A friend wrote to me:
I think you will gather a good following on social media.
You can try posting things on the Voidspace subreddit for a few days.
Your knowledge might have a bigger purpose.
In my opinion, the sole quest to find God is a selfish endeavor.
Which I think is the reason most spiritual practitioners feel compelled to become Gurus and guide others. To give back what they have taken, balance the scale sort of.
Being alone is not freedom, finding God is not an achievement, it is both immense pain and responsibility.
You now have more energy than others, more intelligence, more consciousness, and more power.
As uncle Ben once said “with great power comes great responsibility”, it now becomes imperative that you make this lifetime count. You need to step up, play a bigger part. Just be more willing, you know that’s all you need to do.
To which I replied:
Regarding the “social responsibilities” of an “awakened” person, I am not too concerned with that. Maybe because God is playing different roles through each of us – so-called svadharma. That said, I do engage in a lot of writing on social media (
https://www.facebook.com/d.samarender.reddy.5) and my blog (
https://selfrealization.blog/) – and I have written many articles on spiritual topics in newspapers and some magazines, so, you could say that is my way of fulfilling my “responsibility”.
At the same time, as both Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj pointed out when someone aksed how they the jnanis see the world when they look at it with their eyes of wisdom, “I find the world to be perfect as it is because I know God is in charge”.
Whatever changes are needed to correct any “imperfections” that our finite minds might detect, will happen automatically as per God’s plans. You are being driven by God. I am being driven by God. The wind need not worry about which way it has to blow, whether towards the west or east.
The Friend replied:
For a long time, I wondered why materialist folks don’t take jnanis seriously despite the clear differences in wisdom and intellect, I believe it is because jnanis have a tendency to resolve themselves of accountability. They refer to themselves as the all-encompassing ‘God’, but when it comes to action, they detach from this identity and state ‘God is in charge not me’. It’s convenient, but doesn’t lead to results. A full integration of ego and the absolute would mean that you are still eligible to take action, and whatever action you take would still be the act of God.
I replied to that:
Q: All I want is to be able to help the world.
Nisargadatta Maharaj: Who says you cannot help? You made up your mind about what help means and needs and got your self into a conflict between what you should and what you can, between necessity and ability.
Q: But why do we do so?
Nisargadatta Maharaj: Your mind projects a structure and you identify yourself with it. It is in the nature of desire to prompt the mind to create a world for its fulfilment. Even a small desire can start a long line of action; what about a strong desire? Desire can produce a universe; its powers are miraculous. Just as a small matchstick can set a huge forest on fire, so does a desire light the fires of manifestation.
The very purpose of creation is the fulfilment of desire. The desire may be noble, or ignoble, space (akash) is neutral — one can fill it with what one likes: You must be very careful as to what you desire. And as to the people you want to help, they are in their respective worlds for the sake of their desires; there is no way of helping them except through their desires [Artha and Kama]. You can only teach them to have right desires [through Dharma] so that they may rise above them and be free from the urge to create and re-create worlds of desires, abodes of pain and pleasure [Moksha]. (from the book “I Am That” – see the attached file.)
YOU WROTE:
Jnanis have a tendency to resolve themselves of accountability. They refer to themselves as the all-encompassing ‘God’, but when it comes to action, they detach from this identity and state ‘God is in charge not me’. It’s convenient, but doesn’t lead to results. A full integration of ego and the absolute would mean that you are still eligible to take action, and whatever action you take would still be the act of God.
MY REPLY:
You are making the mistake of thinking that there is an actual “jnani” separate from God. That is not the case. It is ONLY God that is there. So, whatever is happening is ONLY God’s doing or non-doing. There’s no possibility of “A full integration of ego and the absolute” because they never were separate to begin with. It is like seeking “A full integration of the pot and clay.” Neither Jnanis nor Ajnanis are there, only God is there. The ego is just an illusory entity that can do nothing except “think-and-feel” that it is the one doing something, while all along it is just God doing everything. That does not mean Jnanis do not do anything, and so-called Jnanis have done plenty of things in the past, mainly by way of teaching the Truth, but even then you have to remember that the role of Jnanis and the role of Ajnanis both are being played by God. Nothing else apart from God or Consciousness. All differences, such as Jnanis and Ajnanis, and all activity in the form of this world drama is merely imagined and not real. Nothing is happening except insofar as the mind is imagining that something is happening. The pot never came into existence. The world was never created. The world does not exist except in imagination. So, who is there to help whom. And, if one still insists that help is necessary because one “sees” people suffering even though the world be a dream, the only way to help them is by telling them this truth in the hope that they will wake up. Short of that, there are many other ways of helping people, and everyone is engaged in that task only, from the husband/wife helping the wife/husband, the parent helping the child, the teacher helping the schoolkid, the professional solving some problem of someone, such as a doctor helping a patient, a therapist helping the mentally ill, the politician helping the country progress, the sanyasi or Jnani sharing his wisdom, etc. The role any of us plays in this world is already predetermined and we are playing that role according to the script without any choice on our part, whether we are Jnanis or Ajnanis.
Know Thyself 