A Cozy Life

Dear James,

Thank you for your E-Mail. The teachings accompany the Jiva, my Limited Edition of the Self, in various ways.  It took a long reading journey to come to you via Ratziel Bander, Sai Baba, Barry Long, Eckhart Tolle, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramesh Balsekar, Francis Lucille, Rupert Spira, Cynthia Bourgeault (for the Christian path) and many more.  It took time before I saw an interview with you last December from a Dutch Vedanta site.  Then I started reading your book, “The Essence of Enlightenment“ in German.  First I was a bit scared because of your notions about the Neo-Advaita Teachings or the Non-Teachings of Neo-Advaita.  With all these different teachings, there was still a missing something. And now I feel driven homewards with you and Vedanta.

James:  That’s good. 

I appreciate the knowledge approach, respectively the discrimination of the ignorance.  For now I mixed a lot of Vedanta information up. Reading your books, being with you in the seminars, listening to the Bhagavad Gita Talks from Yoga Vidya in Bad Meinberg and so on. Well I’m going to put it order, learning straight one portion after the other.

James:  Good idea.  Vedanta is a science of Existence/Consciousness.  It is a complete teaching.  You have to start at the beginning and patiently work through the steps.  Otherwise you will waste a lot of time exploring all sorts of dead ends and you won’t grow spiritually. 

My Jiva doesn’t have a strong Moksha-Vasana.

James:  That’s a pity.  One’s progress is directly related to the intensity of one’s desire for freedom.  But that need not be the kiss of death.  The more energy you put into it the more the desire grows.   

My life is doing pretty well.  I am noticing my vasanas quite clearly and  am aware of my likes, dislikes and especially the longing for objects.  But on the upside more often than not I feel relief when I don’t long for objects.    

James:  Very often when life is going well people get complacent, take their foot off the gas and just coast along.  Again it’s not the kiss of death, but one day a cozy life becomes a burden. 

The most important sadhana right now is to leave the non-dual thinking, the non-dual behaviour.  In other words accepting that what is, not to interfere, or merge with one side or the other, accepting the duality in the world, in all human beings and the ME in ANYBODY else.

This means to stop judging, complaining, bothering about other people and accept that even the murderer and the saint is ME.  This is cleaning up my mind and getting clear about getting out of this show.  And maybe there will be Moksha one fine day and I guess there must be a lot of laughing if one realises the SELF, that is already lying on the tongue, like an instantly missing word.

James:  Yes, you can’t get out of the show unless you clean up your mind.  And yes, one day you will see how funny it is to try to get out of something you’re not actually in.  The Self is something you know already.  It is innate knowledge.  It means you exist and you are conscious and your nature is bliss.  Nobody needs to tell you that you exist and that you are conscious and when you think about it the bliss you feel here and there can only be coming from you.   So Vedanta is getting rid of ideas, beliefs, opinions and habits that don’t reflect who you really are.    

My other concern derives from a fearful dream when I was a child. The dream took to me to outer space, far beyond everything into a great nothingness. It made me wake up regularly at night. This dream made me realize at the age of four, five, that there is no god as taught to me by the Catholic Church, no man with a white beard sitting on a cloud. So I was left with a distrust and a kind of emptiness, still trying to fill it today. And at this point I am looking for moksha.

James:  Well, God is good, the church not so much.  And yes, God isn’t a big man in the sky.   It’s  your being, your consciousness.  But it’s good that you still looking  for moksa and that you are attracted to Vedanta.  It works.   

What I don’t get is why is the Self, which is complete, unborn, and full allows the Jiva-reflection, Ishvara and Maya.  If it is complete, full, etc. there is no need for that. Why doesn’t it rest eternally in its fullness, completeness?  Then there would be no jiva and nothing at all.  I wouldn’t mind.

James:  The Self doesn’t even know that Maya/Jiva/Isvara exists.  It is not connected to the world.  If it was connected the world would affect it and there would be no moksa for it.  It’s like having a nightmare when you are sleeping comfortably in your bed.  The dream doesn’t change who you are when you wake up.  The world and the Self are in two different orders of reality.  There is no actual connection.  It only looks like there is a connection. 

Here’s another answer.  In a very strange way, it seems that the Self falls under the spell of Maya and forgets what it is.  So it suffers and enjoys until it hears that it is mistaken and begins the path to freedom. 

And here’s another one that may be difficult to understand:  There isn’t actually a jiva apart from the thought that there is a jiva.  Thoughts appear and disappear which means they aren’t real, which means that they are as good a non-existent.  So if the idea that you are a jiva is just a concept, you are free to let it go, or get a concept that is true to who you are that destroys the belief that you are limited and incomplete. 

I gratefully thank you and if you find time to answer me I will be glad to hear from you.