Self-realization and the I

Question: All this talk about bliss and love is fine, but what has it got to do with me, the evolving I?

Jan: The I is a fiction; it is not you, though you at present think it is you.

Q: You mean the ego? The I is the Self that evolves to enlightenment.

J: No, I mean the I. Understand that the I and the ego are inseperable. The ego is the complex of past and present identities. The I is the identity produced by the identification-mechanism. The ego is not an illusion, the I is. The ego is a product of your karma, your body and your experiences in life; nothing more, nothing less. Your current name is Ganesh, that is what your current I is focused on and what you identify with. Your past I was Peter and that was an identity structure based on past impressions and karma that you wanted to dissociate yourself from, so you changed your name to Ganesh. Changing your name will, however, not make the I go away; it only changes the structures in the ego you pick to identify with and therefore it will more or less change the way the I feels about itself. But do not fool yourself and think that because the I changes then you have evolved a step towards enlightenment. It is all just an ego game and all is equally ignorant.

Q: I don't agree. Changing my name has helped me support the evolving consciousness in me and made it easier to integrate Self in my sense of who I am and in my everyday life.

J: Your perspective is wrong. Nothing evolves with respect to getting enlightened. What you call evolution, I call changes in the I based on shifting identification. Your karma brought you to a point in your evolution, where you were sick of your I, and instead of getting enlightened, you decided to replace the old I with a new I. Now to make matters worse, you anchor this misunderstanding in your spirituality by calling the change a step in your progress towards enlightenment. Thus you project a number of steps into the future, that you have to take in order to get enlightened. The problem is, you can go on projecting such steps infinitely and will never get enlightened. You can project such steps infinitely because that is exactly what you have already been doing for countless lifetimes. You are just repeating a good old pattern in the guise of spirituality. I sincerely recommend you give it all up right now.

Q: I know I am not my name, that is commonplace. The point is I evolve towards enlightenment and use as many means as I can to get there and stabilize that evolution.

J: I never meant to imply you think you are your name. I know you somewhat do not. I say somewhat, beacuse though you do not identify with the name as such, you identify with the fiction the name refers to. As for the matter of evolution, I am telling you, you do not evolve towards Self-realization and the Self does not grow to a point, where it realizes itself. You are already the Self right now, the problem is, you don't know it. The Self is and has always been perfect.

Q: Yes, but I at the same time understand enlightenment more and more. That is evolution. I am certainly closer to enlightenment, more Selfrealized, today than I was 30 years ago.

J: No, you are not. Either you are Selfrealized or you are not Selfrealized, there is no in-between. After Self-realization enlightenment comes in degrees through Godconsciousness and growing love-bliss and then in a final shift to moksha, which is full enlightenment. But you are not more or less Selfrealized. Thinking so is an ego game, because you take pride in considering yourself "more enlightened". More enlightened than who? Usually "Others", because you consider "others" to be like you were 30 years ago when you assumed you were just like everybody else. Now you say you are better than you were thirty years ago which in a subte way says better than others.

Q: Selfimprovement is a prerequisite for enlightenment.

J: Not really. You are not Ganesh. I am not Jan, I don't care much about him anymore, to be honest. Jan is just a shell I live with and I agree that Jan is not a particularly ideal personality. The personality is a body you incarnate in, just like the physical body. Most identify with the physical body, more identify with the personality. So called spiritual people identify with the changing I. The reason you think that an enlightened person must have a nice personality is because you yourself identify with your personality. You think you are "I, Ganesh" and that to become enlightened you must change somehow. That is a fundamentally wrong understanding of enlightenment and it will prevent you from reaching it.

Q: I don't agree with you at all, because the enlightened persons I have met have all had an incredible charm and loving kindness about them. You can't have enlightenment and a problematic personality at the same time. It is a contradiction of terms.

J: Yes, their personality reflects their enlightenment. But where you go wrong is, you think the personality has to change in order to get Selfrealized. You can certainly get Selfrealized while still being a not very nice person; I could, so you can too and so can everybody else. What you observe is that in full enlightenment the personality will change. That is true, but that comes after Self-realization.

Q: I think it should come on the way to Self-realization because an imperfect self can not uphold the pure experience of the Self.

J: No, it's not how it works. I know, because I made it, you are just speculating. Where you go wrong is, you think there is something to uphold. There is not. You are deperately trying to hold on to enlightenment, that is one reason why you are missing it all the time. Furthermore what you hold on to is a fiction about what is essentially fictionless. You are holding on to an illusory idea about what enlightenment is, and you use your bliss experiences during bhajans to confirm that illusion because it makes your ego feel good. Then afterwards you project your fictional norms about what enlightenment is onto others and denigrade their state if it does not fit those norms. Those norms are essentially constructed by your ego to feed itself into the pleasent illusion of progressing towards Self-realization. It's a trap, don't you see?

Q: I am not holding on to a fiction. I experince true bliss at times, just as you experience bliss. It is experiences of the Self and they are clearly steps towards becomming more and more Selfrealized.

J: What you experience is not the bliss of the Self, it is the bliss of singing bhajans. It is not the same bliss that I am talking about. True, it is a very subtle bliss in the I and personality, that can create a gap through which you may eventually fall into the Self and its bliss for a moment. But by and large your bliss is a state comparable to a state of trance. It is not the stateless. Do you not agree it is a state?

Q: Well, yes, I must admit that. But what I am trying to say is that that state grows more and more in me and that that not only helps realizing the Self, but is a prerequisite for Self-realization.

J: There are no prerequisites for Self-realization if you are a decent person. The more indecent and selfish and greedy you become, the harder it gets. Mild arrogance is not a major problem, just as mild spiritual pride is not a major problem. But identification of subconscious spiritual pride and the enlightenment project is a major trap, though not an actual hindrance, just a major distraction that is hard to overcome. Remember, the Self IS, that's it and that's all. It is here right now. Where could it have gone in order that it should become? If the Self was to hide, it could only hide in the Self, there is nowhere else for it to go. It is present, it is finished, it has nothing to evolve and nothing to get rid of. Stop fooling yourself!

Q: What do you mean decent?

J: Free of the cardinal sins. You know, decent. You have spiritual greed and that hampers your realization. You want to be a disciple of the enlightened ones, because that feeds your ego. You don't want to be a gnani, because that would destroy the I, that is so proud of itself and its achievments. Please understand: your personality, your ego, will still be there after Self-realization, but the I-ness will be gone for ever. It suddenly just vapourizes. It is not something that gradually comes about. Either there is I-ness or there is not. In fact you can no longer use the spiritual cliché "I AM", because there is no longer an "I" that is. You just ARE. It is so simple, but you are making it so, so complicated.

Q: I think performing good acts like singing bhajans will generate good karma that furthers enlightenment.

J: Self-realization is not a product of karma. So no karma of any kind will help at all. You have to get out of all karmic games.

Q: Are you saying good karma is useless?

J: Well, good karma helps become a decent person, so it does help, but once you have become pure, then Self-realization is close at hand. On the other hand, becoming fixated on doing good karma will become an ego game and a trap just like any other kind of karma. Moderation is best. After Self-realization it's a slightly different matter, but that's no problem of yours yet.

Q: What's the difference? If doing good karma after Self-realization helps get fully enlightened, then can't one take some of those steps even before getting Selfrealized?

J: As far as I understand it, you really can't take steps in advance. Well, not as far as i understand things. I'll explain why I believe it is so... Now, the difference is, that before Self-realization the problem is not the ego, but the identification-mechanism; after Self-realization, the problem is the ego. People usually get this all mixed up and think the ego is the problem before Self-realization -- and in order to get rid of it, they trouble themselves with all sorts of so called spiritual practices and diets, and what not. After Self-realization you have to get rid of the ego and once you have gotten rid of that, you get fully enlightened (and with this I mean moksha). So in a sense you are right that fully enlightened persons are nice chaps, because, yes, they do not have an ego like a fully Selfrealized person does, though the Selfrealized person is free of any identification with it, or with anything else for that matter.

Q: So what's wrong with getting rid of some ego before Self-realization? Will it not shorten the steps to full enlightenment?

J: The point here is, that if you don't get rid of the identification-mechanism, nothing in the world will help you get rid of the ego; you will merely change it. Even your spiritual practices will build up ego. Concentrate on getting Selfrealized, then in fact the rest will come entirely by itself.

Q: How do you mean, by itself? Don't you have to do any sadhana after Self-realization?

J: After Self-realization ego begins to break down by itself. It begins to desintegrate. Living with ego becomes very painful after Self-realization. It is a pain you can not even imagine and it has nothing to do with the self loathing, you might know before Self-realization, for that is also merely an ego-thing. No matter what you do after Self-realization, it will contribute to the disintegration of ego. True, you can speed up the process or slow it down, and that may cause you to do spiritual practices of some sort.

Q: Painful? I thought Self-realization was a happy and peacefull state.

J: At times the pain of the disintegration of the ego is immense; if it was not because you simultaneously developed love-bliss it would be unbearable. Self-realization is not an easy state. In fact, since we were talking about bad character traits, you might actually see bad traits emerge in a Selfrealized person because as layers of the ego vanish, suddenly hidden things may emerge for a while and surprise both yourself and others. But it is passing.

Q: Could you mention some sadhana, that might be beneficial to do after full Self-realization?

J: You will know when Self-realization happens to you. First and foremost you just want to bathe in love-bliss. Life becomes sadhana. If your kundalini is not awakened before the primary Self-realization, then awakening kundalini and raising it fully becomes essential for you to move on. You could do the same stuff that people do before Self-realization, but after Self-realization it will have a totally different meaning to you and a totally different effect on your spiritual progress. This means that doing sadhana in a group of non-Selfrealized people becomes difficult, because they will think you at odds with things if you speak out what is on your mind and in your heart. Self-realization has its own challenges and problems, but don't worry about that now.

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