Martin: Dear Ram, I am reaching out to you, like so many others, to inquire about finding a qualified teacher for myself as I learn and assimilate the knowledge of Vedanta. I realize that students should not seek a teacher but let one come to them. I am willing to let one come to me, though I am not sure how to best follow that suggestion in the Deep South where, as far as I know, there are very few qualified Vedanta teachers loafing around. Ha.
The “Contact Us” page outlines things inquirers should know before reaching out. I have read through those and I will share a bit about myself to give you context. I have completed the beginner’s course, including reading both How to Attain Enlightenment and The Essence of Enlightenment more than once. I continue to study the books daily. I have listened carefully to all of Self-Inquiry Berlin 2011 and I’m currently listening to Bhagavad Gita India 2012. (I purchased the complete Vedanta set from the ShiningWorld website). I have read the PDF book Experience and Knowledge. I continue to read satsangs from the website.
I am grateful to have come upon Vedanta and the ShiningWorld.com website. I have been “spiritual” all of my life, journeying through evangelical Christianity until my late twenties, Christian and Eastern mysticism, atheism, secular Buddhism and discovered something about Advaita Vedanta through various Zen, post-Zen and modern spiritual teachers, as well as Sri Nisargadatta and Ramana Maharshi. I imagine this brief sketch is similar to many who eventually discover Vedanta. Like these students, I have found it a breath of fresh air for my soul.
I do not have a burning question about Vedanta at the moment, though questions arise as I study. Mostly I have tried to adopt Ram’s admonition to study with an open mind and let the teaching work in the reader. I believe it is revealed truth and I am taking seriously the requirement for a teacher as mentioned so many times throughout his teachings. So I present myself to you and remain at your service. I am interested in a relationship with a teacher if that seems right to you at this time. If I should wait until another time, then I will do as you suggest. Whatever the response, I am open to your counsel.
Ram: In this day and age the teacher needn’t come to Tusla. Tulsa comes to the teacher via the internet. In the end the only thing separating one from eternal bliss is attachment to the thought that is occupying the mind in the moment. “I am the Self” provides instant access. If one is committed to Vedanta, all doubts disappear in the fullness of time. But if a person can keep the Self thought at all times, the bliss of consciousness eventually becomes a permanent feature of one’s experience. Nay, it “becomes” one’s experience because it is one’s experience irrespective of the presence of non-liberating thoughts. So, whereas the physical presence of the teacher is always enjoyable, one needs to discipline the mind to stay with the Self thought until it realizes that it is the bliss of awareness, at which time no discipline is involved because the thinker, the doer, has been “merged into one’s Self. Freedom is freedom from the doer. Since your field is psychology, and I consider Vedanta psychology second to none, I would enjoy discussing it with you.
The answer to your question is yes. I’m happy to help you. When you feel the need, make a Skype or Zoom appointment and we will chat. If you feel it is valuable make a donation to ShiningWorld so we can continue to disseminate these precious teachings.
Martin: Thank you for corresponding with me and thank you for your teaching, website, books and the huge library of material for the study and practice of Vedanta. I am excited by the idea of understanding and applying the ideas of Vedanta to psychology and/or developing or exploring a Vedantic psychology. As it is, I am very new to this and have a lot of study and understanding to accomplish first. As I’ve studied your teachings though I have had the recurring thought, “Oh, this would fit well within a model of psychology or psychotherapy.” I’ve also observed overlap in ideas in Vedanta with modern psychology. I came across Vedanta Psychology with Bede Clifford on YouTube. I have not viewed anything yet and wanted to ask you if his understanding and teachings are authentic and consistent with your teaching.
Ram: Actually, I’m responsible for guiding Bede to Vedanta and he has taken instruction on Vedanta psychology from Swami Dayananda and one of his excellent disciples. His understanding is good. However, Vedanta psychology is meant to be contextualized by a clear understanding of satya and mithya and, unless his knowledge has evolved since I last checked, which I somehow doubt, you will only get half a loaf from him, assuming that your real desire is freedom from psychology altogether. Understanding one’s psychology is a means to an end, not the end itself. It’s not uncommon for intellectuals with a spiritual vasana to get fixated on a particular aspect of the teaching at the expense of the complete teaching. If you notice the Bhagavad Gita clearly introduces karma yoga after making the distinction between satya and mithya clear, a distinction that seems to be lost on Bede and as well as on Arjuna. Having said that, Bede is not a bad guy, just a bit ambitious and seems to have found his calling.
Martin: My burning desire is for moksa and for “all doubts [to] disappear in the fullness of time,” removing ignorance and realizing “the bliss of consciousness” becoming “a permanent feature of one’s experience.” I endeavor to discipline my mind to “stay with the Self-thought” at all times. So my biggest, burning question is – am I doing it right? Ha! I’m sure this is a commonly asked question.
I study Vedanta daily through regularly rereading your books, listening to the teachings (currently the Bhagavad Gita) and contemplating the practices of karma yoga and Self-inquiry. I have heard your teaching about the importance of consistently discriminating mithya from satya for liberation. I have understood this to mean that I regularly remind myself that I am Self, I am awareness, the witness of all that transpires in this world. I turn this knowledge toward thoughts, feelings and experiences I have throughout my day (and techniques such as applying the opposite thought). Again, I find the thought reoccurring, “Am I doing this right?” I am aware that there is an idea that arises related to the experiential view of enlightenmen – should I be “feeling” or “experiencing” something as I practice applying the knowledge through study, karma yoga and inquiry?
I have also heard your admonitions to be patient, work hard (be dedicated) but gently at inquiry and allow the teachings to work in me in their own time. I understand that fully removing ignorance and neutralizing the doer is a result of my qualifications, a teacher and grace. So I practice letting go of expectations and trusting the process.
A quick follow-up that continues to come up for in my studies; it comes up over and over in your teachings. I believe this is the most important teaching of all and I want the right understanding and knowledge about this.
Ram: Yes, you should be experiencing or feeling a gradually increasing sense of well-being and your life should be becoming simpler and easier. And yes, satya and mithya is the most important teaching. It is the essence of Self-knowledge.
Martin: What is the meaning of “keep the Self-thought at all times,” “stay with the Self-thought,” “keep your mind fixed on the Self” or “continually contemplate the Self”? Practically speaking, what does this look like in day-to-day life? Is it practicing negation and discrimination moment by moment? I am practicing this as much as I can.
I believe this means more than simply repeating the mantra “I am awareness, I am the Self.” My understanding is that reality is non-dual. Awareness is all. Self is the unborn, unformed, eternal witness of all being. Awareness is all of life, existence and being. Without it, nothing would be. It is the eternal light of all being. All of Creation and its objects are apparent reality manifested from Isvara and Maya. This includes this jiva and all its thoughts, feelings and experiences.
So what is it to “keep my mind on the Self-thought”? If it is always present, if all apparent reality is spun from it like the web from the spider, then what exactly am I to keep my mind on? It sounds like the Self-thought is an object I am to meditate on and contemplate? But this doesn’t seem right, as the Self is not an object but the witness of all objects. Or this could be understood as a feeling, experience or state, but I know from your extensive teaching on this that this is not the case. The Self is not a feeling or state, but the witness of all feelings and states.
These questions occurs to me: if I am the Self and I am always present, then how does the Self stop knowing itself? How is it I stop keeping my mind on the Self-thought? How do I “endarken” myself? When am I not contemplating the Self?
Is it when I identify as the jiva (Martin)? Is it when I’m lost in vasana-generated thoughts, fears and desires, such as about sex, hobbies, relationships, work life, etc? Is contemplating the Self simply noticing what the mind is doing, noticing the parade of objects flowing through consciousness like watching the neighborhood pass by from my front porch?
I feel a bit foolish, as I am certain you have taught on this repeatedly and this is the most basic teaching. Yet somehow I am lacking confidence in it and I am struck with a doubt about this. What does it mean to keep the mind on the Self-thought? And am I doing it right and understanding it correctly according to the teachings?
Ram: It’s good you lack confidence because whereas each of the ideas you presented are partially true in various contexts, the assimilated satya–mithya teaching produces one simple change: the status of the world, which includes the individual, changes. Whereas formerly the world and the individuals in it were understood to be real, they now appear to be unreal, like the dreamworld when one wakes up. Here’s a few verses from the Kaivalya Upanishad, one of Vedanta’s source texts, for you to sink your teeth into. Take your time and let me know what you make of them.
Verse 12-14 (14-17 are mahavakyas):
“When the indwelling consciousness is deluded by Maya, it identifies with a human body in the waking state and performs actions meant to fulfill it in various ways. It pursues sex, food and drink. It tries to avoid pain. When it dreams it becomes the experiencer of pleasure and pain and the subjective world projected by its own Maya. When the mind is overcome by dullness, the waking and dream states and their experiencing entities are resolved into the state of sleep, where it experiences bliss and is overpowered by ignorance. That very consciousness masquerading as an experiencing entity dreams or wakes or sleeps because of its association with karma, the momentum of past actions. All its diverse experiences are born out if it alone and all resolve into it alone. It is the eternally existent substratum of everything.”
Maya puts existence/consciousness to sleep and it wakes up as a jiva in Isvara’s world, which seems real to it. It falls in love, gets married, chases pleasures and avoids pain, which it thinks is real. Then Isvara/Maya makes it enter the sleep state where it appears as a sleeper who forgets its waking status. In sleep it experiences limitless bliss and ignorance but it doesn’t know it is ignorant. Then Isvara generates the dream state, and the sleeper appears as a dreamer in that state with dream body which it thinks (pratibhasika) is a real body and has various experiences, which are just its vasanas outpicturing, but which it thinks are equally real. It falls in love, gets married, has children, chases self-created pleasures, tries to avoid self-created pain and generally behaves like the waking-state self. When your dream wife or husband cheats on you, you think he or she actually cheated even though he or she is lying comfortably next to you in bed. Then Isvara rescues it from the dream and generates (vikshepa) a waking state and a waking-state entity. But owing to Isvara’s concealing power (avarana) it doesn’t realize that it is waking up in Isvara’s dream so it feels victimized when things happen that don’t conform to its desires, as it does in the dream state. When it accumulates sufficient merit by conforming to svadharma and not contravening Isvara’s laws, Vedanta wakes it up to what it actually is: existence/consciousness.
But its problems continue because when Vedanta tells us that we are dreaming when we are awake and that only knowledge works to get out of the waking-state dream, we don’t believe it. We want to do something to get an experience to prove it. But the proof is always in the form of a waking-state dream, which doesn’t prove anything, since waking-state dreams, like dream-state dreams, are not real. Nonetheless we say, “I am awake,” in spite of the fact that the “I” never slept.
Or we run to other teachers to get a technique that proves what Vedanta says is real. If you don’t accept the teaching, you need to identify the reason so you can get to work removing the doubt.
This teaching also appears in the Frog (Mandukya) Upanishad. If we look at the three-state analysis from the waker’s point of view and assume that the waking-state entity is actually the Self, which is supported by Shankara’s statement, “Jivo brahmaiva na parah,” then the analogy of a frog hopping from one lily pad to another is pertinent, the idea being that the Self apparently assumes three different roles but remains free of the roles as it changes states.
Or we can describe the process in this manner. When the waking-state entity falls asleep it unknowingly gains the power to dream and experiences its dream body, and its vasanas/karma as positive and negative dream events, which it assumes are real. Its status changes from a creator to a creature, and it feels hard done by the dream circumstances. When it wakes up it changes its mind and dismisses the dream suffering as unreal.
When it enters the waking state it doesn’t realize that it is actually in Isvara’s dream, which it tries to escape by seeking enlightenment as it did in the dream state. But since it has defined the waking state as reality, it believes that it actually is a victim of the myriad of forces that generate its karma. Because its memory of the dream is no longer fresh it doesn’t think to ask how two different states with two different experiencing entities could both be real. It needs Vedanta to wake up is dull mind. If there were two realities there would be no reality, because it would be impossible to determine which one was real insofar as each one negates the other. You can’t be awake and asleep at the same time. You can’t sleep and dream at the same time, because you experience every state as a simple conscious entity. Duality can only be resolved from a third non-dual standpoint, which is revealed by the Upanishad.
The Differences Between Jiva’s Dream and Isvara’s Dream
In jiva’s dream, waking happens naturally in time, no effort is required. I do not need to do karma yoga, upasana, ravanam, mananam, etc. to wake up. However, in Isvara’s dream waking up is unnatural. If I don’t deliberately work to wake up, it will continue eternally. Even if I sleep or dream thinking that I am avoiding it, I always come back to Isvara’s waking-state dream.
When I wake up into Isvara’s dream, I don’t know that I’m projecting the world and that my Self is hidden from me, because the concealing and projecting powers are hidden. But when I wake up from Isvara’s dream courtesy of Vedanta, the concealing power disappears but the projecting power remains, so I know that I experience the world, which I formerly took to be real, as a dream. The world continues until the time of death because of Isvara’s projecting power. But it has no power to victimize me, because I know I am uncreated and that with my Maya I am the Creator.
The World Is in Me (Saksi Bhava)
To escape from Isvara’s dream, backed by a clear understanding of the teachings of Vedanta, you need to confidently make the following claim.
1. I am eternal all-pervading unborn consciousness.
2. I am the only source of permanent peace, security and happiness.
3. By my mere presence, I enliven the material body and through the body I experience the material universe.
4. I am not changed by anything that takes place the world or the body through which I experience the material world.
5. When I forget what I am, I struggle and suffer. When I remember what I am, life is constant entertainment.
~ Om and prem, Ram
