February 2022 - The First of Many
What does the 'First of Many' mean in Non-Duality; Will my podcast stay on spotify; Poetry; Quotes; Spiritual Text - verse of the month; Upcoming events; podcast episodes of January 2022
Welcome to the First The Bearded Mystic Newsletter!
Hello and Namaste to all of you! I hope that you have all been keeping well and safe during this time.
The First of Many
It seems obvious that this newsletter will be the first of many that will follow. Yet, there is a double meaning for me here. I wanted to emphasize that once you know the first principle there is, then you can understand where the many are from.
The First is your very Self. Those that listen to the podcast or watch it know very well that when I talk about the Self, I am not referring to you the body that has a mind that is reading this post. I am not talking about you that has thoughts appear within the mind. I am talking about the awareness that is aware of all the sensations from the senses of the body, that is aware of all the thoughts, emotions, images appearing in the mind. You are that Awareness, which is Formless and Free also known as Brahman (Pure Consciousness). This is the First ‘I’ before it associates with the body and mind. The many are the products of the body and mind as mentioned above.
The many is the appearance of duality and it is necessary for the functioning of life for duality to appear. We need the appearance to be diverse and show it’s many colors and variety. However, the First - that Awareness does not have a form, then how can duality be present here? This Awareness does not have any image - the mind only projects images to it. The way to understand this is the example of the screen and the projector. This projector shows the images yet the images never become permanent on the screen. Likewise, our body and mind are images and not permanent in Awareness. Like the screen, Awareness remains.
This is the essential knowledge of Non-Duality. I often repeat this and yet, I feel it is not understand enough. To function efficiently and effectively in the world, you may have the many, this apparent duality, which we may call maya - which is the relative reality at the forefront. You are at work, you are at school or at home with family, maybe with friends at a bar, this all is real for you and therefore, this relative reality will be at the forefront. Then in the background, you can have Brahman, this Ultimate Reality, Pure Consciousness. This is the best way to understand non-duality and how to live with that.
Will my Podcast stay on Spotify?
It has been tough these last 2 years as we still go through this Covid-19 pandemic and what has been tougher has been the misinformation that has surrounded Covid-19 from its origins to anti-vax rhetoric, which has led to increasing amount of vaccine hesitancy in the population.
Back in August 2021, I did an episode about Covid-19 and Common Sense Spirituality and my views are very clear that I am pro-vaccine, I follow the science and I am against anyone that pushes misinformation as this costs not only hospital resources, but causes deaths of loved ones.
Spotify recently published their internal guidelines on Covid-19 misinformation and to be honest, it effectively means zero. They claim to have removed episodes but the one podcaster who’s content has had quite a lot of Covid-19 misinformation has had nothing done to any of those episodes. Yes, the mighty Joe Rogan, who I once was a fan of.
Now, for me Spotify is a platform that has a significant amount of listeners of my podcast so this is very nuanced. I understand it may have a contract with Rogan and therefore, it can be tough to then control the content if there is such clause that he is free to say and upload anything. Do I think that Spotify should de-platform Rogan? No, not at all. I think he should remain exclusive but something must be done about those harmful episodes. They should be deleted and Rogan needs to get out of the echo-chamber.
Now, in regards to my own podcast, it will remain on Spotify and I don’t intend to take it down but I will be advocating that Spotify must respond to every podcast episode fairly. It should be known that I feel their guidelines do next to nothing and much more needs to be done to tackling misinformation.
This is not about silencing free speech when I talk about taking down those problematic episodes. We are free to speak the truth and back it up with science and evidence but we are not allowed to share information that may cause harm to someone or even result in someone’s death because they took our advice without understanding the risks.
The Bearded Mystic Poetry
Silence, It takes us within it's grasp for a few moments, We wonder where it will take us, Only to find out that where we have started, Is where we have strangely ended up. Searching for a spiritual answer, Looking for words that can cater to our needs, yet, silence reappears in our life, Taking us again by surprise, Only to lead us into contemplation. From where does this silence reside? How does it arise? How does it separate itself from thought? How does emotion never stick to it? Why does silence hold itself together Without the support of any kind - no doctrine, no theory, no knowledge, It's is when I am aware of the silence That I go even deeper into it, Remaining in it for longer and longer, Staying here is becoming an eternal affair, maybe this is my permanent abode. Silence.
Quotes of what I was reading last month
Here are a few quotes of what I have been reading. At this moment, I am reading a book that is addressing the hard problem of consciousness and the challenges that is faced in them. Understanding consciousness is pretty difficult when we use the western mindset. However, if we use knowledge from the East, it may be better explained.
“Luminous” means having the power to reveal, like a light. Without the sun, our world would be veiled in darkness, but without consciousness, nothing could appear. Consciousness is fundamentally that which reveals or makes manifest because it is the crucial precondition for appearance. Nothing, strictly speaking, appears unless it appears to some consciousness. Without consciousness, the world can’t appear to perception, the past can’t appear to memory, and the future can’t appear to hope or anticipation. The point extends to science: without consciousness, there’s no appearance of the microscopic world through electron microscopes, no appearance of distant stars through telescopes, and no appearance of the brain through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. Simply put, without consciousness there’s no observation, and without observation there are no data.
Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being (p. 14). Columbia University Press.
The classical scientific ideal of a completely neutral perspective untainted by the observer—already shaken to its core by twentieth-century physics—confronts another kind of profound limit in the impossibility of understanding the mind without including the first-person exploration of how we experience our own consciousness.
Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being . Columbia University Press.
Spiritual Text - Verse of the Month with commentary
The common name that the mind gives to itself is ‘I’. Hence, we say, ‘I am reading’, ‘I am thinking’, ‘I am seeing’, and so on. For this reason, the question ‘What is the nature of mind?’ could be reformulated as, ‘Who or what am I?’ The answer to this question is the most profound knowledge that the mind can attain. It is the supreme intelligence.
Spira, Rupert. The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter (p. 8). New Harbinger Publications.
This links with the theme that we have been discussing this month. We need to understand what this ‘I’ is and Rupert Spira, a non-dual Teacher explains this very well. Once we can understand who we really are, then we come into contact with the Supreme Intelligence, which is every present or shall we say, self-luminous.
To truly understand the mind, and we think we are made of the mind, is to really ask who am I? What am I? What is it that refers to ‘me’ as ‘me’. It is through this knowledge that we can awaken ourselves to our inherent nature and through this inquiry, we become aware of our own awareness that has been with us since we were born and most likely, even prior to this life.
For any spiritual aspirant, it is important that we understand this most profound knowledge as the highest goal of life.
Listen To The Podcast - January 2022
Watch The Podcast - January 2022
Watch The Bearded Mystic Reacts - January 2022
Let me know what other videos you would like me to react to in the comments!
Watch The Bearded Mystic Livestream - January 2022
Thank you for reading the first newsletter.
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Aum Shantih Shantih Shantih. Aum Peace Peace Peace
Lots of love
Rahul