Spiritual and Disingenuous

It is hard for doting devotees of a spiritual teacher to see any fault in his sayings. And more often than not, what the teacher is doing is just talking nonsense, or building a dependence on himself in a subtle or crude way.

Take for example the following questions and responses from http://www.ishafoundation.org (a website of a spiritual teacher "Sadhguru" Jaggi Vasudev). The Q&A is first presented as-is from the website and then later it is presented with my annotations.

Q: How do I become aware? What support can I seek for this?

Sadhguru: "Unfortunately most people are still lame. They always need a stick to walk. Without a crutch they cannot walk. Support, once again, is at many different levels. If you are physically lame, you need a physical support. If you are psychologically weak, you need a psychological support. If emotionally imbalanced, you need emotional support. On a different level, if you are financially weak, you need financial support - if socially weak, social support. But these are different aspects. When I say support in relation to your growth spiritually, it was connected to all these things in a way.

Some people need psychological support; some people need a physical atmosphere support. When they come to a particular program, they meditate well, they do their Shakti Chalana Kriya well, but if they sit at home, alone, they can’t keep their eyes closed and do any sadhana even for ten minutes. They need support. Physical atmosphere is very important for them. Without support - outside support - for a lot of people, not only their way of being, their awareness, even their sadhana disappears.

Awareness is hard to keep. When I say hard, I am not saying it is difficult - I am only saying that it needs application, it needs awareness. It just needs awareness. When it isn’t there, to be aware or to make an attempt to be aware is hard. Now, awareness is not something that you have to learn or cultivate. The innermost core of your being is awareness. It is just that when people are living on the surface of their life, they are only experiencing the surface of what they are - just the body and the mind. Then awareness seems to be the most impossible thing, so difficult. But your innermost core is simply awareness. There is nothing to be done - whichever way you are, you are aware anyway."

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The question is pretty clear: "How do I become aware?" What it obviously means is how do I become aware of the various levels of my consciousness and become aware of the causal chains operating in me which lead me to remain as-I-am and unhappy.

How does the teacher approach this question?

"Unfortunately most people are still lame. They always need a stick to walk. Without a crutch they cannot walk."

"Support, once again, is at many different levels. If you are physically lame, you need a physical support. If you are psychologically weak, you need a psychological support. If emotionally imbalanced, you need emotional support."

The above is an elucidation of the word "support" as it is used in various contexts.

"On a different level, if you are financially weak, you need financial support - if socially weak, social support. But these are different aspects."

As above.

"When I say support in relation to your growth spiritually, it was connected to all these things in a way."

This probably refers to a talk of his after which this question was raised.

"Some people need psychological support; some people need a physical atmosphere support."

So, the teacher says: to become aware, "some people" need a conducive atmosphere.

"When they come to a particular program, they meditate well, they do their Shakti Chalana Kriya well, but if they sit at home, alone, they can’t keep their eyes closed and do any sadhana even for ten minutes."

So, the teacher says: at home people are unable to meditate or to do the "shakti chalana kriya" but they can do it well when participating in a program. At a program, typically the meditator is surrounded by like-minded meditators and the whole focus of the group and the atmosphere is on meditation. It is an elementary example of group psychology enhancing one's own motivation. Many people find it hard to jog alone, to watch a movie alone, to travel alone, to motivate themselves to do something creative on their own. They will do things if told to do so, or if part of a group. The mind needs an order or an authority figure to dictate to oneself.

"They need support. Physical atmosphere is very important for them. Without support - outside support - for a lot of people, not only their way of being, their awareness, even their sadhana disappears."

Because such people are unable to internalize the motivation. Their motivation comes from outside.

So what should one do?

"Awareness is hard to keep. When I say hard, I am not saying it is difficult - I am only saying that it needs application,"

Okay, so it is not difficult in the sense of being complicated, but it is difficult in the sense of being hard to persevere in.

So, once again, what does the teacher suggest? How to find out what is preventing one from being internally motivated?

"it needs awareness. It just needs awareness."

But that's begging the question. How to learn about and be aware of one's lethargy and the causes of one's un-creative, unhappy, unmotivated life?

"When it isn’t there, to be aware or to make an attempt to be aware is hard."

Of course, that is why the question is being asked. What is the way out? Why am I like this?

"Now, awareness is not something that you have to learn or cultivate."

So, the teacher says, awareness is not something that can be improved upon, since you cannot learn or cultivate it.

"The innermost core of your being is awareness."

You are awareness in essence, the teacher says. The punchline will come in the end.

"It is just that when people are living on the surface of their life, they are only experiencing the surface of what they are - just the body and the mind."

That begs the question: if my core is awareness, why am I living on the surface? Who is living on the surface? Is it the core? How can the core live at the surface? Is it not the core? But then what is it? How to deepen this experiencing?

"Then awareness seems to be the most impossible thing, so difficult. But your innermost core is simply awareness. There is nothing to be done - whichever way you are, you are aware anyway."

Bravo! I am sure the seeker is now clear about what to do.

Just do nothing. Just realize that you are awareness, and stop trying.

(the statement is obviously false because there is no awareness in a coma, state of unconsciousness or in deep sleep).

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Another example?

Q: Sadhguru, you have told us many times that if we have bitter experiences in our life, it is because of our past doings. What type of activities should we do today to avoid future bitterness?

Sadhguru: "Subbarao, the bitterness of any experience is not in what has happened. The bitterness of any experience is in terms of how you have received it. What is very bitter for one person could be a blessing for another person. Once, a grief stricken man threw himself on a grave and cried bitterly, hitting his head against it. “My life! Oh! How senseless it is! How worthless this carcass of mine is because you’re gone. If only you had lived! If only fate had not been so cruel as to take you from this world! How different everything would have been!” A clergyman, nearby, overheard him and said, “I assume this person lying beneath this mound of earth was someone of great importance to you.” “Importance? Yes, indeed,” wept the man, wailing even louder, “It was my wife’s first husband!” The bitterness is not in what is happening. It is in how you’re allowing yourself to experience it, how you are receiving it. Similarly, whatever the past activity or karma is, is also not in terms of action, but in terms of the volition with which it is done.

What is happening with you all, if you are a little open to me or to the teaching, is just that the volition is taken away, so you just do what is needed. That is what awareness means; there is no volition. Where there is no volition, there is no karma. You are simply doing what is needed; that is what acceptance means. That is what unbounded responsibility means, that you don’t have any volition about anything. In every given situation, simply whatever you see as needed, as per your awareness, as per your capability, you just do it. You build karma only with volition; whether it is good or bad, it does not matter. The strength of your volition is what builds karma.

People ask me, again and again, the same question, "What’s your mission?" When I tell them, "I have no mission; I’m just fooling around," they think I’m being frivolous. They don’t understand this is the deepest statement that I can make about living in the world, because there is no particular volition – just doing what is needed, that’s all. In this, there is no karma. Whatever you go through, there is no karma. Whatever you are doing is just happening, as it is needed. So karma is only in terms of your need to do something. When you have no need to do anything, and you simply do what is needed, there is no karmic attachment to it. It is neither good nor bad."

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[ Now the annotation ]

"Q: Sadhguru, you have told us many times that if we have bitter experiences in our life, it is because of our past doings. What type of activities should we do today to avoid future bitterness?"

So, the student is asking: Since our suffering is due to our past actions, how can we stop doing actions in the present so that we do not suffer in the future.

The Sadhguru replies:

"Subbarao, the bitterness of any experience is not in what has happened. The bitterness of any experience is in terms of how you have received it."

Sadhguru says that the experiences are not bitter per se, but are perceived bitterly. I.e., it is all in your mind. One should ask the Sadhguru, is this the advice he would give to a child who is currently being raped by a sadistic father? "The experience is perfectly fine in itself, just don't take it in a bad way."

This attitude is the prime reason people with a solipsistic psyche do not want to improve anything, because they just stop feeling bad about it and that's the solution.

"What is very bitter for one person could be a blessing for another person."

True, most experiences can be evaluated in various ways, but there are experiences, for example, being painfully handicapped, suffering from hate and lust, being the victim of violence, being in a war-torn disease-ridden, experiences which are unequivocally physically and mentally stressful or damaging.

Psychological suffering (as opposed to bodily suffering), however, is indeed due to one's own instincts and conditioning and it is indeed upton oneself to be completely free of psychological suffering.

Let's define suffering as a state of mind or body which makes one unhappy and/or harmful.

Injury, illness, stress, hate, lust, greed, anger, etc., can be considered objective phenomena causing (or being) suffering in a particular individual.

The issue of responsibility is separate from the issue of categorizing an event. If we agree that living stressfully or unhealthily is not a sensible way to live life, then anybody who is living stressfully or unhealthily can be categorized as a suffering individual.

"Once, a grief stricken man threw himself on a grave and cried bitterly, hitting his head against it. “My life! Oh! How senseless it is! How worthless this carcass of mine is because you’re gone. If only you had lived! If only fate had not been so cruel as to take you from this world! How different everything would have been!” A clergyman, nearby, overheard him and said, “I assume this person lying beneath this mound of earth was someone of great importance to you.” “Importance? Yes, indeed,” wept the man, wailing even louder, “It was my wife’s first husband!”"

This joke illustrates only that the suffering can have a cause which is different from the cause perceived by others. The value of this joke in furthering our particular enquiry is zilch.

"The bitterness is not in what is happening. It is in how you’re allowing yourself to experience it, how you are receiving it."

Ok, so I am responsible for my suffering. Fair enough, so what should be done about it?

"Similarly, whatever the past activity or karma is, is also not in terms of action, but in terms of the volition with which it is done.""

Ok, so the karma (to use that word) is based on volitions, not on externally visible (so-to-say) events. E.g., to kill a person is not a "sin" if it is done with compassion (e.g., to ease that person's suffering during terminal illness). That is how karma is usually defined in spirituality.

"What is happening with you all, if you are a little open to me or to the teaching, is just that the volition is taken away, so you just do what is needed."

This is typically known as the surrendering of the will and is a common theme in spiritual circles. After the surrender, "what is needed" is dictated by external forces instead of one's own mind. Needless to say, the external force in this case is clearly spelt out as "me or my teaching".

"That is what awareness means; there is no volition. Where there is no volition, there is no karma."

So, in other words, "surrender your will to me, and stop worrying about any future punishment that you might get if you act on your own."

"You are simply doing what is needed; that is what acceptance means."

In other words, "you are simply doing what I tell you to do, that is what acceptance of me means."

"That is what unbounded responsibility means, that you don’t have any volition about anything."

It is beyond me how a surrender of one's own will can make one "unboundedly responsible." Reasonably speaking, if I surrender my will, I am not responsible for my actions. Only my master is responsible. And presumably, if he is "beyond karma", then he can be as volitional as he wants to be without accumulating any karma. In other words, God need not be worried about the consequences of his actions, but mortal humans should, as long as they haven't surrendered themselves to him.

"In every given situation, simply do whatever you see as needed, as per your awareness, as per your capability, you just do it."

This clarity of thought, where one acts without conflict, requires an extraordinary amount of self-awareness, enquiry and investigation. It is extremely hard, for a normal enough person, to act without any contradiction, confusion or malice.

Unless, of course, one has surrendered. This is the easy way out. Then one need not bother anymore. Just do what one is told to do, or what is required to achieve the ends which have been specified by the master. There is no confusion about the ends anymore. That is why the strange attraction of total surrender: it is the quickest way out of confusion ... and into ... subservience.

"You build karma only with volition; whether it is good or bad, it does not matter. The strength of your volition is what builds karma."

Clear enough.

So the exhortation is to surrender.

"People ask me, again and again, the same question, "What’s your mission?" When I tell them, "I have no mission; I’m just fooling around," they think I’m being frivolous."

In other words, I am God. I am not acting for furthering myself, I have no agenda of my own. This is all a leela (or play) for me.

"They don’t understand this is the deepest statement that I can make about living in the world, because there is no particular volition – just doing what is needed, that’s all."

This is what is called being dishonest about one's motives. If he wants to bring englightenment to the world, he should be forthright about it. Teachers before him have had the gumption to admit that they were world teachers. On one hand he assumes the title of a "sadhguru" (or the True Messiah), and then he says he is fooling around.

One should ask him: is he fooling around answering such questions? And if he says yes, and if people still keep asking him questions in all seriousness, then probably they deserve to surrender their will to him.

And, "just doing what is needed." Needed for what? Why the need for having a marketing website complete with an online shop, and worldwide tours and lectures, and hobnobbing with powerful politicians and having expensive retreats for the rich and the depressed and going to spiritual conferences with other spiritual leaders (or tricksters, such as Deepak Chopra)?

"In this, there is no karma."

"Whatever you go through, there is no karma. Whatever you are doing is just happening, as it is needed."

"So karma is only in terms of your need to do something. When you have no need to do anything, and you simply do what is needed, there is no karmic attachment to it. It is neither good nor bad."

In other words, I am God, and you surrender to me.

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My home theater setup

I have become increasingly fond of studying motion pictures in the last year. Avant garde cinema, cinema verite, the work of "film auteurs" (or art films), documentaries, technically superlative motion pictures, and so on.

This article details my home theater setup. It is not easy to duplicate a full-fledged cinema theater in one's home but I think I have managed to better it in many ways. :-)

Hardware:

Projection system: I use a Sharp Notevision XR-10X DLP front projection system, it can natively display 1024x768 pixels (more than enough for a DVD source). I use a very smooth light wall for projection but might go in for a tripod mounted projection screen in future. The projector is very bright (2000 lumens) and the contrast ratio is a rich 2000:1, so even in daytime, with curtains drawn, the visuals are rich.

Media source: I use standard PC hardware (a Compaq R4000 laptop) as a media source, especially since I keep most movies in MPEG-4 format (my DVD player, Philips DV642P supports MPEG-4 but is not as flexible as a general purpose computer) and also since I like to watch movies with subtitles. The PC has a standard video card, VGA/component out and a region free DVD ROM drive. I don't use the PC's inbuilt sound card since that only has 2 channel output.

Sound output system: I use Creative's Audigy 2 ZS laptop cardbus sound card. It is THX certified, has built-in decoding for Dolby Digital and DTS, supports 7.1 channels, and has 6-channel analog out as well as optical out.

Audio Receiver/Speaker system: I use Logitech's Z5450 digital 5.1 speaker system, with 2 front satellites, 1 center and 2 rear satellites and a sub-woofer. The speakers are again, THX, can produce more than 300watts RMS, and best of all, the rear satellites are wireless for audio connectivity to the main receiver/amplifier. The receiver also has in-built decoding for Dolby Digital and DTS, and has multiple optical inputs, digital co-ax inputs and the standard 6-channel analog inputs.

Software: I greatly prefer Media Player Classic (MPC) 6.4.9.0 on Windows XP Professional with ffdshow codecs for decoding MPEG4 streams (DivX, XviD, mp4, etc.)

I use the K Lite codec pack, which includes MPC and a wide variety of codecs (including ffdshow).

Watching a movie is therefore as simple (sic) as:

- Making sure I have a high quality audio/visual media (preferably MPEG4 or H.264), Dolby Digital audio (if available) and synchronized English subtitles in Subrip format (so that MPC can display them as per my specifications). The combination of these three things is very hard to get right, especially for movies which are out of circulation, but it is possible with lots of resources available on the internet.

- Running Media player classic with the media files

- Selecting the audio settings to pass through any Dolby audio un-decoded to the sound card (Audigy 2 ZS), which performs hardware decoding of the audio stream. Software decoding of Dolby Digital and DTS streams is still in its infancy. One of the best software decoders, ac3filter, which works with MPC, still has a way to go (it suffers from channel amplitude distortion, unnoticeable till somebody tells you about it).

- Choose the subtitles to be displayed

- Connect the projector via the VGA cable

- Connect the Z-5450 receiver with the 6-channel cables from the Audigy 2 ZS sound card. I might use an optical cable someday to decode the audio stream in the receiver instead of the sound card.

- Set the sub-woofer volume and surround volume on the receiver

- Start the movie, sit back and enjoy.

The set-up is very high quality, as far as I am concerned, but is still not very expensive.

Some of the things which can make it top of the line (but suffer from a bad cost-benefit ratio) are HDMI/DVI video (doesn't help much because very few sources are sold in HD format), an optical audio pass-through from the media direct to the audio receiver, and a better speaker system with higher dynamic range (Z-5450 has a dynamic range of around 95db which is actually better than native CD audio dynamic range of 90db), and a lower Total Harmonic Distortion (Z-5450 has a high THD of 10%, but there is no other rear wireless speaker system in the market which offers as much as this system at this price). I am actually very pleased with both the projector and the speaker system.

The projector cost me around $750, bought from a discount retailer on the internet.
The speakers cost around $230, bought from amazon.com.
The Audigy 2 ZS notebook sound card costs around $100, bought from amazon.com.
I already had a laptop.

So, for around $1100, much much less than the cost of a big-screen television, I have a home theater system, with a very big screen and awesome audio which provides me, my wife and my friends, many hours of pleasure.

(well, you also need a big empty room). :-)