Ursula: Dear Ram, thank you so much for those two satsangs.
I like the satsang Why You Are Not Different from God very much. I like to hear that I am whole and complete, fullness, that I am everything and that nothing is missing, not one iota, not a single little thing. I like it. It is very clear.
And your satsang sheds light on some rising questions about whether it is necessary to sit in a cave for a while (sometimes it seems to so very much). A cave may be good to just stop re-enacting vasanas that are so well-nourished, that turn the mind into a mud-hole (again!), stopping all inquiry. So without a cave, the mountains or some sitting and renunciation, the knowledge part is forgotten again and again. Like let’s say I’m a newly-wed, have a new name and in a situation of big excitement; when asked, I answer with my old name.
But then again, all this what-to-do is born of the belief that I have to do something… and who would that be?
The new satsang is inspiring too, as seems to be the case with all of what you say.
~ Thank you, very much love, Ursula
Ram: Dear Ursula, I like this email very much, not only because you are an entertaining writer but because you seem to have a pretty clear idea of the difference between you and the doer.
In Vedic culture there are only two prescribed lifestyles, the householder and the renunciant. Householders are people with a lot of extroverting vasanas, doers. So they are enjoined to stay in society and take up the karma yoga attitude so that the vasanas will exhaust naturally over time. When they have worked out most of the rajasic and tamasic vasanas they can then opt to become renunciants and pursue moksa exclusively. Ninety-eight percent of people are householders. The other two percent are temperamentally suited to renunciation, the life of a cave dweller, a “sky clad” wanderer. This is so because they already have the karma yoga attitude, have very few vasanas to work out, and the only remaining vasana is for freedom. So they are suited to caves and an itinerant lifestyle, one without attachments.
If you know that “all this what-to-do is born of the belief that I have to do something… and who would that be?” then the only argument for purifying the vasanas would be pleasure, since one’s experience of life is more pleasurable with a pure mind. When you know that you are the self, when you are identified with the witness, you can endure the sticky mud-hole with noxious fumes and you can also endure the torments of passion because your primary source of meaning is your self. But why would you want to subject your mind to all this turmoil, since with the aid of the knowledge (that you are not the doer, that you are whole and complete) you can easily conquer the vasanas and make your life radiant and pure?
~ Love, Ram