Hariji, harijai
Thanks for your email. It’s so good
keeping in touch with you, like there is nobody here in
I want to write something more soon, I am busy at the moment, and much is
happening to me. Between 12 am and 3 am all this week I have been
inundated with Light and what you would call Shakti. I am not sure what
it is all about yet, I have certainly been in bliss, but possibly the Self is
purging my vasanas (I may not have expressed this correctly, so don't get
semantic over these statements).
Ram: Yes, the shakti does purify the vasanas. When the mind is turned inward and one is
experiencing the Self in the form of light, power, peace, etc. the vasanas come
up all the time but when they hit the energy field they just get fried like a
bug zapper. You do not notice the vasanas exploding into the energy field
because your attention is on ‘the light” but it is their destruction that
releases the energy you feel. A vasana
destroyed reduces the vasana pressure in the causal body and this in turn helps
the mind stay inward looking. This is an
excellent way to purify but it has its limitations. Obviously it is not suitable for
householders, karma yogis like yourself.
But since it is happening you have to make do.
But this kind of
energetic purification does not burn all the binding vasanas unless, like
Ramana, you sit in a cave for however many years. The other method, which in no way excludes
energetic or meditative purification, is through knowledge. What causes the vasanas to bind is ignorance
of your non-dual nature, so this ignorance needs to be removed. As long as you see yourself as an
experiencer, a doer, a limited entity, you will be troubled by vasanas. So, somehow one has to relinquish this
belief. When it is surrendered the
vasanas are automatically neutralized and you will simply not reinforce them by
acting them out with the belief that you have something to gain or lose by so
doing.
Knowledge
‘purifies’ the vasanas in this sense also: knowledge means you understand that
this is a non-dual reality and that everything here is you. If there are vasanas in a non-dual reality
then they are also you. Therefore how
can they be a problem?
Marlon: What does intrigue me at the moment is
advaita, the non-dual perspective.
Please do not interpret what I am saying as heresy (after all we have
discussed), but while I can see in bliss I am one with the Self, still God can
be somewhere else. We are of the same matrix, sat chit ananda, but there
is a difference - in power. I cannot create universes, beings or planets,
nor can I be in every beings heart like God.
Ram: Point number one is true although who is to
say that what you do create is any less important or powerful than universes,
planets, beings, etc.? From what perspective are we distinguishing your
creation from God’s?
Point number two (‘nor can I
be in every being’s heart like God) isn’t true.
In Maya there are two creations: Ishwara shristi and jiva shristi. Iswara shristi is God’s creation, the sum total
of all manifest existence. Jiva shristi
is the individual’s creation, Marlin’s life.
The creations are apparently different in terms of scale, power,
longevity etc. but the creators are exactly the same. The Veda is very clear on this. It says, the
jivatman (you) and the paramatman (God) are one. God and the individual are one. There is no difference. What is causing it to seem that God is much
greater is the number of apparent objects it is associated with. Consciousness associated with twenty things
is less powerful than Consciousness associated with twenty billion things? I won’t insult you by giving the answer. You, the Self, is
the same no matter the magnitude of things you associate with. The President is President when he is at home
alone with his wife and he is President when he is addressing two hundred
million Americans on TV. Only the
non-essential outer stuff is (apparently) different.
How can it be that
there is no difference between the individual and God? Because there is no
creation in the first place.
Creation is just a concept that human beings have dreamed up to explain
an eternal reality that is unconsciously being interpreted as a temporal
reality by the mind. If you analyze time
you cannot find it to have an objective existence. Without time there is no creator and no act
of creation because creation requires time.
What you see here and call a creation is just the unborn Self. It seems to be moving and changing but it is
not. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme
chose. The more it changes the more it
stays the same. This needs to be realized.
The Self is beyond
God. God is just an explanation given to
people who find themselves caught up in a body to explain their origins and the
origins of the world in which they find themselves.
No, you cannot ‘be
in everyone’s heart’ because you are
everyone’s heart. The Self,
consciousness, is the ‘heart’ the essence of everything. Common sense and the scripture tell us that
if there is such a person as Marlon, this Marlon is limited in many ways and
that it is not possible for Marlon to be everywhere at once. But as the Self, which is what you are, you
are not only in everything, you are everything.
It is just a matter of getting it straight who
you are. If you enjoy being Marlon,
fine. Accept the limitations that this
conception imposes and soldier on. If
not, chuck Marlon. When you let Marlon
go, you see that you are everything that is.
Marlon: When I am
in bliss I am aware of this and follow my devotional prescriptions, of offering
Love and Blessings to the Lord, a Being who is clearly more powerful than me.
In this subtle relationship there is an exchange of love and bliss which
I experience, but is this non-dual in a technical sense?
Ram: It is
non-dual if you see that the one who is offering the prayers and the one to
whom the prayers are offered are one and the same
being. If you can’t you are a shakti worshipper, a power worshipper. To be a power worshipper you need to think of
yourself as less powerful than what you worship. You think of yourself as created by God and
you offer thanks. No blame.
But you are not
created. You are eternal awareness. Marlon is a name some people put on eternal
awareness. In a non-dual reality, which
scripture says this is, you are neither less powerful or
more powerful than God. Power is simply
not an issue because it implies duality.
God is the Self and you are the Self.
If you are here to
get something, the best way is to be a devotee of God. This way you enlist the help of the giver of
the fruits of the action on your side.
But some people don’t want God’s stuff, they want God. And it is entirely possible to get God
because you are God already. Even God
can’t give you God.
Finally, I would
suggest you look into the statement ‘when I am in bliss.” What does this mean? It means that sometimes you are not ‘in
bliss.’ So who is this person that goes
in and out of bliss? I take bliss to
mean that you feel good. Vedanta (must
toe the party line here Marlon, no heresy allowed) says that you are bliss. Bliss is your nature.
Below I’ve copied
in an e-mail to a fellow on the subject of bliss. Perhaps I’ve sent it to you (my records are a
bit sketchy this far back) nonetheless it might be useful in this context.
Love,
Ram