Docta Ignorantia LXIII

Death, Regret and Destiny

By David R. Graham

Here is "a little something" on the questions you offer. These are centrally important questions and I am grateful for your asking them.

The first thing is to recognize the facts, the essentials, the constants, the fundamentals, the intrinsic phenomena. These are distinguished from the variables, the ephemera, the partialities, the extrinsic phenomena.

This is not to disparage the importance of the variables. It is only to establish from the first the importance of the constants so that in distinguishing these from the variables we may have clear understanding of reality, seeing everything for what it really is, taking ultimates and impartialities for ultimates and impartialities and pen-ultimates and partialities for pen-ultimates and impartialities.

In life we have the base and the based. We always want to be clear about when we are dealing with which. Both are important, but we deal with them differently because the base is permanent and the based is passing. To be realistic therefore we require constant exercise of discrimination or what in Sanskrit is called Viveka, a capacity of the intellect.

The Vedic metaphor for discrimination is that of the Hamsa or Swan which is able to imbibe only the milk from a mixture of milk and water. This world is a mixture. Always will be. Sages are often given the honorific title, Paramahamsa. Para = Intensely Present. Hamsa = Swan. Thus Paramahamsa = Brilliantly Discriminating Intellect.

My definition of an educated or cultured person arises in this metaphor of the Paramahamsa: an educated person is one who can distinguish between the passing and the permanent, the based and the base. I am sure there are correlates to this in the rubrics of comptuer programming. There are correlates in any activity that is constructive, that contemplates the welfare of all.

Now, the essentials or fundamenta of death, regret and destiny:

First, there are two deaths: death of the ego and death of the body. The former is unusual, a fundamenta, and therefore of soteriological importance (having to do with salvation, freedom). The latter is ordinary, a variable, and therefore not in itself too important. When death is terrifying to people, it is death of the ego that they are actually looking at that scares them. As St. Francis says, if this death is undergone, the second death, death of the body, is no big thing, presenting no terror at all.

So, essentially, the only death that is important, that really concerns us, is the death of the ego. In Christian metaphor, this is death on the cross. That metaphor is not about death of the body, not at all. Jesus was bound and beaten. He had no choice in the matter. The metaphor of the cross is about ego death -- that he allowed himself to be in that position. This insight is often missed but is the essence of Christianity, as Paul has said clearly. In fact, Jesus did not die physically on the cross -- another story. The death he underwent there was the real and serious one, death of the ego. That death was voluntary and therefore exemplary. There is nothing examplary about being bound over to a physical death. Any soldier can tell us that. What is exemplary is voluntary self-sacrifice (ego death). And any soldier can tell us that.

All of the great religions have compelling metaphors for death of the ego, the essential religious experience. It is what they all encourage and help to undergo.

Second essential about death -- death of ego -- is that it does not happen. This is a rough way of indicating the presence of the phenomenon of delusion or in the Sanskrit, Maya. There are sophisticated -- important -- ways of talking about this phenomenon but I will not get into them here. I will try to deal in the rough way with it because that is sufficient to our purpose here.

Death -- death of ego -- does not happen. Ego shrieks that it does, but in truth it does not. Ego is the source of maya. Ego is the definition of maya or delusion. There are many other things ego does besides terrorize us, needlessly and unrealistically, about the phenomenon of death, but our focus is its report to us on death.

Fear, ultimately, is goundless, because, to use a customary metaphor, a drop of the ocean is not reasonably disposed to abhor merging in its base, the ocean. Yet ego insists, from young age to old, that this reality must be abhored because ego's certainty -- better yet, its job! -- is to convince us that we are unique and special and individual and should be perpetually so.

The body gets old and dies but the ego is always young and vigorous. This perpetual youthfulness of the ego is what causes our "problems."

Whatever ego says is all a lie, a delusion deliberately fed to trick us. Furthermore, it is a delusion we cannot overcome with any faculty with which are are endowed. The greatest sage cannot overcome the power of delusion -- and can be undone by ego in an instant without even knowing that it happened. All of them. Delusion -- maya -- is power itself. Actually, herself. Delusion is the inseparable other, the feminine aspect in whom God enwarps himself in order to enact the cosmic duet. The truth is the ground, neither he nor her, the ineffable non-duality (adwaitha = not two) that is the base of all activity, including this cosmic duet we enact as God, "Her" enveloping "He," in fulfillment of the will of "He."

Why should delusion be fed us to trick us? The proximate answer is, how else is God going to spend his time? The more ultimate answer is, who is to know? And the more final answer is, that is you. This answer is whispered in the ear of one prepared by long years of spiritual exercise actually to hear it (i.e., with soteriological puissance or effectiveness).

On to regret and its fundamenta or essentials.

The most important essential here is that each of us has been given birth in order that we may have two or possibly three specific experiences. This is a little known fact. First, it indicates that we are here for a specific purpose, and second it indicates that that purpose comprises a very small set of very specific experiences. It is well to understand this fact.

Regret is related to the thought that we will not have these experiences we are here to have. This implies that we are aware that we are here for specific limited experiences. Indeed we are, though not usually consciously. It also implies that we do not trust that we will have them. Indeed, many of us do not trust that we will have them.

One of the jobs of religious leaders is to assure people that they will have or have had the experiences they came to have. In other words, to comfort people. Another job of religious leaders is to stir up people when they are lazy, to induce them to accomplish with this birth MORE than was allotted for it, which in fact is possible to do. But it is also the job of religious leaders to assure people that what they came for they will have. They might not like what they will get -- another story -- but they will get what they are here for.

Now, what we came for is always in our best interests to have, but it is not always going to be pleasant to undergo. Just as medicine is not always pleasant to take. So this birth, which is precisely a medicine for ills incurred in the previous one, may involve experiences we will not find pleasant. But those experiences, like medicine, will in fact be gracious (soteriologically auspicious) for us -- God always gives us what is best for us, even when that is unpleasant -- and we can rely on that being so.

There is never a reason to fear. Well, fear of God is good, to a point, but even that fear must be tossed aside when maturity has been reached. Do we want our best friend to fear us? Neither does God want us to fear him, ultimately.

What we really regret, when we regret, is that we may not have or have in fact not done MORE than we needed to do. It is the awareness, that we all have, that we can get ahead of the script, that we can wind around to the rear of the enemy camp and beard the lion in its lair, so to speak, to prepare for emergence in divinity -- our true destiny -- many births ahead of schedule, simply through effort toward the divine -- it is this awareness that causes real regret ... when we feel, always accurately, that we have not done what we could for our own best interests.

This is the regret, or better yet, spiritual hunger, that drives the saints and sages and Great Captains and Rulers of history. They determine to go ahead of their schedule and win Grace through effort they are not obliged but are advised to make. One who feels this spiritual hunger and does not appease it through various spiritual disciplines -- which suggest themselves from within oneself -- must live with real regret, a bitterness of awareness that will be unbearable.

Self-confidence, self-satisfaction, self-sacrifice. This is the path of religious or spiritual discipline followed by the great souls, achieving MORE than they have to, compelling the admiration of humanity and all beings. It is what we all should do if we feel the inner urge to.

There is another fundamental of regret and that is the phenomenon of loving someone who does not return the love. Whole literatures are built on this phenomenon, which is pandemic. What is behind it?

A combination of destiny and laziness or sloth. On the one hand the person who does not return love is disposed in that manner because their inner guidance towards those two or three experiences does not have them tracked to return our love. On the other hand, their own effort could alter that tracking to include returning love offered them. In the case where they do not make an effort to return love offered, a common case, we have a bitter experience because we know, rightly, that they could have loved us had they been less lazy and more genuinely disposed to "work for their own salvation." Love is always meant to be returned and expanded. That is its nature. Love is the Law of Expansion.

However, unreturned love is common and God himself I have heard mentioning how much he feels the bitterness of it. The divine itself bears this sorrow of unreturned love. It is a design characteristic of the system, part of what makes it work, the freedom of the eternal duet, the disharmony which induces us to seek harmony, driving the drama life is.

Now finally, the essentials of destiny.

Destiny is gracious, first, last and always and everywhere. We may not see that it is, but it is. This is the first essential, the reason all the religions say that trust is justified.

The second essential of destiny is that it is impartial. Our son asked recently how a leader -- who must always be in the company of sages -- should be able to tell a real sage from a phony. I said there are two sets of evidence that distinguish the real sage:

1- what they say comes true
2- they seek only and always the welfare of all -- they are impartial.

Now, observe this fellow in Davos. He is definitely a sage, a see-er. For this reason he attracts leaders. But is he impartial, seeking the welfare of all? I doubt. I do not know enough to say for sure, but I doubt. Why? Because, as far as I can see, he is not doing the things that would indicate genuine impartiality. He is charging entrance fees, for starters. A sage gives freely. Not to all, only to the worthy, but always without charge.

So a fundamentum of destiny is impartiality and specifically concern for the welfare of all, without favoritism. It is their impartiality which makes sages sought after -- and hard to find, because so many want to use them only for agendas of partiality and from these genuine sages actually hide themselves.

A sage is equally at home in the White House and the out house, literally. They see no difference. God's love is equal for all. A sage spends their time only with leaders, but this does not indicate favoritism, it indicates awareness of how best to foster the universal welfare. In their eyes, the sage sees leaders and people samely, gradation of responsibility and therefore need for direct counsel, but no gradation of essence. One essence, the ground of all, all the same.

A third fundamentum of destiny is that it is mutable. Destiny cannot be changed by the great power even of the greatest sages. But the merest glance from the corner of a loving eye can rewrite destiny entirely. The finite is subject to the transcendent infinite. That infinite is the ground of every being. It is being itself, ineffable and unchanging. Grace is will applied to rewrite destiny to the purpose of speeding it up. In the presence of the great ones, saints and sages, people report this experience of "having karma [necessary experiences from birth to birth] speeded up." This is an accurate report. There is much to what is going on there, obviously. The point I want to make here is that it illustrates that destiny is gracious. And this has to be affirmed even when it appears that destiny is not gracious, something we know is not easy to do yet we also know as something we need to do.

Personally, do I have regrets? Of the variety that I wish people I love had loved me, yes, many. That I have not done the MORE that I could to speed up my karma? No, I am confident of having been a hard worker and of continuing so so far as my will and my destiny allow.

Wishful thinking? Yes, on numerous fronts. I do not know that this will ever stop. It is evidence of maya, of which there are two kinds, one beneficial and one not -- an important point included in things I said I would not treat of here. Most wishful thinking now seems to do with people I love who have not returned the sweetness. I do not see an end to that. It is a bitterness that seems must be borne indefinitely, but it is not too heavy a load, at this time.

On youth and ageing: you are of an age when you are at a break point, either for predominately spiritual or predominately carnal or worldly. The worldly is important and fun so long the spiritual is the central interest. When this is the case, the world itself, the carnal, becomes in fact spiritual. An interesting phenomenon and one some charlatans attempt to employ as cover for purely worldly -- carnal -- behavior: Clinton and Gates, for example.

You are auspiciously disposed on this matter, as evidenced by your asking this question. You would not ask if you were merely carnally disposed. In fact, you would not know I exist if you were so. So all is well and you should proceed with full confidence and enthusiasm on whatever course your inner necessity suggests to you. The proper guidance protocols are in place and functioning properly, so ... Law of Expansion. Be strong, be happy!

Loss, finally, is an emotion, transitory though poignant. The best remedy for this emotion, in my experience, is to enter and become it. The third movememt -- Largo -- of Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, listened to and felt repeatedly, is a good medicine. This is an homeopathic remedy: to cure a dis-ease, induce a version of it. A very ancient procedure. I have used it often.

Adwaitha Hermitage
February 11, 2000

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