Paradox Of Understanding Realization, August 26, 2020

Moderator: A very long comment from Santa Monica, California, “Lately what’s happening, after reading the Ashtavakra and Avadhuta Gitas literally hundreds of times over the years but not for awhile, I recently reread them. From first, I got not just intellectually, the mind is hopelessly dualistic. And second, one can abide more and more as an indeterminant that is neither form nor emptiness nor any other duality that is and is not. I pay less and less attention to the mind. The mind is the slayer of the real.”

David: Could you read that again and try to read it with a little better pronunciation and a little louder so I can actually hear?

Moderator: “Lately what’s happening, after reading the Ashtavakra and the Avadhuta Gitas literally hundreds of times over the years but not for awhile, I recently reread them. From first, I got not just intellectually, the mind is hopelessly dualistic. And second, one can abide more and more as indeterminant that is neither form nor emptiness nor any other duality for example, and is not, is and is not. I pay less attention to the mind. The mind is the slayer of the real.”

David: That’s a relevant comment, a very good comment and commentary about your own spiritual evolution. First off, using scripture in the way you are using it is an excellent way to test one’s level of realization, which in this case includes understanding of realization. There is no realization without its concomitant understanding. This is the first important comment I will offer. The second is that you seemed to speak of a neutrality of the mind. That is you became aware of the mind’s non-position, its a-positional reality while reading the scripture, which suggests that you’re beginning to understand non-duality in a very concrete way.

Now, for the purpose of this discussion I am not going to distinguish between realization and it’s understanding. So, what we are talking about here are the merits of your discriminative yoga, your discriminative investigation, your discriminative contemplation of the nature of mind and of course where mind abides which is the nature of the Self.

You also mention something else that seemed important when Orley read it, so I’m going to ask Orley to read that comment one more time so I can hear the last portion of it one more time.

Moderator: Do you want me to read the whole thing or just the last portion?

David: Read the whole thing. Let me hear it again.

Moderator: “Lately, what’s happening. After reading the Ashtavakra and Avadhuta Gitas literally hundreds of times over the years but not for awhile, I recently reread them. From the first I got not just intellectually, the mind is hopelessly dualistic. And second, one can abide more and more as intermedia that is neither form nor emptiness nor any other duality for example, and is, is and is not. I pay less attention to the mind. The mind is the slayer of the real.”

David: The mind is the slayer of duality and the discoverer of the real. Therefore, the mind is complicit in a positive sense with realization. It is a complicit actor, which means it co-participates in realization even when it realizes something negative about itself. So, this mind is like a two-way passageway. It denies realization and lets realization in. This is the paradox of understanding realization. It’s shedding light on what is realized while it is displaying the nature of what obfuscates, or better said, which filters through realization. That is it filters out realization. So yes, it’s filtering so that realization is understood for what the mind can do and cannot do simultaneously.

This is a very different description than annihilating the mind and a much more advanced understanding of non-duality. Remember, annihilating the mind falls into that old-fashioned, traditionalist, extremely bifurcated understanding of non-dual realization which sees it’s either the mind or not the mind. So, what we are doing here, what you have done, what we are discussing is something different and better. This is the value that scripture holds when you read the right scriptures, and these are two good ones which are non-dualistically based and which will bring out for those on the non-dual path that flavor of realization. This is really important to explore.

He also eluded to something which again I’m forgetting as I give this response to you, but that the mind itself is duality. That was given in one of the earlier sentences in his commentary. I won’t ask Orley to read it again, but he said that the mind was hopelessly, essentially and I’m paraphrasing, addicted to duality or the victim of duality or the creator of duality. So, to notice something like that if it’s not just an intellectual understanding, if it’s not just intellectualization and he said it was not, points towards a deeper form of understanding about the nature of the mind.

So, this comment points toward the active participatory nature of the mind in realization while it appreciates its own negative value and also the truth that is allowed to shine through. And this is why I am passionate about the relationship between the mind and realization and why I do not discount the mind, that at some point it’s going to become necessary that the mind participate inside of Awakened Consciousness, that it’s not a question of the mind either going away or staying. And when it’s able to understand and experience this, it’s now floating inside the realized state to some degree or has understood that or both.

That was a good comment. Thank you for sharing it.