Dear Sundari,
I have just read your beautiful satsang on grief and was very heartened by it. I had a conversation on the topic with James not so long ago and was also reassured then to understand that continuing to feel grief as the jiva is normal and natural, perhaps even healthy, even while one “knows” one is the Self, as is the “departed” loved one.
Sundari: thank you for your email, it is poignant and touching. Yes, indeed. There is no contradiction in feeling any emotion and being the Self, it is all a question of identification.
D: My father recently died and while sadness comes and goes, I sometimes find it hard to remember that it is the love for the Self that is being expressed. It may be related to grief on my father’s death (in terms of his body’s death) or not, but lately, I have noticed an underlying sadness in me. It just seems like my default mode has been set at sad for a while, as though celebration and fun were not meant for my experience.
Sundari: The grief is about loss related to the death of your father, but it is also a universal vasana because life in duality is defined by loss. There is nothing that lasts here. When we lose someone close to us, this fact becomes more apparent and sadness can become a kind of default mode, as you say. Even when we have no reason to feel sad, we can experience an undefined unspecific all-pervading kind of sadness. Many poets and philosophers through the ages have written about the inherent melancholy of life. Victor Hugo, the famous 19th-century author made several pertinent quotes about love and loss: ‘melancholy is the happiness of being sad’, along with another, ‘It is nothing to die. Not to live is frightful’; and my favorite, ‘to love another is to see the face of God’. That is so true because everything is God, the Self. When we love another, it is the Self in them we love, not the body or its personality because love is the true nature of the Self and is all there is.
Right now, a lot of people are experiencing a feeling of grief over life as it ‘used to be’ pre-pandemic. Though there is nothing wrong with feeling sad, it can become a kind of identity, a strong vasana filter through which we experience life, or try not to experience life. It is not exactly conducive to true happiness, which comes with the knowledge that everything is perfect the way it is and accommodating our heart and mind to accept all results as a gift.
D: How you described observing the grief as a sadhana really spoke to me. Lately, I’ve begun to just notice the sadness, which I know is not me, the Self. But rather than will myself (the jiva, which is also the Self, ultimately) into some kind of good mood, I started speaking of myself in the 3rd person, saying “She’s so sad right now. She’s missing her father” and it was a strange shift of perspective.
Sundari: Very, good. this is classic mind management, seeing and objectifying the guna that is dominant in the mind as the witness. Mind management is not about trying to manhandle the psyche to force it to change or ‘feel good’, though the mind will shift to sattva if Self-knowledge is operating. When you know you are the Self it does not matter how happy or sad the jiva feels because the bliss of the Self is not an experience, it is who you are, and that does not really feel like anything, nor is it affected by what we feel. There will be a space between you, the Self, and the emotion. At the same time, the jiva responds appropriately to the feeling, which is to say, understand where it comes from, acknowledges it as not-Self and observes it. It’s just a feeling, an object known to you, and it will pass as everything does in the apparent reality.
Mind management is about observing what is unfolding in the mind dispassionately and not conditioning to it, which means you don’t identify with it. If there is sadness, let it be. Don’t try to avoid it, dive into it or make a big story out of it. We can allow our feelings to express while effectively controlling them with Self-knowledge so that they do not take over and incapacitate our lives.
D: I still wasn’t “happy”, as such, but the sadness seemed to be just another experience to accept and offer up to Isvara while it lasted. And I realised too, that when I do feel happiness and joy, it’s not customary for me to offer that up to Isvara, and I thought it would be interesting to offer up all those (eventual) joyous feelings as well. They’re no more real than the sad feelings; I’m just in no hurry to get rid of them!
Sundari: Very good, that is the correct conclusion to come to. As I said in my satsang on enlightened grieving, it is a place of deep intimacy to hold the jiva in love and light as it processes painful, or joyful, experiences. All the same.
D: I find the question of the emotions very subtle. I understand intellectually that they are objects, not real, not me, but there is still often a surprise when I get caught up in a strong emotion. I think it is still OK to have strong emotions (maybe it’s impossible to avoid them altogether), but I’m wondering if it doesn’t gradually become more like the Self “apparently experiencing” the world through a particular jiva-flavoured filter. From that perspective, I could become most curious about whatever experience presented itself, though as a jiva I might not like it. I just wouldn’t want to be dissociated from my emotions in the sense of being emotionally numb.
Sundari: Emotions are very subtle and can be enormously powerful; they can make or break our lives. We could say emotions are what makes us intrinsically human, but we can also say that emotions are the cause of so much of our suffering. The Self is the non-experiencing witness of the experiencing entity, the jiva, it does not feel or think, but makes thinking and feeling possible for the jiva. For the Self, nothing ever happened because there is only itself; it is nondual. All suffering is caused by duality, attributing to the Self what does not belong to it, i.e., imposing duality onto nonduality. However, freedom from suffering, Self-knowledge, is not about denying emotions. It is about understanding their origins, which are the gunas or Causal body, as is everything else not-Self. Intellectually knowing that is not freedom from our emotions necessarily but is a big step in ameliorating the suffering caused by emotions.
All emotions start off as thoughts but morph almost instantly into involuntary emotions. We all have typical patterns of emoting, based on our svabhava (inborn nature) and vasana load. Mind management is essentially about managing emotions, but it is not about suppressing them with the intellect, which many people try to do. To use the intellect for mind management we need to can catch the thought before it morphs into an emotion and an impulsive/instinctive reaction. That way we can remain dispassionate and objective about what we are feeling without suppressing the feeling. We can choose to act on it or not, and action or inaction will most likely be dharmic for us. Emotions are not good or bad but when they take over the intellect, we have problems because this usually translates into actions that cause us unpleasant or painful karma. As I said above, it is necessary for the jiva to process feelings to be happy and mentally balanced.
In fact, lack of or suppressed emotion leads to self-destructive and dangerous behavior. Scientific research has shown that people whose emotive faculties are damaged (such as people who have had lobotomies or irreversible damage to the limbic system) cannot function properly or process the information coming to them from their environment. They are confused, dither, cannot make decisions and prevaricate. People who lack emotion don’t lead well-planned logical lives; they lead foolish lives. This can also be seen in cases such as people on the autistic spectrum or other mental health problems. In extreme cases, people who are incapable of processing emotion are either born psychopaths or become sociopaths, untroubled by barbarism and unable to feel other people’s pain. So, our emotive capacity is important to us to be fully functioning humans.
Moksa is about freedom from and for the jiva, the experiencing entity, which means that you no longer take your jiva identity as your primary identity. But the jiva doesn’t disappear when Self-knowledge obtains, it still thinks and feels according to its inborn nature. So, we accept it and honor it for what it is, the way it is, without trying to change it. Freedom is not about perfecting the jiva but not being bound to it or by it. The jiva is the Self, though the Self is not the jiva.
The jiva is an imperfect apparently real construct in an imperfect apparently real world, but it is also, quite amazing and beautiful. It is only ignorance of its true nature as the Self that makes the jiva unhappy, ugly, or ‘bad’.
D: Coming back to the question of grieving, a friend suggested I write a letter to the person I’m grieving, and I plan to follow his suggestion. The suggestion reminded me of the story James has told of how he learned of his mother’s death and of how lovingly I have heard him speak of her. It seems to me (though that’s just my interpretation) that each time he speaks of her, it’s his own letter to his mother, expressing his love of the Self, as expressed through her mortal life.
Sundari: Very good idea, anything that helps to objectify the feeling is highly recommended. Yes, James has great love and respect for ‘his’ departed mother, that is to say, for the role he, as the Self, played in the role of ‘mother’ for James. Life is not complicated really, and nor is the Self. Self-knowledge is nondual, but for the jiva, it means the ability to experience the Self while (apparently) appearing as a jiva. There is much to enjoy as a jiva, especially when we understand what it is. Enjoy it, all of it, even the apparent sadness, which as I said, is a kind of praise for your mother.
D: Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. I needed to hear what you clarified and greatly appreciate your answer. It will take some time for the jiva to “catch up” with reality, but having a map always makes me more serene about the journey.
Sundari: You are most welcome
Love,
Sundari
