Lent is coming up on the Christian calendar. It begins Ash Wednesday, which this year falls on February 14. It also happens to be Valentines Day. So I guess I ought to be talking about Lent and Love, but I will leave that topic for a blog post. I’ll stick with Lent. In this episode I wanted to deal with a topic that is important to Christians, especially during Lent, but is not talked about too much in nondual circles. The subject is repentance. It is badly misunderstood.
I have talked about repentance before in a nondual context, but I have not dedicated an entire episode to it. So today I am. The call to repent is normally talked about in moral and ethical terms, but that is just the surface of it. When followed to its end repentance is a path to spiritual awakening. It is the door to what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. Jesus said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
Christians talk about repentance a lot, but it is almost entirely described as a change of heart that brings about a change in behavior. That is certainly part of it. Christianity has it right as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Moral behavior is important in the spiritual life. The Buddha knew the importance of right living, which is why in his first sermon he gave his disciples the Eightfold path, which is how to live our lives rightly. It includes eight areas to get right, including right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, and so forth.
But it is dualistic – having to do with right and wrong. And it is temporal, not eternal. Moral requirements change with time and culture, even commandments graved in stone, although Christians do not like to admit that. For example one of the Ten Commandments is not to do any work on the Sabbath, which is Saturday. But there are very few Christians who will observe that commandment even though it is listed as one of God’s top ten. Even if they move the Sabbath to Sunday, they still do not observe it. People do all kind of work – for pay or not – on their Sabbath. Another is divorce, which Jesus talks a lot about. It used to be taboo in churches, but now is as common with Christians as others.
Still there are some behaviors that most cultures and religions agree are wrong. Our conscience, which is formed by our culture and family, convicts us when we violate these norms. To remove the emotional dissonance, we confess, repent, and ask for forgiveness. In return are hopefully granted forgiveness by society and those we have wronged, including one’s relationship with a personal theistic God if that is part of the religion.
Moral repentance is a path that restores emotional well-being and social relationships. But that is as far as it goes. But we must go deeper. I was reading the Gospel of Luke the other day where Jesus tells his disciples who were fishermen to cast their nets in deeper water. “Launch out into the deep,” Jesus told Simon Peter, “and let down your nets for a catch.” That is what we need to do. We need to cast our nets in deeper water spiritually.
To do that we have to investigate the meaning of the word “repent” that is used in the gospels. You may have heard me explain this before, but I am going to go into more depth today. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia. It has several meanings, which correspond to different levels of repentance. One is certainly moral. It has to do with a change in behavior. It means to turn around, to change direction, to do a U-turn. We are heading in one direction morally, and we turn around and head in the opposite direction physically. We change our behavior.
But it has a deeper meaning than behavior. It is a call to self-inquiry. We turn around 180 degrees and examine ourselves. Not only examine our behavior but examine our hearts. Jesus spends a lot of time talking about this dimension in the Sermon on the Mount. He directs people to examine deeper than they are used to. He says the commandment is not jut a matter of not killing, it is a matter of violence in the heart – anger and hate - even if it never erupts intro action.
Self-inquiry goes even deeper than that. We look at exactly who is doing this behavior. We ask the question, “Who am I?” That is what Jesus points to when he asks, “Who do people say that I am?” The answer Peter gave was “the Christ,” which is true if you understand what the Christ means. But the answer Jesus gave was I AM. “Before Abraham was, I am,” said Jesus. The Delphic oracle was said to have engraved over the entrance the inscription “Know thyself.” Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. He got himself executed by the good citizens of Athens for teaching the youth of Athens to examine themselves.
Who am I? That is the question that Ramana Maharshi famously asked of his followers. It is known today as the nondual method. To ask that question is repentance – not morally but spiritually. Going beyond morality to identity. It is to stop looking only at the external world and look inward and ask who it is that is asking the question. It is to do a 180 degree turn. We turn around and look at who is looking. That is the heart of nondual self-inquiry and that is the heart of repentance. If followed to the end it takes us beyond the mind. Beyond the self.
The word for repentance is metanoia which literally means beyond the mind. That takes us to a deeper level in self-inquiry. In self-inquiry we examine all the possibilities for what we are and we discover that we are not any of those. We discover that we are not the mind. Most of us identify with the mind and body. It does not take too much to realize that we are not the body, but it takes longer to realize that we are not the mind. We are not our thoughts or our emotions.
To see who we are we must go beyond the mind. When we do that we see that we are not the mind, We are not the self. We are not even consciousness. We go beyond – or rather beneath – consciousness. This is where I sometimes lose people. People are very attached to consciousness, and they think they are consciousness. I have tried to show how nondual awareness is not the same as consciousness, but people disagree. So I will quote Nisargadatta here. He explains it much better than I have been able to. If you want to argue this point, argue with him. Read what he teaches.
Questioner: What do you do when asleep?
Nisargadatta Maharaj: I am aware of being asleep.
Q: Is not sleep a state of unconsciousness?
N: Yes, I am aware of being unconscious.
Q: And when awake, or dreaming?
N: I am aware of being awake or dreaming.
Q: You use the words 'aware' and 'conscious'. Are they not the same?
N: Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface , a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience.” (end of quote)
To go beyond the mind – repent – is to go beyond consciousness and abide in that from which consciousness arises. That is nondual awareness. That awareness is what we are always – whether conscious or unconscious, whether dreaming or in dreamless sleep. We all know this intuitively. When we wake up in the morning we know we did not we cease to be during those times we were not dreaming. We know we are even when we are unconscious. The same with what we are before the birth of the body and after the death of the body. There is really no before or after; it is all now. With the body or without the body we are awareness.
True repentance, properly understood, brings us to this realization. We turn around and look for what we are. Self-inquiry. In the process we see everything we are not and that which remains – which is nothing as far as the mind is concerned – is what we are. I know I am not this and this and this, yet I know that I am. We are no-Self. Knowing this, realizing this, is spiritual awakening. It is the Kingdom of God.