Dear Bettina,

Thank you for you articulate and interesting letter. I particularly enjoyed the list of ideas that ‘triggered understanding.’ I also wish to thank you for giving me permission to send your letter to people for whom it would be useful. I find it particularly inspiring that you have the confidence to express your newfound understanding to others. Knowledge is knowledge and is not subject to correction.

Concerning the distinction between experience and understanding I think that should you wish to clarify this to your students you will find that it will be very useful for them. The craving for experience, not just so-called ‘spiritual’ experience is, more than any other bit of ignorance, probably responsible for keeping samsara alive in people’s minds. This teaching recently ‘triggered understanding’ in a fellow who read Meditation, Inquiry into the Self. He was so transformed by this idea that he flew all the way from Hawaii to ‘see me in the flesh!

I liked your referring to the Self as ‘ordinary’ awareness…very good. I hadn’t used that adjective but will from now on. The words consciousness and awareness always need to be clarified for Western people because they refer to the Subtle Body here and not the Self.

Bettina: to understand that ordinary awareness effortlessly knows "i am tired, moody, clear, nervous, and peaceful", brings such a relief to meditation. awareness is there all the time, but sometimes "i am not there" but lost in thoughts, identified with images and memories. so what. old vasanas ripening. awareness knows. Wonderful

Ram: When speaking about the ‘I’ and the ‘i’ confusion is always possible. You seem to correctly distinguish ‘ordinary’ awareness from the ‘i’ but is it also clear to you that ordinary awareness is you, the I, the Self? I think the problem here is the usage of words and not a fault in your understanding. What triggered this statement was your contention that ‘to understand that ordinary awareness effortlessly knows "i am tired, moody, clear, nervous, peaceful", brings such a relief to meditation.”

I think I know what you mean, but my understanding is that the nature of ordinary awareness, the ‘I,’ is meditation. Or, if you prefer it another way, there is no ‘meditation’ as an act of mind or a process when you know ‘I am ordinary awareness.’

When you say,“sometimes "i am not there" but lost in thoughts, identified with images and memories” do you understand that you are there…or you would not be able to report that ‘you’ weren’t there? I wonder if what wasn’t ‘there’ was simply that attention was not on the Self, or, more accurately the reflection of the Self in the mind, but was on the thoughts and images in the mind. If you are the Self it doesn’t matter if the mind is in meditation or not, since whatever it would be on would be you, the Self. I’m not saying that meditation wouldn’t happen or be useful after the knowledge “I am ordinary actionless awareness” was firm, but it wouldn’t be useful as a tool for inquiry since knowledge had taken place. It would be useful for purification of the mind, however, should one elect to do that.

Much Love,

Ram