By Matthew Martin
Inserts by Sundari
Matthew: I will describe something that I’ve been aware of quite a bit lately, that I think of as “the slippery spot“ problem. The “place” where there’s “no traction”.
Sundari Insert: No traction is a good description of the last stage of self-inquiry, Self-actualization, because the remaining ‘work’ of cleaning up binding samskaras and subtle doership is very subtle. The doer is still trying to keep a grip, but it has to surrender entirely. Which is the hardest part.
Matthew: Before I get to the point I need to give three metaphors.
Metaphor one: learning to play piano
There are a number of different “schools” of piano instruction. This is analogous to the different schools of enlightenment, for example Buddhism and Vedanta.
The qualifications to be successful as a piano student are very similar to the qualifications for enlightenment:
- Steady discrimination and dispassion give consistent access to a sattvic mind which is a working mind, and is absolutely required. A piano student needs consistent access to a working piano. Enlightenment is made manifest in a mind and music is made manifest by the piano.
- Both an enlightenment student and a piano student need the ability to control their mind, manage internal and external distractions, concentrate for long periods of time, give up habits that conflict, accept the results of their practice with an unbothered attitude, be persistent and keep returning to the work.
- Both an enlightenment student and a piano student need to have a burning desire to succeed or they’ll never make it.
- Both need a qualified teacher, a valid teaching methodology, and confidence in the teacher and the teaching.
The goal of the “Russian school” of piano pedagogy is to produce pianists who are fully qualified to play classical piano in a professional capacity. They don’t teach composition, only performance. They don’t teach improvisation or jazz or other styles, only classical. They do teach every skill needed to play classical piano at a professional level including posture and body mechanics, music theory, sight reading, ear training and expressiveness. To succeed takes steady training, coaching and practice; apparently for around 18 years. The subtlety of the study and the intensity and difficulty of the practice increases over the course of training. A beginning student may only have the ability to study 10 or 20 minutes per day but by the end they will be able to practice six or more hours every day. Studying Vedanta is similar to studying piano in this way.
Metaphor two: infinite approach, never arrive problem
I took an introductory calculus class, and one of the first lessons was about this thought experiment. Imagine you have two objects some distance apart from each other. One of them is at a fixed location and the other is movable. At some set interval, say once every second, you move the movable object towards the fixed object and cover half the remaining distance between them each time. Closing the gap this way means never actually reaching the target. The gap between them gets progressively smaller for the rest of infinity but the two never touch. This is a metaphor for discrimination or holding attention on awareness or “standing as the self” as a technique.
Sundari Insert: This is a good analogy for satya and mithya – though they are not opposed, they also never meet. And they never meet because they are never actually separate. But to get that last bit – to close the ‘gap’ requires dissolving the subject/object split. It is not a target because there is no actual gap and no target. You are and always have been the ‘target’. You cannot gain something you already have. The split cannot be resolved by a doer. It is resolved once Self-knowledge removes all residual ignorance of the Self. Then mithya ‘becomes’ satya because there is only Satya.
Matthew: Metaphor three: wrong identity in each of the five sheaths
Each sheath has identity processes and each process is capable of being wrong. All mistakes about identity cause misery. The intellect sheath is the one primarily responsible for jiva-ego-identity and this being wrong is the single underlying basis of all psychological suffering.
- The first sheath is the food body, and it has an inarticulate, non-verbal identity process. It knows when it stubs its toe that it is its toe, not some other toe. This sense of identity can be wrong, for example tumor growth, clumsiness, numbness.
- The second sheath is the “vital“ sheath, or the sheath of biological processes and reflexes. This sheath also has identity processes and can also have identity errors, for example auto-immune diseases, ulcers, not feeling hungry while starving, hunger for sickening food or drugs, not feeling sleepy while exhausted, maybe twitches and tics, etc.
- The third sheath is the “mind sheath” and it has a lot of different identity activities. The best way to understand the mind sheath is as that part of mental functioning which happens spontaneously or at least without deliberate effort. It acts or thinks or emotes in reaction. It includes learned or trained behaviors and skills like walking, language and speech, habitual gait, body posture and facial expressions, “highway hypnosis” and other kinds of auto-pilot, memory, emotions, all habits, all remembered knowledge and education. Mental functions can have identity mistakes. People can remember things that never actually happened to them, hold habitual beliefs about themselves that aren’t true, continue to limp long after an injury to a foot has healed, etc.
Sundari insert – Technically the mind sheath is the emotional body, but as thoughts precede emotions, you cannot really separate thinking and emotions. See below in intellect sheath
Matthew: The fourth sheath is the intellect sheath and despite the limited identification activity in the other four sheaths this sheath is the primary source of the personal identity. This sheath is composed of volitional mental activity, such as carefully watching and listening, puzzle and problem solving, deliberate learning, willful effort.
Sundari insert: the intellect sheath is composed of four types of thinking,(some of which you ascribed to the mind sheath):
- 1) Impulsive. Unexamined thoughts born of instincts dominate the mind. I do what I feel without thinking about it.
- 2) Mechanical. Thoughts of which I am conscious but have no power to control because they are produced by binding vasanas.
- 3) Deliberate. Thoughts subjected to discrimination that are accepted or dismissed with reference to my value structure.
- 4) Spontaneous. Without evaluation my thinking automatically conforms to universal values and my actions are always appropriate and timely. This kind of thinking only applies to those for whom self knowledge has destroyed binding vasanas and negated doership.
- Every learned skill that is available automatically from the mind is now like typing or piano playing, driving, speaking, walking; all of these were first learned and practiced or trained into the mind sheath by the intellect, either yours or someone else’s.
- The bliss sheath is available when the other sheets are not too distracting. It’s hard to mess up the bliss sheath but you can get false bliss, for example from heroin.
Sundari insert: The bliss sheath is always available, just not always accessible if it is covered by rajas and tamas.
Matthew: Non-Enlightenment is living as a manifest person in the manifest reality while operating with a mistaken identity process in the intellect sheath. This is identification with the impermanent body-mind and is the basis of psychological suffering.
Enlightenment comes in 3 phases:
What the Buddhists call “stream entering”
Vedanta calls this listening. You know about awareness and that you are awareness and you are not the body-mind. This is largely only intellectual knowledge but the mis-identification process in your intellect pauses every now and then for a while, and that little bit of relief gives joy and motivation to continue.
Self-realization
This knowledge is firm. You know you are impersonal awareness not the body-mind, and the mis-identification process ceases (almost) permanently in your intellect, but probably not in your mind.
If you think about your “internal” experience there are some things that you always know for certain, all the time and without any doubt at all, whenever you are awake, even if you aren’t thinking about it at the time:
- You exist
- It’s always now, never any other time
- You’re always right here, never anywhere else
Self-realization is when you know yourself as awareness and not as the body-mind with this kind of certainty. Permanently and without any doubt.
Sundari insert: Self-knowledge is different from knowledge of objects because it is always good in all situations, and it is always present. It is that which cannot be negated.
Matthew: Self-Actualization
When you are self-realized the mis-identification process in your intellect has stopped for good (maybe or almost) and you don’t really experience psychological suffering any more, or at least you have an undercurrent of uninterruptible well-being that exists as the very nature of all experiencing, regardless of any psychological suffering.
However you might still have mental, emotional and behavioral problems and discomfort based on the fact that you haven’t assimilated and integrated Self-realization. For example a Self-realized person can continue to have occasional or chronic sadness or anxiety in their mind, or persistent behaviors that they wish they could be rid of like overeating, smoking, laziness, procrastination, etc. Because they have an undercurrent of uninterruptible wellbeing they are unbothered and okay with the sadness or laziness or whatever, like they would be okay with a rainy day. It’s not them, it’s not real, it’s not permanent, it’s no big deal.
This can last a long time but sooner or later they will have to deal with the issues that make what remains of the mind’s identity process feel bad about itself (regret, embarrassment, shame, etc), or this lack of integrity will eventually cause the mind to restart the mid-identification process in the intellect, and psychological suffering will resume. To be clear you only have to address the problems that you feel bad about. For example if you feel comfortable gambling but are ashamed of smoking then self-actualization includes stopping smoking. If you wanted to you could decide to continue working to be better and better even after self-actualization, when it’s no longer a benefit to you. Why not handle everything you can? It could be a good hobby.
Sundari insert: This is correct, except that when Self-knowledge fully obtains, anything that is not in line with the scripture has to go, not just the things you are ashamed of. It also includes the adharmic self-insulting things you have normalized and make excuses for. You follow the principle of non-injury and of dharma at all times, not to be ‘good’ but because there is nothing to gain by breaking dharma. And peace of mind is paramount.
So something like gambling, which is a rajasic/tamasic activity, would not engaged in because gambling is a gratuitous desire based on the hope of gaining something you think you don’t have. It is not a sattvic endeavour.
When you live as the Self, the jiva’s life becomes clean and pure because the mind is clean and pure. It no longer seeks gratuitous entertainments or activities not only because it does not need them but because even a little discomfort (rajas and tamas out of balance with sattva) becomes intolerable.
Addictions like smoking that harm the body are likewise adharmic because the body is a gift to you from Isvara. It may not be real but you honour it and take care of it as such. And because peace of mind is paramount.
Matthew: The necessary and almost sufficient practice and its limitation and solution
There are many techniques you can use to correct your mind, emotions and behavior for self-actualization, but there is one specific practice that is both necessary and almost sufficient.
We need to practice correcting our thoughts, emotions and behavior while standing as awareness.
This is the slippery spot. It’s hard to get traction because it is paradoxical.
If you are doing the work of discrimination to defeat the process identifying and establish “standing as awareness” (self-realization), so you can then correct your thoughts, emotions and behaviors (self-actualization) then you are doing the required practicing like a piano student.
But you also have the “infinite approach, never arrive problem” of using your intellect to study the reflection of the self in the mirror of your own intellect, and even worse you are reinforcing your identity as a person who does things to get results.
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Sundari Insert: For moksa to obtain requires having all the qualifications, values, motivations, being properly taught by a qualified teacher, and total commitment to the three stages of self-inquiry: hearing, contemplating, application.
The tools Vedanta provides to manage the mind, karma yoga, devotional practice and guna yoga are perfectly designed to address the main problem here – which is the fallacy of doership and the binding mental/emotional disturbances, or vasanas. But the doer cannot free the doer. It will get stuck in the principle of ‘infinite regress”, which is the attempt to refute a position by showing that the position leads to infinite recursive sequences – i.e., there is no solution. And that is true if you are talking mithya. It is not true if you are talking satya. You can only ‘step out’ of this loop with Self-Knowledge, nothing else.
The only solution to mithya is satya – Self-knowledge, which is the only ‘thing’ capable of removing all ignorance of our true nature and ending all suffering the result of the delusion of Maya = mithya.
If there still is a subtle doer involved, (the ‘practicer’), the distinction between the reflected self and the Self is not resolved. So the practicer feels like they are ‘reinforcing’ the identification of the reflected self in the mirror instead of discriminating it from the Self casting the reflection.
This process is very subtle. And without total negation of the doer, ultimately no ‘technique’ in itself will produce moksa – freedom from limitation or identification with the reflection. But even with assimilation and perfect application of the teachings to every aspect of your mind and life, the unknown or missing factor is grace. More below.
Matthew: Another way to look at the problem: three shifts
Shift 1) The false personal mind-body identification ceases due to knowledge and “practicing the knowledge” and you experience a shift from recognizing yourself as a person to “impersonal witnessing awareness” of stuff that includes a person.
Shift 2) Knowing yourself as witnessing awareness ceases and you recognize “naked awareness”.
Shift 3) The final shift happens when you cease to recognize or care about or notice identity or personal selfhood at all on the intellectual and mental levels. No one is there, no one cares, everything is just happening and it is joy. The very concept of personal identity is forgotten, then the idea of separation is forgotten, everything is just spontaneously appearing somehow. A sort of “primitive identification” is still happening in the body, the food and vital sheaths. This is bodily process and is not a problem, and it is not you. After all if the body is hungry it needs to know which mouth to put food in, which toe has been stubbed.
If you don’t make the effort you won’t get the 3 shifts. If you do make the effort you won’t get the 3 shifts”. Frustrated either way.
Sundari Insert: The effort required for Self-knowledge to obtain is undeniable. But unless it is effort in the spirit of sacred karma yoga – total surrender to Isvara the idea of doership – the problem here is that there is still a doer to get frustrated, such as Jeremy’s question last Sunday: How can I go further? You can’t if you are talking as a doer. Beyond this point, you take nothing ‘with’ you.
Matthew: Practical advice for Self-Actualization
- Continue to pray and study every day. Pray for help. Read and listen to the teachings.
- If you get truly stuck or lost or confused reach out to your teacher. Don’t let asking for help too often become a substitute for sincere work.
- Continue to practice managing and correcting your thoughts, emotions and behaviors while standing as awareness. It only seems paradoxical.
- Gathering firewood is not cooking the food but gathering firewood is necessary work if you want to eat. Similarly Vedanta is not theory and practice but self-actualization requires integrity in action as well as in thought.
You have realized your nature as awareness and now you want to clean up your nature as a person. Keep up this way of practicing. Doing both simultaneously seems paradoxical but it really isn’t. Do the best you can.
Ultimately satya and mithya are only teaching paradigms. Reality is non-separate.
Remember the analogy given by Ramana Maharishi about the stick that is used to stir the fire eventually itself being consumed by the fire. Your standing as awareness and your correcting yourself will also be consumed.
Practicing in this is not just developing integrity for the jiva, it is also rehearsal for the moment of grace after efforts, when we no longer need to consciously discriminate between satya and mithya. Duality isn’t real, only apparently real. Someday the world will transform for us forever and the self we worked so hard to transcend will be like the mist from breathing on an early winter morning. It appeared for a moment and was gone, an insubstantial indication of the presence of life.
Sundari insert: For more on the final stage of doer renunciation – read the satsang by Sundari – The Synopsis of the Steps to Self-Actualization
