Topic: What are Self-Actualized People Like?
Often people are attracted to Vedanta and think we are really cool people and would like to “hang out” with us. This satsang is an attempt to explain how Self actualized people think. I omit the email exchange that occasioned this satsang because it is unremarkable. The person’s last statement is “That’s surprising.”
James: It’s a surprise because you don’t really know who I am as a person. The self, yes, the person no. Your Vedanta questions were never really Vedanta questions. It was always the same question, like Arjuna. Unknowingly they masked your original intention. You were looking for someone to talk to for whatever reason, probably because your kids are out of the house and your wife isn’t into spirituality. Loneliness. Your obtuseness drove us crazy. We didn’t want to hurt your feelings, so we put up with it long past its sell-by date, but then I had to be frank and insult you. I didn’t want to…it’s not my nature…but you just didn’t get that we don’t do small talk. We’re one trick ponies. OK, Vedanta fanatics, if the truth must be known. We don’t socialize for socialization’s sake. Yes, we relate to what’s happening in the apparent reality but there is always a mutual appreciation of the pregnant silence of existence shining as awareness. Our friends appreciate this and don’t burden us with trivia. The socialization springs out of the silence and implies a deep appreciation.
It’s amazing that there is such an idea as trivia at all. Among worldly people, it is taken as high art. Jeopardy, for instance. And what is trivia all about psychologically? Boredom. People with too much time on their hands and an absence of noble work. And behind the boredom Affluenza lurks. A good famine, depression and a nice bloody conventional war, like Ukraine, and you will see a society that pulls together, that hasn’t time for tattoos and purple hair and sex changes. Young men with joysticks destroying property and competing for digital body counts. We are not ordinary people. We are ordinary in the sense that we are the one self that pervades every being, but boring bores us. We don’t do it. We’re dynamic and have something important to say. So to attract us, a person has to be remarkable in some otherworldly way. You can see this idea in Chapter 10 of the Bhagavad Gita, God’s extraordinary glories. We pay attention to those people, we help them if they ask and enjoy their company if they don’t. But just ordinary friends you have a beer with and watch sports. No thanks.
Love,
James
