The Real is Beyond Belief
Sat Yoga does not really belong to the advaita lineage that is so popular today. We have nothing against it, you know, it’s an interesting formulation of a concept that goes against the common sense of the ego that functions by taking duality for granted. And so in that sense, it provides a shock of cognitive dissonance that offers a momentary glimpse of the illusion of the phenomenal plane and the subject-object mode of consciousness. But Sat Yoga would not claim that that expresses any absolute Truth whatsoever.
So we are more in alignment with a more ancient tradition that preceded, historically, the arising of advaita and that is the concept of advaya. I have mentioned this a number of times and alluded to its meaning and significance for us, but probably because it’s such a very slippery anti-concept that it is difficult to say anything about it beyond the fact that it describes in a very simple but inadequate way, the nature of reality. And what advaya means is that no beliefs can capture reality. No way can reality be described symbolically or through any other means of consciousness, whether it’s mathematics, or images, or any form of expression. The Real is beyond the mode of consciousness of symbolic thought.
I think this is important for several reasons, and this is not to be taken as a belief; this is very important: if we’re saying advaya is a state that has no beliefs, it doesn’t mean that should become a belief. OK? Because then you’re no longer in advaya. So I don’t want you to believe anything I’m telling you. It’s not offered as a new belief to replace a belief that you had, that things were different. That’s, in a way, how it is different from advaita, which is a belief, although you can hold the concept of advaita not as a belief, but as an expedient means of countering another belief in duality. And then, as Ramana always says, you use a thorn to remove a thorn, and then you throw the second thorn into the fire and burn that as well. You don’t hold onto it—you don’t identify with it—but in truth, you don’t need to go through advaita or any other system of counter-beliefs in order to be free of belief, immediately. We’re not born with beliefs. We’re not even born—that’s a belief!
So, if you free yourself from all beliefs—including the ones that you take for granted as being true—if you get rid of all of them, what you will notice is you have stopped suffering. OK? You will notice that as a fact. I am not telling you to believe it, but do the experiment and discover for yourself whether that’s true. Your beliefs are what cause your pain. OK? And therefore, the freer you are from holding onto or clinging to any beliefs or views—“This is right. This is true. You know, I’ll die for this belief. I’ll kill for this belief”—you know, the world is based on violence that’s based on beliefs, and the belief is usually that you’re good when you’re fighting for a belief, and so beliefs are the cause of all conflicts.
And so when we go into it, our beliefs are the glitches. No matter how refined a belief it might be, they are never adequate. Even the best scientific beliefs are being overcome, refined, morphed—they change—and you cannot even say that the universe operates according to some set form of physical laws. If the universe has an author, then that author can overrule any laws. There’s no limit to freedom. And even that can only be taken as a belief, and you don’t know that, but what you know is that you don’t know. And so any assumption of knowledge is already going to put you on a path in which you are out of alignment with the nature of reality.
Furthermore, the tendency of the different register in modes of consciousness—the imaginary, the symbolic, the Real, and experience, imperience, and sumerience—need to be understood. Those can be observed. You don’t need to have beliefs about them. You can see when you’re in the imaginary and creating narratives about the phenomenal plane. You know when you’re having a dream, you’re in what we can call the realm of imperience. It’s not a belief. There’s some direct knowledge. In the same way that if smoke suddenly starts coming out of the kitchen, you don’t need to believe that there’s a fire there to take action. OK? It’s not based on belief. There are certain kinds of actions that you take based on the knowledge of experience. And even if it proves to be wrong and there was no fire, nonetheless, your action was accurate in the moment. OK? And that’s all you can know, whether your action is accurate and adequate to a situation, but you cannot understand the ontological status of what is happening, or even of the phenomenal plane, whether it’s a dream, or a holographic simulation, or some other model that science of one form or another offers now as an attempt at a description.
But to cling to any of these descriptions is going to put you back in a state of suffering. And the more you hold onto them and the more the evidence accumulates that “No, there’s a better way of describing it that’s slightly different”, then it’s going to create again conflict and pain, and a question of divided loyalties, which are always loyalties to one belief or another. So the only way not to be divided is to be free of beliefs, because any belief at all is going to create a division between you and the Real.
The belief operates at the imaginary level. Even if it claims to be a symbolic belief, it’s always a product of the symbolic capacity being welded to the imaginary. So there are people who want to get out of the imaginary, or out of the realm of experience, and think that there’s a higher truth in the realm of imperience. And this can be gained either through meditation, or other ascetic practices, or taking of LSD or ayahuasca, or any of those substances that will alter your consciousness, but all they will lead to is another level of maya within the bandwidth of imperience. They will not lead to freedom, and they’ll lead to yet another set of beliefs based on whatever kinds of interpretations of the internal phenomena that arise in an altered state of consciousness. They’ll take you no closer to truth, but in fact they may take you further away from truth, because you’ll buy into thinking that it took you closer to truth, and then you’ll get attached to that mode of consciousness which itself can very easily get out of control and out of balance with the realm of experience, and the much deeper levels of consciousness, and cause attachment to certain kinds of fireworks of a psychedelic nature that then prevent one from finding the Real.
And the enjoyment of these kinds of phenomena which, again, lead to beliefs that those substances or those kinds of experiences are important, or necessary, or part of a path to achieve liberation are always going to deepen the delusion and the suffering. There is no path out because you’re not in. It’s only the belief that you need to have a path out when there is no problem except your own belief in certain beliefs that have created suffering for you. And it’s only the letting go of beliefs that’s necessary. Not accumulating a different set of beliefs.
And therefore, no matter how many books that you read, you’re not going to be able to get out of the suffering. It will just complexify more and more because it is the refusal to cling to any views whatsoever that will bring you to the Real. OK? But I’m not saying that as a belief! Don’t buy it as a belief, but try it! It’s a pragmatic, experimental view. You’ll suffer less and you’ll be liberated more from all of the anxieties and stresses that beliefs bring. That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to function—you’ll function very well—but it will be within a pragmatic frame of reference that enables the body-mind to do whatever is advisable in a certain situation according to protocols, etc., but do not at all attach you or commit you to any belief in any particular ontological status of what is happening at that realm of phenomenal experience. It frees the consciousness.
Audio File: The Real is Beyond Belief – Audio File.mp3