Agony of the soul (?) etc

[Charles A. Hillig]

At 09:09 AM 1/17/97 +0530, you wrote:
>Dear Chuck,
>
>I have some comments for  you:
>
>>       Until we move beyond a spiritual hierarchy that seeks to stratify
>> people,
>
>You mean break the Guru-Shishya relationship or the system that creates it ?
>There is so much beauty in this spiritual hierarchy that is very natural.
>Why should moving beyond the hierarchy be our goal at all ? If you say
>we cannot be any freer than what we are, then why move out of this hierarchy?

     I think that the Guru-devotee relationship is important until the
devotee realizes that, all along, he's only been talking to himself.

>> how can we ever experience the loving equanimity demonstrated so
>> beautifully in how Maharshi lived out his life and related so
>> compassionately to those around him?
>
>Is loving equanimity and compassion the final goal ?

     The final "goal" is realization and lovingly seeing things with an
equal eye seems to go along with it.

>
>>      You cannot really "achieve" liberation.  How can you become freer than
>> you already are?  Moksha is not something to be gained, but something  only
>> to be discovered.   It is always fully present.  Bondage is illusory.
>
>I can give the following meaning to your statement:
>
>We are already free, like a free bird in the garden. But now the
>fruit has to be discovered. Why ? We discover the fruit because we are hungry.
>But after eating the fruit, we say that hunger is illusory. Now where is
>the hunger anyway ?! This fruit permanently quenched the hunger! Is it okay ?

     I think that, using your example, the free bird has to first discover
that it is free.  Seeking fruit gives it "something to do" while it's
discovering that it's free.



>>      There's only the Self.  The ego is only the Self pretending that it's
>> not the Self.
>
>Why does the Self fall into this funny game of pretending itself as not the
>Self ?

     It is inscrutable.

>Whom does it want to fool ?

     It wants to fool Itself.  Its nature is to be what it is..... by
pretending to become what it isn't.  It can't be what it isn't, of course,
but It can have a lot of fun pretending that it can!

>
>>      I hesitate naming either pride or ignorance as sins  because it implies
>> that they are wrong or bad. They are only states of mind that are there to
>> help you discover that there is nothing  to be either "proud of" or
>> "ignorant about."
>
>First the Self pretended to be the non Self, and now that game itself is to be
>named as a "help" to again discover the Self !!

     Yes, that's IT!

                                      With Blessings,

                                                        Chuck Hillig