C: My jiva’s experience is that it doesn’t want much / in comparison it seemed I had no will or desire. That did create a doubt. I had thoughts about becoming a monk or a hermit or living as a sadhu – early on in life. But also felt the urge to be in the world without escaping it. To face it – head-on.
S: The sure signs of a natural sannyasi. It is tough to be born this way in a world that has no knowledge or appreciation of this. It must be easier in places like India where the culture supports these strong spiritual vasanas. It is a natural inclination to want to escape the world, but of course, the world is inescapable because it is in you. The mind with its vasana load will follow you wherever you go.
C: To pluck apart jiva is quite a job. This is gonna sound weird; a few years ago, I saw, again, Mowgli. I cried and laughed. It was like understanding my jiva’s life – and how stubborn my jiva is. But, deeper, I was confused by the question ‘what do you want?’ And also, ‘who are you?’. Even, let’s say, in the spiritual meaning, ‘Who am I? It is a question I had trouble with; it wasn’t my question.
S: It’s not weird. We all have that wild innocent and abandoned jiva in us who longs to belong in this crazy world yet retain its wildness. To not be ‘tamed’. Vedanta does not require plucking apart the jiva but understanding what it is, the forces that create it (gunas) and condition it (jiva program or vasana load). While this does require ‘seeing’ how the jiva is programmed, which is not easy for the ego, this seeing is knowing (more on the seer below).
To be free of the jiva program, that seeing/knowing is understanding the jiva from the Self-perspective, in light of Self-knowledge, as Pure Awareness. It is not about perfecting the jiva or reaching any kind of ideal as a person, which is not possible anyway because the jiva is not real and the Self needs no perfecting.
C: I exist – yes, so? Yet I feel a strong will – to know and understand, to live by the subtleties of wisdom. All the rest is secondary or non-essential.
S: This is the great conundrum for the jiva; somehow, it exists, and it is a big ‘so what?’ There are no answers in the mithya world, not even the great minds of old or new have ever been able to answer that age-old question of why we are here. Only Self-knowledge does, and when ignorance goes, the jiva’s existence is known to be ever-present, unchanging pure Existence, capitol ‘E’. The ephemeral creature that the jiva is becomes as good as non-existent, yet also, paradoxically, unconditionally loved for what it is.
C: C: I don’t feel or think to be anything in particular – somehow.
S: That’s good. The Self does not feel or think, though it makes feeling and thinking possible for the jiva. It has no ambition because it is full and content in ‘being’. The drive for the mind to know itself as the Self is built-in to the jiva program because the jiva is the Self. When avidya covers the mind, it is upside down, turned outwards standing on its head, it cannot understand itself or the world. Confusion reigns in the perpetual crepuscular twilight between light and dark, spirit and matter. Which is which? Vedanta is the light that dispels the dark forever, leaving only you, that which makes light possible. Never not shining.
C: I never thought all that much about myself, ‘I’ this or that … – I don’t really like to talk about me either – I notice this a lot, even now. There is not much to say about me, and he is a person who is fine with himself, basically. So, not much to say. Could be sheer lazy-ness.
S: Another sign of a natural sannyasi; I have always had this tendency too. We love to hear people’s life stories, but there really is only one life story and we all share it. What is there to say about the jiva other than to relate a bunch of memories about what it experienced in the past? It’s all subjective stuff, nothing in the mithya world is important because none of it is real. The only thing of real interest is you, Satya. And yet, knowing you are satya can make mithya a fun and interesting place! When the last vestige of ignorance is gone one can enjoy duality for the apparent bliss it offers. Then the jiva experiences the bliss of itself in every experience, no matter how insignificant. It no longer needs grand or important moments because there are no differences left.
C: So… I asked myself ‘what’s up: what shall we ‘do’? What is here to understand? To reflect upon; well, now I am interested to think and talk – to delve into the oddity of Maya and the Truth of being. That is what I did want to know – ever since I can remember, having questions and testing answers. Probably – because reality seems familiar and yet is totally elusive.
S: I like the last sentence in this paragraph: ‘reality seems familiar yet is totally elusive’. An apt description of the mithya world where there is nothing to hold onto and nothing stays the same. You can never quite nail anything down to fit into neat little boxes. Yet there is always a ‘part’ of us that knows we are the knower, and that what we know/see is our reflection in the mirror.
C: This is also why as jiva, didn’t get the ‘have to’s’ in this world, it is so oppressing. I love independence, poetry, evidence, proof, and hard logic. I hate to be told what to do under threat. But I am fine with being a good soldier. It’s all archetypes; the poet, the thinker, the artist, and the warrior. Not to mention the demon and angel. I ‘have’ them all – but all are or can be ‘heavy’ also. But I have a regular Joe, a friendly guy – who knows how to level stuff and gets most doubt’s out of the way, sooner or later.
S: Beautifully put. So true, all identities are limited because they are all mithya, even the ‘positive’ ones. We all contain all the archetypes because there is only one jiva appearing as the multitude. The Causal Body is like this huge, operatic costume room, where all the characters anyone could play on stage can be found to suit our proclivities! When we are done with one role, we change into another…
C: The pain has not been all the shit I went through, in particular. I’ve seen/experienced ‘hell’, in and around me, but it is not that. The pain I experienced was ’teachings and teachers’. Mental pain and heart pain. To my mind the teacher is the greatest archetype there is – in Maya. I don’t blame those people who posed as teachers. They showed me how not to teach and thus also how to teach. It is such a subtle matter. Without wisdom, it doesn’t work – and wisdom is knowledge. Only a teacher is free from the teaching; free from it; having understanding.
S: Yes, a true teacher of eternal truth is always free of the teaching. If there is any identification the teaching is corrupted or co-opted by the ego. There is no other teaching that offers a valid and independent means of knowledge to remove ignorance other than Vedanta. It is flawless. There are many teachers who espouse many things, many are charlatans. But some are wise people, though being wise does not necessarily translate to Self-knowledge. There is mithya wisdom and there is satya wisdom. Both are rare but satya wisdom is the rarest.
Throughout history, many great minds had some of the truth but mixed with ignorance. Some ‘wise’ teachers are purely inspirational because there is still a teacher identity and all they have to teach is their experience. Many spiritual paths are loaded with precepts, beliefs, and opinions. But if the distinction between ignorance and knowledge is not made clear, it is impossible to discriminate, and therefore, impossible to end ignorance and suffering. At best the teaching will be a leading error in that it will get you to the right place through circuitous ways. Most people who are ready for Vedanta have been down that road.
C: So … I am a half-baked sannyasi, getting better at it, day by day – or brick by brick. 🙂
S: Isvara is doing a good job of fully baking you’! Indeed, it is brick by brick, thought by thought. Self-knowledge is applied knowledge and it offers the toolkit for the jiva to work with. Without this, the knowledge does not translate into the life of the jiva, and if it does not, it is not effective. After all, moksa is for the jiva because the Self is already free. So, on the one hand, freedom from limitation requires dismissing the jiva as a construct or concept, and on the other, it involves embracing the jiva as the Self. Always both/and. When you see no separation between you and the ephemeral objects, including the jiva, everything ‘becomes’ real because everything is known to be you. The subject/object split is gone.
C: I do sense a doer in me, as me, who has built up, and maintained, a lot of careful observing/thinking – and this work is to be ended. It already has ended and never began. Beginningless-ness. Not quite yet…every day I take the time to see – to instantiate Vedanta, to repeat, and enjoy this. To know consciously when I don’t know and when I do; the difference is and is not. I hear Isvara better now – or myself as Self. It seems that I must wake up from deep sleep during the day even – whether for real or as a metaphor, then understand the projection and discern it from me as Isvara.
S: This is all part and parcel of how discrimination works. As stated, if you are firm in the knowledge that you are the Self, everything that appears in you is instantly negated as mithya, and simultaneously embraced (known) as Self. Discrimination is no longer necessary; it is the default position of the mind in which Self-knowledge is direct, unwavering. Even nididhysana is known to you as an object, as mithya. But until then, surrender to Isvara with karma yoga and jnana yoga is your daily bread and butter.
C: Then Isvara breaks down the difference between jiva, Jiva and Isvara shows up as a beautiful creation which is pure matter, beautiful and kind of made by me, yet not. It is Love… tender
Sundari: Self-knowledge breaks down all differences between jiva and Isvara because there is no difference in identity, that is the recognition of nondual Love as your nature. The creation which appears as matter dissolves in you as Self and is, therefore, is no longer matter. The unreal is real, but the real is not the unreal.
C: A few nights ago, I had a dream; Ramji had lost a boxing match and had died. His ‘opponent’ was invisible, a dark-ness. I was a bit perplexed while walking out of the building where it all had happened – I didn’t see the fight. While walking out, seeing a kind of L.A.-style theatre with posters and lights – the show-stuff, I woke up. And pondered, because the dream also showed that Ramji was all gold light and alright, no sense of loss whatsoever. I interpret the dream as ‘no use to battle, man – you know that all too well …man so… give it up’.
S: Great dream, Isvara showing you the deathlessness of Self, Ramji as the symbol of the Self, you. The opponent, ignorance, defeated. No need to battle and bleed, Isvara has your back.
C: Why the internal jiva got so fucked up by the events in life – leading to depression is still a mystery to me. But it is over, and something grew strong because of this, despite some damage. One fight in life is really enough. To be is basically enough. Life is so simple, actually.
S: You are so right; life is really very simple. But the jiva programmed as it is with its vasana load (ignorance) makes it very hard to appreciate how beautiful and benign life is. Most experience life in the mithya world as brutal, everyone gets their light punched out at some point. I went through two years of depression in my early twenties, and though it never recurred after that, the punches kept coming! It’s actually amazing, if you think about it, with the gunas being what they are that there is not more darkness, or that there is any intelligence in the world at all. Isvara does not make it easy, Maya is pretty convincing. It’s no wonder so many people desperate for solutions will swallow anything that promises security or succour in an uncertain world.
C: I understand my jiva better now and it seems to be a fractal-like thing, a reflection of the entire creation. But it is not about jiva. Isvara has showed jiva, a few times, something, by dropping the differences between jiva and Isvara; I could see the trees – they are doing well as if I made them and I felt tremendous and quiet love for the gardens/nature. Not that long ago this happened again. I alone could see it.
S: The jiva is a fractal of the whole creation, it is all one big Mandelbrot set. We cannot see the whole picture as jiva’s because our little minds cannot hold that much information. Only Isvara is omniscient. But when we are seeing as the Self (with nondual vision), we know we are the essence of everything, we do not need to have knowledge of all the details.
Though you say only you could see this, perhaps that was true as the jiva. But everyone sees this all the time because everyone is the Self, though they do not know it because Maya hypnotizes the mind into buying into duality, ‘otherness’, separation. We must ask, who is it that sees? The Self is the non-experiencing witness, so it is only a seer with reference to the seen. It would be more appropriate to say that the Self, seeing only itself, is that which knows the seer with reference to the seen, only when Maya is operating. The Self-aware Self appears as a seer; but it never actually is a seer, unless seeing refers to its own Self.
The non-experiencing witness or non-dual Self functions in two ways, as the opaque witness or jiva (saguna brahman – with qualities) and the transparent witness (without qualities – nirguna brahman). The opaque witness is the mind/ego watching itself, and the transparent witness is the Self, pure Awareness. The Self is a seer that never began or ceases and is the all-seeing eye or “I” that sees only itself because there are no objects for it to see. It is self-effulgent as there is nothing but itself.
When ignorance is operating the jiva thinks that the seer is different from the seen, the subject and object are different. Isvara is also known as saguna brahman because it operates Maya (the gunas), but unlike the jiva, it is never deluded by them. When tamas and rajas arise in saguna brahman, then Awareness apparently becomes a jiva and is deluded by Maya.
C: And then my jiva retreats; not wanting to make the claim to have made all of this. This happened almost always after the question; what am I (jiva) doing here? – my jiva’s ‘first’ question.
S: You did make all of it in the sense that as the Self, the whole dream arises from you. The jiva cannot claim it of course, because it is just a construct (inert), and so is the dream. That is the only difference between jiva and Isvara really, the ability to create. Only Isvara creates the whole field, jiva only creates its subjective world. But as both jiva and Isvara are objects known to you, and since everything is you but you are not it, even the reflection appears thanks to you.
Someone sent me this poem yesterday, it is Isvara speaking of the blindness Maya imposes on the mind, and how this instills the sense of being lost and alienated from the world around us:
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
— “Lost” by David Wagoner
C: Well, if there is a doing… it is seeing/ knowing.
S: Yes, seeing as the Self is knowing. See above.
C: You’re right, let’s dump the artha as a problem. It came along a few times, but I jumped ahead anyway. It is good to understand this clearly, as Isvara.
S: Yes. Chasing security is a guarantee you will never find it. Always press pause on who the ‘I’ refers to., jiva or Self? which clearly you do.
C: When I heard Ramji say ‘the mind needs a noble job’ I was convinced Vedanta is the teaching; it made total sense. All jobs end, of course, but this is 100% worth all the effort until it is done.
S: So true, though Vedanta is not a job, it is who you are, and freedom is essentially destroying the notion of doership. Vedanta makes all transactions for the jiva Self-centred, it almost does not matter what one does unless the doer is doing it, or what you do is adharmic. The mind does need to make a contribution of sorts unless you have the svadharma to sit life out in a cave, which most don’t. You cannot run away from Isvara.
C: I observed like I always observe, no matter what the experiences are. The only time this was really hard was while depressed. Here I engaged with a weird and brutal battle, on the verge of suicide. A thought/voice pounded and pounded ‘what do you have to show for; Nothing, why not end it! You stupid fuck! – until I smoothed something out, again. Pure resentment, it seems.
S: When tamas gets hold of the mind to that extent, suicide can seem like an act of mercy. In some cases, I think it is an act of self-preservation, of love, if that makes sense. Vedanta does not take a stand against it because you cannot kill the Self. Though of course, it is not a solution to anything except ending the current incarnation. That troubled Subtle body will work out that karma somewhere along the line, just not as the ‘you’ you currently take yourself to be. Then again, there is only one you…!
Much love
And to you too, always such a pleasure hearing from you
Sundari