THANKS RAM.
I loved the satsang
with
A CLEAR AND GREAT
UNDERSTANDING has come.
I liked the idea of
focusing on the Self but I wonder if the ego ‘i’ can
really focus on the SELF. It makes
sense on one hand because one has to start somewhere but right now even the
sentence I am writing is melting away in nothing. It has no substance. So self focusing on the SELF is a
contradiction of terms. If there is a
‘me’ focusing, the trick is to see that the Self is always expressing as
everything, everywhere. WoW! There is no
separation, it is only because we think and speak in a dualistic way that the
SELF appears as subject and object.
There is no difference between the two.
There is just a floating, a happening unfolding as subjectivity and
objectivity as you always point out.
This subtle process is just an appearance, like shadows. It is in communication where Awareness
is experienced easily as dual. One
starts thinking and feeling as if one were an ‘i’
opposite another ‘i.’
This is where one starts believing oneself to be a separate being
who wants something from the ‘other’ or fears ‘rejection’ from the other. My best teacher of this is my relationship
with my wife. But it is only an appearance in Awareness.
I can see that awareness cannot be lost since Awareness is what the true
nature of who I am.
Then really what is happening is a kind of remembering or seeing one’s
true nature again. Both
knowing or not knowing ultimately makes no difference, even when there
are karmic consequences. If there are
consequences, not knowing seems to have karmic results while knowing/being is
karma free. It really ‘feels’ like I am
aware of the ultimate split of mind, the knowing and the un- knowing.
I am on go till Sunday
with the family. We go to the water
park, the zoo and the dolphin parc for the kids. I will remember you there and I am so
delighted to have you in my mind/heart. When do you come here!!!!
Love,
Mark
Dear Mark,
Hey, great letter! When do I come there? I am always there as the Awareness in you
that illumines the world.
About your clear and great understanding. It is really important to ‘see’ it like this
as a vivid experiential knowing, a realization or as you say, “a clear and
great understanding.” There is really
not much I can add because, like all true insights, it is perfect in
itself. I took the liberty to tidy up
the language and hope that you don’t mind that I send it on to others who would
benefit from it. I will give you a
different name to protect your ‘privacy.’
There are just two
comments I will make. The first, which
I’m sure you understand, is that for ‘focus’ to happen there has to be a
focuser. And, of course that is a
dualistic state, as you say. This is
Vedanta’s quarrel with the experience-based sadhanas like yoga and bhakti. If you know who you are you will not be
‘focusing’ on anything. The Self,
Awareness, is like a special optical lens that has no depth of field
problem. Everything is in focus all the
time, both what is near and what is far.
So by ‘focusing’ on the Self…or anything for that matter…one is just
reinforcing one’s sense of limitation.
One is maintaining the fiction that one is separate from
everything.
The second comment has
to do with your statement “Both knowing or not knowing
ultimately make no difference, even when there are karmic consequences. If there are consequences, not knowing seems
to have karmic results while knowing/being is karma free. It really ‘feels’ like I am aware of the
ultimate split of mind, the knowing and the un- knowing.”
This idea is
absolutely true. It could fit right into
any Upanishad. We might shorten it a bit
and I will present it to the Congress of Saints and Sages for consideration for
inclusion in the revised edition of the Vedas for the next cosmic cycle. The trick to writing scripture is making it
cryptic, so it is hard to understand in one go.
This way you provide employment for gurus…and God knows in Kali Yuga
there are many unemployed gurus, like Sri Ramji. So the revised MahaVakya
by Sri Sri Markji Maharaj of the Shankaracharya parampara (lineage) would read “Not knowing has karmic results.
Knowing is karma free.” If you will initialize this and send it back
right away I will have it etched in stone and will hand carry it to the next
galactic meeting of the Congress.
Your humble disciple
and adoring devotee,
Sri Ramji
Dear
ramji
Mark’s ‘Great and Clear
Understanding’
and your reply came right out of my heart.
Indeed it did. Thank you for
putting this insight in words!
It clarifies the source of the problem I have with
the dualistic language of the spiritual quest where "one starts thinking
and feeling as if one were an ‘I’ opposite another ‘I’.
This is the point where one starts believing that one
is a small self and this small self has to do something to ‘get into the ‘big’
Self’ (or the ‘Now’), as if the big Self were there waiting for the small self
to arrive.
My favorite joke at the moment is the serious effort
that a lot of people seem to be putting into the idea of getting into the ‘here
and now!” They seem to want to finally
get into this ‘here and now,’ yet when you ask them whether or not they have ever
been anywhere else they cannot reply.
It seems to me that this all comes down to the idea
(1) that I am a flawed limited little body/mind thing. If this is how I see myself then anything I
do reinforces the idea that I have to do something to become better, more
important, nicer....or (2) I am whole and complete awareness in which knowledge
and ignorance appears, an idea that does not feed the need to be a doer and is
beyond karma...
So nice and clear how you wrote it: The Self is
always expressing as everything, everywhere. WOW!!!
Love