Rahul N Singh host of The Bearded Mystic Podcast explores the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta or Nonduality in a very simple, direct and practical way.
Episodes include discussions into eastern scriptures like The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads etc and discussions about everyday spirituality.
Rahul has been on the spiritual path for over 20 years and has an open-minded approach to spirituality and finds that there is no one size fits all approach.
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We explore the significant misconceptions surrounding modern non-duality teachings and how they can lead to spiritual bypassing. Understanding the need for purification of the mind before claiming self-realization is pivotal to avoid frustration and the suppression of true emotional issues.
• Examining the false sense of realization and its dangers • Understanding the causal body and its role in latent tendencies • The necessity of purifying the mind before true non-dual realization
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Bearded Mystic podcast. I'm your host, rahul N Singh. Thank you for joining, and I'm going to tell you today what modern non-duality teachers do not tell you and why it may be the reason why we see a lot of people end up frustrated from going around the loop, and why they may also not get to a full realization like they think they are Now. The first big danger is that these people believe that they have attained something. Now, mind you, they've had the direct pointing towards formless awareness or towards non-dual reality. They can see it quite clearly and that is accessible to everybody. Now, the things that they bypass is obviously intellectual understanding and the foundation work that's required. You know, the purification of the mind. Purification of the mind, and while I've been creating my course, one aspect is looking at the causal body, which is the garden sharia, and that is the kind of the, the body that we have, this, the subtlest body that we have, that we only experience in deep sleep. Now, this causal body is the cause for our latent tendencies and which are known as our vasanas. And this is the one thing these modern non-duality teachers do not tell you, because they don't address it, because for them it doesn't exist. They think it's an illusion. And because of that, what happens is somebody has a non-dual realization. Wow, you know, it's amazing, you know they can, they can energetically feel it. And then what happens? Oh, my anger is coming back, oh, my depression is coming back, oh, my anxiety is coming back, and they don't know what to do with it. But they've also declared that they self-realized and they're enlightened. So where do you go? What do you do? What can you say? Can you let other people know? Because now you're on YouTube and you're telling everybody that you've had this amazing experience. And then suddenly you find out that that person's not dealt with their mental health issues that they had while they were seeking something in these modern non-duality teachers. They had while they were seeking something in these modern non-duality teachers. And then what you find is that these teachers end up like creating this narrative that they're the second coming of Christ, or they're the messiah, or they're. They are god and they should be listened to, and they bully everyone else and they, they have such a massive ego they can't even see past it and they don't see their own ego because that suppression is still continuing, because they still feel like they've attained something that other people haven't.
Speaker 1:
So the causal body is the most important thing to know about, to be aware of Now. When we deal with our tendencies now, for example, if I have a tendency to be angry now, what I need to do is to keep looking and keep inquiring into what is triggering that anger, and also, are those triggers essentially being triggered for something that is real, you know? So are those triggers actually something that is long lasting or everlasting, shall I say? If not, then I can look into the cause and I can actually then deal with it. Now the question is well, how can we deal with the causal body? Because when we're in deep sleep, there's a blankness of ignorance there. We don't, unless you're realized, you don't know that you're in deep sleep and you cannot technically recall the state of deep sleep unless you're enlightened or self-realized. Now, once you know this, it becomes very clear. You can experience that blankness and you can see where all those tendencies, those vasanas, are latent, they're hiding, they're unmanifest right now. So that unmanifest aspect of anger is still there.
Speaker 1:
Now the question is is after self-realization, do they disappear? No, this is the biggest error that people make on the journey. They think it disappears, they think their mind has been purified. No, no, no, the mind hasn't been purified. You have to chitta shuddhi that the action of actually purifying the mind has to happen beforehand and it's a prerequisite into non-dual realization, unless you're a modern non-dual teacher. But in Advaita Vedanta it's necessary. So you have to purify the mind, okay.
Speaker 1:
So what's triggering this anger? Why am I getting getting angry? What are those things that make me angry and how can I stop this anger? And you know, that's the whole process when one goes into the inquiry into the causes and then one observes when those causes arise. Now that may mean that we fall and we stumble and we get back into anger or whatever the vasana may be, and we keep falling back into that vasana. But the whole point is to stop that habit from perpetuating itself. So it's putting a stop.
Speaker 1:
So the more we observe where the trigger happens and observe and then pause, the more we do the pause we end up dealing with the causal body. Therefore the breaking of the vasana starts occurring and what we do is swap that vasana for something more positive. So, for example, instead of getting angry, we focus on calmness. So we observe, we see the tendencies, we see the triggers for anger, we pause, we observe. So we observe first, then we pause, we don't react, and then we say we go into calmness. Now what we do is we let go of the anger, we surrender the anger and we can surrender it to God, if you want. You can surrender it to Ishvara, you can surrender it to your Ishvara, you can surrender it to Brahman, nirguna, brahman, whatever it is. You surrender it and you adopt a more positive vasana, the spiritual vasana. There's always a spiritual vasana which is calmness, peace, bliss.
Speaker 1:
So the fundamental thing that I want to say here, and the reason why I'm doing this video, is because we shouldn't bypass this causal body. If you bypass it, we are not going to actually get to a full realization. We can get to a partial realization, where we kind of can see the direct truth. That's okay. But don't think that self-realization. Don't fall under that trap, because if you fall under that trap, then we're going to end up dealing with suffering later, and I have found that this is becoming very common these days, like either someone gets a more grandiose ego or somebody has a mental health breakdown and you find them going into um, obviously they have to go to a psychiatrist, they have to have psychotherapy because they haven't dealt with the mind before.
Speaker 1:
You know, if you're getting told in these circles, these non-dual circles, that there's nobody here, there's nobody getting it, there's nobody getting it, there's nobody depressed, what happens is there's only suppression going on, there's no dealing with the actual issues, and so the mind is still going to be there, the mind is still going to wreak havoc. You may suppress it for a bit, you may push, you know, hold it down, but you're only building it stronger and stronger and stronger. So the whole point of Advaita Vedanta is before. It shows you the non-dual realization, the non-dual truth. It says you know what? Pause for a second, let's deal with this mind, although we know it's unreal. But you know what?
Speaker 1:
For you to be established in this formless awareness, in this brahman, we need to deal with this, and that's why there's no spiritual bypassing that goes on in in advaita vidanta, in traditional non-duality, and that's what my course talks about. There's no, you like, the whole point of my course is that nobody should, technically, if they do the course properly, nobody, nobody at all, should be spiritually bypassing at all, because the traditional teachings do not allow you to, if you're working on purifying your mind, if you're doing the exercises, if you're doing the meditation. You see, meditation is interesting. When we go into that thoughtless state, when we're meditating, we can actually be focusing on the causal body, that blankness, yeah, that kind of very subtle veil of blankness, and the whole point is that we are to bypass, not bypass. We're meant to transcend that and go into the non-dual state. So a lot of people, I feel, go into the garden sharia, they go into the causal body and they think that is realization. That's my assumption, because that's also blankness, it's void, but it's of ignorance, it's of avidya, so that is not formless awareness. So we can fool ourselves into thinking we've got into this kind of realization, but really we've just got to the causal body. And that's why those vasanas keep coming up, that's why they end up manifesting, whether it's sooner or later. Why they? They end up manifesting, whether it's sooner or later, but they end up manifesting. And so the whole point of non-dual realization is to get to formless awareness. So we deal with whatever is those latent tendencies there, we are dealing with them and therefore, once we defeat those latent tendencies, once we deal with actual ignorance yeah, avidya once we actually deal with that, then we can go into the non-dual realization. And let me take it a step further. Even the superimposition, adhyasa, even that we cannot allow the blankness of the causal body to superimpose itself onto the body.
Speaker 1:
Non-dual realization, undeformalist awareness, like you know, you can see, although it's a rope, this non-dual realization, and then you have the snake, which is the blankness of the causal body. We cannot superimpose and think that, oh, you know, we see it as a snake and we're like, oh, it's a snake, and then we mistake that rope for a snake. Do not mistake the non-dual realization, for do not mistake the causal body, blankness, voidness or emptiness for the actual non-dual realization. It's really important that we understand this very deep thing that I've just spoken about. But I promise you this is just because I was writing out my course kind of script and it just occurred to me that this is what is missing and this is something we have to address.
Speaker 1:
So anyway, I'm gonna, um, leave it there. Tell me what your thoughts are on this. Like, do you feel like this may have happened to you, that you're meditating, but you're meditating on the actual blankness of the causal body and not necessarily actually? You know that's why people fall asleep during meditation. Yeah, this is what I mean. So if you now you may be able to recognize what I mean when you feel that tiredness, that's because you're looking at the causal body. The actual realization is beyond the causal body, transcends the causal body. So, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:
If you don't it, let's let's inquire into this, let's let's discuss it, and you can set up a discussion with me. I do them for free. Um, obviously there's, you know, options where you can pay for a session, but you know I'm happy with the free ones. And just remember that. You know the course that I'm doing is going to help you on these matters. We're going to go step by step and we're going to make sure we understand what we're doing. And the whole point of when we have the weekly session meetings with the course.
Speaker 1:
It's your chance to kind of go deeper into your practice. That's the whole point of me creating it, because I really feel that there's so much depth to advaita vidanta and the non-dual realization that it gives that is not really spoken of. And you know, the whole point is for for us to be abiding and resting in this formless awareness for as long as we can. So, yes, so I'll end it there. Thank you very much. Join my Discord server if you want to continue the podcast discussion on there. If you don't want to do it on YouTube, I get it. Rate and view the podcast, like, comment and subscribe. Share this with anyone that you feel is going to benefit and I'll see you next time. Take care, namaste.
