Hi Ram,

My mind is absorbing the profundity of the Self as being actionless. From my mind's perspective I am pursuing answers to the question as to what moksa is actually liberation from???...of course from the perspective of the Self there is nothing you could be free of.

Ram: That’s right. But moksha is for those who are plagued with a sense of limitation. As you are well aware people find themselves apparently limited by money, time, space, love, power, status, health, the past, etc. The desires and fears that make up the psychology of a worldly person are almost universally directed to removing a nagging sense of limitation. Vedanta contends that this sense of limitation is the result of taking the self to be limited, inadequate and incomplete. But is the self limited, inadequate and incomplete? It is not. So the way one ‘gains’ freedom from this sense of being inadequate and incomplete is to investigate the self. Our epiphanies, satories, fleeting samadhis, and insights are experiential proof that the self is limitless. Scripture, the Upanishads, say that the Self is limitless. And scripture is just the knowledge of many people on the subject of the Self. So the quest for liberation is a quest to know the Self. When you know for certain that the ‘I’ is limitless you are liberated.

Carl: I understand the Gita to say it is liberation from birth and rebirth ... karma. Self knowledge is awareness and that awareness is actionless so action has literally no relevancy from the perspective of the Self.

Ram: It is unfortunate that the Gita and other texts present moksha in this way, since there is no concrete evidence that physical rebirth is a fact. Vedanta, in its purest form, does not even consider the question of rebirth. It is simply a means for removing one’s ignorance of one’s self. I think it is quite fair to understand the question of birth and death in a psychological sense…as the identification with an impulse in the mind and the subsequent letting go of that impulse as another bubbles up from the unconscious. For example, when a fear arises you could say that you were born into that fear, assuming that you took the fear and the one to whom the fear arose to be real.

When you are ‘born’ to a certain impulse you are forced to go along with it until it plays it self out (dies). As soon as one impulse dies another springs up. This process consumes our every waking hour. So one is continually being born and dying, going up and down, around and around because of one’s attachment to a self that does not actually exist. This is called samsara, the ‘circling.’ One is born and dies a thousand times a day. Because of the ignorance about the nature of the self one finds oneself attached any number of things: money, pleasure, duty, love, etc. Therefore one is compelled to perform an endless series of activities (karmas) to remove this sense of attachment or limitation.

What you say about the Self, awareness, is true; it is free of action. And when you realize that you are awareness and not the conceptual entity that appears in your awareness, you are free.

Ram