Hi Barbara,
I’m glad you read my commentaries and I value your input. It really helps to get input because I can get a general idea how people see Vedanta and how well I communicate. Of course different people are inspired differently, according to their inclinations. I’m bound by the tradition to present the basic teachings as they are every-time, so there isn’t a lot of leeway for “creativity” except in the manner in which they are presented. I’m striving to make these ideas available to more and more people without compromising their meaning and diluting their impact.
Barbara: You say, “Freewill borrowed from being all the qualities that are not thought.” Then you list qualities that you feel are not thought i.e. Training, Refusing, Speaking Truth, Belief, Ignorance, Looking, Inquiring and Curiosity. Then at the end of the text you share the e-mail from a woman and identify her words/process as her free will standing up to ignorance.
I think that this is the only part of your text where I feel an unnecessary disconnect. It feels like the word game trying to pin down aspects of the coexistence of the relative and absolute… Isvara and free will, to me, are part of the illusion.
James: Yes. This is Vedanta’s point of view. They are only concepts. But it is not a word game. Instead it is part of a larger argument i.e. the difference between thoughts/emotions and the felt processes of the “I sense.”
Barbara: When you state that this woman used her free will to stand up to her ignorance, it is what was going to unfold anyway due to her program or evolving karma. I know we “do” because we can’t help but “do” but I do not believe we have the control we think we do. I am constantly looking at my thinking relative to what seems to appear. This too is an apparent action because what I perceive and name is coming from my causal body powered by non-dual awareness.
James: This also Vedanta’s point of view. But let me run though the issue again, as much for you as for the many people who are looking for clarification of certain important teachings.
James: I understand your view that we don’t have as much control as we think and I don’t disagree but, as far as Vedanta is concerned, we aren’t animals because we have a certain degree of free will. Other animals don’t wake up in the morning, get dressed brew coffee and go to work. There would be no spiritual path or no civilization since there is no reason, apart from the desire for a result, why an individual needs to make choices at all. Mammals, plants, insects, etc. don’t goals, ideals or self-judgments. The have no cultures or civilizations, yet they are conscious entities like us. They make certain rudimentary inferences as do we but they don’t know the are making them.
We plan and we make choices. The point, however, from the human point of view, is that if there is even a little free will there is a lot. For sentient beings, it’s a scale from almost zero to almost infinity. And where a particular individual falls on that scale, depends to a very large degree on his or her view of free will itself. Our view is that there is free will if you think there is an there isn’t if you don’t.
People deny it. People think they have more than they do and misuse it with reference to their intentions. People use very little and fail to help themselves when they can and others manage it judiciously to create dynamic, interesting lives. Some use it to understand the factor that is beyond the human mind. Some use it for good and some for evil. Some see its upside, some its downside and others see both.
From the point of view of existence/consciousness…the “real” you…it is non-existent. From the point of view of the Creator, Maya, it is non-existent because the Creator is not an individual entity. From the point of view of insentient matter there is no free will and from the point of sentient entities there is very little to a lot.
Fate defines it and it defines fate. So it is definitely a dualistic mental concept with significant emotional ramifications and is only useful, depending on what you want to do with your life. You can go limp and leave it to fate or take the bull by the horns and transform it. Vedanta just provides a framework that allows an individual to manage his or her mind. It’s part of the human tool box.
The basic idea, however, is that if you’re completely satisfied with your life, it’s not an issue and if you’re not, you can do more than complain about it. You can change it to the degree that it is changeable and you can change your attitude toward it if your attitude causes problems. I know very well that I am not connected what-so-ever to the s-called person I thought I was for a significant chunk of my life and I attribute it alternatively to God’s grace and free will, both of which are apparently real, which means not real, in so far as they have no impact on me, What Is. I am a What, not a who, although I have a convincing “who act.” Most people don’t know they are just acting.
Vedanta says that your idea of yourself as an individual can’t be disconnected from the context in which your life is playing out. It also says that What I
Am is an alternative. When you understand the alternative you can choose to pursue the who option…or not. Until you understand there is a choice, there is no choice. A dog or a cat is always going to be the same dog or cat because it doesn’t know there are options.
The whole discussion of karma yoga is about how to use free will to manage your emotions, with the idea that lack of emotional control is not helpful in so far as it compromises one’s success in life.
Barbara: You may be shaking your head at some lack of understanding that I have but I honestly do not feel confused about the big picture.
James: I don’t think you do. I am just interested in your reaction to the statement, “You are not a healthy person if you don’t want to see beyond your fixations: security, pleasure, recognition, power and virtue.” I don’t think it applies to you in so far as you have been on the spiritual path, which is a choice in so far as other options were available, for most of your adult life, I believe.
Barbara: The qualities you listed that are not thought still involve thought at a basic level. To me, for example, you can’t refuse or inquire without thought being involved on some level. You can understand the nature of thought which can allow truth to shine…which to me comes through when I question thoughts and allow some space.
James: Yes, everything involves thought. The mind motivates everything. And yes, allowing and questioning are not specific thoughts, they are inbuilt ongoing functions of the “I-sense,” the human makeup, like the sense organs and the Unconscious Mind that we don’t “think” into being. They are What Is.
Barbara: It is very difficult for me to explain what I see and feel about this…if you feel I am in left field with these observations then I am in left field. It is not that big of a concern to me. I am just trying to tell you what I see because you asked.
James: These are difficult concepts, Barbara, and you are doing a good job communicating. The statement “I feel” is one of those natural inbuilt ongoing impersonal processes that are quite different from specific thoughts, the idea that “ït is difficult to explain,” for instance.
Barbara: Now that I stumbled through that one I will note statements/ideas that stood out for me.
“Journey without a goal”. This is true to me. Under the heading See the Isness, not the Thoughtness I like the paragraph that starts with “your experiences are just you. My habit of mind was that I have to “seize the day” when there is nothing to seize. This was a burden that rarely rears its ugly head anymore…if it does it gets dissolved pretty quickly.
James: Cool. Do you think this dissolving was due to your own efforts or was completely up to God’s will? I bet you say it is a combination.
Barbara: Under Listening: “you can discipline your mind not to interpret words.” This is a real practice for me now.
James: Cool again. That is the fundamental practice of jnana yoga i.e. Vedanta.
Barbara: Under Where is the World?: “Your experiences are only thoughts accompanied by equally unreal emotions.” Yup!
“You can perceive isness because you are isness. Only isness sees isness perceiving from a sense organ level.” This made me wonder if all of those qualities you listed under the devotion section that are not thought are what you consider sense organ qualities.
James: They are like sense organ qualities. The senses are material instruments. They don’t have free will. They deliver information and the mind interprets the information according to its biases, it’s conditioning. Interpreting is one of the mind’s unconscious processes. This process is considered “natural” and most people don’t even think they have a choice about it because they aren’t aware that is happening, much less gain control of it. But this process can be brought under one’s conscious control just like specific emotions and thoughts can be eliminated or altered. An individual can let the conditioning stand…or not. I once asked a woman, “Why do you keep such a messy house?” Without a trace of irony she said, “Because my mother did.” So, obviously she felt that no free will was involved in housekeeping, at least.
The reflected consciousness that you as an individual “borrow” from Isness itself is like the senses organs in that it is it dominated by its conditioning, unless it becomes aware of how its habits are counterproductive, at which point it can either take the tamasic option and suffer the conflict or take the rajasic option, which is to attack the problem by discipling the mind. Discipline is a power you can use, if you want. It is not a specific thought. Specific thoughts, are value neutral as are processes. They are. But when you add consciousness to them they become dynamic processes, a part of the “I sense” for better or for worse, depending on one’s values.
For instance, I love to write Vedanta. I would sit on my butt writing 24/7 if I could. But after sitting for a couple of hours, a discrete thought appears. “I am hungry,” for instance. I can suppress that thought and keep writing. But I don’t think “I will suppress that thought,” before I suppress it. I just suppress it. Suppression is an innate impersonal universal process going on in the human mind. It is. Or I can act out the thought. In this case I’ve consciously disciplined my mind to produce a counter thought, so when the thought involves moving my body, I indulge it. Once I identify with the counter thought, no specific thoughts related to it are involved. It just becomes a dynamic energy that moves the body effortlessly toward the object of my desire. Desire is. Again, it is an impersonal value neutral energy.
So the idea in the commentaries I sent you so far is about dropping the thoughts and their attendant emotions and learning to feel what is natural. That feeling is born out of your nature as awareness so by disciplining the mind to feel rather than to emote you are becoming more intimate with yourself, which is yoga. It’s still duality but it’s the best duality because it sets you up for liberation, freedom from the “I sense,” your individuality.
Barbara: If nothing comes of this for you it certainly gave my mind a little work out. This is the most interesting subject there is for me so I enjoy looking at it. Thank you for sharing. I sure hope you get to see Sundari this year…such a strange time to watch.
You’re welcome, Barbara. I very much appreciate your thoughtful reply. It stimulated me to think more on this topic and incorporate the additional material into the original manuscript. As far as Martin is concerned He is Me and I am He. We understand each other. No words are required.