Dear
Ramji,
Thanks
for this email. I especially enjoyed the section on living a dharmic life
since it is what I need the most reminders about--"to respond to every
life situation as if you were the Self, that is, as if you have nothing to gain
or lose." It is all about reminding oneself constantly and training
the mind to remember. I still have a hard time realizing on a gut level that
I can get everything from the Self that I thought the world would
provide. Do you have to have a mystical, enlightening experience before
that becomes gut knowledge? Do you have any tips on how to make that not
a cerebral thought, but instead one based on experience and a gut
feeling?
Thanks!
Dear
Maris,
‘Mystical
enlightening experiences’ can be helpful in so far as they help to convince you
that there is something more than your own small world but they do not solve
the problem of limitation. You may not
know it but the spiritual world is little more than millions of people who have
had incredible ‘mystical enlightening experiences’ yet who still feel limited,
inadequate, and incomplete. So experience itself is not enough. Take Ramana for example. He had a ‘mystical enlightening experience’
but he had to sit in caves for years on end before he was ready to face the
world and live a normal life. A lot of
work had to be done. If the experience
was all that was required he would have just gone back home to his mom’s iddlies, married, and raised a family…or whatever.
In a
way, mystical enlightening experiences can be a very bitter pill to swallow for
this reason: they always end and you find yourself continually longing for and
anticipating the next one. Many people
spend their whole lives trying to generate these experiences and, like junkies,
live in a state of perpetual craving.
Another problem with experience is that any experience is only as good
as your ability to evaluate it. And in the
mind there are many experiences that seem to be profoundly spiritual but are in
fact just psychological detritus.
Scripture is forever warning of the danger of getting caught up in
mystical experience.
Another
point to consider is that this reality is perfect as it is. Why do some people get mystical enlightening
experiences and others don’t? Because
the giver of experience, the Self, knows exactly what you need at any time and
only gives you what you need…or what you don’t.
You can certainly realize the Self without one mystical experience. And, on the other hand, you can have hundreds
of mystical experiences and build an ego on them that is bigger than
Your
‘gut feeling’ argument is fine up to a point.
But the danger with it is that it can be used as an excuse not to do
what needs to be done while you are waiting for your mystical experience. And all that you will come away with from any
mystical experience is that you need to pursue your sadhana more
vigorously. And finally, do you actually
follow your ‘gut feelings’ on any other issues?
I’m not putting ‘gut feelings’ down but take the relationship issue. Every time you meet a guy…and this goes on
throughout the whole courtship…you always say ‘I don’t know what I feel about
X.” The anxiety you feel about travel,
for example, has nothing to do with ‘gut feelings.’ You worry yourself to silly about whether or
not you should spend three days in place x or three days in place y. Where are the gut feelings which should
supposedly settle the issue?
I
believe that you are absolutely right not to follow ‘gut feelings’ because ‘gut
feelings’ can cut both ways. You can
feel just as strongly about x as you can about not x from one moment to the
next. This is why I’m arguing for
following dharma. If you follow dharma
you don’t have to agonize about what you feel.
What you feel is irrelevant. Sri
Ram had his heart set on ruling the kingdom.
The coronation ceremony had been planned and the whole kingdom wanted
him to be king. His stepmother had saved
the life of his father, the king, in battle and he granted her any boon. Just before the coronation she called in the
boon and asked that her son, Bharata, be made king. When told of the decision, (which involved
him leaving the good life and going to live in the jungle and giving up his
dream) Sri Ram smiled and said, “Fine.
It is the duty of the son to honor the wishes of his father.” And he went off to live in the forest. The father too, although his whole life had
been dedicated to seeing that Ram rule the kingdom, did not flinch in granting
his wife the boon. In both cases the
‘gut feeling’ was not the basis of the decision. Dharma was.
And these men were quite happy to follow dharma since they knew that
dharma leads to the highest good.
Dharma
means that principle, not passion, rules your life. Following ‘gut feelings’ is just another way
of saying ‘what I want.’ But is what you
want what you actually need? Take the
relationship issue, which in a way is a kind of symbol of your whole
existential confusion. You’re a
vivacious, intelligent, attractive woman.
There should be no problem getting a guy…which some part of you seems to
really want. Yet, you never seem to get
the guy. Why? It think it is because some other part of you…the
higher part, the dharmic part…knows very well that relationship is not what you
need. It knows you need peace. So it prevents you from relationship since
relationship does not lead to peace. I
have been suggesting for a long time that you pursue peace and see if
relationship doesn’t fall into your lap.
Or, you might even discover that peace is a lot more fun than
relationship. Perhaps you want
relationship because you are not peaceful.
Perhaps you think that if you have Mr. Right you will just settle down
and be happy. What is wrong with this
picture?
As I
see it the highest dharma is a clear peaceful mind. If you don’t have that how can anything,
particularly a relationship’ really work in life? Dharma means that some principle other than
feelings determines what you do. The
feelings are factored in, no doubt.
Sometimes your gut tells you what to do and this is completely in
harmony with dharma and leads to a state of relative peace. But sometimes your gut tells you to choose
something that only leads to misery. So
what good is the gut then? Let the gut
speak, but don’t let it rule the roost.
The
whole problem with American society is that it is based on the principle of
small self satisfaction. Your supreme
duty, according to the Gospel of the
Forgive
me if I am too bold but I think that your question “Do you have any tips on how
to make that not a cerebral thought, but instead one based on experience and a
gut feeling?” is misguided, Maris. You know what you need to do. If you sit around waiting for some gut
feeling to motivate you, you will wait a very long time. And even if you get a gut feeling that tells
you to get to work spiritually, it will only be minutes
before the opposite gut feeling (fear), the one that causes you to mindlessly
doubt everything, arises and paralyzes you.
You
are a cerebral person, Maris. This is just a fact. There is absolutely nothing wrong with
it. In fact it is one of the things that
I find attractive about you. A mind is
what you have. So, why wish you didn’t
have it? Why imagine that you need to
get off this level into a feeling level?
I’m sure you liked The Power of Now because of its exhortation to
‘feel,’ and not to think. The mind is
not the enemy. How you use the mind is
what is important. You can either use it
to think your way out of this existential predicament or not. Trying to kill it or discard it or move away
from it into a ‘feeling’ dimension will not work. Use it to think differently. When your thinking is in harmony with truth
your feelings are unambiguously good.
This is so because the mind is much more powerful than the
emotions.
OK. Let’s say that you reject my argument
completely and want to do it the feeling way.
Eckhart Tolle tells
you how. He says, “Focus attention on
the feeling inside you. Know that it is
the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don’t think
about it – don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of
it. Stay present and continue to be the
observer of what is happening inside you.
Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of ‘the one who observes,’ the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of
your own conscious presence. Then see
what happens.”
But
wait a minute! Know that the feeling
inside you is the pain body? Right off
he is telling us how to think about (certain) feelings. They are painful. He continues.
“Accept that,’ he says, ‘Don’t think about
it.’’ Don’t think about it? He is saying
‘think not to think.’ Who but the
thinker is there not thinking? During
this whole process he is telling you how to think. It is a very cerebral process. It has a specific goal, ‘to become aware…of
the silent watcher.’ There is a lot to
commend this idea and there is a lot to criticize too but the important point
as I see it is that he is not telling you to wait for some ‘gut feeling’ to
start you sadhana. He is saying ‘just do
it.’
Much
as he says it, and much as it has been said for centuries, you cannot just
permanently switch off your mind (if that is actually what is required for
enlightenment) without a very long and arduous sadhana. Notice that Eckhart
is not telling you how hard it is to do this.
Notice he is not saying that this is the end of it either. He puts it this way, “Then see
what happens.” Aside from the seductiveness
of it all, he means that this is just the very first step in spiritual
life. He is just trying to give you a
technique to get you to see that there is a Self, ‘a conscious presence’ he
calls it. Once you see it, your problems
just begin. But this is the subject of
another satsang.
So
here’s a sadhana put forth by Eckhart who you admire
so much. Why not do it? Are you waiting for a ‘gut feeling’ to get to
work? You are not even sure you if are
interested in doing what it takes to realize the Self. You said yourself on our recent walk around
the lake that you were not seeking liberation.
When you know what you want…this applies to any field…you simply do not
have doubts about what to do in life.
You just go for it. Did Bill Gates trouble himself about whether or not
he wanted to get rich? Did George Bush
trouble himself about whether or not he wanted to be President? I don’t think so.
I’m
not saying you should go for enlightenment…this can be just another greedy self
centered endeavor. I’m saying use your
mind to catch your mind fooling you.
Stop just accepting these tired beliefs you have about yourself. Take astrology, for instance. Astrology is fine up to a point. But it is only as good as your use of
it. If you use it to convince yourself
that you are the way you are because the stars have decreed it…that you have to
be this way because venus is squared mars or
whatever, then your mind is playing tricks on you. No mystical experience is going to stop the
mind playing its tricks. Pay attention
to this ‘I want’ mantra that the mind loves to chant. Look into this notion that ‘relationship’ is
the ‘be all and the end all.’ See if you
don’t already have everything you could ever want…you.
Enlightenment
is not getting some experience of a conscious presence. You are the conscious presence. There is nothing to be done about it. The reason you don’t appreciate yourself this
way is because you think of yourself in other ways. So, contrary to all the non-thinking advice
you hear nowadays, I say think clearly.
Think from the Self’s point of view.
This is not to say that you can’t also practice any kind of experiential
sadhana that you are attracted to. There
is no contradiction between thinking and feeling, between thought and
experience. Contradictions arise when
you use the mind in the wrong way. Look
at Ramana. You will rarely find someone
with a more clear mind. His knowledge was vast and his ability to
express it shows that he carefully trained and cultivated his mind. I say pay attention to your feelings, pay
attention to your thoughts and use some standard other than how you ‘feel’
about them to put them in their place.
OK. As an old girlfriend of
mine once said, “My, how you do run on.”
I didn’t even get to the real juicy e-mail coming up, the one where you
take me to task for being a hypocrite.
Don’t worry, I’ll get to it soon. Be ready for some good arguments. And don’t feel guilty about it. There is absolutely nothing you can do or say
that will stop me loving you.
Ramji