Just think about the three statements in my heading. They seem contradictory, do they not? Well, this sums up why nonduality is so counter-intuitive. Understanding what these terms mean and applying the knowledge is not only the key to a great life, it is the key to freedom. What is freedom? It comes down to this: Discriminating satya, that which is real because it is invariable, from mithya, that which is apparently real because it is variable.
Last week I talked about why the terms integrity, authenticity and transparency are interchangeable code words to describe living as the Self. Simply put, if you are really living as the Self, you cannot not have invariable integrity, confident authenticity, and complete transparency. Why invariable integrity? Because your integrity belongs to the Self, which unlike human integrity which is subject to change, is the one and only invariable factor. The same goes for confident and complete authenticity and transparency because you are fearless as the Self.
Living as the Self confers an inviolable and permanent Self-confidence. No more whiny little ego bleating about how unfair life is and what a bad rap you got. You become powerful not because you are special but because you are no longer small. You have been restored to your natural state. This is the directive Ram’s guru gave to him when he was done: ‘I restore you to your natural state”. Then he dispatched him to go and do his thing spreading the word for the timeless lineage of Vedanta in the western world. What is your natural state? The Unborn Self. That is what Ram has done for me, and many of you. It is on offer to all of you. Not to gain anything. Just to return to your natural state of ever-present, unchanging, fearless dignity.
You are not the wounded creature, the small and twisted golem, hiding in the underground lusting after his ‘precious’ ring to give him power. You are the ring of power, the only truly powerful thing in Existence because you give Existence to existence. You do not need anything and nothing of importance can be taken from you.
I want you all to think about actually living like this. Do you? Are you invariably true, totally authentic and fearlessly transparent? If not, why not? What is holding you back? What are you hiding or hiding from?
I brought up a little of my personal story last Sunday not because it’s anything special or because I need to talk about myself. Who cares about my childhood or life story, or about my relationship with James, for that matter? It’s completely unimportant. James and I do great work, we adore each other and like anybody else, we sometimes drive each other crazy. Nobody really cares. So why share ‘private’ information with you? I used to be a naturally private person and did not talk about myself much unless I knew someone well. I also find people who talk a lot about themselves extremely boring. But I wanted to illustrate two important points in doing so.
1. If you are really living as the Self you are not attached to your story and don’t care what is or isn’t known about you as a person. So what if some of it is personal and embarrassing? We all suffer more or less the same indignities and pitfalls of personhood as long as we are identified as one. The real reason I used to care about privacy was I wanted to control what people knew about me because I was afraid I would be judged. There was an ego there with low self-esteem. I was attached to others thinking of me in a good way because I was not convinced of my worth. It’s that simple. It was fear based.
This is the fate of all egos. They are very fragile and also, very dangerous entities causing much suffering. I don’t care anymore. The ego has been relegated to its proper place, which is just a messenger between the outer world, the field of experience, and the inner world, your subjective feeling/thinking world as a person, and of course, as the Self.
We need a functioning positive ego because the person lives in a transactional world, where we need to respond appropriately. But when the ego is given the job of running our entire identity, it becomes negative, like Gollum, because the ego cannot do the job. It’s like promoting the janitor to CEO. Exposing the fraudulent ego is called fearless living. And if freedom from limitation is what you are after, this is what is called negating the fearful egoic doer. Fear and the Self cannot go together.
2. There is no way to live fearlessly as the Self without negating the person and the illusion of doership. It is the key. The sine qua non, of moksa. Remember this French term because there is no good equivalent in English: it literally means without which, nothing. No matter if you have realized the Self or how much of the scripture you have understood and can quote verbatim, you remain in the prison of smallness without full negation of the egoic doer. It is what your freedom depends on.
I told you that before Vedanta and James upended my life, I had worked out a lot. I understood Isvara and the gunas (I did not call them by those terms). I knew how most of the psychological order of existence worked and that it was connected to God, the creator of the Field. I knew that both the person and God were dependent on one unifying factor – Consciousness. Knowing all this was enough to reduce a lot of existential stress. But it was not freedom from limitation.
That was because I did not have a good understanding of the difference between what is real and what is not, and therefore, the doer/doership issue was not understood. And without that, I was still in prison. Why is the egoic doer the one that has to go if you are after moksa? It’s because the egoic doer is the ‘I’ wrongly identified with your personal identity in this world. It means that duality is operative, that there are still binding samskaras, still desire and fear. That is everyone’s biggest problem. All the teachings in Vedanta come down to this.
You are the Self. That is your true nature. Your natural state of being is free and happy. It is not natural to be miserable, which is why everyone is seeking bliss in whatever form. Vedanta tells you why this is so upfront, and why it cannot be any other way. But will you accept it? You may accept it intellectually. But that is not enough. The ego never gives up without a fight.
So the take-away here is – moksa is not about perfecting yourself as a person. There is no need because the person is not real. But if you don’t clean up the jivas act, Self-knowledge is not translating into your life and limitation is still there. As it states in my heading, the tricky part of getting this is that though moksa is about negating your identity as a person, moksa is for the person. As the Self you do not need moksa because you have never been bound. So, if your life is not improving and if you are not happier, there is still a doer in the way, plain and simple. It’s never the fault of the teachings. If perfect satisfaction is elusive or intermittent, you have work to do cleaning up the jiva’s psychological issues, and negating the doer. No way around this.
Carolyn made a statement last Sunday which was very helpful in illustrating this point. Basically she said that yoga is for the preparation of the mind and Self-knowledge is beyond the ego. I think this is a common misunderstanding for inquirers. Yes it’s true the mind needs to be purified and prepared to receive knowledge, and for this, karma yoga, values, qualifications and devotional practice are essential. But jnana yoga or the Isvara/guna/three bodies/five sheaths teachings are not for the Self. So, who are they for?
Why would the Self need teaching? You are the teacher and the taught. There is no ‘beyond the ego’ firstly because the ego is not real. And secondly, beyond is a totally dualistic term because if there is an ego, the ego is the Self. There is no such thing as ‘beyond’ you. You are all there is. See how tricky non-dual thinking is? So all teaching of Vedanta is only for the person to remove the identification with their egoic and separate identity. To give the person a great life free of the prison of ego smallness. I see you got this Carolyn, good for you!
Even if you don’t have all the qualifications for moksa you can realize the Self. It’s logical if you understand the logic. And the logic is not hard intellectually. It is simply this: you can’t be your body or your mind with its volitional and non-volitional thoughts and emotional patterns because they are always changing and known to you. Known to who? There is another factor always present that never changes which is the uninvolved witness or knower. The Self, or Consciousness. You can’t be what you know, right?
OK. Got that. To progress means I must understand that the body mind is a product of the field of experience, my environment or the world. That field is created by a principle greater than the ‘small me’ who has a name and a story, but is really big me, the Self. It’s all me. Creator creation, creature, experience. None of it is possible without me, Consciousness. This creation is there because I see it, not the other way around. Wow, that’s a reversal!
The field, from which my body/mind is inseparable, is intelligently designed and run. It seemingly has a real creator, and this creator is called Isvara or Total mind, and it knows all factors in the field. It is me as the Self but not me as the conceptual person. But we share the same identity, so essentially, God is me. The difference is in our powers of creation: small me only knows my subjective world and can only create my subjective reality. God me takes care of the rest.
The field and my body/mind are a product of three forces which make up everything subtle and gross. These forces have a quirky name, the gunas – satya, clarity revelation, tamas, dense material, dullness, rajas – desire and action. Ok, that’s not hard to grasp. Again, it’s quite logical that the creation is one big program run by certain principles, organized by an impersonal principle, that determines the material and psychological orders of manifest gross and subtle life.
But neither the apparent creator, the creation nor me as a body/mind are actually real. Real defined as we know, as what is always present and unchanging. The creation and creature borrows its intelligence from the Self, Consciousness, which is real because it is the only non-negatable factor. So, if I stick with Consciousness, I’m good. Where’s the problem?
The problem is Self-realization is huge but it’s not moksa, which is freedom from limitation and suffering. Why not, if I get I am the Self? As I said above, there is a very persistent idea in the way, called doership – the egoic me experiencing entity that believes its life story, is hypnotized by separateness or duality, owns things and is convinced it can do something to get what it wants. Plus once you know the doer has to go, doership gets progressively subtler as I advance with self-inquiry. Here we have the ‘infinite approach never arrive’ problem that Matthew coined. No matter how close I seem to get, the ‘target’ (which is me, moksa, btw) it seems to move as much away. Why? I am the sought. It’s the tenth man syndrome.
Duality makes sense to the doer and nonduality does not. To make things worse, nonduality is a both/and not either/or. It is not opposed to duality. Non-duality just releases the mind from hypnosis – the prison of identification with the body/mind, meaning, all objects. Yet, the paradox is you have never been limited, never been born and will never die. Only the body dies. The only solution out of the quandary of the infinite regress loop of mithya is with Self-knowledge.
So what gives here? If the doer is not real why bother with it? Who cares about going to all the trouble of cleaning up its act? It’s such hard work. If it’s not real nor are any of its many problems. But it does exist because you experience it. So why not give it a great life? Duality is cool when you know what it is and only cruel when you don’t. Why not have some real fun? As John said, learn to play, commit to radical gratitude, lighten up and take it easy!
The good news is, as Dave put it so well last Sunday, if you don’t like your experience or know how to change it, Vedanta teaches you the difference between experience and knowledge. This is not taught anywhere else. Most if not all other religious and spiritual paths put spiritual growth as doer/object-based i.e., action and experience-based. Which is guaranteed to keep you firmly behind the bars of smallness. Only Vedanta puts in your hands the keys of the kingdom, the sole valid and independent means of knowledge to change your experience and upgrade your personal story. To change your status in this world through Self-knowledge.
But the bad news is the ego cannot free the ego. And whether you realize it or not, for most inquirers, that’s where Self-realization takes place. And for many, that’s where it remains. You are free as an ego, not as the Self. This is still an improvement on being totally identified as an ego, but it’s not freedom. You are still spinning your wheels in the sand because you cannot ‘do’ your way to moksa.
Clearly, self-inquiry requires dedication to a sadhana, and applying the teachings to your life. This is work. Knowledge will not just fly into your head unless your mind is ready for it and it has a means of getting in there. Think about it. If you want to be a classical pianist or a physicist, how successful will you be if your intellect is dull and you never apply the knowledge, even if you are clever and do study? Purifying your mind by cleaning up your binding patterns and lifestyle won’t magically happen unless you do something about it and change your self-insulting habits. That’s hard work. Contemplating the nondual teachings and applying them is hard work.
The problem even if you are applying the teachings, ‘standing as or in Awareness’ can be done with the ego. It does not make you Awareness because you already are Awareness. You only ever looking at/experiencing your Self. But thanks to how competent Maya is at deluding the mind, you can get stuck in the reflection of the Self in the mirror of your life. We are highly programmed to think dualistically. It’s the cause of our suffering but it’s what we know as normal. Nonduality is our savior and the truth but it’s not normal to a mind hypnotized by duality. Nonduality is highly counter intuitive. There is a very good chance that the doer is reinforced instead of negated in the process. Why is this?
Well, apart from nonduality being counterintuitive, we never stop ‘doing’. It’s impossible. We will all do until the day this body dies. No point in trying. It’s only the ownership of the doing that is the problem, not doing itself. And renouncing that is much subtler than it sounds. I have had the enormous benefit of living with someone who unfailingly responds to life’s demands, i.e., Isvara, with instantaneous total surrender. I have had it modelled for me. And I know how hard it is to live 100% of the time.
Hence karma yoga is the most important tool Vedanta offers us. Without it, jnana yoga, Self-knowledge, will not work. It’s as simple as that. Karma yoga is an essential practice because it works on the doer (the ego), the part of the mind that acts to enjoy results, that owns actions and their results. When you act for results you incur stress before, during and after the action. Karma yoga removes stress by exhausting the fears and desires that produce it. It is burnout insurance.
When we truly surrender the idea of doership, Self-actualization starts to obtain. But it happens in stages.
Two Forms of Karma Yoga
1.) Secular Karma Yoga: Karma yoga with desire.
There is still a doer doing things, even ‘doing’ surrender. Secular karma yoga works for people with lots of desire who want to accomplish worldly goals, who are not into self-inquiry and not going for moksha. A karmi yogi applies karma yoga to get what they want or avoid what they don’t want. But secular karma yoga is also mandatory preparation for entry-level inquirers to minimize the pressure of likes and dislikes. The desire for objects/results is still present, and there are usually several qualifications that need developing, but there is also a strong desire for self-inquiry.
2.) Sacred Karma Yoga: Karma Yoga without Desire
Sacred karma without desire is for more advanced inquirers—people who have developed most of the qualifications for self-inquiry. They have realized that there is nothing to gain by action and are ready for or already engaged in self-inquiry. At this stage, you have given up needing anything. You are not after ‘God’s stuff’. You are after God. It’s not that you no longer have desire, but all desire is in keeping with dharma and directed to the Self. They are ready to surrender everything to the scripture, Isvara, as the boss.
The renunciation of desire happens in three stages:
Step 1: Renunciation of Desire
Taking a stand in Awareness and managing thoughts and emotions through the surrender of results to Isvara in an attitude of gratitude. Consecrating each thought, word, and action on a moment to moment basis and no longer initiating any gratuitous actions. This does not mean that we do not continue to follow our svadharma and do what is dharmic for us, but we do so with karma yoga in the spirit of renunciation. We are no longer chasing anything in the world, and do not require validation for whatever we do. As we have mastered the qualifications for self-inquiry we apply Self-knowledge automatically to discriminate satya, that which is always present and unchanging, from mithya, that which is not always present and always changing.
But though at this stage we know our conditioning does not belong to us, we are not completely free of it either. Unless we understand and practice bhakti yoga and guna management in conjunction with karma yoga, even if we are highly qualified inquirers, we can get stuck here because there is still an ego invested in ‘getting it”. What also tends to happen at this stage is the identification with sattva as ‘enlightenment’. Many inquirers wrongly believe that if they are not experiencing sattva, they are not ‘enlightened’. They forget that all the gunas are objects known to the Self, which is unaffected by all of them.
Step 2: Karma Jnana Sannyas
Through continual discrimination and application of the teachings to our lives, we assimilate the knowledge that we are actually the Self, limitless Awareness, and not the person. It is the full negation of the idea of doership with the knowledge that we can act but Isvara is the only doer. If Self-knowledge has fully removed the ignorance of your true nature and rendered all binding vasanas non-binding, then you know without a doubt that you are the Self and beyond ALL the gunas. This is moksha, direct Self-knowledge.
Direct knowledge is spontaneously discriminating the Self, Satya from mithya without any thought involved. You do not need to take a stand in Awareness because you are Awareness. There is no longer the need for a ‘stander’. At this stage karma yoga is no longer a practice as such, it is just knowledge. However, duality does not disappear once you know what it is. Maya/Macrocosmic ignorance continues even though Self-knowledge has removed personal/microcosmic ignorance.
Step 3: Self-Actualization: Nididhysana
Karma Yoga becomes a different kind of mind management, nididhysana, the transformation of our remaining binding mental/emotional conditioning into devotion to the Self. Nididhysana is managing the mind’s involuntary thoughts as well as our habitual thoughts and feeling patterns, which are bedrock duality and can survive moksa.
Without self-objectivity and mind-management, these patterns can still hijack the mind without a moment’s notice, denying it access to the Self in the form of Self-knowledge. There is nothing inherently wrong with involuntary thoughts, but they tend to immediately morph into actions which are liable to create unwanted karma in the form of obscuring thoughts and emotions. This period can take many years for most inquirers and it requires the continued application of karma jnana sannyas until the jiva identity is fully dismissed.
The final stage of doership renunciation, as I mentioned in my satsang last Sunday, is the renunciation of the one renouncing. It entails cleaning up and letting go of the last vestige of the teachings that you are still identified with, and any doubts that have arisen. For this stage, remember the beautiful metaphor that Ramana uses to describe it:
Much love
Sundari
