Thank you so much – after reading each morning and night I am still lost for words, it is such a blessing of clarity.
Sundari: I am very happy to hear this.
Frank: I (the Jiva) did not know Isvara wants for us to be free! I know dharma is pre-coded into the field by Isvara, it’s felt and most people seem to know when they are going against the grain but I never put 2+2 together: Isvara is not Maya. I don’t know why I never made this distinction before.
Sundari: Isvara does not know that there is a you separate from it or that you are bound because it is not conditioned by Maya. Isvara is you, the Self, so is beyond the scope of influence of the gunas – duality/ignorance. Maya seems powerfully real, but it’s just a giant computer simulation – the original AI. Under its spell great suffering occurs for the embodied jiva, even though neither Maya nor the jiva are real – meaning, always present and unchanging.
Universal Maya is relatively real with reference to the embodied, limited and short-loved jiva, but both ultimately can be dismissed with Self-knowledge. When that takes place, it still leaves Universal Maya and an embodied jiva – they do exist. Duality does not disappear when you know that it is just a superimposition onto nonduality. But when you know that you are Existence itself, duality no longer has the power to delude the mind because personal ignorance no longer obtains. That’s freedom. Then you get to have your cake and eat it, and life becomes delicious and delightful (full of the light = YOU).
Frank: The reason my Jiva holds onto past resonances is Maya. It fools with two faces: My Jiva feels justified in expecting to be treated special, unique yet professes to be so small and helpless (where the world should listen to its bleatings, give it attention, and blow it up to larger than life). Isvara does not care, and I see that is how it needs to be or freedom is not possible.
Sundari: Isvara ‘in the role of’ creator is not a person but an impersonal principle. It is unborn Awareness (apparently) wielding Maya. Its job is karma phala datta – the giver or dispenser of karma. It has no choice but to provide the jiva with the karma due to it, as long as there is a jiva identified with its limited identity. Though our karma feels very personal, and is, from the egos point of view, it never is. It’s just the endless play of the gunas, spinning the web of Maya. Beginningless ignorance.
Of course it’s all a set-up, but while the show is going on, and the ego is caught in the spider’s web, it’s very convincing and very painful. It’s so convincing that most people find it hard to give up their ‘story’, even though it is no more than a verisimilitude of the truth, even from the point of view of duality. Our jiva stories are compiled by what our subjective memory has strung together. It is neither relative truth nor the Truth. From the Self’s point of view, there simply is no karma. How can there be?
I just wrote two satsangs on the topic of how hard it is to give up the personal narrative– one is called the Chokehold of Maya, and it is posted on our website. The other I will post soon, and is called The Missing G in Fandom. I think it would benefit you to read them both. Just remember that you are far from alone on this issue – everyone goes through this. It’s part of the process as Self-knowledge works on the mind to remove ignorance. Some never get past it and will remain stuck in their story until ‘death do us part’. A sad fate.
Frank: To be free also requires “me” letting go of both Maya juxtapositions. I give up the oh so “justified ego specialness” as well as the ever hungry “justified” inadequacy. It’s not me, it’s a thing I see, with two comical faces. Both cancel each other out, leaving a ghost which I let go of. I am not sure this is precise, I will contemplate more.
Sundari: Yes – as I said previously, Mayas favourite form of torture is to cut us off at the knees ensuring low self-esteem and smallness, while simultaneously endowing us with prodigious feelings of entitlement to being ‘special’. A sure recipe for anxiety, disappointment, dissatisfaction and resentment. Freedom only obtains when we see what Maya is, how it operates (gunas) and can discriminate the jiva/Maya from the Self. Maya has many faces, and all of them are no more than a conjurer’s magic trick. As I said in the email I mention above, the Chokehold of Maya:
Maya shreds everyone to pieces and fills jivas with so much anxiety and fear. It is a sad state of affairs. Though there is no magic wand, thankfully, we are the lucky ones who can find the way out of the soul destroying game of duality with the help of Vedanta. Once Self-knowledge (nonduality) takes over the jiva’s typical mode of perception (duality), we are given brand new specs. The confusing upside down matrix we didn’t know we were lost in rights itself. It’s so incredible, to finally ‘see’ clearly how Maya has the ego in a vice-like grip. And it’s just a phantom of the opera – as good as non-existent, yet seemingly, so powerful. What a great cosmic joke!
Much love
Sundari
