The following is a response to a marvellous and insightful question I received from someone. I felt it may be of help to many.
Charlie: Would you mind if I contacted you with questions about Vedanta from time to time? If so, I’ll share this question or issue that continues to surface for me accompanied by some doubts. It is not a new issue. In fact, it is one of the oldest; the question of evil. I’ve read James and Sundari’s teachings on it among many other spiritual teachers over the years. I’ve wrestled with it throughout my life as most spiritual types probably do. Most recently, it arose in a conversation with someone very close to me who recently experienced a violent rape. We were discussing karma yoga, Vedanta, and the principle of having gratitude for “all that life has given you.” Another friend recently told me of her struggle with the problem of evil after she inadvertently came across a video of a child being raped on Instagram. As you can imagine, this principle can be a tough pill to swallow for folks who have experienced great human-caused trauma and suffering (and even the natural kind). My friend had a difficult time understanding why or how she should be grateful for her rape experience and others like it. Rory, we both are aware of the great human suffering women, people of color, and other oppressed people experience daily. The fear of violence and hatred they face every day. How do we face such people facing such calamities and say, “Be grateful.” Answer: we don’t as it seems insensitive and insulting to their lived experiences.
I empathized with her difficulty in understanding or accepting this principle of gratitude for the horrors of existence. I struggled with any words to make sense of it all. Discussions about the “big picture” such as Isvara, Maya, the gunas, and the impersonal nature of the universe following dharma ring hollow for people in the midst of their pain. As do appeals to universal principles of love, goodness, and compassion. The existential fact is that pain, suffering, and human-caused evil exist in this reality, in this world. Whatever spiritual meta-narrative we accept, we must reconcile this fact. My understanding is that Vedanta makes no apology for the existence of evil and attributes it to spiritual ignorance, Maya/adviya. The ignorance of our true nature and the nature of reality leads to the mistaken belief that we are separate beings in a world of objects. This belief leads to identification with our bodies and a mistaken understanding of the nature of the universe that results in personal and collective misery, violence, and suffering.
My question really is about how do you respond to this issue when faced with a person’s lived experience of evil and violence? Is it a matter of spiritual maturity and knowledge? That is, if a person lacks a solid grounding in the whole teachings of Vedanta (or perhaps other spiritual systems), does this prevent teachings like karma yoga from making much sense? I felt helpless in my conversation with her. I empathized with her pain and difficulty in accepting this principle of gratitude as a healing salve. I appreciate the problem of evil and how a nondual spiritual reality would result in such violence, horror, and trauma. Why would god treat god this way? Why would nondual awareness allow itself to experience all these invented and illusory horrors of this virtual reality?
Again, I realize this is an age-old question. I am not expecting “the answer” to this question. I am curious about your own musings, reflections, and thoughts on this issue and how to respond to it with others. If you have written something on this or found others’ teachings helpful on this, please feel free to point me in that direction.
Rory: Your question is an excellent one. As you no doubt expect, there are no simple answers, for it’s obviously a difficult and nuanced topic. Vedanta doesn’t have much to say on the subject of evil, at least not directly. Evil is viewed as adharma, which arises from mankind’s misuse of free will, in combination with self-ignorance. The latter blinds us to the fact that when we harm another we’re actually harming ourselves as there is only one Self inhabiting a universe of different forms. This “original sin”, to borrow a Christian term, is the inability to see ourselves as we truly are—pure Awareness—and instead believe ourselves to be a limited, independent body/mind/ego. The belief that we’re separate, limited and lacking creates a fundamental sense of fear and this fear is at the root of pretty much all our desires, attachments and aversions.
This, of course, manifests in many different ways according to each individual’s karma and psychological makeup. This is where we see the gunas at work; some of us are lucky to have enough sattva to be able to see things with enough clarity and self-awareness that we can acknowledge and deal with our issues and, therefore, progress psychologically and spiritually, whereas the influence of rajas and tamas have an obscuring, deadening effect on the mind. Rajas generally leaves people hooked on the external world, forever chasing desires and fuelling addictions, whereas tamas is a blinder, distorting our thinking and leaving us prone to adharmic action. The combination of rajas and tamas in some individuals is a deadly one; for we get people who have a deeply distorted psyche and also the energy and impetus to create a lot of harm to others in the world. In the Gita commentary, I spoke a little about such people, whom the Vedic tradition calls “asuras” and “rakshashas”—meaning people with “demonic” natures; in modern terminology we’d likely call them sociopaths and psychopaths. These are the people out in the world exploiting, manipulating and harming others, all for their own gain. Unfortunately, duality being what it is and human nature being what it is, such people have likely and will likely always exist, although they are mercifully but a small minority (although unfortunately they do tend to get ahead in business and in politics).
It’s a difficult one to reconcile: how God can stoop so low; how divine beings can perpetrate such evil? It’s something I’ve struggled with because I’ve always been particularly sensitive to the horrible suffering human beings inflict on their fellow man and to animals and the planet. I’ve seen and heard things that will forever haunt me. Alas, as we know, this world is a duality, and there’s no up without down, no hot without cold, no day without night, or saint without sinner. Vedanta doesn’t go into much depth with regard to the condition of the material world or the beings in it, because it’s primarily focused on our identity as the Self. Part of the reason for this is that Vedanta is traditionally intended for sannyasis, for people who have already renounced the world and have a certain distance from it. That said, Vedanta does offer another entry clause specifically designed for householders, and that is the stipulation that we first become proficient at managing our material lives as karma yogis.
The Bhagavad Gita is the “worldliest” of the primary scriptures, and is basically a bible for those seekers with worldly ties, as it spends significant time examining how to deal with this battlefield of life. Krishna acknowledges the dualities of life, and says they are fleeting and must be “endured” as best we can. Easier said than done, certainly! The key to making Vedanta work is cultivating what we call samatvam, or evenness of mind; the ability to weather the extremes of life with as much equanimity as possible. As long as we’re in the world, we can’t escape life’s pains and sorrows; and some people, alas, have a more intense karmic stream than others. The important thing is developing what psychologists call psychological flexibility; or the ability to bend without breaking and to healthily process and assimilate our painful life experiences without getting stuck in them, as can so easily happen.
You’re absolutely correct that, for someone suffering terrible trauma, Vedanta will be of little use. The mind has to be appropriately receptive, otherwise the teaching simply doesn’t work, and may even be counterproductive. Vedanta is a means of knowledge; a tool for reorienting our sense of identity from the limited ego to the limitless Awareness in which it appears. A tool is only fit for its purpose, so I don’t know if Vedanta is appropriate for someone whose mind is wracked with suffering. In my experience, Vedanta frees the mind by allowing us to see the patterns of the mind and psyche objectively and then divesting them of self-identification. It generates a great and liberating sense of dispassion with regard to the body, mind and senses. But I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a tool for healing trauma and psychological disturbance.
From what I understand, we store trauma at a somatic level, and the only way to really deal with a problem is to tackle it at the level of the problem. So, if someone is dealing with intense psychological issues, the best way is to work with a skilled psychologist. The only way out is through, and I have known some people who have taken to Vedanta as a way of spiritual bypassing; of avoiding dealing with their pain. This never works in the long run. In a sense, Vedanta perhaps IS a type of spiritual bypassing—or, as I prefer to think of it, spiritual re-contextualising. It enables us to see that, regardless of what’s going on with the body and mind, we’re actually free and untouched by it all. The problem, however, is that a disturbed mind is an unqualified mind, and Vedanta will never be much more than intellectual theory until the knowledge is fully assimilated…so, like it or not, we eventually have to go back and take care of whatever wounds or traumas we were seeking escape from. It’s like sitting on a nail and trying to convince yourself the pain doesn’t matter because the nail isn’t ultimately real. It’s not appropriate to apply Vedanta in a situation such as that—what you really need to do is get up off the nail!
This isn’t to say that elements of Vedanta won’t be of help to people suffering from grief and trauma. The preparatory stages ought to be of tremendous help; particularly having a clear understanding of dharma, which includes svadharma (being true to who we are) and learning to understand and manage the gunas in order to minimise the influence of tamas and rajas and cultivate greater sattva.
Karma yoga and Bhakti, or upasana yoga, are also invaluable. Some people find these challenging because they have issues with the concept of God, and they may not be at the stage where they’re able to accept what life has brought as a “gift” from God. For those people I sometimes suggest Stoicism, which is, in many respects, karma yoga in a more secular packaging. Ultimately, I don’t think we can heal until we at least accept what life has brought, even if we’re not at a stage where we can see it as a blessing. With time, it ought to be possible to see even the bad things in life as having a purpose, because it’s often from the worst experiences that we grow the most as people, that we can develop compassion and empathy, learn to become more powerful and resilient psychologically, and find the strength to be an agent of dharma in the world.
Certainly, one of the most powerful books I ever read was “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who who lost his family, freedom and very nearly his life when he was sent to Auschwitz. This remarkable man survived by realising that even in the most horrific circumstances imaginable we can still find meaning and purpose, and that gives us a reason to survive and thrive. If there is a positive side to pain and trauma, it’s that it can force us to become stronger, better people, to contribute more meaningfully to the world, and, above all, to instil in us the desire for freedom that will eventually lead us to moksha and freedom from the world. Without the grit in the oyster, we’d never be blessed with the beauty of pearl.
It is still possible to use Self-knowledge to help people who are in the midst of suffering. You might be able to help them glimpse the part of them that is always untouched by sorrow and pain; the part of them that is always there, shining as the very light that illuminates their experiences. It might help to get them to imagine they are a little child again, and to be aware of the awareness that was “looking” out of their eyes; then bring them back to the present and get them to be aware of that very same awareness in which they currently experience their body, thoughts and all the objects within and around them. Draw their attention to the fact that this unchanging awareness is exactly the same as it has always been, regardless of their age and circumstances. Though their body and mind may have suffered a great many things, that awareness is always untouched by even the worst that can happen in life. Nothing sticks to it, and nothing can change or taint it in any way. This simple glimpse of who they really are may be very helpful if they’re open to it. Again, it’s almost impossible for someone who’s suffering greatly to fully assimilate the Self-Knowledge taught by Vedanta, but it could well sow seeds and help them on their journey to dealing with their pain and trauma. In the fullness of time, they may become ready to take to karma yoga, upasana yoga and the three stages of Vedanta.
Your final question: “Why would nondual awareness allow itself to experience all these invented and illusory horrors of this virtual reality?”
In actual fact, awareness doesn’t experience these things, or anything. They are experienced by the mind/body/sense-complex, which we call the “experiencing entity”. Awareness is free of experience. It’s the light by which experience is known, while itself beyond all experience. Awareness was never actually “in” duality. It only seems to be when it’s “shining” upon and illuminating the body/mind/ego apparatus. But, no, there’s never any question of experience for awareness, because it is non-dual. The play of maya is rather akin to a dream; and, yes, at times, a nightmare. Yet no matter how bad the dream, it can never affect awareness in any way. Hence, we can say that, for the Self, “nothing ever happened”. That is true from the perspective of awareness, although not true from the perspective of the jiva. It wouldn’t be appropriate to share such knowledge with someone who isn’t ready for it, which is why Vedanta was traditionally only taught to highly qualified students, so the teaching couldn’t be misunderstood or misused, as some people sadly do.
Again, it’s quite a nuanced discussion. I hope this makes some sense and is of help. If anything isn’t clear or it brings up further questions, just ask and I will be happy to do my best to clarify.
Rory
