James Swartz
2002
Contents
Experience of the Self is Not Enlightenment
There is no Advaita Vedanta
You are That
Cause and Effect
The Five Sheaths
Is Experience Out There?
The Self as Bliss Confusion
Elimination of Unconscious Tendencies is Enlightenment?
Stages of Enlightenment ?
The Stages of Enlightenment
Western spirituality
in the last one hundred and fifty years has seen many expressions of the
impulse to experience and know something ‘higher’ - from the late Victorian New
Thought movements through the recent New Age with its plethora of
quasi-spiritual subcultures. About
thirty-five years ago during the psychedelic revolution in
Predictably none of the ideas and practices
that arrived from the East survived the contact with Western culture in their
original form, not that the form in which they arrived was particularly
'original,’ although they seemed quite ancient and authentic to Westerners
easily awed by the exotic. Indeed many
were hybrids of earlier and purer traditions that had already been corrupted in
their native habitats. Two related but
separate traditions, Yoga and Vedanta, arrived already corrupted.
Both claim to be ‘liberation’ philosophies,
equally able to free the soul from the suffering that is the hallmark of life
in an uncertain world. Both are rooted
in the Upanishads, the oldest most authoritative extant texts on the nature the
cosmos, the individual, and the Divine.
Yoga promises an experience of oneness of the individual soul with God.
To gain this experience certain practices are required which vary
depending on the person prescribing them.
Vedanta contends that human beings find
themselves limited in many ways and continually strive to rid themselves of
limitation. People pursue wealth,
pleasure, and merit because they believe it will free them from all manner of
physical, temporal and psychological problems.
Vedanta presents freedom from
limitation as the most desirable goal of human life.
The Upanishads,[1]
the source of Vedanta,[2]
say that before this creation was, the self, limitless being, was. It further says that this self continues to
exist outside of time and is therefore eternal.
And it states that no action one can perform will ‘gain’[3]
this self, even though it is an ever-present reality... because actions are
limited while the self is unlimited.
Therefore it is at odds with Yoga on this issue. The discovery that one is the limitless self
is presented as liberation or enlightenment by Vedanta.
One of the erroneous notions about Vedanta, which came about
through a confusion of its teaching with the doctrines of Yoga, is the idea
that Vedanta is a way to experience the self.
Vedanta contends that ours is a non-dual reality in which everything that
exists is the self, including everything that seems to be ‘not me,’ meaning
everything experienceable. If this is
true then any and all experience is already the self. From this standpoint the Yoga doctrine that
one needs to engage in certain practices
like arresting the thoughts to produce a ‘self’ experience or ‘enter the
state of the self’ is unnecessary and, in fact, redundant. The problem, according to Vedanta, is not that
discrete experiences of oneness are available or unavailable but that the
individual does not know that he or she is already the self...and as mentioned,
that whatever experience is happening is the self. So the
problem can only be solved by knowing what the self is...and knowing that I am
it.
Finally, if this is a non-dual reality[4]
and enlightenment is the experience of oneness with the self, how does one
explain the existence of the experiencer since experience requires an
experiencer and an object of experience...an obviously dualistic
condition? The self is not going to be
experiencing itself because it is itself.
Or if it is, it does not need an agent, were an agent capable of
experiencing it[5]...which
puts paid to the very idea of self experience as an experience unique from any
other. The only other candidate for the
position is the ego, the individual, and Vedanta says that if it exists it is
the self already...so its desire to experience itself is merely the product of
ignorance...and can be profitably dismissed.
We cannot dismiss the Yoga view completely because untold
millions of truthful persons have ‘experienced’ the self over tens of thousands
of years so we need to look for a reasonable explanation for this
phenomenon. One possible explanation
lies in the imprecise use of language.
It may be that ‘the experience of the self’ is actually a shift from the
individual’s point of view to the self’s...in which case it would be more
accurate to say that the self experiences the ego, which is how it actually
is. Because the shift is so subtle and
language evolved in the experiential world, it is ill equipped to describe this
shift accurately so it is forced to formulate the new vision in terms of an
ego’s experience of an object.
Another reasonable explanation for the idea of self
experience as liberation is the situation where the ego, the subject, experiences the reflection of the self in a clear
mind, the object, and takes the reflection of the self for the self...and
declares this experience liberation.[6] The problem with the idea of enlightenment as
self experience is that experience changes... so there will be no ‘permanent
experience.’ This accounts for the
‘fallen yogi’ phenomenon where the experience of the self disappears and with
it the notion that one is one with the Self.
Or, worse...the experience disappears but the notion that one is the
self is retained leaving a very unhappy person since the ‘experience of the
self’ is pure pleasure.
A second and related misconception is that Vedanta is merely
an ‘intellectual’ appreciation of the Self, not a deep and abiding experience
as is promised by the samadhis of Yoga and many modern gurus. According to Vedanta any deep and abiding
experience would naturally be the Self but so would a superficial and
transitory experience. Why? Because in a non-dual reality…which this
certainly is…any and all experience could only be the Self experiencing the
Self. When I brush my teeth it is the
Self (apparently) brushing the Self. I
say, ‘apparent’ because all experience is apparent, the conspiracy between an
apparent subject and an apparent object.
It could only be apparent because the Self is non-dual unborn
consciousness and everything is it…so there is not actually anything going on
at all. Or as Vedanta says, “Nothing
ever happens.” And since Vedanta says
that there are not two selves…one ego or ‘lower’ self and one egoless or
‘higher’ self, but only one self with apparent ignorance or apparent knowledge
of what it is…the idea that an ego, an individual, can somehow ‘experience the
non-dual Self’ as a discrete experience is plainly incorrect.
The misunderstanding here lies in the idea that there are
two kinds of knowledge: experiential (no knowledge) and intellectual. But actually, since all knowledge takes place
in the intellect, including the absence of knowledge, both knowledge and
ignorance are only going to be ‘intellectual.’
The ‘I’ is never interested in knowledge or no-knowledge since it is the
illuminator of both…and therefore free of both.
Furthermore, if the Self were an experience and the problem of Self
recognition was due to ignorance of the nature of the Self as Vedanta contends,
how could an experience erase the ignorance…except temporarily as happens in
various fleeting samadhis and epiphanies?
And experience, no matter how ‘non-dual’ it is (and how long it goes
on), does not erase thought patterns…as evidenced by the fact literally
millions of people who have ‘experienced’ non-duality continue to think of
themselves as limited beings when the experience wears off. If the experience of non-duality were the
solution to the spiritual search no one who had had it would continue to search
for ‘permanent’ or ‘total’ enlightenment.
The spiritual world today is little more than tens of thousands of people
who have experienced the Self but who remain locked in their concepts of who
they are.
However, analysis of experience, shallow or deep, leading to
the discovery that any and all experience is nothing but one’s Self, could
remove the ‘intellectual’ notion that experience was superior to
knowledge. After all, someone who strives for the experience of
oneness does so because he or she holds an ‘intellectual’ conviction that
experience is the only path to enlightenment. If he or she is going to dismiss the very
reasonable idea that you can only get what you already have through
understanding that you have it, he or she will have to dismiss as merely
‘intellectual’ the much more unreasonable notion that the Self is only
available through a particular non-dual experience.
In fact, Vedanta has no quarrel with experience. Experience is a universal experience. And the ‘experience of non-duality’ gives a
glimpse of the Self which can be an aid to understanding. Vedanta
merely says that experience as such is unconscious, incapable of
delivering knowledge. For knowledge to
happen whether it is based on experience or inference there must be a conscious factor other than experience that recognizes
experience for what it is. This is
why enlightenment is not a permanent experience of the Self but is instead the
‘experiential’ (as opposed to ‘theoretical’) understanding that one is the
Self.
Another corruption of Vedanta exported to the West is the
idea that Vedanta is a philosophy or school of thought. A school of thought is always the ideas of a
given person or persons and is therefore subject to dispute. If an idea is to be accepted as a fact, not
merely a belief or an opinion, it needs to be verified by a legitimate means of
knowledge. But the subject matter of
Vedanta, the Self, is not available by direct perception or inference since it
is outside time and space, the field in which the senses and mind operate. And because human beings only have three
means of knowledge (perception, inference and testimony) and these can only be
used to know objects, how can the Self, the subject (which cannot be
objectified) and the one who is wielding the means of knowledge, be known
through them? So the subject matter of
Vedanta, the Self, cannot be a school of thought.
Vedanta looks like a school of thought,
however, because it is comprised of a body of ideas that originated in the
Vedas. People to whom the Self had never
been revealed through the teachings of Vedanta assumed that it was just another
philosophy and attributed differing interpretations to different teachers and
so it became several schools of thought...for them. Had these people understood that Vedanta was
simply a means for knowing the Self, this misconception would not have arisen.
A means of knowledge is not knowledge. It will not remain
once the object to be known is known. So
study of its ideas and the retention of them as beliefs or opinions is not
appropriate to the actual purpose of Vedanta.
Philosophies like existentialism, on the other hand, are subject to
modification and remain in the realm of ideas as long as they serve some
purpose. Vedanta, a means of knowledge
that works, will never be modified because it already performs its function
perfectly. Nor will it be forgotten
because the human mind forever needs to rid itself of its sense of
limitation.
The words Advaita
Vedanta, like the word Hinduism,[7]
are a misnomer because they imply other Vedantas. The word ‘Advaita’
means non-dual and implies the concept of duality. Indeed, those who view Vedanta as a school of
thought speak of Dwaita Vedanta,
dualistic Vedanta, VishistAdvaita
Vedanta, qualified non-dualism, and even Bhakti
Vedanta, devotional Vedanta. Or they
compare it with philosophies or religions that present similar ideas.
The word ‘Advaita’
is not an adjective meant to modify a particular type of Vedanta but a word
that describes the nature of the Self.
Keeping in mind that words are always symbols, although non-dual implies
dual, it is more appropriate to refer to the Self as non-dual than as one since
one is a number that implies two, many, and even zero, nothing. Furthermore, it would be inappropriate to
label Vedanta, which is merely a means of knowledge, as non-dual because it is
in fact a dualistic device operating in a dualistic situation, one that
ironically delivers non-dual knowledge.
The ultimate source of Vedanta’s teachings
are the Upanishads, documents appended to the concluding portion of each
Veda. In fact the word Vedanta is a
compound. Veda means knowledge and anta
means end. On an exoteric level the term indicates the Upanishads, the texts
containing its seed teachings, because they are situated at the end of each
Veda. On the esoteric level, it means
the non-dual knowledge that ends the belief in oneself
as a
limited being. Because of the cryptic
nature of the Upanishad mantras, the
subtle nature of the subject matter, the Self, and the fact that a single
Sanskrit word often has many possible meanings, it is possible to interpret the
statements of the Upanishad differently.
Over the course of time there have been a number of great teachers of
Vedanta who interpreted the statements of the Upanishads in different
ways. But this does not amount to
different schools of thought because all of them accepted Vedanta as a means of
Self knowledge.
Although Vedanta is often erroneously accused of being an
intellectual discipline, it operates differently from them because it does not leave concepts behind in the mind
once it has been handled by a teacher.
It uses concepts to destroy false concepts about the nature of the
Self. And in the process both the
correct idea and the erroneous idea disappear into the vision of oneself as the
Self. Since the emphasis is on removal
of doubt, any interpretation of a mantra can be applied to remove the doubt,
irrespective of other interpretations.
For a given person one interpretation may be appropriate while the same
interpretation may be inappropriate for another because he or she entertains a
different doubt or formulates the doubt in a different way. Irrespective of the interpretation, Vedanta
acts as a means of knowledge if it removes one’s ignorance of one’s limitless
nature.
If I want to see an object I need only use my eyes. If my ears do not hear the object while my
eyes are seeing it their testimony does not invalidate what my eyes see. If I want to gain the knowledge of my Self I
need to dispassionately expose myself to the teachings of Vedanta to see
whether or not what it says is true.
Because they are concerned with a different reality, perceptions and
inferences about things in the world do not in any way invalidate the vision of
Vedanta.
The vision of Vedanta is an equation of the identity between the individual and God. God is defined in Vedanta as everything that
is. This vision of non-duality, which
Yoga claims to achieve through certain disciplines, is not contradicted by
direct perception or by inference. Although
it is erroneously believed that the self can be experienced, it cannot. Why?
Because the experiencing instrument, the ego/mind, can only know
objects. What yogis claim to be a direct
perception or experience of the self is the ego seeing the reflection of the
Self in a pure mind and not the self, since the Self is subtler than the mind
and ego.
Vedanta is not a salvation theology that
requires an individual to change.
According to it, the soul, the individual is perfect and already
free. So the release of the individual
from his or her feeling of limitation is the result of understanding that the
individual and God share the same nature, limitless awareness. All the other teachings of Vedanta are only
meant to prove this equation between man and God. Or, as a great mystic who seemed to have the
vision of Vedanta once proclaimed, “I and my Father are one.” The ‘God’ Vedanta envisions is not a bearded
old man in the heavens.
The heart of Vedanta is a number of teaching
methods, called prakriyas, found in
the Upanishads and used by the teachers of the tradition to communicate the
vision of non-duality. If a system of
philosophy is built up out of these teachings it defeats the purpose of
Vedanta.
Vedanta does not try to prove that the self
exists because the only self evident self existent thing in reality is
oneself. Everything that is known is
known only because the self, the I, is self-evident awareness. Vedanta
concentrates only on removing the ignorance that keeps one from appreciating
oneself as self-evident awareness. Self knowledge is the most valuable
knowledge one can gain because it shows that while everything depends on you,
you depend on nothing. This
realization is called liberation.
The
purpose: to show that the self is limitless and that the world is not separate
from it.
In this important teaching God is presented as the cause of
the universe, “that from which everything comes and that to which it returns”
to quote the Upanishad. Additionally,
God is presented as eternal awareness, what always exists and never changes.
The world is seen as an effect of which God is the cause. But the world is of a slightly different
order of reality from God. In a famous
text, the Vacarambhana Sruti, the universe is not said to
exist, nor is it said not to exist. What
kind of existence does it enjoy then?
According to the scripture it has an apparent and dependent existence. The
individual’s body and mind are within the creation and therefore enjoy this
peculiar status, but the individual itself is eternal awareness, non-separate
from God, and therefore the reality of everything.
If the effect is just the cause in a
particular form, then the cause and the effect are one. For example, although there are many
different ornaments made of gold, from the standpoint of the gold they are all
the same. If everything in the universe
is fashioned by a single cause, limitless awareness, then everything in the
universe is limitless awareness.
Therefore if I know the essence of any one thing it is as good as
knowing the essence of every other thing.
To know salt water I needn’t drink the seven seas; I need only take a
sip from one. The realization, let’s say
recognition, I am limitless awareness
and the whole universe is not separate from me even though I am separate from
it is the result of this teaching.
This recognition of myself as the whole removes my view of myself as
limited and incomplete and is called liberation from suffering.
The
purpose: to point out that the invariable awareness in the three universal
states of experience is the self.
Another important teaching employed in Vedanta[8] is
an analysis of the three states of experience: waking, dream and sleep. In this
analysis, which is based on experience, the scripture notes that the waker and
waking world is absent in both dream and sleep. The dreamer and the dream world
is absent in both waking and sleep. In sleep the dreamer and the waker and
their respective worlds are absent. Then
it reasons that If the I, the self, is real, meaning eternally existent, it
cannot relinquish its status at any time.
Yet, experience shows that these three ‘I’s’ appear and disappear. That most of us consider ourselves to be the
entities that experience the waking state
and
dream states and that we consider
ourselves to be real is incorrect
according to this analysis because as
wakers, dreamers, and sleepers we continually relinquish our existential status.
Furthermore, what is intrinsic to an object should be
present in the object as long as the object exists. If it is not present, then it is an
incidental attribute. For example, in
the case of a crystal assuming the color of a nearby object, the color is
incidental. If it were inherent in the
crystal it would not disappear when the nearby object is removed.
If perception, which is a waking and dream
state attribute, were native to the self it would exist in the deep sleep
state. But the subject-object
relationship necessary for perception is absent in deep sleep, yet the self
does not cease to exist.
If the self has no attributes is it
non-existent? It cannot be non-existent
because non-existence is a concept requiring a subject, someone who knows. Investigation of the knower leads us to
conclude that the knower is the self.
And the self’s nature is awareness, a view supported by the scripture.
Awareness is present in all states of
experience, although ego consciousness, is absent in the deep sleep state. When scripture describes the self as
attribute-free it means that the nature of the self is awareness because
awareness is the only thing free of attributes.
Attributes, such as a sense of doership and enjoyership, are incidental
because they depend on the state in which one finds oneself.
Is there a world without someone to see it? No, if that someone is the ego, a
non-essential attribute of the self. The
existence of the objective world does not depend on the existence of any individual
but on impersonal awareness. It cannot
be said to exist if it is not known to exist.
To say that it exists independently of awareness is meaningless. Because the self is awareness it is limitless
and the world, which depends on the subject-object relationship, is only an
apparent reality, neither completely existent, nor completely
non-existent.
The Five Sheaths
The purpose: to point out the universal
errors in self understanding that occur at each of the five levels of
experience.
The non-apprehension of the self as oneself gives rise to
five misconceptions about its nature.
These misconceptions are called sheaths because they apparently hide the
self and need to be removed if the self is to be apprehended as it is.
The most obvious misunderstanding we
entertain about ourselves is that we are our gross bodies. The notions that ‘I am mortal,’ ‘I am fat,’ I
am male/female’ indicate an association of the ‘I’ with the physical. Association of the ‘I’ with the
physiological systems causes one to say, ‘I am hungry,’ ‘I am thirsty,’ when in
fact the I, awareness, does not suffer these sensations. The universal statements, “I am happy,’ ‘I am
sad,’ show that the I is taken to be the emotional body. When the intellect entertains the idea ‘I am
a doer,’ ‘I am a knower’ it reinforces the belief in oneself as the body or
mind. This idea is untrue because the
self is non-dual actionless awareness.
Finally, the I is commonly associated with enjoyment, the state of
feeling good, which motivates endless activities. The self is not a feel good ‘state.’ It needn’t feel good because it is good, in
the sense of what is always auspicious.
So the sense of enjoyership is also illegitimate.
The application of this teaching follows a
certain type of logic. First the self is
introduced as the gross body, a common belief.
Then it is shown that there is another subtler body, the feelings and
emotions, which also are considered to be oneself. When one’s feelings are hurt one will
instinctively say, “I was hurt by what she said.” This ‘self’ negates the previous self because
for a self to be a self it cannot be two, modern theories of multiple
personalities notwithstanding. The word
‘self’ means essence, that which is not made up of parts. Once the belief in oneself as the physical
body is dropped and one accepts oneself as the emotional body, the teaching
brings in the intellect ‘self’ which shows up in experience as the concept ‘I
am the doer’...which is meant to remove the notion that one is only the
feelings and emotions. When one can see
that he or she thinks of his or herself as a doer and understands the
limitation inherent in that concept, the idea of the bliss body is introduced. The ‘bliss body’ is responsible for pleasure
and its companion concept ‘I am an enjoyer.’
The doer will give way to the enjoyer in every case because doing is for
the sake of enjoying but enjoying is not
for the sake of doing. Finally,
the self is introduced as the source of bliss.
Thus by tracing the ‘I’ concept from the gross to the subtle one is led
to the self, the fundamental ‘I’. The
realization of the whole and complete ‘I’ negates all the lesser selves,
meaning one lets go of one’s belief in oneself as them and embraces the
unlimited identity.
The teaching works when it becomes clear
that the association of the ‘I’ with these five basic but conflicting concepts
is absurd, since we know experientially that we are only one being, a view
supported by scripture. In fact one need
not rigidly employ this model when inquiring into the self because discovery of
the association in one’s mind of the ‘I’ with many conflicting ideas should be
enough to encourage one to abandon all self concepts. The renunciation of limiting self concepts is
tantamount to ‘gaining’ or ‘realizing’ the self exists in the absence of all
concepts.
One corruption of Vedanta related to this
teaching is the idea that the ‘sheaths’ actually cover the self and therefore a
‘transcendental’ technique such as stopping the mind to experientially gain
access to the self is required. Even if
such techniques work, one would only enjoy an experience. And we know from experience that experience
is by nature temporary...so no lasting solution to the problem of limitation
would result. In fact, because experience is temporary,
‘experience of the self’ as distinct from everyday experience just produces
frustration in the experiencer, the ego. To gain a permanent ‘experience’ of the self,
one need only see that all experience is the self. If experience is gained by knowledge one need
not suffer the anxiety of trying to ‘maintain’ it, a common concern of
meditators following the path of Yoga.
One of the problems with the experiential
view of life, as opposed to the
analytical view, is that experience always seems to be separate from the
experiencer. But is it? If a thousand people experience one man
giving a lecture in a large auditorium and they experienced him at the point at
which he was standing, all the minds hovering around experiencing would
interfere with each other's experience and nobody would experience the man as
he was. But experience is completely
subjective. Stimuli from the man enter
the senses and drop into the mind, causing the mind to take the form of the
stimuli and this is where our man is located.
So how far is the self from experience? Is there a gap, perhaps a tunnel down which
the self must travel from its world to the world of experience? There is not.
In fact experience is the self taking form like the ocean takes the form
of waves. If I’m looking for the self as
an object, a transcendental experience, for example, or taking the experience
of the self as an object, I am deluded because whatever experience I’m having
is nothing but me. This, however, does not mean that experience in anyway invalidates or
validates me because it depends on me but I do not depend on it.
If Vedanta were a philosophical school of thought all that
would be required to grasp it would be that one memorize the concepts. Whatever ignorance about the nature of
oneself was in place before one’s study began would remain...with a new layer
of ideas sitting on top of it. But
because it is a means of knowledge it needs a teacher, someone ‘abiding’[9] as
the Self who can skillfully wield the teachings according to the traditional
methods. And, like advanced studies in
worldly subjects, the person on whom the teachings are wielded needs to be
qualified or prepared to receive the teachings.[10] If the teacher does not know who he or she
is, or his or her ‘enlightenment’[11]
is formulated in terms of experience, then all he or she can do is present the
Self as an object to be attained and recommend certain practices which he or
she believes will give the student access to the self. Because it is a means of knowledge Vedanta is
not a practice that will bring about ‘experience of the self,’ nor is it a
theory about the existence of transcendental ‘state.’ It’s subject matter is awareness and because
awareness is the content or essence of every experience, Vedanta need only reveal the self to grant one permanent self
experience...since there is nothing more permanent than oneself. Discrete experiences come and go but the ‘I,’
the self, precedes, pervades and succeeds every experience. The ‘access’ to the self that Vedanta
provides is in terms of the removal of ignorance and not in terms of a
mechanical technique like arresting the mind.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t
make it drink. While a teacher is
necessary because one cannot apply the prakriyas
on oneself merely by studying the ancient texts, the teacher cannot willy-nilly
grant enlightenment to any qualified aspirant simply by unfolding the
teachings. Because ignorance is
tenacious the student needs to ‘practice knowledge.’
The ‘coming down’ or ‘falling back’ that one suffers on
experiential paths like Yoga also occurs in Vedanta. Understanding the teaching and seeing how the
teacher wields it allows the self inquirer to apply the appropriate teaching to
the mind as needed outside the teaching situation, until every last vestige of
ignorance is destroyed.
Because life in this world without the understanding of
oneself as limitless awareness involves considerable suffering, human beings
universally want to feel good. This
craving has created the belief that there is an experienceable ‘state of permanent
bliss,’ ananda, that is available through
certain practices. This belief stems
from an incorrect understanding of the word ‘ananta,’ which is used by the Upanishad to describe the self. Ananta
is invariably mistranslated as ‘bliss’ when the actual meaning is
limitlessness. ‘Anta’ means end and ‘a’
is a negative meaning ‘not’ so the word means ‘what doesn’t end.’ So the actual meaning of the word is the
self, awareness.
“The light knows the darkness but the
darkness does not know the light.” Like all
experience, bliss, which is produced when the mind is temporarily free of fear
and craving, is unconscious. It does not
know the self. But it is known and
experienced because the self, awareness, illumines it. The best one can do with the word bliss is to
see it as a symbol of the self, a statement that the self is full, a partless
whole. When someone who has been
suffering the changes in the body mind initially wakes up to the self, the self
seems to ‘feel’ very good. But the
‘feeling,’ which is an interpretation by the mind, is not the presence of a
positive self ‘state’ but simply the appreciation of the absence of
change. As one abides as the self over
time and the memory of suffering diminishes, the feeling of bliss gradually
dissolves into non-dual partless wholeness.
As the self I have no need to
feel good because I am good, meaning I am the essence of every experience.
When self realization is touted as the
‘experience of limitless bliss’ it is usually believed that this self bliss is
infinitely superior to the transitory blisses one encounters in daily
life. But the scripture says that any
experience of bliss, whether it is born of sensory experience, the discovery of
some unknown object, or spiritual practices such as Yoga, it is just the
fullness and limitlessness of the self reflecting in the body/mind.
The recognition of this fact removes the
belief in oneself as unhappy, limited and mortal.
Another ill-considered belief enjoying
considerable currency in the modern spiritual world is the idea that self
knowledge is intellectual and that self realization is ‘experiential.’ Because of this confusion it is thought that
the study of the scripture is merely for knowledge while other practices, like
the samadhis of Yoga, are for
practical, ‘experiential’ enlightenment.
This confusion between knowledge and
experiential realization is caused by not recognizing the invariable presence
of the self in all situations. If the
self is always present and available, the scripture wielded by the self in the
form of a teacher is the most direct way of ‘experiencing the self’ because it
reveals the nature of the self. And if only knowledge sets one free because
ignorance is the problem, a technique that is meant to give ‘experience’ of the
self would in fact be indirect realization since the experience would have to
be converted into knowledge for it to last.
The absurdity of the experiential view is apparent when we consider that
whatever experience one is having at any time is the self...but the self is not
an experience.
Knowledge is only direct or indirect. Direct knowledge arises simultaneously with
perception. Indirect knowledge is
inference. I see smoke and infer
fire. The derogatory adjective
‘intellectual’ is completely unwarranted unless there are other kinds of
knowledge like physical, emotional, intuitive, etc. In fact all knowledge is ‘intellectual’
because the intellect is the only instrument capable of knowing. Because it is the product of unconscious
impersonal forces, a feeling or an intuition is not self-knowing. It becomes known because the self illumines
the intellect in which feelings and thoughts arise.
Usage shows that what is actually meant by the word
‘intellectual’ is knowledge not backed by experience. A person can intellectually know what love is
without ever having been in love. But
the self is not an experience like love.
If I exist I am the self so I am not short of self experience. Therefore the need to experience myself is
illegitmate and I need another way, knowledge, to gain the ‘experience’ that I
already have. The many seekers of self experience that eventually become
disillusioned because they are unable to obtain a permanent experience of the
self need to convert their quest for experience into a quest for understanding
if they wish to free themselves from bondage to their attachment to
experience...which prevents them from enlightenment.
The idea that self knowledge can be gained in four different
ways is a corruption that took place in
That one can gain self knowledge through
action is an obvious absurdity because knowledge requires a means and action is
not a valid means of knowledge. In fact action to gain something someone
already has is motivated by ignorance.
Rather than erase one’s ignorance of oneself, it will only serve to
reinforce the ill-considered belief in oneself as a doer of ‘selfless’ action, a
devotee of God, or a knower of truth...all egoic identities.
The Vedas actually only prescribe two
lifestyles relevant to the quest for liberation; that of the householder and
that of the renunciate. The renunciate
pursues self knowledge exclusively and has no obligatory duties. The householder is enjoined to perform action
in a certain spirit to prepare his or her mind for self knowledge.
If someone thinks of his or herself as a
devotee exclusively, this identity is not warranted because devotional
practices like pujas, chanting, and meditation/prayer are all karmas, activities. So, in fact this person is just a karma yogi, a doer of ritualistic
actions. Additionally, devotion is not a
quality unique to any individual or path but is found in anyone pursuing a
spiritual goal. One does not pursue self
knowledge or self experience without devotion, for example. So the idea of devotion as a particular path
is not found in the Vedas.
Although not found in the Vedas proper, the
idea of integral yoga became associated with Vedanta in the last century
primarily through the writings of Sri Aurobindo. According to this view, because the subtle
body has three inner centers, the mind (emotions/feelings), intellect, and ego
which are often in conflict, three ‘techniques’ are necessary to fuse it into
an instrument capable of knowing the self and retaining that knowledge
permanently. Devotional practice is
meant to be useful in transforming gross emotions into devotion for God who is
non-separate from the self. Action yoga
is helpful in identifying ego and wearing away its concept of itself as a
doer. And the practice of knowledge
trains the mind to think from the Self’s point of view, rather than the ego’s,
eventually harmonizing the individual with the natural order of things, thus
reducing stress and conflict. At best
this view is helpful in preparing the mind for self knowledge but it does not,
for the reasons mentioned above, qualify as a valid means of self knowledge.
One of the most popular and misguided views at the heart of
Yoga doctrine[12]
that became associated with Vedanta is the idea that liberation is the
elimination of all thoughts in the mind.
This idea came about because the scripture describes the self as thought
free and because experientially many epiphanies occur when the mind is
temporarily arrested in the waking state.
But if a thought-free mind was
liberation everyone would already be enlightened...because who has not slept? Even between two thoughts there is a tiny
gap, an absence of thought. If absence
of thought for a split second is not enlightenment, absence of thought for an
hour or two is not going to amount to the liberating knowledge ‘I am limitless
awareness.’ Realistically, the idea
that no thought is enlightenment means that there is no such thing as
enlightenment. Finally, if one is
enlightened only when the mind is thought-free, what happens to enlightenment
when the mind begins to think? The mind
is not going to free itself of thought because it is not capable of knowing
that thought is a problem. So someone
else would have to do it. The only
someone capable of removing the thoughts would be the self but the self is
already free of thoughts so there would be no reason for it to destroy the
mind. From its non-dual point of view
although the mind is a lesser order of reality it is still the self and
therefore not a threat.
Because enlightenment is the nature of the self the idea
that no mind is enlightenment implies a duality between the self and
thought. That the self does not exist
when the mind exists means that the self and the mind enjoy the same order of
reality like a table and a chair. But
this is untrue. If one exists only in
the absence of the other they enjoy the same order of reality, like illness and
health. But does the existence of
thought deny the existence of oneself?
Is there thought without you? In
fact thoughts come out of you but you are not just a thought. They depend on you but you do not depend on
them. So whether they are present or
absent you, the ever-free ever-present self, can always be directly known.
The thoughts and feelings in the mind are not
self-generating but are the effects of subtle causes called vasanas, ‘sub’ or unconscious tendencies
accumulated from past experience. The
sum total of these tendencies is often said to be the individual. And since they are the cause of all the
individual’s habits they are prior to the individual and therefore bind the
individual to a repetitive cycle of experience.
To free oneself of this bondage it is believed that the vasanas must be completely
exhausted. Since there are no longer any
tendencies to constitute an individual or to keep the individual together it is
believed that the individual dissolves and the self, which is what remains, is
realized by default. But if the
individual is gone who is there to realize the self? The self obviously does not need to realize
anything because it is already realized.
A second problem with this theory is that nobody knows how
many vasanas are stored in the
unconscious, perhaps billions or more, so it might take millions of lifetimes
to exhaust them. A third is that in a
non-dual reality there are not two separate principles, the self and the vasanas.
If the self alone exists as scripture says, and the vasanas exist, they would only exist as the self. In other words they would be dependent for
their reality on the self, just as a clay pot is dependent on clay for its
reality. Anything that depends on
something else for its existence is not real.
Experienciable, yes, but not real, meaning unchanging. If vasanas
are the self but the self is not the vasanas,
it is already free of them and no work needs to be done to ‘gain’ the self.
But if
enlightenment is the knowledge “I am the self, limitless awareness,” this
knowledge would necessarily take place in the mind. Furthermore, if the mind were excessively
disturbed by thoughts and feelings in the form of likes and dislikes and these
likes and dislikes, fears and desires, were conscious effects of which the vasanas were the cause, as scripture
states, then the mind could be brought to a clear, calm state, by exhausting
the vasanas disturbing it...making it
fit for knowledge. Therefore, vasana
exhaustion is useful to prepare the mind for self knowledge but is not
tantamount to enlightenment.
If the problem is ignorance and enlightenment
is the understanding backed by experience that I am limitless, to say that
there are stages of enlightenment is like saying that a woman is a little bit
pregnant. Contrary to popular belief no
enlightened person[13]
is more or less enlightened than any other because the self is one unchanging
awareness.
Then how does one account for the apparent
differences in understanding and experience that one sees from one enlightened
being to another? There is no question
of enlightenment from the self’s point of view because there is no
ignorance. And because the self is
non-dual there is no experience in it.
But the self is capable of creating the appearance of duality. Just as a spider is both the substance of its
web and the intelligence that shapes it, the self appears as the world and
shapes the individual entities in it.
What is called experience is the self functioning through the various
entities (plant, animal and human) just as electricity functions through
various appliances. Expressing through a
bulb it produces light, through a heater heat, and through a radio sound. Though the manifestations are superficially
different all are just electricity transformed by its contact with the
appliance.
There are no ‘enlightened beings’ because there
is only one formless self. So when knowledge destroys a person’s sense
of individuality, the individual ‘becomes’ the self by default. The ‘becoming’ is not a physical change or
the experiential removal of the individual.
It is a change in understanding. Just as knowledge of the nature of a mirage
will prevent one from taking it to be water, the knowledge that I am the self
allows one to understand that the experiencer, the individual, is only an
apparent, not a real self.
An ‘enlightened being’ is just the self functioning through
a mind whose self ignorance has been removed.
But the removal of self ignorance does not automatically remove the vasanas in the mind although it
eventually renders them non-binding since they bind only because of ignorance. Since from the self’s point of view all the vasanas are known to be only the self,
it has no preferences as to the type of vasana
it illumines. Therefore it works through
the existing vasanas. Because the vasanas are the cause of the mind’s energy, attitudes and opinions,
ignorance and knowledge and every mind has unique and varied experiences, the
self seems to be unique and varied. This
‘seeming’ is caused by lack of discrimination, the power to separate the real
from the experiential, so that an
indiscriminate person will wrongly assume that there are many types of
enlightened beings and many stages of enlightenment.
(1) Endarkenment
Nonetheless, from the individual’s point of view there are
three ‘stages of enlightenment.’ The
first stage might well be called ‘endarkenment.’ We come into this life experiencing our
limitlessness and oneness with everything but, because the intellect has yet to
develop, we do not understand what we are experiencing. When the intellect does develop it is trained
to think of the self as a limited, incomplete, inadequate creature and
encouraged to solve the problem of inadequacy by picking up experience in
life. At a certain point, the individual
comes to realize that no matter how much experience he or she can garner, the
experienced objects and activities do not do the job. This is usually an unpleasant realization,
often resulting in a profound disillusionment with life and is frequently
referred to as the ‘dark night of the soul’ in religious literature or ‘hitting
bottom’ in popular culture.
Most react to this existential crisis by sinking into
distracting habits, mind numbing substances and/or frivolous entertainments,
but for unknown reasons a few begin to enjoy a variety of peculiar and
invariably confusing religious or
spiritual experiences that lead them to the idea of God or some sort of ‘inner
light’ or ‘higher state.’ And at some point
during this period the person becomes convinced that he or she can find happiness
‘within’ or in some relationship with God.
(2) Self
Realization/Self Inquiry
The second stage might be termed the ‘seeking’ or ‘questing’
phase and usually heads off in two apparently separate directions. The religious road leads to the development
of a personal relationship with God who is conceived as a pure and perfect
someone other than one’s self. The idea
of the self as inadequate, incomplete, and separate is retained and often
conceived of as corrupted by sin.
Salvation is meant to lie in invoking the grace of God through prayer
and the study of scripture and working hard here on earth for a place in the
‘promised land,’ a heaven far from this veil of tears which can only be
accessed by relinquishing the physical body.
The religious life offers a positive alternative to the belief in the
world as a source of meaning.
The other branch of the road leads in a less doctrinal and belief-laden direction into the experience of the ‘inner’ world and an investigation of the self. In its worldly form it may incline one to the study of psychology but in its ‘spiritual’ form the person experiences epiphanies, fleeting samadhis, satoris