Hi Ram,
Well it is good just to know you are still out there, or is it in
Here? Anyway, I think most of
my ignorance stems from odd corners of the Vedic world where I have not read or
been informed of some peculiar facet of Reality and reality.
Anyway, I am interested in how Veda describes how the Self
actually sees/understands Maya and the recycling of the jivas through the
gunas, do we have any information in some obscure Vedic text on what everything
looks like from the Self's perspective, or are parts of this Consciousness
unavailable to the human mind ?
Ram: Yes, there is
plenty of information in the Upanishads and all the major Vedantic works about
the nature of the Self. Basically
there are two teachings on this subject.
The first is called adwaita (non-duality) and it says that the Self
(Awareness) alone exists. This
means that there is no Maya from its point of view. Everything is just Self. The second teaching, vishistadwaita
(qualified non-dualism) is a compromise position. It says that there is only the Self but
that there is also an imaginary position, called the human position, which is
caused by ignorance of the Self.
From the Self’s point of view even if this ignorance
(avidya) is operating the Self understands it and knows that the projections it
makes possible are just Self and has no problem with them. This is the condition of the jivan
mukta, the one who is liberated while alive.
The state of avidya or dwaita (ignorance, duality) applies to the
human mind. It is synonymous with the
human mind. The human mind does not
know that everything is Awareness.
It takes what it sees with its senses and what it believes (its
projections) to be reality. In its
most primitive form it thinks that it is the body and the universe is only
matter. But, because it has no
existence apart from the Awareness it is subject to epiphanies and these
suggest to it that there is some other principle, i.e. the Self, operating. This is the ‘in-between’
state of human consciousness, a state of doubt about the nature of
reality. Carefully wielded by
someone who knows ‘I am the Self’ the teachings of Vedanta remove
the doubt about who one is and the nature of reality.
Martin: And now
from the completely dualistic perspective........I guess I am still a bit
bourgeois, but I find great difficulty with the efficiency of the model that
the Self creates Maya out of Its Self to experience Its Self as the other,
allows Its Self to be identified with the mind and ego (products of Maya),
apparently forgetting its own nature, and creates a plethora of objects (also
products of Maya) to which the senses and mind get attached and result in
suffering, before retracing Its steps back to where it started from. It’s
almost masochistic. I know, tell me
I am bourgeois, I do not have the apparatus to fully understand the cause, but
wow, look at all that illusory suffering millions of bits of Its Self are
undergoing (tell that to the mothers in S. Russia). It’s not efficient and the
Ignorant need a charter. There,
I've got it off my chest.
Ram: Indeed you should
have great difficulty with this notion because it is a rather poor attempt to
explain the relationship between the Self and the world and I am sorry to have
occasionally purveyed over the years.
It’s a hangover from my days with my guru who was a tad dramatic
and liked miserable stories.
One of the problems with the idea of Self ignorance is that the
truth is pretty subtle. So for the
common person a number of half truths have evolved, attempts to explain intellectually
something that it is better to grasp directly and intuitively: the relationship
between the Self which they wish to know but cannot see and the world which
they do know and want to escape.
The idea is that suffering has a useful purpose in that it can
generate inquiry which can lead to Self realization. If you don’t see suffering this
way you have to take the dualistic position, that there are two opposing
factors in the universe, God and the Devil, and that human life is an endless
struggle between the two. It is a
popular idea because this is how life seems to people who are unable to see
through their projections. I should
note that the masochistic ‘teaching’ you refer to is not really a
proper Vedantic teaching. But it is
better than the dualistic position, unless you believe in heaven, because there
is no way out of it. The dualistic
idea says that there is a God (which you don’t know is you) locked in
eternal combat with a Devil (which you don’t know is you). And the problem is that this is all
going on somewhere outside yourself and you feel powerless to change it. The “eternally awake Self becomes
the world so it can suffer and wake itself up” idea at least has a happy
ending in so far as there is no mention of eternal damnation.
Ram