shaftless shaft of existence/consciousness, which also happens to be eternal bliss (anandam). Obviously there is no way to directly experience yourself as an object, because you are always only experiencing yourself. Nobody ever told you that you exist or that you are conscious, because it is a self-evident fact. Vedanta calls this kind of knowledge innate knowledge. So you are two-thirds enlightened from the get-go. No thought is required to deliver it. But the other third – the fact that you are bliss – is not known. Why? Because you include Mike, the experiencing entity when you think of yourself. Mike is not a conscious subject capable of experiencing a shaft of light, although it appears as if he is. Mike, such as he is, is nothing but a particular bundle of priorities and values, an inert object, like the shaft of light itself. And you are the existent, conscious blissful Self that witnesses Mike. If you are clear that you are a what, not a who, you needn’t waste time meditating on shafts of light, which are pale reflections of the unborn original light of awareness that you are and ever will be. And you will get the following benefits from this knowledge: (1) the immortality benefit, which means that you will stop worrying; (2) the pleasure benefit, i.e. complete satisfaction; and (3) the freedom (from Mike) benefit.
So how do you claim your identity as the limitless, ever-present, unborn, ordinary, non-dual, whole and complete Self? You transfer your misplaced identity to your real identity. And how do you do that? You take a stand in your true nature, awareness. And how do you do that? Whenever a desire or fear, a belief or an opinion, which are proxies for ignorance of your nature, come up, you dismiss them as not-self with reference to What you actually are. At the same time you offload Mike and his conditioning, i.e. experience, on Isvara, the factor in you, awareness, that generates experience.
Jivanmukti is not an experience. Jivanmukti is the hard and fast knowledge backed by the palpable experience of the bliss of existence that does not require practice, i.e. staying focused. For instance, you don’t need to focus on your name, Mike, because it is hard and fast knowledge. Jivanmukti is freedom from Mike, the bather. You, awareness, don’t need a shower, much less a bath. You are immaculate.
And Mike, insofar as he is real, borrows whatever bliss is associated with his experience of the shaft of light from you, bliss itself.
We call yoga a leading error because it puts you in the Vedanta ballpark. Yogis do contact the shaft of light. But they don’t realize that it is only a reflection, a ray-like emanation of you, the Light of Awareness. So they relate to it as an object, not realizing that it is them, the subject. So yoga is not the kiss of death, unless it is. If you want to pursue this line of reasoning further, I’m happy to assist you. You are most welcome to visit. I took Steven to the airport yesterday.
By the way, what’s up with the kids?
~ Much love, James
