SpiritAwake

Note: What follows will likely be considered controversial. It, in part, touches on a topic few Vedantins are comfortable discussing. Some of its implications might even be disturbing, which can be looked at in a positive light in the form of a healthy challenge. (I wouldn’t attempt writing this in a forum whose participants didn’t have the qualifications here demonstrated.)

Melj, I assume you wrote this:
“There is no you because there is no other than you.”

Beautifully stated. Yet obviously we still need to play along with the illusion that there is the APPEARANCE of a me here writing and the APPEARANCE of a separate you there reading, in order to allow the world game to flow *effectively*. Whereas, in reality, there is only the One IAm speaking to Itself. Nevertheless, as the saying goes, “We can’t *live* Advaita.”

In any event, if we attempt to investigate how the relative World came into apparent existence, all the evidence–both intuitive and within the sastras–points to the fact that “we Brahman the IAm Singularity” willed the World of Plurality into existence for the essential purpose of entertainment. As the Creation Song in the Rig Veda [has the philosophical audacity to tell us], “After aeons of being alone, Brahman became bored and desired to experience Itself…” (playing devil’s advocate here: I guess this is the best the Universal Mind could come up with…expecting to sneak passed us the fact that a perfection like Brahman could have a latent desire!, and yet retain Its status of perfection.. tantamount to the miracle of having “something come out of nothing.”)

Here’s a telling anecdote..
A woman walked up to Sri Ramana; she was holding her dead son in her arms, entreating, begging the Maharshi to bring him back. He said the boy’s time had come and there was nothing that could be done. Her grief was so heavy it seemed she herself might not recover. She asked for his blessing, bowed namaskaar, and walked out. Tears were in Ramana’s eyes.

This is clearly a breach in vairagya (dispassion), which suggests even a great jnani can be less than perfect, underscoring also the fact that the sahaja state had been abandoned, at least temporarily.

This leads me to make the point that the prevailing belief that the conduct of a jivanmuktha should preeminently adhere to strict, unwavering, and invincible guidelines, is an unfortunate mistake. Unfortunate because it compels seekers to place unrealistic restrictions on themselves, where if they might have a lapse in ideal conduct, confirms to them the fact they still have so very far to go before they can be within reach of enlightenment.

In the last days of my active participation in the yahoo group forum called “Advaitin,” I tried pointing out how the tendency of advaitins to regard the world as purely illusory (mithya), is a mistake, since, for example, both Ramana and Adi Sankara referred to it as Maya, implying it was both unreal and yet had a real component within it; and that rendered it as ultimately beyond comprehension or description (anirvachaniya). Now, there have been instances where Ramana would also “clearly imply” the world was purely an illusion also, thus apparently contradicting himself (which is not uncommon for acharyas, and doesn’t really matter either).

So, this can represent an ongoing riddle or paradox for many seekers, *including* jnanis! Doubtless, from the sahaja or thuriya state, there can be no issue…no questions will or can arise. However, no-one can remain in that state continuously…evidently not even Jesus or Buddha were, since being embodied, they were yet subjected to the pull of the relative world glamor and/or bewilderment.

Nevertheless, such dilemmas don’t intrinsically take anything away from the jnani’s *undercurrent* of moksha or “stateless state” of nirvana. Indeed, we could rest on the latter being the definitive stamp of the Real on the whole matter in question. (Herein, in fact, lies my own default failsafe mechanism; thus the Self is like the ocean, with cyclical turbulence of waves and eddies on the surface, yet all the while dark, still, and unfathomable in the deep.)

All this has been, alas, a prologue to something [which I just realized] I can’t even alluded to without giving away its probable content.

Reply to melj (SpiritAwake)

Hi melj.

Yes!

Your pointing is quite near “perfect.” (I put it in quotes coz I’m allergic to the word.. )

I’ll try sharpening the focus:

The technical fiction “me” we nevertheless desired to create, because if not, its appearance (purest illusion of the watery mirage dancing on desert or hot city street: being yet nameable, imaginable, … thinkable!) wouldn’t be something we’d have to even bother talking about.

So, we can play with the Maya, and it cannot under any circumstance–regardless how intensely we might believe otherwise–matter. This Samsara is Brahman’s Leela, which, however (and, as Toltec shaman would put it, “just for the hell of it”), [it] has rules, just like any other game. And although there can be no ontological consequences for breaking them, we desire to follow them and break them as we see fit, if not in the name of art, then in the name of novelty, or in the name of nothing at all.. since the first rule of the game is that there are no rules. And the second rule violates the first… and then we go on… all the time sunk in the realization of the transconceptual Self vibration.

And this is the point, right? We play yet know the play is just that, a chimera with beautiful proportions, sounds, and vibrations. God is a music lover. An art, poetry, mind navigator, dance and comedy

afficionado. We (God) just have to remember to take it all with a grain of salt, and never allow ourSelf to deviate from this.

Namaskaar!

Melj, Please note, I didn’t mean to imply we had the right to do anything we please (such as in Aliester Crowley’s dictim, “Do what thou wilt”); I meant we had the “freedom” to act within certain parameters based on the best of our understanding re an acceptable code of ethics…which would therefrom include breaking rules as we saw fit. Moreover, I don’t ascribe to free will either… only that there is an appearance of such…

376SpiritAwake,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I was more than a bit hasty in writing my last reply.

Almost everything I ever read or heard about Sufism was impressive in its depth of insight. Rumi, for example. It draws from the same source as all the esoteric traditions. I also thought the page you added was a good read and solidly founded on non dual wisdom.

The miscue in my reply had to do with how we conduct ourselves in Samsara, which wasn’t necessary to get into, having had the unfortunate effect of diverting the attention from the point I was trying to make.

The following might help to rehabilitate that point..

Circa mid 90’s, someone wrote to me complaining about how to effectively handle some difficult problems they were having without compromising their spiritual connection. I replied (the result of a spontaneous channeling out of compassion for them), “Act as though everything matters; *be* as though nothing does.”

This underscores the dilemma we’re facing as seekers, realizers, and even jnanis, and I believe it represents the higher purpose of this dark age of the Kaliyug: a novel refusal to tolerate blanket denials of relative world events unfolding, made by proponents (myself included in my first 28 years of teaching; and modified in the last 20) claiming the problem lies exclusively within the individual’s perception.

We veterans well know the talk about resting in the Self, while the world with all its problems and wonders never really existed to begin with. How, in fact, nothing can be said or even thought about the Real at all..It being ineffable, attributeless, inscrutable, *unknowable*. (As I alluded to, I [still] default to this, which is indisputable and incontrovertible.)

And yet, some day a week later will arrive and we get a call from our son in jail, charged with a felony for selling narcotics.

The best of us are still beset with worldly responsibilities. One has a family to care for, a livelihood to make, even people on the metaphysical path to guide, as you yourself and Melj are doing. Or one can become a sanyassin, renouncing the world…but have they really?…they still need to *do things*:eat, sleep, etc…and if not eat, breathe [in sahaja samadhi], if not breathe, stop the heart, while the brain is kept alive from the pineal, which in turn receives its packets of information (pranava OM vibration) from the Buddha Self seated in the cave of the heart, etc.

Denying that such circumstances exist is, imo, being disingenuous.

Nevertheless, and once again I’ll say, I quite agree (and very much actively practice) that we in reality are That IAm, and all else is ultimately empty. *Yet and however*, it still manages to greet us, and occasionally–*albeit quite temporarily*–seems to even derail us.

This is what prompted me to get involved with your forum. I had read Melj’s post referring to Castaneda’s JOURNEY TO IXTLAN, coupled with posts on Advaita, the Dammapada, etc.

I believed, and still do, that there is a rare degree of openmindedness here, with an embracing of eclectic approaches…much like the wide ranging perennial philosophy or even theosophy (both having been, in their core teachings, chanelled from akasha).

As I see it, there’s a significant obstacle in place. Perhaps it’s by design, and left to the entry-level jnani to discover on his own. A matter, if revealed, properly cognized and surmounted, will accelerate his spiritual focus virtually overnight!

The obstacle I’m referring to is an unwillingness to acknowledge what I contend is a virtual divine flaw, intrinsic to the relative *as well as* the Absolute! I say this for the simple reason (based on the simplest observation) that the realm of Manifestation, whether regarded as pseudo-real or abjectly unreal (Maya or mithya), is the result of a latent desire in Brahman (as revealed in the Rig Veda’s Creation Song), which by definition is tantamount to It possessing an imperfection. And regardless of the intellectual somersaults that attempt to redirect the problem as a misunderstanding in one’s perception, or ostrich-like bury its head in the sand pretending it doesn’t exist, doesn’t remove the glitch, extraordinarily subtle though such glitch might be.

The kernel of illusion lies within Existence Itself. If not, where could it have possibly come from?

How would acknowledging this help us?

As I alluded to in my first comment, it would provide relief from a tendency toward rigidity and evoke a more fluid response in the face of life’s inevitable travails and moral responsibilities, where if/when one fails to meet a given circumstance with the expectation of impeccability, they’ll be less likely to succumb to the idea that imperfection doesn’t–in fact, *cannot*–befit a man of knowledge or enlightenment.

namaste!