Ted: My mind was about to explode caught between satya-mithya concept. Finally, Isvara through your teachings cleared all the misconceptions. I have stopped seeking. Pesky vasanas do not affect me. I can witness my three bodies! I feel the world is perfect as it is. I am living authentically, recognizing my personal vulnerabilities.
Sundari: This is great, Ted, but remember, taking a stand in awareness as awareness sometimes turns out to be more than a little tricky because it is so subtle. The split mind watching itself has a slippery tendency to claim to be awareness. But is it “unfiltered” awareness or is it a delusion? How to know and how to deal with that? Taking a stand is done with the mind and can lead to a kind of self-hypnosis that makes the jiva think it is the Self without the full understanding of what it means to be the Self. Of course, based on logic alone (is there an essential difference between one ray of the sun and the sun itself?), the jiva can claim its identity as the Self – but only when its knowledge of satya and mithya is firm.
The practice “I am awareness” does not give you the experience of awareness or make you awareness. It negates the idea “I am the jiva.” When the jiva identity is negated, the inquirer should be mindful of the awareness that remains because negating the jiva only produces a void. Nature abhors a vacuum. Many inquirers get stuck here and depression can set it if they cannot take the next step, which is understanding that the emptiness of the void is an object known by the fullness of the Self, the ever-present witness. Or at that time, many inquirers “start” to experience as awareness and make a big fuss about it even though you have only ever been experiencing as awareness all along! So,the discrimination between jiva’s experience of awareness and the Self’s experience of awareness is essential.
The Self’s experience of itself is qualitatively different from the jiva’s experience of the Self as an object or as objects. As we have said before, it is one thing to say “I am the Self” as the Self and another to say it as the jiva. This realization may well be a painful moment for inquirers who are very convinced that they are enlightened without knowing that they are only enlightened as a jiva, not as the Self.
Sankalpa samadhi or the akandakara vritti is seeing all things as Self, as non-dual. The akandakara vritti experience comes out of Self-knowledge, and if the knowledge is not firm, it will end, as do all experiences. Full assimilation of the akandakara vritti – meaning unbroken or ending, is moksa.
~ Love, Sundari
