The Portal to Freedom is Now Open
So to continue from this morning’s class, rather than read further scripture texts, it seems that the real knot that must be solved or resolved is that which concerns love. As not only the Kashmiri sages, but Sri Ramana, Anandamayi Ma—all the sages agree that you must have both gyana and bhakti; the knowledge of God that is accurate, and devotion that is wholehearted, if you wish to achieve establishment in God-consciousness.
And you cannot abide in the Self if you do not love the Self. So the reason why the ego can’t remain in stillness is, it doesn’t love itself, as we spoke about before. And it doesn’t love others because it has discovered through its life experience in Kali Yuga that you can’t trust others. And the ego has been betrayed many times, and it’s hyper-sensitive to betrayal.
And so it’s wary, it’s defended, it’s always projecting either negativity or cynicism, or a sense of danger, a paranoid conceptualization of every situation, and it is taking steps pre-emptively to defend itself against being hurt again. And it was hurt in the past—in childhood especially—because it loved; it was innocent, and it got abused, or neglected, or abandoned, or rejected, or whatever were the traumatic scenarios of any particular life—but they always include some insult to one’s heart, some wound of feeling unloved, and therefore unlovable, and so how can one who is unlovable have any love to offer?
And so the relationship that the ego has to others is one of fear of love—love is a threat because one doesn’t want to put oneself back in that state one was in in childhood when one was helpless and innocent, and again be exploited, or betrayed, abandoned, whatever. And so the heart stays closed; that’s the ego’s main function. And one uses one’s rationality to figure things out and to try to dominate situations. But surrender? No way! That’s not in the ego’s repertoire of action.
So because of this, it’s not able to surrender even to God. And because of the fear that even God could betray one, then one doesn’t want to be open and have too much faith, because one feels that one would be devastated if one’s faith was disappointed. And because one has already been traumatized during the period of one’s innocence (in childhood), one feels, well, “My faith was already devastated by my innocence having been destroyed by abuse of some kind.”
And so the ego is knotted against the possibility of opening the heart and being vulnerable, right? That word, “vulnerable”, is in the common discourse because every ego fears that. This is the main reason people don’t even want the help of a teacher, usually, because they’re afraid of dependence on a teacher to guide them, and then feel that they could be betrayed, or they could be disappointed, or whatever. So it generalizes, this feeling, toward everyone, and it cuts the ego off from the kind of help that it could use to overcome the traumas that have wounded it and kept it in a loveless condition.
So because the ego has internalized the attack on its love, it becomes an attacker of love. And love, because it’s a threat to its equilibrium, it attempts to live as much without the need of what it considers an emotional dependency, because that’s how it conceives of love, because in childhood one was dependent, and not as a kind of strength, and not as a kind of power to overcome obstacles—because love gives you courage, love gives you strength, love gives you the ability to do things that would otherwise not be possible. This is why, in the old days, when there was still rationality in societies, the societies always wanted the people to grow up feeling that the country stood for—and its highest value was—the love of God. And that’s what would make its members be willing to die for their country, because they were dying for God, they were dying for a social order that was supporting the love of God.
But at a certain point in history, the love of God was replaced by the love of money, and people are not willing to die—they’re willing to kill for money, and they’re willing to betray each other for money—but they’re not willing to give themselves in the same way. And so cowardice comes out of that, and corruption. In fact, the whole world situation today is only possible because people are willing to betray their fellow countrymen, their fellow humans, for money. Police are willing to do it, doctors are willing to do it, the lawyers, the politicians—everyone is willing to betray the best interest of the people for money. Because that is the value now, not love, and certainly not God—that’s ridiculed. You’re a sissy if you have love for God, you know? It’s not something that hard-headed, strong people have: they’re purely into the power of their cleverness and their capacity to make money.
So this is a world in which love has been marginalized, ridiculed, cynically put down as a fantasy, and as “the opium of the people”—as Karl Marx put it, in terms of religious love—and that has created a world that is loveless, and that, in a way, despises love, because of its false forms of expression—its toxic forms, its abuse. The use of the word “love” as a four-letter word—has become something of a cliché, that people use. And all the pop music that uses the term “love”—it’s clear that they mean desire, infatuation, attachment, possessiveness, or sentimentality, or something else, but not the purity of Real love.
So, because of that, it’s very difficult now for an ego to feel love, for itself, and therefore because it has confused itself, its structure, and its self-image with the Real Self, that is the actual life-energy and consciousness that underlies the ego—it doesn’t get to that level, and so it stops at the complete illegitimacy of the concept of love that it is based on. Does that make sense to people? Can everyone relate to that?
So this is, I think, the main problem for yogis as well
This Post Has 3 Comments
Pavan (Paul Keetley)
14 Oct 2021Dearest Shunya
a very dear now very old friend was a Jungian analyst whose take on the US transition collectively from ethic to profit was he felt a byproduct of the Civil War. Materialism has so dominated the world of late its hard to grok. Very much appreciating your book in pdf but sure you will get to read it aloud and make it available. Please do. In Australia we are staring to look again at international flights so hoping to come and see you time, although the speed of Consciousness bridges all spaces, and your wisdom is beyond relativity. Love Pavan (Paul Keetley).
Vajra Sat Yoga
15 Oct 2021Dear Pavan,
Thank you so much for your comments. We will be sure to forward them along to Shunyamurti. Thank you for being a part of our global community. we do hope to see you one day soon!
Namaste and blessings.
Pavan (Paul Keetley)
14 Oct 2021PS reflecting on your ashram movie nights a favourite you might like a look at is Meet Joe Black. Namaste.