Dear James,

I went along to Arshavidya in West Kensington here in London to hear Swami Dayananda Sarawasati give three talks entitled Dharma or Discord last week. I had remembered the name from your site and found some excerpts from talks on You Tube which were so lucid I really felt I had to go and listen. I really liked this man. There is a certain sort of clarity about him and a beautiful sense of humour that really touched me. 

On the morning after the second talk I woke up from a very vivid dream in which I was a little kid playing with my friends in the garden and conducting a game in which we would go and look for animals.  I'm very surprised to see almost immediately in front of us, on the raised bed we're standing beside, a little creature like a miniature badger standing on its haunches. I'm surprised because I hadn't expected that a real and strange animal would immediately answer a call that didn't really expect any answer. Then I am totally dumbfounded as the badger animal is immediately followed by the most incredible awesome elephant like creature (elephant is about the nearest word, but it wasn't an elephant, it had no trunk it was an unparalleled animal) about five feet long and three feet tall and a dazzling rich pristine white, cream colour and walking directly towards me on the raised bed and smiling at me with a sort of unconditional approval and recognition the gaze ineluctably intelligent. This animal is untouched royal regal completely self contained yet totally at home in this world and he is looking at me  as if I also was the lord of creation, I got out of bed actually feeling good, which is a unique event in itself.

I have had many dreams over the years in which a significant animal appears but almost always it is a real animal like a dog or a horse and the animal is in bad shape and the feeling is that it's because I have been mistreating it even though this animal has a beautiful friendly spirit.  This was the same type of dream but the animal is superb and untouchable and totally unique and knows me through and through even though I have never even been aware of its existence before.

The reason I'm describing the dream to you is that I think you would be able to make some helpful comments on it in the context of the self.

James:  Super dream, Nick.  My understanding of it is about the same as yours. (Nick's analysis follows)   Here are my thoughts.  When you have the pure mind of a child you are naturally curious.  The badger is a digging animal.   Digging is a symbol of inquiry, investigation.  There is a lovely Pauranic story about Visnu, the Self, becoming and Boar and digging down to the bottom of an infinite column of light in search of its end.   Inquiry is curiosity about the nature of existence.   This inquiry reveals the Self, the strange elephant like creature.  The Self in Sanskrit is called Brahman, the ‘big,’ the ‘vast’ so it presents itself to you as an elephant.  Elephants are known for their intelligence so they make good symbols for the intelligence that creates, sustains and destroys the universe.   Pristine white is a symbol of the Self.  It…you…is uncontaminated by anything.  You are pure.  I believe that white is the presence of all colors which indicates that the real you, the Self, is everything that is.    It is ‘coming toward you,’ meaning it is revealing itself to you.  This is the result of your inquiry.  You’ve had a spiritual vasana for a long time and it is now bearing fruit.   It is taking you to hear a mahatma, Swami Dayananda, for example. You visit Tony Parsons.  You write me.  You’re curious, innocent.  It is ‘intelligent.’  This means you, the Self, are Awareness, that because of which intelligence is possible.  You are the source of knowledge.   It ‘approves’ of you.  This means you are non-dual.  You as Self see no difference.  Therefore everything is fine, including that ‘animal’ you once thought you were and have been mistreating.   When you are ignorant of your purity and beauty you tend to mistreat your body/mind, the ‘animal’; you live from a platform of desire and fear and this produces bad karma, i.e suffering.  The ‘raised platform’ is the vision of the ‘higher’ Self.  Self realization is an elevated vision, something that lets you look out over the world from ‘above.’   This Self knows you.  It is the seer, the witness.  But you don’t know it.  This means that the mind/ego is under the spell of Self ignorance and does not realize that it is actually the Self.

  
Mike:  I had the feeling that the animal is the self. The self is looking at me, specifically, in total recognition and acceptance as if, I was it. This allows me to feel wonderful for a short time, but then I return to the habits and routines and petty emotions of my day and certain of these cause me to wonder.  Can this ratbag be the same one saluted by the self? There is a bit of a cognitive gap there.

In the dream I was a little innocent kid.  Maybe that's the difference. The little kid’s feeling was the same as mine however "Who - me?"  He just could not understand why this fabulous creature recognized him in such an intimate way. The self knows me, but I do not know the self.  I can never know the self since thought is what obscures the self, or if your thought world is structured around a recognition of this fact and you follow the reasoning of Vedanta, can you arrive at a point where your mental activity becomes somehow transparent and the self actually appears in it clearly?

James:  Yes, absolutely but you have to work to get there.  The knowledge of the Self…i.e. Vedanta is a perfect, time-tested means to restructure the orientation of your mind around the Self.   Again, this is where Neo-Advaita is confused.  It dismisses traditional Vedanta as ‘only intellectual.” It says no sadhana is necessary.  But no sadhana is a sadhana and the result of it is that you stay exactly as you are, once the effect of the satsang or the epiphany has worn off…as you know.   If sadhana was not necessary then Tony Parsons and the Neo-Advaita crowd would not be giving you the sadhana of no-sadhana.  They would not be giving satsang because satsang is a sadhana.   Neo-Advaita appeals to the lazy person in everyone, it invokes the Las Vegas syndrome.  Just put your nickel in the slot machine and pull the level (oops, that’s a doing too!) and out pops millions.  Problem solved.

It is impossible not to do.  As long as you are here in this body you are a doer.  If you pursue frivolous goals or sit around pretending to do nothing, waiting for enlightenment to just happen, nothing will happen, including enlightenment.  As I pointed out above, doing will not produce the Self but it can produce the kind of clear mind that is capable of inquiry.  If the object of one’s inquiry is the Self and one conducts one’s inquiry along scriptural lines, it will result in Self knowledge.  Self knowledge is enlightenment.  This is true because you are already the Self.  You simply don’t know it.   Once you know it and gain confidence in it…run your life from that perspective…that is the end of your seeking.   I hope this has been helpful.

 

James