Dear Ramji,
It was just unbelievable to read the title of my ex-teacher’s statement “even awareness will die with the body.”
Ramji: That statement is not called a satsang, keeping the good company of truth. It is called a kusang, keeping the bad company of ignorance i.e. samsara. She’s the last in a long lineage of diehard Rajneesh/Osho Zorba the Buddha hippies who are bound and determined to party hardy till the day they die. To be fair, however, a few of them struggled all the way to Vedanta and are doing good sadhana these days. God bless them.
Henry: Also, Mooji. After many years I was shocked by his total nonsense. Same with the Buddhists and their bodhisattva stuff, which is just a trap to give them more virtue by “I’m putting off my enlightenment until I’ve helped the whole world get enlightened.”
It clearly showed me that Self knowledge has begun to sink in. My vision of nonduality has grown these years with you.
Ramji: Well, karma always catches up with the unenlightened. Mooji, God bless him, who had the same guru as Mira, Papaji, is a shadow of his former self these days. Somebody sent me a link to a recent video, so I had a look. He seems to have come to some sort of realization, maybe a shock or something. He lost his mojo and seems very tentative and confused. I couldn’t really make sense of what he was saying. The chickens of ignorance always come home to roost at the end of the day. He never was the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I felt sorry for him.
Henry: I understand now that karma yoga means to offer ANY action, thought, or feeling to Ishvara. And to look for blind spots like even my spiritual desire to see and know Ishvara and offer them too.
Ramji: Yes, offering all actions is the takeaway from our last satsang. Burning desire is good, as are the actions you put forth behind it, assuming they conform to dharma, but the result is always in Isvara’s hands, so there is no sense stressing yourself about moksha, not to mention that you are always free.
Henry: I feel a strong release and more silence in again, understanding my mind much more clearer now. Without any doubts about anything, I feel so fresh and young. I didn’t experience that for some years. That must be sattva.
Ramji: That’s sattva.
Henry: Today one thought is all the time present; “Ishvara is doing me,” not “I am doing Ishvara“.
Intellectually I understand that this jiva is also only Ishvara, the 3 Gunas playing, but it’s not enough deeply absorbed, because it’s still the experience of a person, the me-ness.
Ramji: It may not be enough, but it is enough. You, Awareness, don’t need to absorb anything because you are free of duality, which in this context means the idea of “enough/not enough.” As far as Henry is concerned, however, the more absorption in I AM the better, so it is all good.
Henry: As you said, nothing will change, nothing will be different, while at the same time, everything is different, because that jiva is not real. I have nothing to do with the jiva called Henry.
Ramji: Henry is definitely getting more flexible switching from the jiva to the Self and backs. Crows are often used in Vedic symbolism as examples of Self actualized people because they are monocular. Unlike humans, they cock their heads from side to side because their mind has only one organ of vision. Through one eye they witness the upside and though the other they see the the downside of life, remaining always as the witness of both.
Henry: Honestly, speaking as a jiva, I was thinking I can be in the world with samsaris, a normal guy secretly studying Vedanta getting my fingers burned again and again by life. Whenever I touch samsara, I get disappointed. Still, it’s not easy to let samsara go, the Jiva still thinks something must be there in Babylon, some satisfaction, just something…but, as you showed again, and remembered me, it’s all just a zero-sum.
Ramji: It is easy when you realize how painful it is. Anyway, the suffering is good because it makes you doubt your involvement with the samsaric state of mind.
Your jiva has a proud and a stubborn streak…tamasic is the right word, like Ganga Mira, who has a terminal case of enlightenment sickness. She makes completely ignorant statements and passes them off as knowledge to her crew of stoned hippies. Too bad there isn’t hospice for Neos so they can die peacefully. When you think about it, however, they are as good as dead anyway because they are incapable of thinking clearly, so what does it matter if they are comfortable in their old age. But there’s always hope for losers. See how the mighty Henry, like the mighty Arjuna, stood up and fought once he heard the unparalleled teachings of Vedanta!
Henry: It’s one thing to say there is no joy in the object and there is nothing in the world for you, but it’s another thing to really realize that the world is empty, is only suffering, and that you are out of it. It’s pretty stupid to try to make a dead horse run.
So, I am scared to write too many emails to you, I know how busy you are…and how crazy some of my mails may sound. So, I will send an update in some months and join some Sunday satsangs. I have some free time off work on Sundays coming.
Ramji: That’s a thoughtful reasonable fear, Henry. I was about to suggest that you take it easy with the emails because you’re good to go.
Henry: Thanks for letting me check my Karma Yoga Sadhana, being available, I feel I understand it again better. Somehow lost the track, regardless of how often I was listening.
Ramji: Your mind is getting more sattvic which is proof you are doing good sadhana.
Henry: Shingworld, you and Sundari are the center of my life, the most important thing ever; it’s an eternal relationship. And I take you by your words, I quit worrying!
Much love, Henry
