Camille: Vedanta is the most beautiful gift that came into my life 5 years ago.
Listening every day to the teachings, attending the seminar in Berlin means so much to me. I spoke to James about my relationship and where I stand. With the question if we love each other, I gave the answer yes, although my attention towards my partner is diminishing. I think this is because I want to share the deepest understanding in relationship. In your book you wrote about all kinds of relationships and values. The highest value of living this life in true love is my most important ‘goal’. So, I trust in the absolute ever-present Awareness. That is the only secure ‘part’.
I live about 25 years with my partner. We are very different in living life, nevertheless I fell in love with him with the understanding I had at that time.
I was spiritually active in a way of making life worthwhile, and I was often not happy and was in search for happiness.
There is kindness and we let each other free from whatever we want to do. On a respectful level. There is no talking about true love etc. Not that that is needed, still there is a wanting to share this highest value about true love. The Self. We live with ourselves in respect to each other. Well, it seems I do not anymore.
I joined a zoominar with James a few months back and there was a guy in this meeting that I came in contact with, and we were kind of curious about each other. I really don’t know why but we started to communicate and still do. It is like an attraction that is sooo “big”! I love to talk about true love and understanding. This friendship is very beautiful. This man has spoken to James and is reading your book. So beautiful to share the same understanding.
He was almost immediately “in love “. I am not. Still, I do not experience the “in love “. Or am not sattvic enough to recognize it maybe. It will come to me…
The separate Self is alert, haha. He is also so persistent about that the field has given this contact, he/me, to Us. And I get more confused about the things he says. Not trusting it. We are doing this while we both are in a relationship.
Why is this so important? My highest value is to share true love in a relationship.
At the same time, I think it might be over with my ex.
The big Q is: DO I REALLY WANT TO CHANGE MY LIFE AND LEAVE MY PARTNER AND BE WITH HIM?
Does this all make sense?
Sundari: Thanks for sharing your story and the doubts you have about what Isvara has presented for you to inquire into. It is good that you are doing so. Yes, what you say makes sense and comes up often for many inquirers. The relationship issue boils down to a love/need issue, and it is one of the toughest ones to resolve for most people. It is natural to want love, and it seems so natural to seek it in others. There is nothing wrong with that, as I point out in my book. But there is a problem if you truly are an inquirer. The entry-level requirement for self-inquiry is the realization that there is no joy in any object. The joy resides solely in you. To seek love in another is the hypnosis of duality and leads to bondage and suffering.
The whole point of self-inquiry is to free you of dependence on objects for happiness. Love relationships create the biggest obstacle here because, in samsaric relationships, dependence is built in, that is why people enter them. Relationships from this point of view are the ultimate duality. You say your main goal and value in life is to ‘live this life in pure love’. What does that actually mean, for you? It sounds like it means experiencing ‘true’ love in a relationship, which you feel you have not had in your current one. The same applies to this new person you have met online who is so persistent that this is ‘meant to be’’.
As the Self, you already are ‘pure love’. That is your nature, nobody gives that to you or takes it away—you cannot get more of that from anywhere. There is no need for any special condition or person to be present to experience this love ALL the time. But if the knowledge that you are the Self and not the jiva is not firm, then the mind is still under the spell of Maya, duality. The desire to seek fulfilment, to find what is missing, is still there, but disguised as a spiritual value, as in your case. There is still a separation between you and the objects of your affection. There is still the feeling that love is a feeling, something to gain, to give, a special experience. In dualistic love, desire feels like love because when its needs and conditions are met, the mind is settled and blissful. When its needs and desires are not met, it is a veritable sea of storms. Hence the drama and suffering in so many people’s lives thanks to the unmet needs, expectations, and disillusions in relationships.
As I say in my book, Love is not a feeling or thought. Thoughts/feelings are just the reflection of love, they are not actually love, just like your reflection in the mirror is you but is not you. Love as your nature means you are whole and complete and need nothing, it does not involve another at all. It is not a special experience, it is ordinary. ”Others’ are seen as the love you are. Love can be expressed as a feeling to or for ‘others’, of course, but if you know you are the Self, the subject, the object is loved for its own sake, not for how the object makes the subject feel. Real love is free because it wants nothing and fears nothing. It is self-satisfied, totally confident. To share non-dual love is not really possible because it is not an object, something to get or give. You can only share something with someone if you see them as other than you. If you know you are the Self, you experience nondual love with everyone all the time regardless of whether they love in the same way because everyone is the Self. It is not a sharing as such, it is just what nondual love is and does. You are the same love, the Self.
Having said that, I understand the desire for the special experience of loving someone who understands you and is of similar mind. It is a longing many spiritual people have. I cannot imagine being with someone who is not Self-actualized because there is zero need for anyone to share my life. A person who loves dualistically is full of needs and expectations, which would not work with me who has none. I see no purpose to working that hard just to have someone in my life, there is nothing to gain, I need from the world. I can only be with someone who knows they are the Self and James feels the same, that is why we say that a nondual relationship is a ‘non-relationship’.
From the jiva perspective, it seems like there are two of us, both with our jiva programs. That is so, but we are not identified with our jiva, even though we have the freedom to be a jiva because we are free OF it. We are the Self, that is our identity, no fine print. How can the Self be in a relationship if there is only the Self? But not everyone is ready for or comfortable with that kind of freedom that non-dual love is, though many in the spiritual world claim to want it above all else, such as you do. But they are not aware of what it entails because they are not free of the jiva yet. They are still attached to its needs because they still have residual issues around the love need, so the jiva keeps tripping them up and prevents them from fully accessing Self-knowledge. If they actually had to experience non-dual love, they may not know what it is or how to cope with it because there is nothing to hook onto. Non-dual love can even seem cold and unfeeling to the uninitiated, though it is anything but that.
It sounds like your current partner has not satisfied your need for love, and that need is still there. Now you have met someone else, and it is tempting to believe that this person will fill that need. If you are both inquirers, this puts a different spin on things. Or does it? That depends on whether or not you have dealt with the needy part of the jiva nature, and I don’t think either of you has. Many inquirers assume that because they are inquirers they are on board with this idea, but they are far from it. The love/need vasana is one of the deepest and most hidden in the jiva makeup; it is a universal and highly deceptive samskara.
So, regarding whether or not you should leave your steady and unexciting but true partner of 25 years for what seems to be an exciting, new, and passionate ‘true’ love interest is to answer these two questions:
What do you think you will gain that you don’t already have?
Do you believe someone else can make you happy?
What are your truthful answers to these two questions?
Right answers: Nobody can give you what you believe you do not already have. Nobody can make you happy, not permanently. This is just a fact. If you chase love in another you are looking for it where it cannot be found.
As we have said many times, most people don’t enter into or stay in relationships for freedom. They do so for emotional satisfaction, which is not necessarily the kiss of death spiritually but may well be. Relationships are samsaric preoccupations if they are based on desire and need. Unless you are a proper karma yogi, intimate relationships create bondage, as I said above. Entering a new relationships is only permitted in the first stage of karma yoga (sakama karma).
In the second stage of karma yoga (nishkama karma) chasing a relationship is not permitted, but not having relationships per se. In the second stage, you are presumably mature enough to stand up to your desires and dismiss them with reference to your love of Isvara, which you do whether you are in a relationship or not. It is not that there is anything wrong with relationships or having a new and exciting relationship. It is all a question of how deep your commitment is to freedom from limitation.
But know that the risk you run if you go for it is that your self-inquiry will be derailed by an all-consuming desire. When this need is satiated, you feel so blissful because all barriers seem to dissolve and the feeling of love as your nature rushes in. It is the highest most addictive high. The problem is that the mind deluded by duality ascribes the high to the other person without realizing the high comes from them as the Self. That is what cements the bondage to the other, so the needy vasana clings on for dear life. It is a trap sadly because it is an illusion. The love is never in the other.
I am not sure what your sadhana has been, or how much you understand about the process and methodology of self-inquiry. Maybe you do, or maybe you don’t realize that when you commit yourself to Vedanta, you are locked into a predetermined sadhana. You are no longer the boss. You must follow the steps for self-inquiry to bear the fruit of freedom from limitation and suffering. The whole point of self-inquiry is to bring that wilful, self-centered ego into line with scripture, which is Isvara’s words. If the love/need vasana tail is still wagging the dog, it is important to accept that fact and follow the program of self-inquiry to the letter, assuming the desire for freedom eclipses the need for love. I have attached a satsang on the requirements of self-inquiry, in case you are not entirely clear on this very important topic.
It is good that you are sceptical about this man’s over-zealous desire, and it does not seem that you have succumbed to the pressure from him to enter into a relationship. But it is hard for many inquirers is to see love attachments for what they are without making any excuses and adjusting their desires according to Self-knowledge, not the jiva’s conditioning. As an inquirer, your life must fit into the scripture, not the other way around. It does not necessarily (though it may) require ending relationships. In your case, perhaps the most honest thing to do would be to address the karma in your current relationship before leaving it for another. If you are not happy in the relationship, why stay in it, what’s in it for you? Safety, security? As the Self, you are the only true safety and security that exists, a fact you claim to know.
If you don’t address what the issue is in your existing relationship, you will simply take the same vasanas into the next one. That is guaranteed. Most people are in a relationship with their vasanas, not another person. If you don’t address the vasanas, they just appear in the form of ‘another’ person. You may be ‘happy’ with your new exciting love interest, maybe even ecstatic, for a while. But sooner or later, the same issues will arise that you had in the last relationship for the simple reason that you are in the same relationship with a different person.
Why? Because it’s the same vasanas, just sugar coated with the veneer of spirituality. It is seeking love in another. If you truly want to live your life as the Love you are then live the understanding that YOU are what you seek. You will never find that in another because Love is the nature of the Self. Your true nature always endures because it is the nature of life, it is not something we must work to become, gain, or give.
As I said, there is nothing inherently wrong with relationships, it is just a question of what motivates them. What is truly the most important value to you – freedom from limitation or the bondage of need? Self-actualized people have relationships all the time. The only difference between Self-Actualized people in a relationship and jivas who need love is that Self-actualized people are never ‘in love or ”in a relationship’. If you are ‘in’ love or ‘in’ this relationship, you will be out of love and out of the relationship one fine day, even if you stay in the relationship. Just like you are now, in your current relationship. That is the law of karma. But, if the relationship is ‘in’ you, that is a different story altogether because then there is no need for objects, no dependence, as I said above. Desires that are not contrary to dharma are never binding. Sathya and mithya never meet and are not expected to, which is the hopeless quest of people in dualistic relationships who are looking for love/security where it cannot be found: in someone else.
The real motivation for the attraction to this new relationship will be revealed if you answered truthfully the two questions I asked you above. Many people who haven’t worked out the love issue, go for love relationships and then look for spiritual reasons to justify them. Is that what you and your new love interest are doing? Only you can answer that. There is no quick fix to the agony of duality. Discriminating between satya (that which is always present and unchanging, you, the Self) and mithya (that which is not always present and always changing, i.e., everything other than you, the Self) is hard. It requires eternal vigilance because ignorance (duality) is so hard-wired and tenacious.
It sounds harsh, but we call the needy love vasana the “love whore” vasana, the almost zombie-like impulse to get love and attention from others. Assimilating the most primary lessons of Vedanta is difficult (the joy is not in any object) and most people are not suited for it. See this vasanas for what it is: a way to distract you and seduce you into tasting Maya’s sexy stuff just like the parable of Eve and the apple in the garden of Eden. You can taste the apple but know the cost. Everyone who wants freedom must pass this way, there is no blame. Maya sets up the game to trap us in this way. The only solution is the scripture, and it says to hand over the vasana to Isvara while resolutely sticking to karma yoga.
Karma yoga is your main defense. It is a kind of need-armour when the hungry need vasana pops up like an unwelcome cork in the ocean of samsara. Whack it instantly with the opposite thought: I am whole and complete and need nothing to make me happy. Do not hesitate even for a second. Hold tight to the lifeline of Self-knowledge like a deep-sea diver and keep discriminating. For self-inquiry to work and bear fruit, it must translate into every aspect of your life. It is knowledge in action taken in the karma yoga spirit. Perseverance and persistence are the name of the game when up against the formidable foe of need.
The teachings are clear on this issue, and my book spells it out. There is no fine print to freedom, you are either on board and committed to self-inquiry, or you are not. Clean up your karma in your current relationship, stick to the teachings, practice radical trust in Isvara and see what unfolds. There is nothing more I can say to help you though I am happy to talk to you over zoom if you still want to do so. But I cannot tell you what to do, it is a personal choice. Our brief as Vedanta teachers is to explain the scripture and to help you with how that relates to your question with reference to self-inquiry, no more.
Camille: I know that the joy is Me and that is the most beautiful gift and understanding Love is our nature How can it be possible to get it from objects? The reason for asking myself is because of the fact that the sharing of this true love is my highest value. Being on the same page in shared being, as I said before. The fact is I am not alone yet inquiring about this. Is this maybe an opportunity from the Field. You can’t do that on your own right?
Sundari: Yes, this is a big opportunity for growth from Isvara because deep binding vasanas are coming up out of the jiva program to be seen and understood so that they can be negated. You need help to get you through this challenging time and you have the teachings as your guide, and a teacher to unfold them for you. This is grace and grace is earned. It is to your credit that you have trust in both. Well done, this is hard to do when such a strong desire takes residence in the mind.
Camille: Holding back to go for another relationship which is not a relationship but sharing love, is there because I want to live this Love with someone with the same understanding. Do I miss this? Then I have to say, not really because missing would mean depending…It comes to me or not, right?
Your book says: “I am a whole and complete being, whose nature is love. I love and respect myself and I am free to give myself totally in each moment …..”. This is where my focus is… ( not always there indeed )
This new friend is very persistent in being together. He is also in a relationship and wants to spend his life with me. While I hold back the thought: What would this make more beautiful.
I did not search for a new relationship and also, he did not. When I write these words, it starts to clear my mind. I don’t have to be with someone to live the highest value…that is already the case if I know what or who I am. Can we still talk about this in zoom Sundari? Life talking is maybe clearing things even better.
Thank you for your support. Vedanta will tell and you are the one, a tool, to communicate this teaching. 
Sundari: Thank you for your feedback, I am glad to be of help though I know what I impart is not easy to hear. I feel for you and the emotional dilemma you are going through. It feels so right to give in to love when it knocks on our door, especially when we think we have not been looking for it. You made peace with your current relationship despite what it fails to give you, and you thought you were not looking for love. Clearly, the teachings helped you with you this. But you were still unconsciously looking for love, which is why it showed up in this form. Isvara knows you are not satisfied with your current relationship and the unfulfilled desire that remains. There is something missing.
Your statement:
‘The reason for asking myself is because of the fact that the sharing of this true love is my highest value. Being on the same page in shared being”
That says it all.
If you were truly not looking because you know you are what you are seeking, that your nature is love and needs nothing, there would be no need to share this love with another being. It may be a preference, but it would not be a driving need. The Self needs nothing because it is full, whole, and complete. You are your highest value, and you are always available, regardless of who is or is not in your life. As a jiva and an inquirer, your highest value should be freedom from dependence on objects. From that place, you could decide to leave your current relationship because it is redundant and therefore, is no longer appropriate, i.e., no longer dharmic. Or you would remain in it with the karma yoga attitude and love your partner as the Self. Seeking would be over for you so there would be no problem, either way.
But it isn’t, is it? There is still a longing for the “other” who will give you what is missing, and therein lies the problem.
I cannot advise you on what is right for you. as I said previously. If you cannot say no to this temptation, then go with it fully. Dive into it and give it your all. Make your experience, try to remain objective. However, as I said before, it is very good that you are sceptical and suspicious of this man’s insistence that ‘this is it!’. That is discrimination at work, activating the doubting function. You should doubt because things in mithya are seldom what they seem. The very fact that this man is so insistent is a warning sign of danger. Danger of what? Of bondage, dependence. He sounds extremely needy, and remember, needy people are only really interested in getting what they want, they do not really care about you, the ‘other’, though they would swear blind that this is not true. They can come across as so charming and wonderful, but they are really like emotional vampires.
Women are so often coerced by men into thinking that they are needed by them, and they need the man. It feels good to get so much attention, to be needed, especially when one has been in a barren love-starved relationship for so long. Why is he so desperate if he is on the same page and committed to freedom from limitation, which is freedom from dependence on objects for happiness? It sounds like his pursuit of you is under the guise of fulfilling your unmet desire to share your love with a like-minded person, aka, a ‘spiritual’ person. But really, it is about filling his emotional void.
If one has never resolved the needy lustful part of the psyche, you are an emotional thief. The treasure you are after to steal is your lover’s energy and attention to gain what you feel is missing in you, to make you feel good, whole, that you matter. As I said in my book, it is very painful for a non-needy person to remain with a needy person. In fact, they seldom do because the needy person is only after their own needs-fulfillment. Needy people are often narcissists with low self-esteem, and they often feel self-loathing for being so weak.
Are you really both committed to freedom? What is the ‘same page you want to be on’, which book does it come from? Is it a page in the Vedanta scripture or in the mithya book of needing objects to complete you? Vedanta says you are whole and complete and need nothing to complete you, ever. What does your book say?
Have you discussed these feelings you have for the other man openly and honestly with your current partner? And if not, why not? Don’t you think he deserves to know how you feel in as much as he probably believes you have a commitment to each other and to honesty?
Of course, I am happy to talk with you, but I cannot tell you anything different from what you already know and what I have already said. You have to decide if going for this new relationship is dharmic for you, and if so, do the dharmic thing and clean up your karma with the man you are with FIRST. Then go into the new experience with the karma yoga attitude and see what happens. If it fails, well, it fails. Big deal. You will have learned something. Sometimes it takes things like this to get us out of a tamasic rut. Isvara always gives us what we need, but it seldom comes in the form we expect.
I wish you well, whatever you decide.
Camille: Thank you for your clear response.
I think my suspicion about persistence is exactly why I hold back.
Sundari: Good for you Camille, that is discrimination at work as I said above.
Camille: And with my current partner, I talk about my thoughts and about us. He doesn’t know about another man. We cannot talk well with each other. I tried so many times. It is not working. You are right! I (we) have to take care of this relationship and work things out. I will be alone for a few weeks. Just to be with myself, read your book and this email again. And find it out what I must take care of. But he let me be in my time to do the work.
Sundari: I emphasize with you because I think I know the kind of man you are married to. So many men have not developed the ability to understand let alone be objective about their feelings, and too many women are run by them. Men clam up and refuse to talk and women tend to get over-emotional and sometimes, irrational because they feel so frustrated. It’s an old story. Marriage can be such a prison for this reason. But many choose to remain imprisoned rather than face the drama that comes with leaving, of change, the unknown, and especially of being alone. The often painful journey of looking within for what is missing, instead of to another to provide it.
It sounds like your marriage has run its course and could have passed its sell-by date a long time ago. But who knows, maybe there is a way to work things out with him. Much will depend on how well you can communicate if you want to stay. If you are afraid to leave, ask yourself why? Are you afraid to be alone? The truth is everyone is always alone, regardless of whether they are in the ideal relationship, a bad relationship or, alone. The determining question is are you alone or ALL ONE?
Camille: I read Vedanta books (James and yours) not any other. I am committed to Vedanta. I cannot talk about Vedanta and that is or was not a problem. It is because of the other man that my focus is gone in this relationship. Clean up the karma in this relationship seems harder than I thought. And also, How!?
Sundari: It is excellent that you stick to the teachings and trust them because without faith in the teachings you are powerless against that needy ego. But there could still be another book you are stuck in, the book of wanting the world to give you something you feel you don’t have. Many have this book without knowing it, even people seemingly dedicated to self-inquiry. It goes with the territory of being human in the world of duality. There is only one way to clean up our karma in any situation and that is to take the road less traveled. It is hard, and it requires radical self-honesty and self-inquiry without self-judgment. As you said earlier, you married this person with the knowledge you had at the time. There is no blame, ever. Now you have grown a great deal and this relationship no longer serves you.
So Isvara sends you a curved ball in the form of this new love interest, to get your attention on what the real issue is. And the real issue has nothing to do with your husband or your new love interest. It has to do with inquiring into the jiva Camille’s program. To see and understand what needs and desires drive her, why she suffers, to uncover the binding vasanas that limit her and are coming into view. To see the programs in light of the teaching of Vedanta. Understanding is all that is required because nobody makes themselves the way they are. All jivas are an Isvara guna-generated program, and freedom is not about perfecting the jiva. Freedom is freedom from and for the jiva. You cannot be the Self and the jiva. So, who do you identify with? The needy jiva, or the Self? You must choose, at every moment.
Moksa is the ability to discriminate satya from mithya in every moment of every day, until it becomes the default position of the mind and is automatic. You are no longer identified with the jiva as your primary identity but as the Self. Up until then, your sadhana as a true inquirer requires that you think the opposite thought by taking a stand in Awareness as Awareness, one thought at a time, thought by thought, and surrender to and stick with the teachings to the letter. It is not easy. The childish ego wants what it wants and will not give up without a fight. Self-inquiry is radical and ruthless at this point because it has to be. It demands fearless total transparency and honesty that is why so few actually do the work required. They use self-inquiry as a disguise, window dressing, to keep their binding desires, not to expose them to render them non-binding.
Camille: Time to focus on what needs to be done Sometimes the confusion is too hard to take myself on the road again.
Sundari: Yes. For the jiva cleaning up your karma may well involve some upheaval, this is true. Taking this path is the path of grace, it is the harder path, and it takes courage. I attached a satsang for you to read that I wrote about the two paths that are always available to us. The natural, or easy path, the path of least resistance, the path of staying in our ‘comfort’ zone and paying the price. Or taking the path of grace, the path less traveled, the one I described above. It is your choice. But I can tell you that the path of grace is the path of Love. The path of least resistance is the path of the slow shrinking and even death of the soul. Read the satsang attached.
Camille: Thank you so much. I understand that zoom is not necessary. I will make a donation to Shiningworld. For your time and help.
Sundari: I am very happy to talk to you on zoom Camille. I understand that sometimes one needs to hear the teachings, not just read them. So, I am available if you still want to, we both are. We are happy to be of service, that is what we do, so feel free to write or talk to us. A donation is much appreciated, thank you.
Camille: I needed that push to go on. To keep inquiry and do Karma yoga.
Sundari: Good, that is Isvara giving you a shove, not us. We are just mouthpieces for the timeless and flawless teachings of Vedanta. Karma yoga is like emotional burnout insurance if you are doing it right. It offers us the great gift of gratitude despite our circumstances because we get to understand how Isvara is taking care of our every worldly need and helping us live our true nature as the unlimited Self. We get to hand over all our mental/emotional confusion and turmoil on the altar of karma yoga and to trust Isvara to take care of it and show us the way. What a deal!
Camille: You said previously;
“Many inquirers assume that because they are inquirers that they are on board with this idea, but they are far from it. The love/need vasana is one of the deepest and most hidden in the jiva makeup; it is a universal and highly deceptive samskara.”
This is very clear to me. These words are so helpful. It seemed that I had to change my life and live this “true” life. But I am it! And that this other man came into my life, is for ‘pushing’ be towards Me. Not that I need to change now. I need to see what is in front of me and be honest with myself and my partner.
Sundari: Bravo. Yes, if you want freedom the way forward is to clear up your karma, there is no other way. To jump into another highly charged desire-filled new relationship is asking for more pain and frustration down the line. It may not be the same man, but it will be for the same desires. If peace of mind is what you want most, first things first. Take care of your karma. If this new relationship is dharmic for you, it will still be there. It is not what is important right now, it is just the catalyst for growth. Whatever happens, know that sometimes things need to break before they can mend.
Much love, and all the best
Sundari
