2013 Swartz Quotes
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Rajas is the state of mind where you are trying to get something from the world. Tamas is the state of disappointment at not having attained what one wanted or having attained something one didn’t want. The most important thing is to understand the value of a pure mind. The mind is the instrument of experience and when it is pure life is intensely vibrant and beautiful. Turn your attention away from the agitation to the self, the presence of I. Karma Yoga works just as well. There always comes a point when you realize that no matter how much experience you've had, you actually don't have anything tangible to show for it. You still find yourself looking for a new experience to give you meaning. If someone has reached middle age and is still expecting something, like financial security or emotional security to fulfill them it means that this person has not actually understood the nature of reality. As the scripture says, "There is no Self nature in objects." Objects being any situation or person or place or physical thing or idea or emotion or experience. Karma Yoga is meant to correct rajas. Rajas is a evaluating, competitive state of mind. In a sense rajasic people are both opportunistic and insecure. They have so many desires and want to get the fruits of all of them that they are continually evaluating their situation to see how things are going, to see it they would be get more/better/different results if they switched to something else. This evaluation and competitive intellect is painful. Sometimes it gets so bad that a person cannot commit his or herself to a simple appointment a few hours down the road because he or she does not want to miss out if something ‘better’ comes up in between. Self inquiry is a simple but difficult practice. It involves keeping the mind on the Self at all times in spite of it extroverting tendencies. When you are trying to develop non-attachment you need to understand the nature of attachment. Most worldly people do actions for the results. This is very natural. They develop attachment to the results because they feel the results will somehow benefit them, not just physically or materially but psychologically too. This attachment causes agitation in the mind. When you experience agitation concerning results it means you have not understood the nature of karma…how results are apportioned. Appropriate and timely action in a particular field does not guarantee the desired result. Nor does desire for the result. The result depends on appropriate and timely action in one’s chosen field and THE NATURE OF THE FIELD…over which you have absolutely no control. You have to ‘let go’ or surrender the action and the desire to the field. Since this is a non-dual reality made of awareness you leave it to awareness to apportion results according to its ‘understanding’ of the needs of all the individuals in the field. Why should a certain result (object, situation, etc.) go to you if it would better serve the total if it went to someone else? The point of this ‘surrender’ is to render the mind available to deal with “other aspects of what is happening.’ If the mind is only thinking of results it will miss out on all the other aspects of reality. Most doers have a kind of tunnel vision…they are so focused on what they are doing and what they want that they are not aware of the background, the larger picture. This is a problem because no individual action takes place in isolation. It always occurs in a greater context.
The only way you will become completely non-attached is if you discover that all things perceivable are empty. Here is how to use it (nada). Notice the limitless ‘field’ in which this sound is occurring. That is you, awareness, the ‘Silence’. Put your attention on the field, keep it there and mediate on it. Eventually, there will be a shift and Mike, the attention that is meditating on the field, will discover that he is not different from the field and he will either melt into the field or he will appear as a object in awareness, like the nada brahma. You will then understand that you are awareness, not the meditator. The meditator, attention, is you, but you are not the meditator. Take your time. It may be a little difficult to meditate on the field. Let me know how it goes. This is very interesting. Rajas is called vikshepa shakti, projecting power. It is a state of mind that is characterized by intense mental/emotional activity. It is an extroverting power. All one's thoughts and feelings run to objects and never back to the source, the Self. Because the mind is thinking of objects all the time it becomes exhausted or tamasic. If the mind is sattvic one does not make mistakes because a sattvic mind is still and clear and full of awareness. Because of this quality it gathers information efficiently. Because it is clear it can think logically and rationally and apply the information it has gathered intelligently. Thus it is not prone to making decisions based on emotion. Tamas is quite different from rajas but it causes pain for the same reason. Tamas is called avarana shakti or veiling power. When the mind is tamasic it is not aware. It is sleepy and dull. It operates out of habit because it is not intelligent enough to creatively respond to life situations. So when you are tamasic you make mistakes which bring pain. You choose the wrong food, the wrong friends, the wrong work, the wrong lovers, the wrong lifestyle…and this causes suffering.meditate on the Self, it would feel light and high and the energy would be continually regenerated from within. When the mind is extroverted, negative and painful things happen. They happen because the mind is so scattered that is it incapable of properly gathering information about what is going on and so it makes irrational choices that almost invariably result in pain. If the mind is sattvic one does not make mistakes because a sattvic mind is still and clear and full of awareness. Because of this quality it gathers information efficiently. Because it is clear it can think logically and rationally and apply the information it has gathered intelligently. Thus it is not prone to making decisions based on emotion. Sadhana is defined as the removal of rajas and tamas and the cultivation of sattva. A spiritual person is going for a pure mind, nothing else. So he or she takes whatever comes as prasad. And taking whatever comes as prasad purifies the mind. So it really doesn’t matter if you get what you want or not, each option is a useful as the other, in so far as the result of either is a purer mind…if you have the kyoga attitude. A pure mind is one that understands that the results of one’s actions cannot set one free. If you are making choices you are doing so for certain results, i.e. to make your ego happier than it was or to keep some happiness you have, etc. And if these choices are based solely on your likes and dislikes,
instead of dharma, you will not get a pure mind. Your choices will just reinforce your likes and dislikes and your mind will not be free to understand that you are free already. Meditation doesn’t work unless you have the right attitude toward life. The right attitude is essentially a religious attitude. You see that you are part of a great creation and that you were put here for a reason and that you have a role to play, a role that is not self-assigned. You understand that things don’t happen because you want them to happen and you’re cool with that. So when things come or don’t come you do not get bent out of shape. You remain calm. You understand that at any moment you are getting what you need whether or not your ego wants are being met and you are happy with it. If you have this attitude then the mind becomes meditation-worthy. Reality, the Self, is non-dual. So the subject and the objects cannot be different. However, when you are caught in Maya i.e. you don’t know the Self…you identify with objects…particularly the “I” thought, the emotions, the body, various situations, etc. and this causes suffering because the objects are inconstant and deliver both pleasure and pain. So first you negate the objects, meaning you go through various experiences in your life until you realize that they are not fulfilling…money, sex, book learning, career, etc; it can be anything. Or using logic and reason you can negate the objects…as long as you accept the conclusion and live by it. Or you can take it on faith that there is no happiness in the world and let the vasanas burn out that way. The point is that you realize that your desire for and fear of things isn’t real and you quit taking your fears and desires to be real. You quit identifying with them. This makes it possible to realize the Self. The Self…awareness…is the default. You can’t get rid of it. It’s what’s left over when the objects are negated. In the last stage you realize that in so far as the objects have any reality they borrow it from the Self. So you take them back but with the understanding that they are ‘mithya’, apparently real. But the most important point is that if you know what it means to be awareness, you will not get identified with the vasanas that arise in you and take your attention away from yourself. What does it mean to say “I am awareness?” It means that you are whole and complete. It means that you are confident that you can deal with anything that life has to offer. If you understand this you will not let your attention be hijacked by the fears/desires that appear in you. You will not be interested in pursuing anything in the world because you are already complete. You only pursue things because you believe they will complete you. So, judging by your statements your discrimination is not perfect. When you are ‘enlightened,’ your discrimination is perfect and you never fall away from yourself, not that this is actually possible, although that is how it seems. I cannot be sure, but it sounds to me like you do know who you are but lack confidence in it. If you say ‘no’ to your fears and desires backed by the understanding that you are the self, your confidence in the knowledge will grow and grow until it becomes one hundred percent. Then you will never dip back into the world and suffer. I think this situation happens because you have not realized the inherent defects in all objects. When you see that they do not deliver what they purport to deliver, your desire for them will dry up. You can’t ‘see’ the Causal Body actually, if by ‘see’ you mean experience. It is not an object of perception. It is too subtle for that. It is not so much an ‘it,’ as it is tendencies born of karma. You can experience its existence in this sense; when you feel an urge, an unnamed desire or an unnamed dread, the Causal Body
is about to generate a recognizable desire or a fear. Because the Causal Body is subtler than the Subtle Body, the instrument of experience, it cannot be known directly. The means of knowledge for the Causal Body is inference. You observe some kind of subtle body phenomenon and you know that it has a cause because you do not have an effect without a cause. The practice of knowledge, which can also be called Self inquiry, is fundamentally the contemplation on the difference between satya, you, and mithya, you in form, you in time. It is (1) an open questioning attitude concerning the way you think about yourself and life and (2) the application of the understanding that you are whole and complete, that everything is perfect as it is. Application to what? To the mind. The mind has a difficult time understanding and accepting its ignorance. By ignorance I mean the inability to distinguish what is apparent from what is real. If the mind causes you to chase ephemeral things then it needs to be re-educated to the fact that you, satya, are perfect and that mithya, the apparent body/mind/world 'not-self' is also perfect…in its imperfections. The mind has a built-in dissatisfaction, a tendency to want things to be more/better/different. To 'maintain' one's freedom in Maya one needs to know this tendency for what it is and not let oneself identify with it. Continuous alertness is required until the tendency to identify is burned to ashes. Continuous alertness is not a neurotic ego-driven goal oriented preoccupation with one's spiritual 'progress' but a sattvic lifestyle and a relaxed introspective attitude. One simply observes one's mind and compares its views and attitudes with the truth of one's self and concludes that that the imperfect apparent 'you' is fine as it is, warts and all. Through the observation of the mind and by comparing it with the Self one’s identification with the mind lessens and the innate freedom that is one's nature slowly comes into the life of the mind. A mind freed of its identification with apparent things is no longer driven and reactive but becomes open and accepting. You, the doer, feels liberated, free of the need to act. Not being the doer does not mean that you are incapable of action, only that you always have the option not to do what your conditioning demands. Life becomes effortless once you have seen that you are not the doer. It takes care of itself and you are not bothered. Because you don’t have to act but because you understand that you lack nothing, that you cannot lose anything. Ignorance resides in the intellect. It is the intellect that thinks it is not awareness. Enlightenment is just getting the intellect’s idea of who it is, in harmony with its true nature. In a non-dual reality the intellect is actually the self because there is only one self. In an unenlightened person the intellect plans the ego’s pursuits for pleasant experiences. In the enlightened it cautions restraint in light of the knowledge of nonduality, meaning it knows that nothing outside is going to fulfill it because it is already full. And how does that translate into practical terms? It means I can relax completely. It means that fulfilling desires is completely optional. It means that fear of undesirable outcomes no longer motivates my behavior. It means that I am quite content to let the day evolve on its own irrespective of my list of ‘to do’s’. When I lay down to sleep at night the events of the day dissolve quickly and I fall asleep effortlessly. I am not inclined to start ambitious projects. It means I understand that people wouldn’t be what they are if they could help it and do not become agitated when they act like jerks. It means I’m not disturbed when the mind thinks a stupid thought or an unkind emotion passes through bit. It means that being there for others does not require special effort.
Krishna says this in the Gita. He says, ‘There is no purifier like knowledge.” What does this mean? First it means that the knowledge born of trying to get lasting happiness through satisfaction of the vasanas will purify the vasanas. What is that knowledge? That you cannot get lasting happiness from getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t. When you realize this you quit trying to satisfy your vasanas and they just wither and die. Then you become dispassionate and are qualified for enlightenment. If residual vasanas are there you are not bothered by them. On the other hand it means the knowledge “I am actionless, ordinary awareness” destroys the vasanas. If you are whole and complete then what will you want? If you are indestructible, then what will you fear? Wants and fears just symbolize all the vasanas. It is a very simple thing. Om poornamadah poornamidampoornaat poornamdachyate poornasya poornamadaya poornamevavashisyate . “That (The Self) is full. This (The World) is full. Add this to that or subtract that from this and only fullness remains.” No matter what one’s experience on an emotional or spiritual level, you are still going to experience life according to what ideas are operating in your mind. And if these ideas, particularly your self idea, are not in harmony with reality you will not be happy. You have a lot of people who are in the Self realization phase, whose minds are fixed on the Self and who are experiencing a lot of peace and bliss but who are still not satisfied because they think of themselves as the experiencer, the recipient of this ‘magical’ connection to this ‘incredible state.’ In this case the idea that the ‘I’ is separate from the Self (which is being incorrectly thought of as a separate ‘state’) is the problem. If you see that what you are experiencing is you, the ‘I,’ you completely relax because you know that you can’t disappear. So the knowledge that the ‘I’ is blissful, peaceful, self-luminous, etc. needs to happen before the person is completely free. You ‘kill the mind’ by taking it seriously, not by trying to dismiss experientially. If you take it seriously you can patiently educate it. For every one of its ideas you come up with a better idea, one that points out the fallacy in its thinking and offers a better way to think. You let it have its way and when the results are not happy you point out where it went wrong in the way it was conceiving the problem. You educate it.
So why isn’t the conviction there? Perhaps the problem is that the believer in the thoughts and feelings has not realized that the pursuit of certain experiences and/or the cultivation of certain thoughts and feelings will not bring lasting happiness. I would say that he needs to come to a point where it is completely clear that there is nothing anywhere, inwardly or outwardly, that can either add or subtract happiness from him. In Vedanta this is called viragya, dispassion and is based on viveka, discrimination. Such a person has lived enough life to know that whatever experience brings is limited and will therefore not set one free. So this type of person stops chasing experience in any form…including the so-called spiritual experiences. Even if you have a powerful spiritual experience, it always fades, leaving you feeling limited and incomplete once more. In Vivekachoodamani and elsewhere Shankara says that viragya is one of the most important qualifications of enlightenment. It means you do not care one way or the other what experience brings. You are happy when you feel good and you are happy when you feel bad. It does not matter what you feel because feelings always change on their own. You are not in control of them.
To accept the impersonality of the mind is a great blessing because it sets you free and allows you to change your relationship to the mind, not the mind itself. When you have shifted from someone who is dissatisfied with the mind and who wants to change it to a whole hearted acceptance of the mind as it is, you feel confident to deal with the experiences it generates and your reactions to them. It is no longer an enemy. You don’t move toward anything, nor do you run away from anything. I think the absence of this feeling of confidence is what you mean when you suggest that the ‘full conviction’ is not there. If this is so, then on the other side of the mind there is a belief that something might happen in this world that would make you supremely happy or set you free. So you keep hoping, paying attention to what’s happening in your life looking for the magic to appear. When dispassion happens understanding is possible. But until it is there, the unfulfilled part of you will not be able to accept the fact that you are whole and complete. Vedanta is not saying that you will ‘become’ whole and complete. It says that you are whole and complete already, even when you think you aren’t, and that all is required is to remove the belief that you are limited and incomplete. This is why it often says in the scriptures that enlightenment is very easy. But it also says that it is very difficult…if you have not developed this dispassion. Let’s look at it another way on a more subtle level. You say “I would not indulge anymore in any thoughts.’ Why? What power do the thoughts have to compromise your happiness? The thoughts don’t think you. You are the thinker of the thoughts. So they depend on you, not you on them. Therefore you are free of them. The Self, the I, is the watcher of the thoughts. You cannot be what you see, at least on the relative plane. So there is a built in gap between you and the thoughts. You can journey across it from your side and identify with the thought if you wish, but no thought ever made the journey across the gap to visit you. If you inquire in this way you will see that you are already free. I do not think there is a more valuable knowledge for monitoring and transforming the mind than the knowledge of the gunas. Yes, it does not matter from the Self’s point of view…which is your point of view… what the mind it doing. But it does matter to the part of the Self that lives in the world. The more sattvic it is the more the whole creation benefits. I understand emotional patterns better and people seem to get what I am saying quite easily. I understand better than ever the value of purifiying the mind. Unless there is a pure, relaxed open mind people don’t understand what I am talking about. To relinquish the limited standpoint ‘Ann’ and assume your real identity/platform is self inquiry. It is not asking a question or trying to ‘grasp’ anything. It is just knowledge. To say that you are awareness means that you are whole and complete, a partless whole, an indivisible oneness. It means that nothing can be added to you or subtracted from you. It means that what happens to the experiencing entity, Ann, has nothing to do with you. It means that you do not depend on anything, that you are free. To realize it, you have to contemplate on the meaning of this knowledge. You have to see whether or not it is true. Until you can see that it is true and it stops your seeking you need to take a stand in awareness as awareness. When desires and fears appear you need to dismiss them with the knowledge that you are whole and complete. This is how you assume the platform of awareness, your true nature. It is hard, tiresome work but it is the only way.
To practice Vedanta you need a pure mind. This means that the mind is calm enough so you can hold your attention on a subtle object for a considerable period. Once the mind is turned inward, looking at the Self, it is asked to separate the activities of the mind from the light in which these activities occur. The ‘light’ of course is the Self. You need trust if you want to be happy and that trust is related to one's idea about reality. You can relax and enjoy life if you know that at bottom it is fundamentally non-threatening; this is a self-aware creation that likes itself and looks out after itself.
An adkandakara vritti is an unbroken continuous thought, a complete thought, or a limitless thought, one that stands on its own and doesn’t change. It is the Self’s thought of itself, not that the Self necessarily needs it. But it is useful for the self when it finds itself apparently under the spell of ignorance. It may form up into words such as “I am whole and complete limitless awareness, I am everything that is, There is nothing other than me, I am fullness itself, I am the cause of the whole universe, Nothing can be added to me or subtracted from me,” etc. The Vedanta texts are full of formulations of this thought. It is a statement of the nature of reality and one’s true identity. It may not even form up in words. It may just appear as a sense of complete release coupled with an unshakable conviction that I am fine, I have always been fine and I will always be fine. They say that the akandakara vritti works to bring Self knowledge i.e. liberation indirectly or directly. The indirect idea says that liberation does not necessarily happen immediately with the rise of akandakara vritti. The idea is that liberation happens only with direct knowledge, so the vritti needs to be contemplated upon until it become direct. It means that one needs to gain such confidence in this knowledge that one abandons any other idea of who one is. And how does this confidence come about? By proactively using this knowledge to destroy the notion that the ‘I’ is limited as it arises in the mind on a moment to moment basis. This sounds like an impossible task but it isn’t because whenever you forgo the incorrect idea of yourself in favour of the truth about your self, great waves of joy and peace follow. In other words you cultivate an “I am the Self” vasana so that the knowledge becomes unbroken and works on its own whenever it is called for. Building this vasana is a struggle because there is always attachment to the belief in one’s self as a limited entity…even when it is well known that seeing oneself in this way produces suffering! In any case once this thought is continuous it eats up its opposite and then, because it is no longer necessary, it retreats back to the Unconscious and lets you get on with the business of life. What is important is the purity of the mind, how hungry it is for liberation and whether it understands the importance of Self knowledge. Growth or maturity is basically letting go of self notions that don’t work. Well, positive is not exactly the right word because identity is not positive or negative. But the assimilation of the knowledge “I am limitless Awareness” has a very positive effect on every aspect of one’s life in the sense that it destroys all your insecurities. You realize that nothing can touch you and you relax in such a way that you are like a big blob of silly putty…you effortlessly conform to every situation life presents. Life only hurts because you resist. It is a great river in spate. It is returning to the ocean and nothing stands in its way. The assimilation of Self knowledge means that you are no longer a small boat subject to the many perils one encounters as one sails across the vast ocean of existence. You are the ocean itself.
So you have to change the thought that you aren’t free. It is hard work because this voice in your mind that tells you that you are lacking something, that you are small and spiritually unworthy, has become a deep samskara. So what has to happen…if you take up this sadhana…is that every time you catch yourself thinking like this you have to recall your experience as the Self and change that thought to “I am limitless, I am everything that is, I am whole and complete, nothing is missing, etc.” When you do this for some time, you notice that your life starts to change. It changes because the way you see yourself has changed. Your life starts to become vast and silent and very satisfying. This practice works because your idea about who you are is in harmony with the Truth, with Reality. Scripture says we are a partless whole. I take this to mean that we are not a somebody abstracted from many disparate experiences, but are something that precedes and transcends our experience, something that apparently suffers and enjoys experience, but is unchanged by it. If I'm somebody subject to change by experience, then I have to continually update my sense of self based on what has just happened. I was person x yesterday, now I'm person y, and tomorrow I'm going to be person z. This, as you can see, could cause a lot of confusion. “I don’t have to worry about that.” “A worry and a thought and what looks like an outside situation cannot stain me” “All troublesome thoughts diminish and disappear, but I remain” “I contain all within me; I am secure at all times and in all situations and with all people” Practically, this means that if I am confused, hostile, sad or worried and acting in destructive ways toward myself or others, I am ignorant that I am the Self. But all these uncomfortable expressions of my self ignorance are useful if they motivate me to inquire into my nature as they arise. So I do not try to improve myself, or change myself because such efforts are based on the assumption I am the person I experience myself to be and not on who I am. Rather, I pause and begin to reflect on a meaning that comes from scripture that is relevant to my present suffering. How extraordinary that as the truth of that meaning becomes apparent and active in me, I find myself lifted beyond the present suffering! My external situation may remain the same, but the suffering it engendered dissolves and I find myself thinking and feeling and doing things in a non personal, dispassionate way. All my thinking, feeling and actions become a function of the understanding embracing me. It is extraordinarily ordinary. If this existential shift does not occur, recollect an idea that has been elucidated by the teaching. Quietly ponder it. It is not your job to understand it, it is your job to expose your mind to it and let it do its work. The idea 'I am awareness' is scripture’s most fundamental meaning. If you do not expose your mind to it by reflecting on it and contemplating the reality of it as it exists in your life, no existential shift will happen. When you examine its meaning whole heartedly, the reality it points to will become as clear as the existential shift it causes. To gain a mind capable of Self realization, it is important to develop the habit of evaluating desires with reference to priorities. I want to lose weight and my neighbor brings over a big cheesecake. Desire arises and I want to eat it. Is it appropriate to satisfy this desire? Giving up gratuitous desires as they arise, with reference to the goal of achieving a quiet mind, is a necessary qualification for Self realization. If you do not go with gratuitous desires eventually they will no longer disturb you. I got rid (of anger) by realizing that I did not like the feeling of anger and monitored my mind carefully, cutting it off at the root before it had a chance to work out. It always starts as a vasana, an unspecific sense of irritation or dis-ease which if not looked into and dismissed, leads to an outbreak. A person who is
consistently angry…or depressed…is vain and narcissistic. He or she thinks the world is only there for his or her pleasure. The objects appear in the mind. If the mind has not been cleaned, the mind interprets what appears in it according to its likes and dislikes. So you are limitless non-dual actionless Awareness. Sally is an idea that appears in you, in Awareness. You are not Sally. If you look carefully into Sally you will not find a special person with a certain history, someone who wants some things and doesn’t want other things. You will only find Awareness. Knowing that you are Awareness is enlightenment. When you know that you are Awareness you no longer want things nor do you fear things. You don’t get excited when good things happen nor do you get depressed or angry when negative things happen. You feel completely free. Worldly problems disappear.
It means that everything is OK, that there is no reason to be afraid or to want anything. It means you can see that Candice is being looked after all the time, that everything he needs is automatically supplied. So you don’t have to worry about Candice. The way you tell about whether or not you are progressing is if you feel lighter and happier, more cheerful and dispassionate. You are making progress if you are not so interested in your agitating habits …the food, the wine, etc. You will not be interested in such things because the happiness that comes from within takes the place of the happiness that you get from sense pleasures. From time to time there should be a feeling of happiness and peace that you cannot attribute to experience. It just comes up from within for no reason at all. Along with it there should be a feeling of dispassion a ‘been there, done that’ feeling. You should not care what is going on around you, just witness it with a sense of humor. If you do not have these symptoms, it means that somehow you believe that you are separate from everything. Non-duality is just knowledge. It is the knowledge that what appears to be separate is not separate at all. Knowing that life passes through you and that you do not pass through life is discrimination. Negative emotions…guilt, fear, longing etc…are not to be indulged in but seen as opportunities to change one’s attitude and turn your attention to the self. Karma yoga is essentially a religious attitude without all the doctrinal nonsense the church has attached to it. There are a lot of things to be grateful for and a practice centered in glad acceptance quickly bears fruit. Manomayakosha (feelings, mine-ness): the more subtle the objects are, the more difficult they are to dissociate from. Contemplate on the idea that you are whole and complete. See if it is true. On the macrocosmic level, rajas makes things happen. To create, action is necessary. You need knowledge, you need a substance, and you need the power to shape the substance according to your idea. If the physical universe is the result of a 'big bang,' as inference seems to suggest, some power is causing the matter to travel away from its point of origin at astronomical speeds. On the individual level, rajas is a spiking, agitating, extroverting energy. It makes you move physically, emotionally and intellectually. It is desire and the emotional agitations that desire morphs into, when it is unfulfilled: anger, anxiety, frustration, hatred and aggression. It is responsible for the feeling that there is never enough of what one wants and too much of what one does not want. It is responsible for obsessions about what might happen.
It causes the mind to hop uncontrollably from one thought to another and limits the attention span to a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds. Attention deficit disorder is a mind completely dominated by rajas. By objectifying the mind, you automatically identify with the self. When you find your attention caught up in any object, you apply the knowledge “I am awareness” to disidentify. There will be a qualitative existential shift away from experience and back to the witness. You just keep at it until you no longer identify with objects. By inquiry I mean looking at the mind, determining what kind of thought is operating there and neutralizing it by looking at it in light of the knowledge ‘I am whole and complete ordinary actionless awareness.” That there is no free will would be a basis for karma yoga because the ego cannot really claim to have achieved anything. Self inquiry is the application of the understanding that there is only one ‘I’ and that it is whole and complete. Application to what? To the opposite thought. The opposite thought is always playing in the mind. It supports the mind. This thought needs to be exposed and destroyed by the application of knowledge. Self inquiry is the consistent application of a questioning state of mind to everything the mind presents, the practice of discrimination between the Self and its many forms and the consistent affirmation of one’s non-dual identity in light of the mind’s conviction that the self is limited, inadequate and incomplete. Self inquiry is discrimination, the application of knowledge. It is the discrimination between the seer, you, and the seen i.e. subtle and gross objects with the understanding that the seer is not the seen. This breaks the seer’s identification with objects. When the mind is quiet you notice Awareness shining in it. And you will become fascinated and fix your attention on it because it is so beautiful. Then you will start to think about what you are experiencing and how it relates to the one who is experiencing it. Behind every emotion peaceful, non-dual Awareness rests. It is the essence of every experience. If you can find it you will conquer your anger. Whenever you want something or fear something it means that you think the ‘I’ is limited in some way. Inquiry is a practical process that destroys this sense of limitation little by little. (Concerning meditation) If there are many thoughts it means that there is too much pressure from the causal body and one should do inquiry on the reason for the pressure of the vasanas.
When other thoughts arise I think 1) I am aware of the thought 2) I am aware of the emotion and physical sensation associated with that thought. 3) Then I ask am I these objects or am I aware of them. 4) Then I repeat "I am awareness." Am I on the right track? James: Yes. Just repeating it may not be enough. Is there a change in your perspective when you do this? Are you conscious that the body/mind/sense complex is not you, that you are the one to whom it appears? Does that negate or neutralize your identification with the thoughts, feelings, etc.? If you are contemplating the meaning of the words and really get what they mean there should be a shift in your point of view or an acknowledgement of who you are. In Vedanta the method of Self inquiry is called Viveka, discrimination. Moksha is simply knowing clearly what is the Self and what are the changing forms of the Self and not identifying with the forms. When the difference between the Self and its forms is known you are free of the mind. You are free because you understand that identification with the thoughts brings pleasure and pain and that non-identification forces you do identify with the Self since it is the only other option. Yes, this ‘identification' with the Self is also a very subtle thought but it is a thought that has great value…it is the centerpiece of Vedantic teaching…since it destroys identification with the thoughts altogether.
When you are in meditation, for example, the presence or absence of thoughts is known by awareness. If the absence of thoughts is experienced as silence, ask how it is known. If you are aware of thoughts ask how they are known, since they do not know themselves. The idea of asking this question is to point your attention to awareness, the one in whom experience is occurring. If silence is the object, ask how the silence is known. It is known by something other than silence, is it self knowing? If enlightenment is freedom from dependence on objects and freedom is gained by Self knowledge, it stands to reason that love of knowledge should be a core value. If you find yourself indifferent to knowledge and enamored by feelings, know that your values are distorted. Ignorance of the Self means that the Self erroneously feels that it is incomplete and tries to complete itself through various experiences. It’s an honest mistake because the craving is painful and prevents it from thinking clearly about ‘who’ wants experience so it rushes out to relieve the pain in the only way it knows…it does what everyone around it does…chase experience. __BG-commentary__When you say, 'I am affected,' then atma is looked upon as an object, a karma, that has something affecting it. This object can be a person, an event, or even iSvara. Anyone who looks upon atma as an object does not know atma __The reflection cannot come out of the mirror to tease and destroy you, any more than your own shadow can. If your reflection looks ferocious and frowning, that is only because you look so. There is no need to become anxious because your reflection is frowning and looks as though it is going to destroy you. If you run away from it and it comes chasing after you, any chasing that is done is all in your mind!. __Unlike milk, the atma undergoes no change. You cannot say that previously atma was happy and now it is sad because, no change is possible for the atma. Due to aviveka, however, one takes oneself, atma, to be subject to change. But, because it has no avayava, no attribute, it cannot undergo any change.
__You are ananda by nature. When you are ananda, you do not require any source of ananda, any source of security. __Any result can be responded to in either of two ways: dispassionately with samatva or like a yo-yo, elated because I got what I wanted or suicidal because I did not. This yo-yo response is because I think that I am the author of every result of action when, in fact, I am only the author of action…Depression is created by some onerous responsibility you have assumed, one that is absolutely illegitimate. You take what does not belong to you and then smart under it because you cannot always produce what you want. This is a fact. Then why do you not just accept the fact? All that is required is to accept it objectively, to accept that this is how the creation is.
The only way you will become completely non-attached is if you discover that all things perceivable are empty. Here is how to use it (nada). Notice the limitless ‘field’ in which this sound is occurring. That is you, awareness, the ‘Silence’. Put your attention on the field, keep it there and mediate on it. Eventually, there will be a shift and Mike, the attention that is meditating on the field, will discover that he is not different from the field and he will either melt into the field or he will appear as a object in awareness, like the nada brahma. You will then understand that you are awareness, not the meditator. The meditator, attention, is you, but you are not the meditator. Take your time. It may be a little difficult to meditate on the field. Let me know how it goes. This is very interesting. Rajas is called vikshepa shakti, projecting power. It is a state of mind that is characterized by intense mental/emotional activity. It is an extroverting power. All one's thoughts and feelings run to objects and never back to the source, the Self. Because the mind is thinking of objects all the time it becomes exhausted or tamasic. If the mind is sattvic one does not make mistakes because a sattvic mind is still and clear and full of awareness. Because of this quality it gathers information efficiently. Because it is clear it can think logically and rationally and apply the information it has gathered intelligently. Thus it is not prone to making decisions based on emotion. Tamas is quite different from rajas but it causes pain for the same reason. Tamas is called avarana shakti or veiling power. When the mind is tamasic it is not aware. It is sleepy and dull. It operates out of habit because it is not intelligent enough to creatively respond to life situations. So when you are tamasic you make mistakes which bring pain. You choose the wrong food, the wrong friends, the wrong work, the wrong lovers, the wrong lifestyle…and this causes suffering.meditate on the Self, it would feel light and high and the energy would be continually regenerated from within. When the mind is extroverted, negative and painful things happen. They happen because the mind is so scattered that is it incapable of properly gathering information about what is going on and so it makes irrational choices that almost invariably result in pain. If the mind is sattvic one does not make mistakes because a sattvic mind is still and clear and full of awareness. Because of this quality it gathers information efficiently. Because it is clear it can think logically and rationally and apply the information it has gathered intelligently. Thus it is not prone to making decisions based on emotion. Sadhana is defined as the removal of rajas and tamas and the cultivation of sattva. A spiritual person is going for a pure mind, nothing else. So he or she takes whatever comes as prasad. And taking whatever comes as prasad purifies the mind. So it really doesn’t matter if you get what you want or not, each option is a useful as the other, in so far as the result of either is a purer mind…if you have the kyoga attitude. A pure mind is one that understands that the results of one’s actions cannot set one free. If you are making choices you are doing so for certain results, i.e. to make your ego happier than it was or to keep some happiness you have, etc. And if these choices are based solely on your likes and dislikes,
instead of dharma, you will not get a pure mind. Your choices will just reinforce your likes and dislikes and your mind will not be free to understand that you are free already. Meditation doesn’t work unless you have the right attitude toward life. The right attitude is essentially a religious attitude. You see that you are part of a great creation and that you were put here for a reason and that you have a role to play, a role that is not self-assigned. You understand that things don’t happen because you want them to happen and you’re cool with that. So when things come or don’t come you do not get bent out of shape. You remain calm. You understand that at any moment you are getting what you need whether or not your ego wants are being met and you are happy with it. If you have this attitude then the mind becomes meditation-worthy. Reality, the Self, is non-dual. So the subject and the objects cannot be different. However, when you are caught in Maya i.e. you don’t know the Self…you identify with objects…particularly the “I” thought, the emotions, the body, various situations, etc. and this causes suffering because the objects are inconstant and deliver both pleasure and pain. So first you negate the objects, meaning you go through various experiences in your life until you realize that they are not fulfilling…money, sex, book learning, career, etc; it can be anything. Or using logic and reason you can negate the objects…as long as you accept the conclusion and live by it. Or you can take it on faith that there is no happiness in the world and let the vasanas burn out that way. The point is that you realize that your desire for and fear of things isn’t real and you quit taking your fears and desires to be real. You quit identifying with them. This makes it possible to realize the Self. The Self…awareness…is the default. You can’t get rid of it. It’s what’s left over when the objects are negated. In the last stage you realize that in so far as the objects have any reality they borrow it from the Self. So you take them back but with the understanding that they are ‘mithya’, apparently real. But the most important point is that if you know what it means to be awareness, you will not get identified with the vasanas that arise in you and take your attention away from yourself. What does it mean to say “I am awareness?” It means that you are whole and complete. It means that you are confident that you can deal with anything that life has to offer. If you understand this you will not let your attention be hijacked by the fears/desires that appear in you. You will not be interested in pursuing anything in the world because you are already complete. You only pursue things because you believe they will complete you. So, judging by your statements your discrimination is not perfect. When you are ‘enlightened,’ your discrimination is perfect and you never fall away from yourself, not that this is actually possible, although that is how it seems. I cannot be sure, but it sounds to me like you do know who you are but lack confidence in it. If you say ‘no’ to your fears and desires backed by the understanding that you are the self, your confidence in the knowledge will grow and grow until it becomes one hundred percent. Then you will never dip back into the world and suffer. I think this situation happens because you have not realized the inherent defects in all objects. When you see that they do not deliver what they purport to deliver, your desire for them will dry up. You can’t ‘see’ the Causal Body actually, if by ‘see’ you mean experience. It is not an object of perception. It is too subtle for that. It is not so much an ‘it,’ as it is tendencies born of karma. You can experience its existence in this sense; when you feel an urge, an unnamed desire or an unnamed dread, the Causal Body
is about to generate a recognizable desire or a fear. Because the Causal Body is subtler than the Subtle Body, the instrument of experience, it cannot be known directly. The means of knowledge for the Causal Body is inference. You observe some kind of subtle body phenomenon and you know that it has a cause because you do not have an effect without a cause. The practice of knowledge, which can also be called Self inquiry, is fundamentally the contemplation on the difference between satya, you, and mithya, you in form, you in time. It is (1) an open questioning attitude concerning the way you think about yourself and life and (2) the application of the understanding that you are whole and complete, that everything is perfect as it is. Application to what? To the mind. The mind has a difficult time understanding and accepting its ignorance. By ignorance I mean the inability to distinguish what is apparent from what is real. If the mind causes you to chase ephemeral things then it needs to be re-educated to the fact that you, satya, are perfect and that mithya, the apparent body/mind/world 'not-self' is also perfect…in its imperfections. The mind has a built-in dissatisfaction, a tendency to want things to be more/better/different. To 'maintain' one's freedom in Maya one needs to know this tendency for what it is and not let oneself identify with it. Continuous alertness is required until the tendency to identify is burned to ashes. Continuous alertness is not a neurotic ego-driven goal oriented preoccupation with one's spiritual 'progress' but a sattvic lifestyle and a relaxed introspective attitude. One simply observes one's mind and compares its views and attitudes with the truth of one's self and concludes that that the imperfect apparent 'you' is fine as it is, warts and all. Through the observation of the mind and by comparing it with the Self one’s identification with the mind lessens and the innate freedom that is one's nature slowly comes into the life of the mind. A mind freed of its identification with apparent things is no longer driven and reactive but becomes open and accepting. You, the doer, feels liberated, free of the need to act. Not being the doer does not mean that you are incapable of action, only that you always have the option not to do what your conditioning demands. Life becomes effortless once you have seen that you are not the doer. It takes care of itself and you are not bothered. Because you don’t have to act but because you understand that you lack nothing, that you cannot lose anything. Ignorance resides in the intellect. It is the intellect that thinks it is not awareness. Enlightenment is just getting the intellect’s idea of who it is, in harmony with its true nature. In a non-dual reality the intellect is actually the self because there is only one self. In an unenlightened person the intellect plans the ego’s pursuits for pleasant experiences. In the enlightened it cautions restraint in light of the knowledge of nonduality, meaning it knows that nothing outside is going to fulfill it because it is already full. And how does that translate into practical terms? It means I can relax completely. It means that fulfilling desires is completely optional. It means that fear of undesirable outcomes no longer motivates my behavior. It means that I am quite content to let the day evolve on its own irrespective of my list of ‘to do’s’. When I lay down to sleep at night the events of the day dissolve quickly and I fall asleep effortlessly. I am not inclined to start ambitious projects. It means I understand that people wouldn’t be what they are if they could help it and do not become agitated when they act like jerks. It means I’m not disturbed when the mind thinks a stupid thought or an unkind emotion passes through bit. It means that being there for others does not require special effort.
Krishna says this in the Gita. He says, ‘There is no purifier like knowledge.” What does this mean? First it means that the knowledge born of trying to get lasting happiness through satisfaction of the vasanas will purify the vasanas. What is that knowledge? That you cannot get lasting happiness from getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t. When you realize this you quit trying to satisfy your vasanas and they just wither and die. Then you become dispassionate and are qualified for enlightenment. If residual vasanas are there you are not bothered by them. On the other hand it means the knowledge “I am actionless, ordinary awareness” destroys the vasanas. If you are whole and complete then what will you want? If you are indestructible, then what will you fear? Wants and fears just symbolize all the vasanas. It is a very simple thing. Om poornamadah poornamidampoornaat poornamdachyate poornasya poornamadaya poornamevavashisyate . “That (The Self) is full. This (The World) is full. Add this to that or subtract that from this and only fullness remains.” No matter what one’s experience on an emotional or spiritual level, you are still going to experience life according to what ideas are operating in your mind. And if these ideas, particularly your self idea, are not in harmony with reality you will not be happy. You have a lot of people who are in the Self realization phase, whose minds are fixed on the Self and who are experiencing a lot of peace and bliss but who are still not satisfied because they think of themselves as the experiencer, the recipient of this ‘magical’ connection to this ‘incredible state.’ In this case the idea that the ‘I’ is separate from the Self (which is being incorrectly thought of as a separate ‘state’) is the problem. If you see that what you are experiencing is you, the ‘I,’ you completely relax because you know that you can’t disappear. So the knowledge that the ‘I’ is blissful, peaceful, self-luminous, etc. needs to happen before the person is completely free. You ‘kill the mind’ by taking it seriously, not by trying to dismiss experientially. If you take it seriously you can patiently educate it. For every one of its ideas you come up with a better idea, one that points out the fallacy in its thinking and offers a better way to think. You let it have its way and when the results are not happy you point out where it went wrong in the way it was conceiving the problem. You educate it.
So why isn’t the conviction there? Perhaps the problem is that the believer in the thoughts and feelings has not realized that the pursuit of certain experiences and/or the cultivation of certain thoughts and feelings will not bring lasting happiness. I would say that he needs to come to a point where it is completely clear that there is nothing anywhere, inwardly or outwardly, that can either add or subtract happiness from him. In Vedanta this is called viragya, dispassion and is based on viveka, discrimination. Such a person has lived enough life to know that whatever experience brings is limited and will therefore not set one free. So this type of person stops chasing experience in any form…including the so-called spiritual experiences. Even if you have a powerful spiritual experience, it always fades, leaving you feeling limited and incomplete once more. In Vivekachoodamani and elsewhere Shankara says that viragya is one of the most important qualifications of enlightenment. It means you do not care one way or the other what experience brings. You are happy when you feel good and you are happy when you feel bad. It does not matter what you feel because feelings always change on their own. You are not in control of them.
To accept the impersonality of the mind is a great blessing because it sets you free and allows you to change your relationship to the mind, not the mind itself. When you have shifted from someone who is dissatisfied with the mind and who wants to change it to a whole hearted acceptance of the mind as it is, you feel confident to deal with the experiences it generates and your reactions to them. It is no longer an enemy. You don’t move toward anything, nor do you run away from anything. I think the absence of this feeling of confidence is what you mean when you suggest that the ‘full conviction’ is not there. If this is so, then on the other side of the mind there is a belief that something might happen in this world that would make you supremely happy or set you free. So you keep hoping, paying attention to what’s happening in your life looking for the magic to appear. When dispassion happens understanding is possible. But until it is there, the unfulfilled part of you will not be able to accept the fact that you are whole and complete. Vedanta is not saying that you will ‘become’ whole and complete. It says that you are whole and complete already, even when you think you aren’t, and that all is required is to remove the belief that you are limited and incomplete. This is why it often says in the scriptures that enlightenment is very easy. But it also says that it is very difficult…if you have not developed this dispassion. Let’s look at it another way on a more subtle level. You say “I would not indulge anymore in any thoughts.’ Why? What power do the thoughts have to compromise your happiness? The thoughts don’t think you. You are the thinker of the thoughts. So they depend on you, not you on them. Therefore you are free of them. The Self, the I, is the watcher of the thoughts. You cannot be what you see, at least on the relative plane. So there is a built in gap between you and the thoughts. You can journey across it from your side and identify with the thought if you wish, but no thought ever made the journey across the gap to visit you. If you inquire in this way you will see that you are already free. I do not think there is a more valuable knowledge for monitoring and transforming the mind than the knowledge of the gunas. Yes, it does not matter from the Self’s point of view…which is your point of view… what the mind it doing. But it does matter to the part of the Self that lives in the world. The more sattvic it is the more the whole creation benefits. I understand emotional patterns better and people seem to get what I am saying quite easily. I understand better than ever the value of purifiying the mind. Unless there is a pure, relaxed open mind people don’t understand what I am talking about. To relinquish the limited standpoint ‘Ann’ and assume your real identity/platform is self inquiry. It is not asking a question or trying to ‘grasp’ anything. It is just knowledge. To say that you are awareness means that you are whole and complete, a partless whole, an indivisible oneness. It means that nothing can be added to you or subtracted from you. It means that what happens to the experiencing entity, Ann, has nothing to do with you. It means that you do not depend on anything, that you are free. To realize it, you have to contemplate on the meaning of this knowledge. You have to see whether or not it is true. Until you can see that it is true and it stops your seeking you need to take a stand in awareness as awareness. When desires and fears appear you need to dismiss them with the knowledge that you are whole and complete. This is how you assume the platform of awareness, your true nature. It is hard, tiresome work but it is the only way.
To practice Vedanta you need a pure mind. This means that the mind is calm enough so you can hold your attention on a subtle object for a considerable period. Once the mind is turned inward, looking at the Self, it is asked to separate the activities of the mind from the light in which these activities occur. The ‘light’ of course is the Self. You need trust if you want to be happy and that trust is related to one's idea about reality. You can relax and enjoy life if you know that at bottom it is fundamentally non-threatening; this is a self-aware creation that likes itself and looks out after itself.
An adkandakara vritti is an unbroken continuous thought, a complete thought, or a limitless thought, one that stands on its own and doesn’t change. It is the Self’s thought of itself, not that the Self necessarily needs it. But it is useful for the self when it finds itself apparently under the spell of ignorance. It may form up into words such as “I am whole and complete limitless awareness, I am everything that is, There is nothing other than me, I am fullness itself, I am the cause of the whole universe, Nothing can be added to me or subtracted from me,” etc. The Vedanta texts are full of formulations of this thought. It is a statement of the nature of reality and one’s true identity. It may not even form up in words. It may just appear as a sense of complete release coupled with an unshakable conviction that I am fine, I have always been fine and I will always be fine. They say that the akandakara vritti works to bring Self knowledge i.e. liberation indirectly or directly. The indirect idea says that liberation does not necessarily happen immediately with the rise of akandakara vritti. The idea is that liberation happens only with direct knowledge, so the vritti needs to be contemplated upon until it become direct. It means that one needs to gain such confidence in this knowledge that one abandons any other idea of who one is. And how does this confidence come about? By proactively using this knowledge to destroy the notion that the ‘I’ is limited as it arises in the mind on a moment to moment basis. This sounds like an impossible task but it isn’t because whenever you forgo the incorrect idea of yourself in favour of the truth about your self, great waves of joy and peace follow. In other words you cultivate an “I am the Self” vasana so that the knowledge becomes unbroken and works on its own whenever it is called for. Building this vasana is a struggle because there is always attachment to the belief in one’s self as a limited entity…even when it is well known that seeing oneself in this way produces suffering! In any case once this thought is continuous it eats up its opposite and then, because it is no longer necessary, it retreats back to the Unconscious and lets you get on with the business of life. What is important is the purity of the mind, how hungry it is for liberation and whether it understands the importance of Self knowledge. Growth or maturity is basically letting go of self notions that don’t work. Well, positive is not exactly the right word because identity is not positive or negative. But the assimilation of the knowledge “I am limitless Awareness” has a very positive effect on every aspect of one’s life in the sense that it destroys all your insecurities. You realize that nothing can touch you and you relax in such a way that you are like a big blob of silly putty…you effortlessly conform to every situation life presents. Life only hurts because you resist. It is a great river in spate. It is returning to the ocean and nothing stands in its way. The assimilation of Self knowledge means that you are no longer a small boat subject to the many perils one encounters as one sails across the vast ocean of existence. You are the ocean itself.
So you have to change the thought that you aren’t free. It is hard work because this voice in your mind that tells you that you are lacking something, that you are small and spiritually unworthy, has become a deep samskara. So what has to happen…if you take up this sadhana…is that every time you catch yourself thinking like this you have to recall your experience as the Self and change that thought to “I am limitless, I am everything that is, I am whole and complete, nothing is missing, etc.” When you do this for some time, you notice that your life starts to change. It changes because the way you see yourself has changed. Your life starts to become vast and silent and very satisfying. This practice works because your idea about who you are is in harmony with the Truth, with Reality. Scripture says we are a partless whole. I take this to mean that we are not a somebody abstracted from many disparate experiences, but are something that precedes and transcends our experience, something that apparently suffers and enjoys experience, but is unchanged by it. If I'm somebody subject to change by experience, then I have to continually update my sense of self based on what has just happened. I was person x yesterday, now I'm person y, and tomorrow I'm going to be person z. This, as you can see, could cause a lot of confusion. “I don’t have to worry about that.” “A worry and a thought and what looks like an outside situation cannot stain me” “All troublesome thoughts diminish and disappear, but I remain” “I contain all within me; I am secure at all times and in all situations and with all people” Practically, this means that if I am confused, hostile, sad or worried and acting in destructive ways toward myself or others, I am ignorant that I am the Self. But all these uncomfortable expressions of my self ignorance are useful if they motivate me to inquire into my nature as they arise. So I do not try to improve myself, or change myself because such efforts are based on the assumption I am the person I experience myself to be and not on who I am. Rather, I pause and begin to reflect on a meaning that comes from scripture that is relevant to my present suffering. How extraordinary that as the truth of that meaning becomes apparent and active in me, I find myself lifted beyond the present suffering! My external situation may remain the same, but the suffering it engendered dissolves and I find myself thinking and feeling and doing things in a non personal, dispassionate way. All my thinking, feeling and actions become a function of the understanding embracing me. It is extraordinarily ordinary. If this existential shift does not occur, recollect an idea that has been elucidated by the teaching. Quietly ponder it. It is not your job to understand it, it is your job to expose your mind to it and let it do its work. The idea 'I am awareness' is scripture’s most fundamental meaning. If you do not expose your mind to it by reflecting on it and contemplating the reality of it as it exists in your life, no existential shift will happen. When you examine its meaning whole heartedly, the reality it points to will become as clear as the existential shift it causes. To gain a mind capable of Self realization, it is important to develop the habit of evaluating desires with reference to priorities. I want to lose weight and my neighbor brings over a big cheesecake. Desire arises and I want to eat it. Is it appropriate to satisfy this desire? Giving up gratuitous desires as they arise, with reference to the goal of achieving a quiet mind, is a necessary qualification for Self realization. If you do not go with gratuitous desires eventually they will no longer disturb you. I got rid (of anger) by realizing that I did not like the feeling of anger and monitored my mind carefully, cutting it off at the root before it had a chance to work out. It always starts as a vasana, an unspecific sense of irritation or dis-ease which if not looked into and dismissed, leads to an outbreak. A person who is
consistently angry…or depressed…is vain and narcissistic. He or she thinks the world is only there for his or her pleasure. The objects appear in the mind. If the mind has not been cleaned, the mind interprets what appears in it according to its likes and dislikes. So you are limitless non-dual actionless Awareness. Sally is an idea that appears in you, in Awareness. You are not Sally. If you look carefully into Sally you will not find a special person with a certain history, someone who wants some things and doesn’t want other things. You will only find Awareness. Knowing that you are Awareness is enlightenment. When you know that you are Awareness you no longer want things nor do you fear things. You don’t get excited when good things happen nor do you get depressed or angry when negative things happen. You feel completely free. Worldly problems disappear.
It means that everything is OK, that there is no reason to be afraid or to want anything. It means you can see that Candice is being looked after all the time, that everything he needs is automatically supplied. So you don’t have to worry about Candice. The way you tell about whether or not you are progressing is if you feel lighter and happier, more cheerful and dispassionate. You are making progress if you are not so interested in your agitating habits …the food, the wine, etc. You will not be interested in such things because the happiness that comes from within takes the place of the happiness that you get from sense pleasures. From time to time there should be a feeling of happiness and peace that you cannot attribute to experience. It just comes up from within for no reason at all. Along with it there should be a feeling of dispassion a ‘been there, done that’ feeling. You should not care what is going on around you, just witness it with a sense of humor. If you do not have these symptoms, it means that somehow you believe that you are separate from everything. Non-duality is just knowledge. It is the knowledge that what appears to be separate is not separate at all. Knowing that life passes through you and that you do not pass through life is discrimination. Negative emotions…guilt, fear, longing etc…are not to be indulged in but seen as opportunities to change one’s attitude and turn your attention to the self. Karma yoga is essentially a religious attitude without all the doctrinal nonsense the church has attached to it. There are a lot of things to be grateful for and a practice centered in glad acceptance quickly bears fruit. Manomayakosha (feelings, mine-ness): the more subtle the objects are, the more difficult they are to dissociate from. Contemplate on the idea that you are whole and complete. See if it is true. On the macrocosmic level, rajas makes things happen. To create, action is necessary. You need knowledge, you need a substance, and you need the power to shape the substance according to your idea. If the physical universe is the result of a 'big bang,' as inference seems to suggest, some power is causing the matter to travel away from its point of origin at astronomical speeds. On the individual level, rajas is a spiking, agitating, extroverting energy. It makes you move physically, emotionally and intellectually. It is desire and the emotional agitations that desire morphs into, when it is unfulfilled: anger, anxiety, frustration, hatred and aggression. It is responsible for the feeling that there is never enough of what one wants and too much of what one does not want. It is responsible for obsessions about what might happen.
It causes the mind to hop uncontrollably from one thought to another and limits the attention span to a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds. Attention deficit disorder is a mind completely dominated by rajas. By objectifying the mind, you automatically identify with the self. When you find your attention caught up in any object, you apply the knowledge “I am awareness” to disidentify. There will be a qualitative existential shift away from experience and back to the witness. You just keep at it until you no longer identify with objects. By inquiry I mean looking at the mind, determining what kind of thought is operating there and neutralizing it by looking at it in light of the knowledge ‘I am whole and complete ordinary actionless awareness.” That there is no free will would be a basis for karma yoga because the ego cannot really claim to have achieved anything. Self inquiry is the application of the understanding that there is only one ‘I’ and that it is whole and complete. Application to what? To the opposite thought. The opposite thought is always playing in the mind. It supports the mind. This thought needs to be exposed and destroyed by the application of knowledge. Self inquiry is the consistent application of a questioning state of mind to everything the mind presents, the practice of discrimination between the Self and its many forms and the consistent affirmation of one’s non-dual identity in light of the mind’s conviction that the self is limited, inadequate and incomplete. Self inquiry is discrimination, the application of knowledge. It is the discrimination between the seer, you, and the seen i.e. subtle and gross objects with the understanding that the seer is not the seen. This breaks the seer’s identification with objects. When the mind is quiet you notice Awareness shining in it. And you will become fascinated and fix your attention on it because it is so beautiful. Then you will start to think about what you are experiencing and how it relates to the one who is experiencing it. Behind every emotion peaceful, non-dual Awareness rests. It is the essence of every experience. If you can find it you will conquer your anger. Whenever you want something or fear something it means that you think the ‘I’ is limited in some way. Inquiry is a practical process that destroys this sense of limitation little by little. (Concerning meditation) If there are many thoughts it means that there is too much pressure from the causal body and one should do inquiry on the reason for the pressure of the vasanas.
When other thoughts arise I think 1) I am aware of the thought 2) I am aware of the emotion and physical sensation associated with that thought. 3) Then I ask am I these objects or am I aware of them. 4) Then I repeat "I am awareness." Am I on the right track? James: Yes. Just repeating it may not be enough. Is there a change in your perspective when you do this? Are you conscious that the body/mind/sense complex is not you, that you are the one to whom it appears? Does that negate or neutralize your identification with the thoughts, feelings, etc.? If you are contemplating the meaning of the words and really get what they mean there should be a shift in your point of view or an acknowledgement of who you are. In Vedanta the method of Self inquiry is called Viveka, discrimination. Moksha is simply knowing clearly what is the Self and what are the changing forms of the Self and not identifying with the forms. When the difference between the Self and its forms is known you are free of the mind. You are free because you understand that identification with the thoughts brings pleasure and pain and that non-identification forces you do identify with the Self since it is the only other option. Yes, this ‘identification' with the Self is also a very subtle thought but it is a thought that has great value…it is the centerpiece of Vedantic teaching…since it destroys identification with the thoughts altogether.
When you are in meditation, for example, the presence or absence of thoughts is known by awareness. If the absence of thoughts is experienced as silence, ask how it is known. If you are aware of thoughts ask how they are known, since they do not know themselves. The idea of asking this question is to point your attention to awareness, the one in whom experience is occurring. If silence is the object, ask how the silence is known. It is known by something other than silence, is it self knowing? If enlightenment is freedom from dependence on objects and freedom is gained by Self knowledge, it stands to reason that love of knowledge should be a core value. If you find yourself indifferent to knowledge and enamored by feelings, know that your values are distorted. Ignorance of the Self means that the Self erroneously feels that it is incomplete and tries to complete itself through various experiences. It’s an honest mistake because the craving is painful and prevents it from thinking clearly about ‘who’ wants experience so it rushes out to relieve the pain in the only way it knows…it does what everyone around it does…chase experience. __BG-commentary__When you say, 'I am affected,' then atma is looked upon as an object, a karma, that has something affecting it. This object can be a person, an event, or even iSvara. Anyone who looks upon atma as an object does not know atma __The reflection cannot come out of the mirror to tease and destroy you, any more than your own shadow can. If your reflection looks ferocious and frowning, that is only because you look so. There is no need to become anxious because your reflection is frowning and looks as though it is going to destroy you. If you run away from it and it comes chasing after you, any chasing that is done is all in your mind!. __Unlike milk, the atma undergoes no change. You cannot say that previously atma was happy and now it is sad because, no change is possible for the atma. Due to aviveka, however, one takes oneself, atma, to be subject to change. But, because it has no avayava, no attribute, it cannot undergo any change.
__You are ananda by nature. When you are ananda, you do not require any source of ananda, any source of security. __Any result can be responded to in either of two ways: dispassionately with samatva or like a yo-yo, elated because I got what I wanted or suicidal because I did not. This yo-yo response is because I think that I am the author of every result of action when, in fact, I am only the author of action…Depression is created by some onerous responsibility you have assumed, one that is absolutely illegitimate. You take what does not belong to you and then smart under it because you cannot always produce what you want. This is a fact. Then why do you not just accept the fact? All that is required is to accept it objectively, to accept that this is how the creation is.
