Dear James,
I listen to your teachings over and over again and am slowly becoming a Vedanta computer.
There have been some experiences of absolute freedom, complete fearlessness, unconditional love, etc. in the past.
The first experience happened in a retreat. For days I had not followed the teachings of the guru, but had simply begun to dissolve all my resistance to the whole event and these spiritual people. So I felt more and more free. At some point something very remarkable happened. I just sat there and watched the goings-on like a moviegoer watches a movie. Then, from one moment to the next, the spectator and the cinema disappeared. There was only film, no more subject-object separation. The normal human perspective briefly reappeared, then it slipped away again. And in the middle of this timelessness, the mind suddenly roared: “You can’t even go to the john in this state.” That was indeed the thought that brought me out of this state again. After that the mind was just empty. Complete equanimity, Joe had disappeared. For a week. Then there was so much agitation that the personal perspective took over again.
From the whole story, I then concluded that I had to learn to simply tolerate strong feelings that bring me out of my peace of mind, without pushing them away but also without identifying with them. I practiced this until I was sure that there was no more feeling that I could not handle. With my present knowledge of Vedanta, I would then call this work with regard to moksa a qualification. I do not know if this qualification is meaningful for everyone. How would you see it?
James: Yes, work on your emotions is qualifying work. But let’s leave the qualifications idea out of it for now and look at your conclusion from the point of view of your ultimate goal—freedom. The conclusion is logical, but logical doesn’t work for liberation because the problem lies with the one who concludes. Freedom is freedom from the concluder, Joe. But it was Joe that made the conclusion. He “had to learn to simply tolerate strong feelings…etc.” The one that concluded is the same one that “has to tolerate” in the future, which isn’t possible since the future is purely conceptual. The actual meaning is that you don’t tolerate negative feelings now.
This is quite fine since there is another solution: find out why you don’t tolerate negative feelings. And the answer is that you don’t tolerate negative feelings because you think they are real. But negative feelings, as well as positive feelings, including the feeling of toleration, are not real. They belong to the “I-sense,” the feeling entity. They only seem to be real. Or you can say they feel real. You, the one who sees them and believes that they need to be “tolerated,” is real. If you know this, the feelings are as good as non-existent since they have no impact on you, existence shining as consciousness. The other option, pushing them away, is subject to the same analysis. You don’t push or pull. You are the ordinary awareness in which pushing and pulling happen.
Joe: Unfortunately, I had also concluded from this experience that enlightenment is the dissolution of subject-object-appearance. So that this state should be achieved. Today I would agree with the mind: A functioning on the worldly level, at least without help from others, would be quite impossible.
James: Enlightenment is the dissolution of the subject object appearance but we need to look into what kind of dissolution it is. Is it something you can do, something that happened, or something that is already done? It is not something that happens…except when it does…or something that you can do, at least not the way you conceive of it, because it is not a state. It is a fact that can only be realized i.e. known. If you dissolve it then you have the same problem I pointed out above. The “dissolver” is not an actual entity. It is purely a conceptual entity an “I-notion.” And the subject-object split is equally conceptual because it disappears on inquiry. It is not real. So what kind of dissolution is it? It is knowing that although duality is experienced, it is not real. Once you know this fact the subject-object split remains but it is “dissolved.” I understand that this is difficult to assimilate but it is the only fact you need to assimilate if you want freedom from Joe, which is to say you are interested in being unaffected by “his” experiences positive and negative.
Finally, you are right that you can’t take a poop or tie your shoes in that state, but so what? You can tie your shoes in the waking state where your shoes actually are. And you can also take a dream poop and tie your dream shoes in the dream state. Two states for pooping and tying are enough. Experiences, spiritual and otherwise, are not real.
Joe: On the subject of qualification and above all the generation of more and more sattva I have a question. You sometimes bitch about yogic breathing techniques in your lectures. I do not practice yoga techniques, but I do other breathing exercises and I feel that they lead to a clearer mind in the long run. Do you see it completely different?
James: No. Any practice done in the right way with the right understanding is excellent and should be continued. In general you can’t have enough sattva and all healthy habits produce it. It’s good to think “I am am always qualifying.” I hope this email helps you qualify for discriminating what happens to you from you. It’s the essence of enlightenment.
Joe: One experience I would like to add. So after I had practiced to be able to feel all emotions freely and thought that nothing would knock me down now, the following happened: I sat down one morning because I felt a slight pressure in the solar plexus. I knew from experience that this mostly has to do with feelings, so I completely got into that pressure and looked to see if there was an emotion. Slowly I felt a fear that became stronger and stronger with time. It developed into a real fear of death, even thoughts like “I don’t want to die!” But I remained the one who perceived the fear of death and also the thoughts and remained completely untouched. Suddenly the thought came up: Give the fear the whole space. And with the OK to this thought, something happened that seemed to me similar to a supernova. As if everything was jettisoned from me and I imploded at the same time. It was only for a second and then everything was completely silent. I suddenly knew that fear of death is just the fear of this fear of death and that there is no such thing as death. Suddenly I also knew that no one has ever died because no one has ever been born.
As I sat there with this knowledge, it was absolutely silent until my alarm clock rang. I wanted to go to a seminar and got on the subway. Suddenly I was so flooded with love that I was not even embarrassed to have tears streaming down my face in the subway. Of course that was very nice, everywhere I saw only love. All those people: Love. Then after a few minutes (at that time I didn’t know the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna Arjuna shows the whole picture) I got the feeling that I could feel the emotions of all the people on the train. I was flooded with so much pain, fear, sadness, being lost, etc. that I just wanted to get out of there. That was actually the beginning of the more interesting part, because for the rest of the day I was able to watch Joe’s personality reassemble itself by the mind resisting everything it encountered. What was astonishing was that there was absolutely nothing I could do against this process and it was quite clear that I am not Joe.
For this I then have a question: Is this what you mean by direct knowledge? I did not know where this knowledge came from and how I had to classify it. I only knew with absolute certainty that it was the truth.
James: Direct knowledge is “I am blissful existence shining as consciousness and not the experiences that present themselves to me.” This knowledge is in all the Vedanta texts and all my books. It didn’t come from that experience. That experience was Isvara’s clumsy attempt to formulate the knowledge for you. But you didn’t assimilate it or you would not have felt the need to ask me about your experiences. Don’t feel bad; almost nobody interprets these experiences in such a way that it permanently sets them free from the person they think they are. However, once they are interpreted in light of Vedanta, they generally stop happening because experience is a decaying time capsule meant to deliver knowledge. If you do interpret the you realize that you are what’s real and (satya) and experiences are unreal (mithya.) The experience dissolved and reconstructed Joe, which shows that Joe isn’t real. And the knowledge that you got didn’t remain long enough to remove whatever belief remained in the reality of Joe and his experiences. Revelations are discoveries, like gravity and electricity that produce knowledge.
It’s so cool that it awakened empathy, the feeling of identification with the experience of everything. You will probably notice that the reconstructed Joe will increasingly become more empathic, in so far as he feels anything. It is actually the same revelation, another way of saying that the nature of existence/consciousness is love.
I’m not saying that these experiences are not useful but they are only Isvara’s attempts to reveal the truth. They are approximate, incomplete and inadequate as the basis for claiming your identity as existence shining as awareness. Now the challenge is to make this claim and relate to everything that happens from now on as existence shining as awareness. We call this the nididhyasana stage of enlightenment.
Much love,
James
