The unalloyed ease of being - Francis Answers - 104

Dear Francis:

I’m not sure if you respond to random emails but I will shoot it anyways knowing that it is sincere.

I have a couple of questions for you and I wonder if you would have the time to respond:

Dear Sudhakar,

Here are your questions and my answers

1. We are not what we experience; that much is clear. We experience our body-mind as much as we experience the world “outside” of us. This means that we (whoever that “we” is) are as distant from our body-mind as the apparent world outside. This can also be experientially evidenced in some cases. However I wonder why is it that the “I” who is this all pervasive consciousness and also me does not feel the hunger or the pain or the joy of another body-mind complex.

What makes you so sure it doesn’t? What if it does and the selective memory attached to this body-mind complex doesn’t have access to and does’t remember the sensations and thoughts of another body-mind?

2. The intellectual answer is that the “consciousness” is welded and fused with the apparition called the “ego”. This fusion is also apparent but seems real because of the “identification”. However there must be a way to experience evidentially the experiences of all the B-M-I complexes…

Actually, there might be some fleeting moments during which we experience the thoughts and feelings of another body-mind, for instance during a telepathic experience. But because this experience, no matter how unusual it may be, is still confined to the phenomenal realm, it doesn’t put an end to ignorance, which is the only desirable achievement.

3. Time has no meaning in and of itself; it is clear to me that it is a construct of the mind and our psychology. I can also feel that at the “watcher” level there is no time or attributes. It takes effort to be aware of where we are operating from, I guess that this effort will become spontaneous and slowly I will be able to abide in that state. Is this understanding correct or is my mind cheating on me?

The effort to be aware of where we are operating from is a last ditch effort by the mind to perceive that which it cannot perceive, for the mind, made of perceptions, cannot perceive the awareness that perceives the mind. A perception doesn’t perceive. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we are the awareness that perceives, and that we somehow know this awareness. This points at a different form of knowledge, direct, immediate, with no involvement of the mind. The light from which you derive the knowledge that you are aware reveals the path that leads, beyond the mind, to the source of all things..

4. According to Hindu philosophy, realization is not possible until there is a complete cessation of “vasanas” or latent tendencies of all kinds. Is that really possible in a body-mind framework that is hard-wired, evolved and designed in a particular way where there will always be traces of some ambitions and desires?

We have to make a distinction between a glimpse of our true nature (nirvikalpa samadhi) and our subsequent establishment in the peace of our natural state (sahaja samadhi). Only the latter refers to the cessation of the vasanas which are habits (of thought, of feeling and of behavior) that were by-products of ignorance. A glimpse of our true nature suffices to eliminate ignorance. It is jivan mukti, liberation while alive. As a result, the old habits, being no more fueled by the belief in separate existence, become extinct one after another like oil lamps after the passing away of the old servant who was in charge of refueling them. This progressive extinction corresponds to the establishment in wisdom, the fruit of liberation, the unalloyed ease of being.

We can, in most cases with the help of a Karana Guru, cooperate with the dissolution of the residual vasanas. It would be like blowing the lamps that remain burning to accelerate their extinction.

5. I feel that this consciousness, if it had a quality it probably is Compassion or Humor; one thing is clear the more I pay attention to “that” , the more fearlessness I experience. So I guess that maybe I’m on the right path.

This Atman has many qualities: Immortality, Absolute Happiness, Intelligence, Splendor, Life…and, yes, Fearlessness, Compassion and Humor. So, I guess, you are on the right path.

Love,

Francis