Dear Ramji!

I have a guest. She is a friend and student of Martina and guess what we do? We talk about Vedanta. I read your satsangs to her and tell her what I have heard from you. She would have come with Martina and Bettina to see you but she grew up in East-Germany and doesn’t speak English. Only Russian in school those days. So she decided not to come.

Anyway, today she came up with these questions and I suggested that she write them down and I translate them into English and send them to you. If you care to answer them, you can send the answer and I will translate it into German and forward it to her. Anyway, here are the questions. If it is not very clear, it is the fault of my English.

“Dear Ram! I am a student of Martina. Since many years she is helping me in my spiritual journey and I am watching her spiritual development over many years. Through her simple question: "Who knows this?" (that I am happy, angry, hungry, depressed, thinking, hearing, seeing) I suddenly understood very clearly, what the Self is. On one hand I could say, my whole life changed through this understanding, and at the same time everything is as it ever was.

Now I find myself thinking, that my understanding is not deep enough or not correct. What is the difference between my understanding and your understanding? Or Martina’s and Ulrike’s and your understanding? And how can I integrate it more into my life so that this knowledge is present and available all the time? How can I ever forget a realization of such an impact??

But I do forget it. If I can’t do anything except developing new thinking patterns like "I am whole and complete, actionless awareness" it feels to me a little like a dogma of the catholic church which says: "You have to believe in me!" Although this is not a good example because it is more like a constant reminding myself than a belief. But somehow my understanding seems to be too small. It doesn’t seem to have the power to fulfill and inspire me all day long, like it seems to be for Martina. My first experiences following this understanding were quite ecstatic. I know, that this kind of experience doesn’t last. But shouldn’t a realization of something with the dimension of the SELF fulfill one to the last fibre of my being? These are the questions that drive me at the moment and I would be very grateful to hear your comment. With best wishes.

Love,

Gisela

Dear Gisela,

Let’s start with the first question, “Shouldn’t a realization of something with the dimension of the SELF fulfill one to the last fiber of my being?”

The short answer is no. The problem with the question lies in the phrase ‘dimension of the Self.’ The idea is that the Self is something big. It is not big, nor is it small. The scriptures are very clear on this. So when you awaken to the Self you need to inquire and investigate it to see what it actually is. If you keep your attention on it (and not on what you think or feel it should do for you) you will start to understand it clearly. This is particularly difficult because true knowledge of the Self will destroy every idea you have about it…and about everything else.

You feel let down because you developed expectations of Self realization based on the common wisdom about the Self. This is not your fault. The books that people write and the words of the gurus make you think that the Self is something wonderful, incredible, and fantastic and that winning it is like hitting the jackpot in Las Vegas. Yes, there is a sense of euphoria and relief when you first understand that there is something other than the constipated bundle of impressions, beliefs, opinions, fantasies, and memories that you thought you were. But as you know, this feeling slowly wears off.

Why does it wear off? Because the ‘person’ who had this feeling is not really a solid and substantial entity. This person, Gisela, the one that you think you are, is just an idea of a self based on an interpretation of certain experiences. There is nothing real about her. This ‘experience’ happened to Gisela and Gisela grasped the meaning of Sylvia’s words and this understanding rearranged the thoughts and feelings in her mind. No, she can’t forget it, but at the same time things go back to ‘normal.’ Should they not go back to ‘normal?’ Yes, they should. The problem is not that Gisela is the way she is. The problem is that somebody wants Gisela to be something she isn’t. Somebody wants her to be happy and inspired all day long and she isn’t. Who is that person?

The second problem is that Self realization is presented in books and satsangs as a particular kind of experience, one that will make you happy and inspired forever. For you to have an experience you need an experiencer and an object of experience. But Self realization is the understanding that the ‘I,’ Gisela, is the Self. To say that Gisela is the Self means that there is no Gisela. Or that what you thought was Gisela is actually actionless awareness. You are not left over with a Gisela and a Self. If this is a non-dual reality there is only one Self.

What has happened to you would be called an ‘awakening.’ There is still a Gisela. When you wake up, you can go back to sleep. Why? Because there is someone who can change states. But if you are the Self you are neither awake nor are you asleep. You cannot change states of consciousness because there are no states of consciousness for you to change. Or if there are then you don’t have Self knowledge because Self knowledge means that you do not change. It means that you are fine as you are on whatever level you experience yourself. Self knowledge means that there is only you, non-dual consciousness appearing as an experiencer and a world to experience. ‘Appearing’ means that Gisela and the world are like a mirage, they seem to be real, but they are not.

What does Self Realization ‘feel’ like? There is no easy way to express it but ask your self this question, “Who was aware that Gisela woke up?” “Who is now aware that the excitement of waking up is wearing off?” Or put it this way, “How do you know about this experience of waking up?” This is a very subtle experience. Only a few of the billions of people here have this experience. How is it known? It is known because it takes place in awareness, not because some person, Gisela, had a certain experience, unless we understand Gisela to be just another name for the Self, awareness.

This Self, you, does not care about inspiration. Inspiration is for people who are not inspired. Uninspired people feel incomplete and inadequate as they are. They see how basically boring life is and they want to feel alive and inspired, like children. Children are inspired because they are ignorant, not for wonderful noble reasons. They believe that things are the way they believe them to be so they are happy. And when they realize that they are not the way they thought they were, the inspiration goes and they feel let down, depressed. Anything as fickle as inspiration is not real. Perhaps you have fallen in love. This is a state of complete, but temporary, inspiration. You feel so good. You can walk on water. But slowly, as time passes, you understand that the inspiration, the euphoria was only generated out of need and when the need is fulfilled, the ‘in love’ goes.

I don’t know, this is only an opinion, but I think the reason people like Martina seem to be constantly inspired is because they have learned how to continually draw inspiration from noble ideas and ideals. This allows them to forget themselves, to lose themselves in something more important than themselves. It is not important to such people whether they are happy or not. They know that the quest for personal happiness is only motivated by petty self interest. So they identify with causes and ideals and they draw inspiration from them. Perhaps it will be of interest to you that the Bhakti tradition in India looks down on people striving for liberation. They say it is a frivolous and pointless goal. They say that people who are seeking to be free simply do not know what love is. If you know what love is you will be quite happy to be hopelessly bound. You will exist quite happily in the prison of love. Love of an ideal or love of Self is better than inspiration any day. And when you scratch the surface, inspired people have their own private moments of doubt and depression. Inspiration ultimately solves no problems. The only thing that solves the existential problem is the hard and fast understanding that I am not this person I have been led to believe I am, that I am uncreated, whole and complete actionless awareness. Just to say it sounds ridiculous from a human point of view. But it is the truth.

So how does one ‘attain this state?’ Mind you it is not a ‘state.’ It is hard and fast knowledge. In the Bhagavad Gita it is called ‘steady wisdom,’ knowledge that does not change. What you have discovered is that the experience of awakening does not change the way you think about who you are…except perhaps momentarily. Why should it?

It is a common misconception that you can just ‘get it’ once and for all and from that point on life is just endless bliss. I don’t know if you are familiar with the story of Ramana Maharshi, but if you are, ask yourself why, if after his death experience and the awakening it caused, he spent twenty years sitting alone in caves? If he was the Self as he had experienced, then what is the point of sitting in caves? Isn’t it rather stupid to say the reality only shines in caves, that it does not shine in the world? Why not just go back home and live like a normal person? The answer is that he had experienced the Self and he could not forget it and his mind was turned inward, ‘’by a powerful fascination’ to use his own words. But this was just the beginning of his spiritual life. There was still somebody there that was fascinated, inspired, by the Self.

Ramana’s greatness was that he understood that the best way to get rid of Ramana, his sense of duality, was to keep his mind fixed on the Self (he called it Self inquiry) and just burn out all those old dualistic notions. The best way to do it for him was to follow the tradition and go sit in a cave where he would not be distracted. At some point the small Ramana that he thought he was, the one who had had the experience, disappeared and from that point on the name Ramana referred to the Self, not to a person who had realized the Self. A person did not disappear because there was no person there in the first place. All that disappeared was his notion of himself as an incomplete being.

Yes, as you say, your awakening caused you to understand what the Self is but the next step is to understand that you are the Self. Getting this understanding is hard work. Every time you find the mind thinking as a limited ‘I’ you correct it. You put it to work asserting your wholeness and completeness, not denying it. And slowly the mind changes. You can keep up this work because you know that you are the Self, not Gisela. This is why it is not brainwashing or a kind of religious belief. You can actually see what the Self is and that you are it. One day, the mind gives up arguing with you. It surrenders. It accepts you as are you are and no longer tries to convince you that you are a limited little worm, a beggar in need of inspiration or anything else. It sees you as you are. This is the end of it.

I hope this has been helpful. I wish you all the best. If you have more questions feel free to ask.

Love,

Ram