Dear Ram,

My friend says that Awareness creates the world but I said that there is no creation from Awareness' point of view. What do the Vedas say about this?

Carl

Dear Carl,

You are both right but you are more right than he is. I think he looks at the creation and assumes that it must have a cause and that that cause is God or Awareness. It stands to reason that if everything is Awareness as the scriptures and one's epiphanies show then Awareness must have created everything. But this is not the whole picture.

Direct perception, direct apprehension of Awareness and careful study of the Vedantic scriptures show that the relationship of Awareness to the creation is more subtle than cause and effect. It may be that there is a creation but if there is what is its nature?

If you look at several types of gold jewelry let's say a ring, a necklace, earrings, a watch, etc. you will say that these things are ‘created' out of gold. But what is actually created? Is anything real or substantial actually added to the gold? Before the ring existed you had two ounces of gold and after the ring was made you had two ounces of gold in the form of a ring. Does the ring alter the gold in any meaningful way? Does the ring weigh more or less than the gold? No. Is the ring more or less valuable than the gold? No. When you take a piece of gold jewelry to a jeweler he pays you for the weight of the gold. Does the luster of the gold belong to the ring? Is the ring the source of its color? No. In fact every attribute of the ring is borrowed from the gold. What does the gold get from the ring? Only a name and a form, is ringness. In fact no real change (creation) has happened when the ring is made, only a non-essential change.

If you want to call the addition of a name and form a creation, fine, but from the gold's point of view it is no creation. Melt down the ring and make a pair of earrings. Has anything substantial changed? No. His definition of creation is OK but it is not in harmony with non-dual reality.

The idea that there is no creation is called the ‘ajatawada' teaching in Vedanta. ‘Jata' means born and ‘ajata’ means unborn. Nothing new comes into being because everything we see and know is uncreated pure Awareness. It just seems to be a creation when we look at it through a mind that projects time, a mind that does not see the essence, the Self, and takes apparent, non-essential superficial changes to be real.

Whomever you are talking to does not have correct knowledge about Awareness and its relationship to its many forms. Carl is just a name that is given to Awareness. There is no actual separate individual named Carl who knows or doesn't know about Awareness. There is only you, the Self, with apparent knowledge or apparent ignorance about your nature.

It is strange that people think that an ego can know or not know that he or she is Awareness when there is not even a way to know what an ego actually is apart from a belief in limitation. And we both know that a non-dual reality is limitless. Because of this people say that this or that ego doesn't know this or that or is confused about what he or she knows. Instead of seeing that the Self is speaking directly to the Self (in the apparent other) they think that a non-existent person is speaking to a different non-existent person. In fact the different somebodies speaking and listening are just creations of Self ignorance, names and forms superimposed on one's Self. And like any creation then are apparent and temporary, not actual and permanent. As long as this ignorance exists gurus will stay in business.

Teachings that are aimed at a fictional entity that wishes to become a different fictional entity i.e. an ‘enlightened person' are no teachings at all. The ‘be here now' teaching is this sort of teaching. ‘Be’ is not something you do. Even the teaching that you are not an ego can be misunderstood and send a non-existent someone on the trip of trying to get rid of his or her ego. People claim to ‘be egoless' but how can they make this claim since there is no ego to start with? In fact the teaching that there is no ego and that you are not an ego is addressed to the Self which is temporarily and apparently under the spell of ignorance. The Self hears this and knows that it is true, the ignorance goes and so does the belief that it is a person.

Carl: Please comment on my friend's statement that nothing can be known.

Ram: Ask him how he knows that nothing can be known. If he insists that he knows that nothing can be known then his statement is false because ‘nothing' is not nothing. Nothing is the object of his knowing. This fellow is stuck in the belief level. If he actually had Self knowledge he would not make such statements.

Carl: My friend also said that he was Awareness but that Awareness was not free of the need to create. What about it?

Ram: Awareness has no ‘needs.' When he said that he was Awareness but doubted that Awareness was free of the need to create it shows that his knowledge of Awareness is only a belief. If he understands the nature of Awareness as it is there will be no doubt about the relationship of Awareness to his created needs because it will be clear in what sense the creation is apparent or and in what sense it is real. He will take his needs and the world to be unreal and apparent just as one takes a dream to be unreal when one wakes up. He will take it to be real if he sees it as the Self.

But if it is the Self can you call it a ‘creation?' In fact he should ask what ‘creation' means. The common presupposition that people make when they speak of creation is that the creator and the creation are two different things. But this is not true in our non-dual reality. To illustrate this, the analogy of the spider and its web is given in Vedantic teachings. Although the web is not conscious it is consciousness appearing as matter, just as the spider's web is a substance contained in the spider, extruded and shaped by the spider's intelligence.

One cannot understand non-duality when one is under the spell of a dualistic thought system. It does not make sense. If the person can shift from the dualistic position to the non-dual position the nature of reality becomes clear. But it is hard work to recondition one's intellect to think from the Self's point of view so people don't do it. They keep their dualistic point of view and try to make statements of truth from that platform but it doesn't work. The dualistic perspective comes with the built-in belief that enlightenment is some sort of experience. It posits an experiencer who thinks he or she has something to gain by the enlightenment experience. But enlightenment is not an experience. It is seeing from the Self as the Self which you are doing all the time but don't realize it. Seeing from the Self as the Self exposes dualistic thinking and lays to rest all the apparent contradictions that arise in the mind when you assume the dualistic point of view including the idea of a creator and a creation.

This idea feeds into your next question about Self realization and enlightenment. I'm not sure what you mean by maturation but yes, it is a process of maturation if you think of maturation as a consistent application of the non-dual idea to your mind. People who wake up to the Self experientially, who perceive It (or more accurately who perceive the reflection of it in a sattvic mind) are always burdened with residual vasanas. This means that they still have many erroneous notions that were formed when they were out of the light of Awareness. And often they think that this perceptual or experiential realization is enough so they do not clean up the mess that was still there when they woke up. This is why you have people like that guru you mentioned who has had plenty of Self experience but who has not purified his mind. On the one hand there is something spiritual and attractive in these people but right beside it you have the old shit mucking up the picture.

Most of these modern gurus and satsang gurus are awakened but they are still identified with their vasanas to some degree. They are helpful in awakening people but they cannot finish a person's sadhana because they have not actually finished their own. A person is finished when there is absolutely no doubt that he or she is non-dual Awareness and the mind/intellect rests in that knowledge permanently. A completed sadhana means that whatever experience you have, including dull and passionate states of mind are known to be you and you alone. It means that the idea of enlightenment as a unique experience of oneness is no more. Practically this means that someone who has realized his or her true nature has no agenda, not even the agenda of teaching. Teaching may happen when karmic forces cause it to happen but there is no identification with the idea that one is a teacher. It is a hat that one puts on in the appropriate situation and then takes off when there is no need for it. Guru, enlightened master, spiritual teacher, shaman, yogi, mystic; these are just limited identities. They are like a ring to the gold: non essential in every way.

In fact the teacher you are talking about doesn't give satsang.' Nobody does. When a person realizes that he or she is Self ignorant and has a true desire to know who he or she is, then Awareness causes that person to meet with Awareness in the form of a jnani and a communication takes place both in silence and in words and all doubts are removed.

Self experience does not set you free. If this is a non-dual reality then everyone everywhere is experiencing the Self all the time…but how many are free? Even meditation and yogic states, including nirvikalpa Samadhi do not set one free because they do not remove the ignorance that causes a person to think of his or herself as an experiencer. Only knowledge can do this. It may be that as a result of thinking about an experience either during the experience or later the knowledge of who one is may arise. If nirvikalpa Samadhi happened and when it ended you realized that ‘you' did not exist for some period you may come to the correct conclusion that the ‘you' you thought you were, the experiencer, is not real. This would be knowledge. If you just tried to get the ‘experience' of no self back you would not have understood anything. People who say that nothing can be known are ignorant. Everything operates on the basis of knowledge. You can't even shovel food into your mouth without the understanding that it will be dealt with appropriately by a known stomach. A tree needs to know how to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen before it can do it.

I don't know about going around to these gurus, Carl. Sometimes it can just confuse a person further. I think you should trust your own wisdom. What do you need to know other than the fact that you are the Self? As the Self you have no questions so you can just dismiss the doubts that arise in the mind and rest as the Self. If you want to clear up the doubts then teach your mind to think non-dually. Watch it and correct it as necessary. As soon as you go back to the understanding that you are whole and complete, lacking nothing, doubt and dissatisfaction disappear.

If you asked me what you should do I would say you have three options. Drop out of the spiritual world altogether and let your Self/knowledge establish itself without trying to fit it into the satsang world which is purveying a lot of incorrect and contradictory notions. Or start giving satsang. Sometimes, if you are honest, you can figure out what is lacking by teaching it. Or pray for a one on one relationship with a real jnani who is qualified to help you remove the few final doubts. Just hanging around a satsang guru and asking the odd question here and there won't do it. Sometimes a person builds up an identity as a seeker and it is a very comfortable identity. It can bring a lot of interesting and good friends into one's life but this identity has to go if the person is going to attain full spiritual maturity. Anyway, you did not ask me this so I did not say it.

Om and Prem,

Ram