Colleen: It was very confusing the only place I saw a mention of it was in the satsangs. And then I kept looking at the page for a link on the top and there was never anyone there, so I thought maybe they were just referring to giving a link for the scripture. I’m bummed out that I missed it again. I tried the link that was in your email about an hour and a half into it when I saw your email, but it didn’t work.
Sundari: I am sorry to hear you had problems joining the meeting. As I said in reply to your email last night, nobody else had any problems doing so, and the link worked for everyone. You are the only one to complain, so the problem must be on your side.
Colleen: But I have to say I kind of wish he wouldn’t talk about the Vax as I strongly disagree with him on that point. There is the moral aspect of life as James discusses and the level of dishonesty, manipulation and lack of scientific integrity with this VAX have been astonishing. I do think there is more going on here than meets the eye I’m not talking about Qanon stuff or anything. But I do believe there is more to it. And I will continue to help people to see and take care of themselves.
Sundari: You disagree with James about the vaccine, so what? Everyone is entitled to their personal opinions. However, James’ teaching is not personal, though you seem to think it is. If he had to modify the teachings to suit everyone’s opinions, likes, and dislikes, how do you think that would work? Are you looking for a teacher and a teaching that agrees with your opinions or challenges who and what has those opinions and why? If you are committed to self-inquiry, you are not the boss. Isvara is. And in this case, Ramji is the stand-in for Isvara. If you cannot surrender to Isvara with the karma yoga spirit, self-inquiry will not work for you.
You say there is a ‘moral aspect to life’ as though your stance on the vaccines is moral and James’s is not. Yet, Vedanta addresses dharma, right living, which is, living in accordance with Isvara as Dharma with a big ‘D’. The Dharma with reference to the vaccine is a question of right action for the Total, not just for you. This is exactly why James brings the vaccine issue up. It is not to make anyone right or wrong, but to bring to attention what the correct response is from the big Dharma (meaning Isvara’s) point of view on this issue. While everyone may be entitled to their opinions and ‘facts’ as a jiva, there is more going on here. As individuals, we are part of the field, we are not separate from it. Everything we do should be in line not only with our ideas and opinions but what is good for the Total.
That is what is called ‘moral living’, i.e., living in accordance with what Isvara wants. Furthermore, if you accept Ramji as your teacher (and if you don’t, why are you listening to him?), then shouldn’t you accept that he is presenting the Vedantic teaching about the law of karma, which is the teaching about the moral dimension, in the service of Isvara? According to you, taking the vaccine is adharmic, but what do you base this idea on, and what exactly is dharma, according to you? What is an undeniable fact is that the vast majority of people dying of Covid are unvaccinated.Â
What if your ‘helping people to take care of themselves’ (whatever that means), results in people refusing the vaccine and dying as a result? How does that square with your idea of what is moral? And what exactly does ‘taking care of themselves mean’? Obviously, it does not mean that you trust Isvara to take care of you or anyone else, and you feel you must protect people from adharma, according to your ideas of what is ‘true’ or ‘moral’. So, are you a dissatisfied moralist, or are you the Self? If you are the Self, you would follow what Isvara wants for the Total despite your reservations and trust Isvara to take care of the jiva and the needs of the Total.
I am not sure what the source is of your information regarding the vaccine that has you so convinced of mass fraud and manipulation regarding the ‘scientific integrity’, but it must be very different from ours. There is no shortage of peer-reviewed, authentic scientific research and findings on the covid vaccine if you are open to finding them. The mRNA technology is nothing new, it was developed decades ago for other medical purposes. The only new part is the scientific breakthrough in understanding how to get the RNA molecule to function as a vaccine. In fact, the technology is nothing short of miraculous and up for a Noble prize in medicine. How could this be true if there is no transparency on the vaccine? It does not make any sense.
If you are proposing that the vaccines do not work, then what actual, credible, evidence do you have of this? It is hard to argue that the vaccines do not work for their intended purpose, which is to prevent death and the most serious ill-effects of Covid. Well, I suppose you could argue against this if you are deeply invested in being right, in which case, facts will be interpreted to suit your view.
As with so much in the media and on the internet these days, there is much hype and fear around the vaccine, most of it based on speculation presented as facts. It seems holding the moral high ground is most important to this minority cohort. But doubt regarding immunotherapy is nothing new. Vaccine hesitancy and suspicion are as old as the advent of vaccines, though recently the whole issue has lost all rational discourse for some who have their own ‘facts’ and claim to have the ‘science’ to corroborate them. The shared evidence-based means of knowledge we once agreed on to determine ‘truth’ scientific or otherwise does not work for you or this group of people, it seems. Fortunately, humanity, on the whole, has not lost its rational bearings and ability to discriminate fact from fiction in the neurosis of suspicion and mistrust.
The favorite slogan of the new breed of anti-vaxxers is that humanity is a giant Guinea pig for Big Bad Pharma. This is true, but sadly, also myopic. It would be funny if the fear this idea generated were not potentially dangerous and resulting in many needless deaths. Humanity has always been an experiment in progress. Ever since our caveman days, medicine has been one long process of the study, experimentation, and application of poisons, natural and otherwise, for the ultimate benefit of the organism. Many people died or got sick along the way, and still do because most ancient as well as modern medicines have the power to do great harm as well as great good.
How could it be any other way? How do we find out what is good for us without some risk involved? Yes, it is true, there have always been unscrupulous profiteers and villains, especially in the development of drugs. We all know that the powerful pharmaceutical giants are ruthlessly profit-based. Nonetheless, that does not mean that all medical scientists and researchers are flawed or evil. Medicine may have become institutionalized but there have always been incredible and noble individuals who go to extreme lengths to bring about medical cures. Along with the bad, there are heroes and miracles in medicine as everywhere else.
There are risks and benefits from taking the corona-virus vaccine as with any other medication. There are always gains and losses no matter what we choose to do, not do, or believe. Our approach is that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks given what is now known about the vaccine and the virus. There have been a small number of people who have had bad reactions to the vaccine, some may have died as an indirect result of vaccination. Nobody is certain yet, but what the research is confidently showing is that in most cases other co-morbidity factors were present. People react differently depending on the kind of vaccine they had not only because of factors like underlying health problems but also their genetic profile. We still need much more information, but thus far there is not enough credible evidence-based science to prove direct causation in most of the bad side effects reported, and there have not been many.
What we do know is that some people suffer serious side effects even from supposedly safe readily available over-the-counter medications, let alone prescription drugs or immunotherapy. Though being vaccinated is not a guarantee that you will never contract the virus or transmit it to others, it is almost certain that the chance of dying or of long-term side effects are very slight indeed. The chance of transmitting the virus even if you are asymptomatic is also greatly reduced if you are vaccinated.
Who knows about the long term? We will only know if there are long-term unforeseen effects from the new vaccines after a minimum of 10 years. In the meantime, there is no doubt they are saving lives and the virus is taking them. The virus may continue to mutate, and the vaccine may prove to be effective for only a short period of time, though some results for the mRNA vaccines in particular are already showing long-term protection from the virus and any mutations. Though I have never been a believer in the necessity for an annual flu vaccine and never had one, with corona, it may be necessary to have a booster shot after some time.
It is up to everyone to assess the long-term risks according to trustworthy evidence, not fear-based speculation. Some people are not against the vaccine but feel that not enough evidence is available yet on certain issues, like the impact on fertility, for instance, therefore they will not avail themselves of the covid vaccine. We have a friend who wants to fall pregnant and weighing up the risks of the virus has decided against the vaccine for this reason. Fair enough. If you genuinely have this attitude and take every other precaution possible to not be infected or to infect others, you are still taking the needs of the Total into account.
There is no such thing as a risk-free life or medical intervention of any kind, whether preventative or surgical. One of the leading causes of death in the world is called iatrogenic disease. Death as a result of the harmful side effects or complications either from the proper diagnosis and administration of drugs or through misdiagnosis, error, or negligence. This is the price we pay for medical care; it is far from foolproof. Not only is it human nature to make mistakes, but it’s also impossible for any medicine whether natural or allopathic to be totally safe for everyone. Medical science has come a long way and is rapidly moving towards medical care based on our individual genetic profile tailored to the needs of our unique physiology, and therefore, much safer. But that day has not quite come yet.
We are not afraid of the virus or of death, but as we like living and contributing to life, we do what we know to be reasonable and logical to maintain the health of the body. So, we make informed opinions based on evidence-based knowledge, a judicious acceptance of the way the Field of life works, and our trust that life is fundamentally benign. In life, there are no guarantees, for anything, ever. However, for us, getting vaccinated against corona is not only common sense but a service to life, to the Field. We trust Isvara implicitly, and to us, the vaccine and the virus, are Isvara.
While we all have the right to choose what we want to put into our bodies, we are all part of the interconnected field of life, as stated above. Nothing happens in isolation. We need to ask ourselves what our responsibility is to the whole, not just to ourselves when it comes to something as serious as a pandemic. I understand vaccine hesitancy up to a point; there have undoubtedly been serious problems with some vaccines in the past. Yet the science of immunotherapy has saved humanity from many of the most serious plagues that have come our way so far. Think Smallpox, Measles, Polio, Bubonic Plague, Tetanus, TB, Hepatitis B, Yellow Fever, etc. Even so, many people were at first afraid of them and in many cases had to be forced to take them by law. When I grew up it was mandatory to be vaccinated against most of these viruses, and one could not travel to most countries unless you were vaccinated. Why the hysteria about the Corona Virus Vaccination?
While it is true that the current vaccine was developed in record time, the mRNA technology is four decades old and holds great promise for the progress of medicine on the whole, not just immunotherapy. Whatever the case, nothing is perfect. Those who have fallen down the conspiracy rabbit hole on this issue have become brainwashed by fear, believing it to be intelligent ‘knowledge’. You say you are not a conspiracy theorist, but what are you, then? Conspiracy theorists see themselves as the ‘keepers of truth’, rebels who will not be told what to do or think. They pride themselves on going against the flow, ‘thinking outside the box’. But they do not realize that they are in another box of their own making: the box of frightened people who feel out of control. They tend to be people who are after a feeling of agency and empowerment against the big bad world ‘out there’ threatening them. But there is no ‘out there’. There is only in here, the world our mind creates.
It’s not to say that conspiracy theorists are necessarily entirely wrong, they often support elements of truth. The problem is that elements are presented as the whole truth. Disparate facts are conflated in such a way as to support whatever the individual wants to believe. Conspiracy theories require allegiance to a confirmation-biased point of view. You must drink the Kool-Aid to be part of the tribe, and never challenge it. Once signed on, it’s a short trip indeed to the total loss of discrimination. You then live in a bubble of your own making, shut off from any other point of view. There is no acknowledgment of the fact that in this world, there are no simple answers to anything. There is always an upside and a downside, lots of good and bad. To everything. The big picture is what matters, and for that, it’s a question of what lens you are consistently looking at the world through. Fear, or Love, i.e., do you see life as benign or as a threat?
That is a question we must all answer, and much of our happiness depends on it. But because life is so unpredictable and human nature so flawed, humans are a suspicious lot with a natural tendency to be suspicious and defensive. We may think that following the fear route is smart, and sometimes, it is. The search for security, to feel safe, is one of the primary motivations for most. But fear also keeps people stuck in the smallest idea of who they are. This is not a judgment; it’s just a statement of fact and nobody is to blame for this, it is the way most people are programmed. I am not saying you are wrong, but perhaps this is a good opportunity for you to address the fear and sense of dissatisfaction that seems to be coming through in your email to us?
It is fine to have beliefs about things, whatever they may be. We all do. But we must beware of indoctrination by the so-called gurus of ‘fact’ that are legion, especially on the internet. They are trapped in the limited negative fear-based view of life. It is entirely possible to be entirely fooled by what sounds very reasonable and logical but isn’t. Why not take cognizance of your likes and dislikes from the point of view of Vedanta, which is what Ramji is suggesting?
Love
Sundari
