Dear Ram,
I want to thank you
for your support, understanding and care. It is very helpful to know
that you exist and that I can contact you.
Today, after our talk I am quite OK.
It was a good day. I jogged and
did exercises and worked in my friend’s company. And no smoking
today! Do you know anybody who knows "a great deal" about
depression and who could be helpful? I wonder if I could get help with "my
case" with nutrition or any other way (in addition to medication). Perhaps a radical change of food will do the
trick. I would be willing to try anything to heal the body/mind. Please let me know if you can say something
in regard to depression from the point of view of Vedanta in general and
something that could be helpful to this body/mind on bases of daily life and
living. Dear Ram, I am looking forward
to hearing from you in the near future.
With a thankful hug,
Carl
Dear Carl,
This is a good
attitude and because of it I will try to explain what needs to be done to get
your mind clear. The first thing you
need to look at is why you smoke marijuana, or take any other mind-altering substances. The obvious answer is that these things
change your state of mind and make you feel good. Vedanta would not argue with this fact except
to say that the pleasure is temporary and that it has its price…you come down,
not just back to normal, but you actually dip into the negative side for a
period until the chemical karma has been purified by your system. And then you bounce back to neutral until the
dissatisfaction (rajas) comes up and starts the whole cycle again.
The real issue from
the Vedantic perspective is: what leads you to take the drug in the first
place? What is it about the world or
yourself that is unsatisfactory? God
made us without a joint sticking out of our mouths and a beer in our hands and
gave us a functioning body/mind/intellect, one capable of dealing with
life. We experienced the world and
ourselves to be quite fine when we were young and we did not have a lot of self
doubts. But at some point we began to
feel uncomfortable. These negative
feelings cry for attention and someone comes along and offers us a beer or a
joint and presto! they go away. I will assume that you agree that the problem
lies in oneself, not in changing the world, because ‘the world’ is nothing more
than what is in our own minds. So the question
is: why do I not feel OK as I am? Why do I experience negative feelings about
myself? And the answer is because I do
not know that I am whole and complete, that I am fine as I am. So before you take up any sadhana to purify
yourself you have to have the sadhana of self inquiry going on. And self inquiry in your case would entail
figuring out what self views you have that are not in harmony with who you
really are and what misunderstandings you have about the way the world works
that makes you interpret what happens in a negative way.
In terms of Vedanta,
mania is a state of uncontrollable rajas (which I witnessed when you were here)
and depression is a state of complete tamas.
When rajas collapses it turns to tamas. Rajas is the state
of mind where you are trying to get something from the world. I think in your case you are trying to make a
success, to do something that will give you a sense of accomplishment and
financial security. There is nothing
wrong with wanting things from the world.
The problem, however, is that what you get from the world has nothing
whatsoever to do with the wanting. What
comes depends on appropriate and timely action in a certain field and then on
all the factors in the field, which, if you are spiritually inclined you could
say was ‘the grace of God’ or ‘up to the Universe.’ So when you do something…like try to promote
this book…it is not appropriate to have your mind riding on the outcome. If caring about it helped, fine, worry and
fuss day and night but it doesn’t; it just takes the joy out of life. In this case the prospective publisher just
happened to marry a woman and she read something that upset her and there goes
the contract. Now, the fact that he
married her and that she had this particular conditioning has nothing to do
with you at all. So is it appropriate to
feel let down? Tamas is the state of
disappointment at not having attained what one wanted or having attained
something one didn’t want. One feels
bad. One thinks one is responsible in
some way for things not going one’s way.
One blames oneself…if I had only done things differently, etc. And the mind looses its shakti.
The way to correct
this situation is to practice karma yoga.
Karma yoga is an understanding that you keep in your mind when you are
doing what you do. It means you have
realized that the results are not up to you and it means that when the results
come you take them as prasad. If you
take them as prasad it is not possible to get either elated when things go your way nor is it possible to get depressed when
you don’t get what you want. You take
them as prasad because they are prasad, an offering from the Lord in the form
of the results of your actions.
What you have not been
going for in your spiritual life is a pure mind. You have been looking for other results. Nearly everyone makes this mistake. They make it because spiritual life is not
about attaining anything that you don’t already have. It is about understanding and appreciating
what we do have. A pure mind is possible
because the mind is just the three energies that make it up and these energies
can be purified and transformed by intelligent living. We can do something about this part of the
Self. We have ‘free will.”
But if you are going
to be happy, the only way you will actually achieve happiness is through a pure
mind. After you get
the pure mind you can then think about enlightenment if you wish. A pure mind is gained by sadhana. And sadhana is defined as the ‘removal of the
relative proportions of rajas and tamas and the subsequent increase of sattva
in the mind.” Ramana had a pure
mind. He did years of intense
sadhana. None of your gurus did sadhana
as I have defined it above. We know
Rajneesh didn’t. His mind when to pieces
and he died a broken man in a completely tamasic state. We know Papaji did
what he thought was sadhana but in fact he was greedy, vain, cynical,
manipulative and hypocritical, so what sadhana did he do? He had shakti
because he was a self confident vigorous energetic shrewd man who figured out
how to make his way in life but he didn’t have a pure mind. These fellows knew that you do not get
disciples by telling people that they need to change the way they think about
action and the results of action. You do
not teach them the downside of desire; they will all go away. So you convince them that some kind of
desire-prompted action will liberate you even if it’s some kind of clever ‘vedantic’ non-action: stop the mind, call off the search,
be a non-doer, etc. This kind of teaching
only gives you another desire, which in turn set you up for more
disappointment. If you hold the karma
yoga notion in your mind all the time, is it not possible to get depressed and
you will not need to get high to get rid of a bad feeling.
So that’s the subtle
side of sadhana. The other side is very
practical. If you want the movie
playing on the screen of Consciousness that is your life to be a happy one, you
need to change the film and polish the lens.
Changing the film and polishing the lens means taking up different
habits. It is quite simple. The habits you’ve developed over the years
are tamasic and rajasic so they will just reinforce the feelings of passion and
depression that you experience. You must
change your diet. Eat sattvic. Change your sleep habits. Get to bed by ten thirty to get in harmony
with the cosmic cycles of day and night.
Give up alcohol and drugs.
Exercise reasonably. And only
associate with sattvic people.
Here is a practical
thing you can do when you find yourself depressed. Instead of focusing on the depression you can
look for the Self. The Self is right
there in the very middle of every emotional state, is in fact the essence of
every emotional/mental state. And when
you find it, the depression or the passion dissolves. This is what is actually meant by tantra: looking for the Self in every situation. Or you can become one with the
depression. What makes it unbearable is
the fact that you don’t want it to be there.
This is rajas. You are dissatisfied with it. So you can just ease into it until…presto! you discover you are not in it at all…it is in you.
The fear of financial
insecurity comes because you do not feel secure in yourself. Will enough money make you secure if you are
not already secure? This is something to
think about
There must be many
people where you are that are into radical cleanses. I would imagine that your body is quite
toxic. It is possible in a few months to
clean out ninety five percent of the toxins.
Look into it. Spend the money you
spend on dope on sattvic food and herbal cleanses. It is possible that your colon is coated with
many layers of post-putrefactive mucous.
Read Robert Gray’s Colon Health Handbook and see
if maybe it applies to you.
As I suggested on the
phone I think you should look for simple work where you can see concrete
results every day. When I was doing
sadhana I refinished furniture. It was
very rewarding to take an old broken down item and transform it into something
beautiful in a few days. This will build
up your self confidence. When you are
self confident you know you can overcome negative emotions and you don’t fall
into them…or if you do you quickly work your way out of them. I’d say give up the grand plans, making it
big, taking care of financial security in your old age. It creates much anxiety and one never feels
satisfied because one never knows what the future will bring and how much will
be enough.
There are many
practical things you can do and they will just come to you in the course of
your sadhana but the most important thing is to understand the value of a pure
mind. The mind is the instrument of
experience and when it is pure life is intensely vibrant and beautiful. When you understand this the next thing to do
is to vow to achieve it. But don’t rush
into it in a rajasic way…hasten slowly.
Go about it patiently and consistently; make a little progress every day. These negative states, rajas and tamas, are
not going to go away overnight. You’ve
cultivated them unconsciously for your whole life…so it is going to be a
battle. But it is a good fight. And I have the sense that you are ready, that
you have hit bottom and do not want to stay there. This time you are not going back.
OK, that’s enough for
now. I hope this helps. I’ve copied in some satsangs on the subject
of a pure mind and rajas and tamas that may help you.
Much love,
Ram