Jason: Ramji, you are right. I have been successful at discriminating thought and emotion as not-self. But the discrimination of the doer/enjoyer has eluded me up until now. Upon being told the doer is an object, I have accepted it as an idea, but the discrimination of the reality those words point to is clouded by vasanas. I can think back to experiences of fasting where the mind finally caves in and moves beyond the suffering. All that is left is pure joy and unshakable self-confidence that comes with the relief from desire, even the desire to drink water. But the knowledge that accompanies that experience was not present yet.
Ramji: Hi, Jason. You say, “Upon being told the doer is an object, I have accepted it as an idea, but the discrimination of the reality those words point to is clouded by vasanas.”
I don’t think vasanas are the culprit, Jason. I think ignorance is. Vasanas, which are not ignorance but are the effects of ignorance, don’t hide the relationship between the Self and the doer. Think about it this way: Do you know that you are doing something when you are doing something? Yes. You are aware that you are doing action. Now ask yourself if you, awareness, are doing something. The answer is obviously no. This means that there is no doer or, alternatively, that the vasanas are causing action. I think you think that the doer, meaning Jason, is a knower as well as a doer, but it isn’t.
The doer is purely a concept generated by Maya, the creative principle, only one factor in a chain of causation that causes actions. So it can’t do anything. The doer, Jason, is purely conceptual, a thought. When it is present, you think “Jason” is doing something but actually the vasanas, the desires, are causing actions. If the doer is real, it needs to be present all the time. But many times you don’t think, “I, Jason, am doing this or that.” For instance, you may think, “I am not digesting my food properly, my stomach hurts.” But when your stomach doesn’t hurt, are “you” digesting your food? No. So who is digesting? Digestion is happening by the grace of Isvara whether you are aware of it or not. Before you want something, do you think “I want something?” No. The want arises and you are aware of it. The problem is that you add the “I,” awareness, to the desire. But does awareness want anything? No, it doesn’t. So this is not a vasanas problem. It is an ignorance problem. If you follow the logic above the ignorance should go.
Vasanas and the actions generated by them have no impact on you, awareness. You are always free of action. That action is happening is known to you. But action and the doer don’t know you. They are inert objects created by Maya that generate the appearance of action. Ignorance adds the notion of doership.
Jason: Over the weekend I kept thinking, “The wise grieve not for the living or the dead.” It occurred to me during the funeral that the word “wise” does not refer to one who wields information. It must refer to the one who sees the difference between the emotion and the witness of emotion.
Ramji: Yes.
Jason: I see now that my vasanas keep me locked in a conditioned experience of myself as a person. Otherwise there would be nothing limiting me from the consistent knowledge of Self. I was sitting on my couch this morning, and that thought brought me great happiness. I am zeroing in on the doer now.
Ramji: See above re vasanas.
The important statement here is “I am zeroing in on the doer now.” The focus should be on the doer and the idea of doership, not the vasanas. Your vasanas are not a problem, except the tendency to think of yourself as a doer. The way you break that tendency is to apply the opposite thought: “I am limitless, unborn, non-dual, actionless awareness,” until it destroys the thought, “I am a guy with vasanas.”
Rebirth
Jason: As for life after death of the body, let me see if I understand. The body dies and the subtle body is withdrawn into the causal body, effectively ending the doer/enjoyer? No passing “Go” or “collecting $200.” There will be no experience of objects, even the most subtle object of identity. When the eternal individual has rested enough, it then is remanifested based on the momentum of its own past actions in a particular body and takes up the task of progress where it left off, more or less. Is that about the size of it? If I am understanding this correctly, then that would have to mean that it is possible to experience pain, i.e. “hell,” in the causal body? Just as it is possible to experience bliss?
Ramji: No, that’s not the size of it. You are confusing the non-eternal jiva, the doer/enjoyer entity, with the eternal Jiva, which is awareness. How can something that is eternal “rest” and “remanifest”? How can it “take up the task where it left off”? It is not a doer. It has no vasanas, no karma.
The non-eternal jiva is purely conceptual. It thinks, “I have vasanas. I am a doer, etc.” It begins shortly after birth and it dies when the body dies. It doesn’t know who it was in its past life because it has no past life. Even during the seventy years the body lives it is not always present. Jason is not Jason. Jason is a name for awareness, which has no name. It is a convenience added by Maya so that awareness can apparently live in the apparent reality.
The mistake is identifying with the jiva, not identifying as the Self, because you are only aware as the Self in the first place. The non-eternal jiva is inert, so it is not aware. The eternal Jiva is non-different from the Self.
~ Ramji