Dear Ramji
I hope life’s treating you well. It’s been a while since I last wrote to you. Things seem to be going well here, thankfully. I found your recent satsang, “A Flower Pushing Up Concrete” to be quite helpful. I’ve also been slowly segregating from society, and I wasn’t sure if this was adequate. I’m facing some doubts I can’t resolve on my own. As always, I’d really appreciate your help. This time it’s about thoughts and the attempt to control them.
In his commentary on Chapter 3 of the Gita, Swami D says:
“If you try to avoid anything, in the name of avoiding it, it is necessarily right there in your mind.
Problems always arise when we try to avoid the thoughts themselves. Some people spend their lifetime trying to avoid certain thoughts because they are told that some are good and others are bad. In the process, they remain stuck with the very thoughts they are trying to avoid! In fact, these thoughts have nothing to do with you; they have only to do with the unconscious material part of yourself.
What control do you have over liking a person? None. Nor should you have any control. In fact, you should leave it alone because if you try to control it, you will be in trouble. You will be meddling with your mind and when you rub against your mind, you rub against life itself. And in this process,you get rubbed too.
Some of our modern spiritual literature is replete with statements declaring that you should avoid having certain thoughts. There are so many do’s and don’ts that a seeker becomes nothing but a pack of nerves! Prior to becoming a seeker, the person was much more acceptable to himself or herself, but after reading so many books, the person finds so much garbage in his or her mind. Because you are beyond all concepts of good and bad and beyond concepts themselves, cultivating and avoiding good and bad thoughts becomes meaningless. All thought is just insentient matter.
And how is your will involved here? Will is not to determine what you should and should not think, but how far you should go with the thoughts that arise. Your activities are not caused by the likes and dislikes appearing in your mind but by your identification with them. Because you are identified with your like and dislikes, you go along with them, “you”, meaning willpower.
So, allow the likes and dislikes to be what they are. The mind is a beautiful instrument as long as you let it think and do not meddle with it. Otherwise, you will be in for problems. It takes very little time to become insane”.
Franklin: I partially understand that thoughts are beyond my control, but is mind management not an attempt to control them? What about dealing with pesky vasanas, isn’t this also some form of willful thinking?
Ramji: Mind management is a tool for an advanced inquirer. It is about discrimination, dismissing all thoughts as unreal. Karma yoga is about not worrying about the mind. You just cheerfully do what you think is best every day and gladly take what comes. If you do, unwanted thoughts go away on their own because you aren’t obsessing on them.
Franklin: Isn’t applying the opposite thought all about forcing positive, clean thoughts? The Swami mentions: “What control do you have over liking a person? None. Nor should you have any. You should leave it alone because if you try to control it, you will be in trouble. You will be meddling with your mind and when you rub against your mind, you rub against nature. And in this process you get rubbed too”.
Ramji: No, it’s not forcing clean thoughts. It’s about knowing that a particular thought isn’t you. If it isn’t you, it isn’t yours to worry about, so it goes away. You don’t worry about what your neighbor had for breakfast. A mind full of nice clean thoughts is better than a mind with ugly guilty thoughts, but it is still a busy mind supported by fear of unclean thoughts. This question implies worry, dislike of certain thoughts. Sometimes the mind is nasty. It’s not because you want a nasty mind. It’s just your conditioning. You’re a nice Catholic boy so you feel guilty about sex, I suppose. Fine. Get into it until you see the downside and you will then start to become indifferent to it. Eventually, it won’t bother you.
Franklin: But in The Value of Values, when talking about purity, he states: “When I see a person I resent or dislike, I deliberately use my will to think of thoughts opposite to the negative ones”. How is the practice of of the opposite thought compatible with “leaving the mind alone”?
Ramji: Sometimes you have to actively intervene if a particular type of thought won’t go away, unless it is the type of thought that is generated by Isvara, like sex or food. Sex and food are species things, not jiva things. Unfortunately, Franklin thinks he is a human being with a body, when he is just awareness, so he gets what all humans get, a sex drive or a gratuitous food vasana of one sort or another. So, you manage it by judicious restraint and indulgence until you get weary of thinking about it and let it die. After all, if you don’t agree to insure the future of the human race, someone else will.
3. Finally, I’m trying to follow the five dharmas of karma yogis daily, but when it comes to Unconditional Reverence for Parents, I find it hard to get rid of resentment. I’ve been trying to think positive thoughts and cultivate purity but again, I’m not sure if this is a futile attempt at controlling my mind. Is it just a matter of practicing the opposite thought long enough to get rid of resentment? What about the statement “If you try to avoid anything, in the name of avoiding it, it is necessarily right there in your mind”? Am I not avoiding resentment by thinking the opposite thought?
Ramji: You get rid of that thought by realizing that your parents are jerks by no fault of their own. They did their best. Ignorance makes them what they are. You should feel compassion for them. You feel compassion for yourself afterall. The problem here is that you think they are your parents. Isvara is your mother and father.
Franklin: I can totally relate to “becoming a pack of nerves as a seeker” and having been “much more acceptable” to myself before. As a jiva, I used to be much more confident in myself before I got into spirituality. It all seems to be coming from the idea that I “shouldn’t” have certain thoughts (or worse, that “not thinking” is the goal). This obviously leads to neurosis because I’m not in control of them, right?
Ramji: Yes. I sympathize, but worry is just a bad habit that keeps the mind bleeding, like picking a scab. Karma yoga takes care of it. You don’t decide to worry just as your parents didn’t decide to be born into a Catholic family and get indoctrinated with all that nonsense. Feel some compassion for yourself and do what you want. After all, you’re not in danger of becoming a bandito, an ax-murderer, a child molester or a drug addict, so lighten up and start living. If you arein danger, then Vedanta can’t help. You can decide to trust yourself and do what you’ve been told is sinful to see if it is actually harmful. Actions are only sins if they control you. You’re a reasonable person. If you weren’t you wouldn’t be staying in contact with us because we only deal with reasonable people. If you get your fingers burned, so what? Krishna says, “Life is pleasure and pain. You have no choice but to endure it.” You don’t grow if you don’t live.
I spend a lot of time helping spiritual and religious people walk away from those two mentalities. Vedanta is just common sense, which, it seems, is in short supply these days.
Much love,
Ramji