Matt: When you talk about karma, what do you mean exactly?
Rory: Karma literally means “action.” Anything that you do is karma, from brushing your teeth first thing to going to bed last thing at night. Of course karma also refers to the results of those actions. So when we talk of karma, we’re often referring to not only our present actions, but the seeds of our past actions, which determine our present circumstances. Here’s a short article I wrote explaining karma.
Matt: You wrote: “It’s Isvara that determines and dispenses the results of all our actions.” Can you elaborate on this?
Rory: Isvara is referred to in Vedanta as karma phala data, a technical Sanskrit term meaning “the giver of the results of our actions.” As both the intelligence behind the Creation and the very shape and substance of the Creation (i.e. the very environment around us and all the natural laws governing it), the results of our actions are determined by Isvara: the innate, organising principle which determines how our actions influence the material field and what ripples they create. Every action, of course, involves countless unseen variables and factors, as this is a complex and interconnected Creation. Therefore we accept that the results of our actions are not up to us (if they were up to us, we’d always get what we wanted, which is clearly not the case!), but determined by Isvara, the creative and organising intelligence behind the cosmos.
Matt: Does jiva mean “soul” here or something else?
Rory: Yup, the term “jiva” refers to the individual, i.e. consciousness identified with a particular body-mind-sense complex. You can use the word “soul” if you like, although I tend to avoid the term, as it can cause confusion for some people who have other ideas about what the word “soul” means.
Matt: What do you mean when you talk of jiva’s “stuff”?
Rory: By this I mean anything that we take to be “us” or “ours” in terms of the jiva’s body, mind, thoughts and psychological content, as well as everything we think we have or own in the outer world. All of it actually belongs to Isvara. The ego superimposes a sense of “I,” “mine” and “my-ness” on these objects and claims ownership of, but that’s actually nothing more than a thought.
Matt: What do you mean when you write: “The jiva, with its assorted likes and dislikes, desires and aversions, that superimposes a veil of subjectivity on the world of objects…”?
Rory: This basically means that we project a kind of mental overlay onto the world of objects. Instead of seeing things as they are, completely objectively, we superimpose subjectivity onto things. We divide things into “good” and “bad,” “desirable” and “undesirable,” “beautiful” and “ugly” based on nothing more than the likes and dislikes conditioned into us. Objects in themselves are value-neutral. Things just are as they are. What happens is the human mind projects onto them, and we invest those objects with a meaning and value that is entirely subjective – and which we then mistake as “reality.”
Matt: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I have now gained clarity around these items. There are a couple of other key questions that have come up as a result of reading The Essence of Enlightenment. In the book, James writes: “Jiva is an eternal principle, not a specific person. It is actually pure awareness, Paramatma.” My question: Is jiva not an individual then? And how could jiva be pure awareness if as the book also says, “The jiva is awareness with a subtle body.” Similarly, if the body-mind-sense complex (subtle body) is comprised of thoughts, feelings, interpretations, etc., how can that be pure awareness?
Rory: Vedanta often makes seemingly contradictory statements. They aren’t actually contradictory, however, because each statement is true depending upon the perspective you’re taking. If I’m at the top of a mountain looking down at a tree below, I might say, “The tree is small.” If I’m standing on the ground beneath the tree with its branches towering above me, I might say, “The tree is large.” If I take a powerful microscope and examine the tree’s atoms and subatomic particles, when all that I ultimately find is empty space, I might conclude, “There is no tree!”
It’s the same when we consider the jiva and the material Creation. There are three basic “orders of reality”: the subjective, the objective/empirical and the absolute. At the subjective level, the jiva is a seemingly separate person with its own body and mind and all the various thoughts, beliefs, emotions and concepts constituting that individual’s experience of life. This is what we usually mean when we use the term “jiva.” Another word for this is the “non-eternal jiva” because each jiva only exists as that particular configuration of gross and subtle bodies for a single lifetime. This jiva is awareness with a subtle body which, courtesy of its karma stream (the accumulated vasanas and samskaras) migrates from gross body to gross body.
When you look at things from the objective/empirical order of reality, the jiva is actually just part of Isvara. That’s what James means when he writes that “jiva is an eternal principle.” Sometimes Isvara is referred to as the “eternal jiva,” for Isvara (the Self plus maya) is the macrocosmic gross, subtle and causal bodies, and these have no beginning or end. In spite of the appearance of plurality, all physical forms are actually part of this one macrocosmic gross body (Isvara), and all the subtle bodies are also part of the one macrocosmic subtle body (also Isvara). You might think of Isvara as the ocean, and all the jivas as waves rising and falling upon that ocean.
At the absolute order of reality, all we have is the Self – pure awareness/consciousness/existence. Everything is actually just this pure awareness. It’s the only “substance” in reality. Courtesy of maya, however, within this awareness appears an entire universe/universes of form and differentiation. By its power of maya, Isvara “creates” this entire universe of form, including all the gross and subtle bodies. So within the absolute order of reality appears the objective/empirical realm, and with this objective/empirical realm, we experience the subjective realm of the jiva. All thee orders of reality exist within awareness/the Self, which is ultimately all that exists, appearances notwithstanding.
Matt: From the book: “If you have understood what we have said so far, you have either been set free by the knowledge or you have the knowledge needed to set yourself free. You can put the book down and get on with enjoying life as it is or you can meaningfully start your spiritual work.” This is confusing because I thought that the book can only provide information, not knowledge? Isn’t knowledge beyond experience as the book says, and isn’t it an experiential revelation of Reality?
Rory: I’m a little confused by the question, as I’m not sure I understand the distinction you make between information and knowledge. Vedanta is what we call a pramana, a “means of knowledge,” specifically Self-knowledge. So what the book delivers is knowledge, and this knowledge is really about the removal of ignorance, the ignorance we had about our essential nature.
The first step of Vedanta is just hearing the teaching repeatedly until it begins to make sense. The second step is where we work through whatever doubts or confusions we have – and that involves resolving any seeming contradictions, as you are doing here.
The third and final step is taking that knowledge, which is really just as simple as “I am awareness and not the mind-body-ego” and then applying it to the mind and all the layers of ignorance-based conditioning as they arise. It’s really just a matter of consistently applying that knowledge until the mind finally gets the message. That’s when the fruits of Self-knowledge really flourish, as a sense of fearlessness, lack of selfish or ego-centred desire and complete satisfaction with who and what we are. So this experience is actually the by-product of assimilated Self-knowledge and is quite different from the experiential states we might seek through yoga or meditation or whatever. Unlike those, the fruits of Self-knowledge last, regardless of what’s going on with the body, mind and in the environment around us.
The term “experimental revelation of Reality” is a bit problematic, because we’re actually already experiencing reality all the time. We’re never not experiencing the Self, because there’s nothing else to experience. All that’s necessary is the removal of ignorance about that fact. So perhaps what you mean when you say “knowledge” is assimilated, fully integrated knowledge, which renders the vasanas non-binding and delivers those delicious fruits of moksa. This comes from consistently reflecting upon the teaching and applying it to the mind over and over until the mind finally gets the message!
Matt: With regard to the non-eternal jiva, when you mentioned it’s the gross body with the subtle body, the common “person,” the part that’s throwing me off is that it would seem to make more sense that this jiva would be part of the objective realm as opposed to the subjective realm? I say this because the subtle-body-gross-body combo is an object, and the objective realm is the realm of objects. Or is it maybe that the non-eternal jiva doesn’t include the gross body and is therefore only awareness with a subtle body?
Rory: This is a yes-and-no answer. The gross and subtle bodies are indeed part of the objective/empirical order of reality. The gross body is available to the senses as an object of perception, while the subtle body can be known by inference because we experience mind, intellect and ego as subtle objects of perception.
However, the notion of being a jiva is actually nothing more than a thought created by the ahamkara, the ego (the word ahamkara literally means “I-maker”). The ego takes what is objective – the form of the body and the arising of subtle phenomena, thoughts, habits, emotions, etc. – and places a stamp of “I-ness” on them, thus making the objective subjective. But where exactly is this ego-self? It can never be found, because it has no tangible existence of its own. It’s just a thought. Neuroscientists concur with this. They’ve found there’s no single part of the brain where this “ego self” exists. Rather, it’s an assortment of various thoughts and mental processes loosely grouped together by the ego misplacing our basic sense of “I am.” That’s why the person we think we are is classified as being a product of the subjective rather than the objective order of reality.
Matt: Is the subjective realm, generally speaking, the realm of interpretation and of night dreaming?
Rory: Yes, it’s the personal reality the jiva creates with its thoughts, interpretations and imagination in the waking state, and the world of its dreams in the dream state.
Matt: When you say “Isvara (the Self plus maya),” does maya mean the creative force or does it mean the world of illusion?
Rory: Both. I liken it to the dreaming state; it’s both the creative intelligence that shapes the dream and the very substance of the dream. Isvara is therefore both the intelligence that governs the Creation and the very Creation itself. The Upanishads use the analogy of a spider. The spider not only spins the web, but fashions the web out of its own substance.
