Verse 12

ििद्या कथं भािि न चेदििद्या ििद्यां ििना िकं प्रििभात्यििद्या ।

द्वयं च कस्येिि ििचायय मूलस्वरूपिनष्ठा परमाथयििद्या ।। १२
vidyā kathaṁ bhāti na cedavidyā
vidyāṁ vinā kiṁ pravibhātyavidyā,
dvayaṁ ca kasyeti vicārya mūla-
svarūpaniṣṭhā paramārthavidyā. 12
avidyā – ignorance; na cet - if it is not there; vidyā –
knowledge; kathaṁ – how; bhāti – shines?; vidyāṁ vinā –
without knowledge; avidyā – ignorance; kiṁ pravibhāti –
does (it) shine?; ca – and; dvayam – the two; kasya – to
whom; iti – thus; vicārya – having inquired; mūla-svarūpa-
niṣṭhā – firm abidance in one’s basic nature; paramārtha-
vidyā – (is) knowledge of the Reality.
If there is no ignorance, how does knowledge shine?
(It cannot). Without knowledge, does ignorance shine?
(No, it cannot). And to whom do these two belong?
Having thus inquired, firm abidance in one’s basic
nature is the knowledge of the Reality.
Seeing the world as pairs of opposites
This verse looks at the pairs of opposites. Human life is
crammed with too many opposites. People assume that
creation is an enormous assembly of countless things, like
stars, flora, fauna, minerals, and so on. But there is another
way of looking at it, namely that the entire creation is in the
form of pairs of opposites. In fact, there is no creation other

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than the opposites. It is like water: water creates waves and
the moment it does so, it results in a pair of opposites – the
crest and the trough. Or take an old-fashioned movie: on the
screen there is a projection of a black and white. Without
black and white, can you have a movie? If all projection is
white, there is no actor or anything else, there is nothing.
Similarly, if all projection is black, there is no movie. The
screen is projected with black and white movie film, there is a
pair of opposites.
Now look at your mind, which includes the intellect. I am
not talking about the emotions, being happy and unhappy and
all that; that will come later. Just look at your mind: the mind
is moving, and the minute it moves, it splits into all kinds of
opposites. But we are now examining one pair of opposites,
namely ignorance and knowledge.
Knowledge implies ignorance
If I ask you, ‘Do you know English?,’ you may say, ‘Yes, I
know English.’ ‘Do you know French?’ ‘No, I do not know
French.’ That means you have the knowledge of one and
ignorance of the other. The knowledge of a few things is
invariably associated with the ignorance of many other things.
When you say, ‘I know English,’ it invariably shows that
there are a few other languages that you do not know. The
knowledge of English cannot shine so brilliantly without the
presence of its counterpart, namely the ignorance of so many
other languages. It is like entering into a dark room. When
you switch on the light, you see the glory of light very well
because you have seen the opposite ‘darkness’ equally well. If
the sun does not set, there can be no sunrise; and if the sun
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does not rise, there can be nothing like sunset. Things are not
absolute, they are merely pairs of opposites.
All are caught in the pairs of opposites
People are caught in the pair of opposites. Can you have
anything beautiful without the corresponding idea of ugly?
Saying something is beautiful is invariably associated with
thinking of a few ugly things. Or when you say, ‘I love my
son,’ it invariably follows that you do not love just anybody
of that age. In Vedanta, we do not even call it love; it is
attachment, an inability to love every single young man. So
when you say ‘love,’ it is invariably associated with the
opposite of love. You love a few things only because you do
not love a few other things. What you call love, happiness, or
knowledge is very much associated with the corresponding
opposites.
Ramana Maharshi is saying that you must learn to look at
your mind. When you do this, you can see that it is an
accumulation of pairs of opposites. In life we are buffeted by
the pairs of opposites: sometimes we are happy, and soon we
fall into an abyss of unhappiness. We struggle to rise above
that and make all kind of efforts to become happy once again.
The unhappiness is not going to disappear. How will it
disappear? We try to sweep it under the carpet or pretend as if
unhappiness does not exist. There is a name for that
pretention: the name is ‘party.’ You show me a bunch of
partying people, and I will show you a bunch of unhappy
people. People want to celebrate because they are so poor
within. There is no celebration inside; all that is there inside is
the burden of saṁsāra. Therefore to escape from it, we want
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to celebrate. To be a scholar is to know how much one does
not know.
We recognize ignorance because of our knowledge and
vice versa
How do we know that there is so much ignorance in the
mind? We know it because there is some knowledge there,
and that knowledge could not become evident unless it is
differentiated from the corresponding ignorance. Can
knowledge shine without ignorance? Here the word ‘shine’
means to become evident. Therefore, knowledge cannot
become evident unless there is ignorance also. Ignorance also
cannot be discerned without knowledge. You cannot be aware
of your ignorance unless you are knowledgeable. Therefore,
the dawn of knowledge is simultaneous with the admission
that I am ignorant.
Knowing God is denying God
I asked a gentleman, ‘Do you know God?’ He told me,
‘Hey Swamiji, what are you talking about? I have known God
for the last thirty years.’ Then I asked a very great mahātmā,
‘Sir, do you know God?’ He said, ‘What you know cannot be
God. Knowing God is denying God.’ Brahman is known to
him for whom it is not an object of knowledge; The one for
whom Brahman is known (as an object) does not know
Brahman, declares Kenopaniṣad (2.3). The one who knows
God is the one who admits that God is unknown and
unknowable. Therefore, the dawn of knowledge is in realizing
that you do not know. We look around without proper
understanding and we take appearances for reality. That is our

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problem. We believe we know the world and we believe we
know ourselves also. This admission that ‘I do not know’ is
the dawn of knowledge. When you stop presuming, and admit
that you do not know, that is a great blessing.
As we pointed out, knowledge and ignorance – like
happiness and unhappiness – are states of mind and they are a
pair of opposites. A dvandva is not a couple: it is not two
things like a horse and a cow, or a book and a paperweight. A
dvandva is a pair of opposites that are fundamentally the same
in that they both have the same mūla, basis. We require mūla-
svarūpa-niṣṭhā, abidance in the basic or essential nature (or
substratum) of both (the pair of opposites), abiding firmly on
the substratum of the pairs of the opposites.
Pursuing pleasure creates pain
A pair of opposites has the same basis, like credit and debit
are both dollars. Just because credit and debit are a pair of
opposites, it does not mean that credit is dollars and debit is
gravel. Credit is dollars and debit is also dollars (receivable
and payable respectively). It is the same with pleasure and
pain. Both are modifications of kha, the mental space.
Therefore by pursuing sukha, you are only avoiding one
aspect of kha and pursuing another aspect of kha. This means
you are caught in the opposites at the mental level itself.
People all over the world pursue sukha (pleasure) and try to
avoid duḥkha (pain). How would be that possible? Every time
you create sukha you also create duḥkha. If ice cream gives
sukha and then the small churning in the stomach that takes
place after an hour of eating it is duḥkha. Then you create that
duḥkha even while pursuing the sukha.
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 If you want to go beyond the pair of opposites of pleasure
and pain, that is a different cup of tea altogether. Therefore
my appeal to students of Vedanta is to pay attention to the
nature of seeking. If you are seeking like a rich man who
seeks riches as opposed to poverty, or like a university
student seeks knowledge as opposed to ignorance, then your
seeking has some value, but it falls short in Self-realization.
You have to understand that both vidyā and avidyā are states
of mind. The one who knows that both are the states of mind
knows the truth. That is why mahātmās do not divide society
into jñānīs and ajñānīs. They say that all are Atman. When the
student protests, ‘No, I am an ajñānī,’ the mahātmā says,
‘You are not an ajñānī, you are the jñāna-svarūpa.’ He does
not say, ‘Yes, you are an ajñānī, I am a jñānī, come and be my
śiṣya, I will enlighten you.’ That is why study of Vedanta is
critical. If you put yourself in the wrong path to begin with,
you will remain in that path and suffer.
The truth of the opposites lies outside the opposites
Therefore we have to come out of this trap of the
dvandvas, pairs of opposites. Suppose I give you a set of
diamonds and some gravel. You will say that diamonds are
superior. But whenever the word ‘superior’ is used, it is
followed by the word ‘to’ something else. Diamonds are not
superior in an absolute sense; they are superior to something
else, in this case it is gravel. Gravel is also not inferior
absolutely; it is inferior to diamonds. In saying all this,
however, we miss the crucial point altogether. It is that which
differentiates the diamonds from gravel. That is the seeing
itself, which is the truth. If there is no seeing, what is
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diamond and what is gravel? Suppose you give a blind man a
set of diamonds and gravel. Then what is a diamond and what
is gravel? There is no diamond or gravel. Only a person who
sees well can talk of this as diamond and that as gravel. So we
must go beyond the dual states of vidyā and avidyā, the locus
of which is the mind. The mind, not Atman, is the locus of
vidyā and avidyā. It is like the day and night are related to the
earth’s rotation and not to the sun. They are irrelevant to the
sun.
What matters is not one or the other of the two states of
vidyā and avidyā. The knowledge of scriptures is a mental
state, and it is opposed to the ignorance of scriptures, which is
equally a mental state. To begin with, you are in the mental
state of the ignorance of scriptures. Then you train yourself
for a few years and catapult yourself into the opposite mental
state of scholarship. Does this mean you are an ātma-jñānī?
Of course not. You have to raise a question, namely dvayaṁ
ca kasya, to whom does this pair of opposites related or
belong?
If a person tries all his life to gain sukha and avoid duḥkha,
he cannot succeed because the intent itself is fundamentally
flawed. What he needs to do is to rise above the pair of
opposites of sukha and duḥkha. One does this by asking
where is the sukha? Whose sukha is it? Where is duḥkha,
whose duḥkha is it? Asking that question means that you are
willing to examine the two opposite states of mind called
sukha and duḥkha. Then you are the witnessing awareness
with regard to the state of mind called sukha, and also to the
opposite state of mind called duḥkha. This creates a space
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between you and the mind, which is wavering between sukha
and duḥkha.
Transcending the pleasure-pain cycle
Do not pursue sukha to the exclusion of duḥkha; you will
not be successful. The more you pursue sukha, the more
duḥkha will be your lot. Instead, try to disassociate yourself
from the mental states of sukha and duḥkha. Be the
witnessing awareness towards these states of the mind. Do not
try to rationalize too much. When there is sukha, be a witness
to it – be gracious, humble, and be quiet. Do not start a
celebration just because you have a happy mood. And when
there is duḥkha, do not get dispirited, just watch it. Sukha and
duḥkha are not intrinsic to you, they are mere states of the
mind. Just let the mind be; these states will be there for a
while and then they will be gone.
This is what we call equanimity. When you are
equanimous, the boundary between sukha and duḥkha
collapses and you will rise above these opposites. Then you
will not know what is duḥkha and you will remain in
uninterrupted bliss, which is your own svarūpa. This is only
an example, it is not the topic here. The topic is knowledge
and ignorance. But just like sukha and duḥkha, mahātmās
know that ignorance and the so-called knowledge are states of
mind alone. All knowledge is memory. Cognition is only
recognition. You may say, ‘I cognize the rose.’ But you do
not cognize the rose, you only recognize the rose. It is from
memory. What you call knowledge is memory, whereas
reality is beyond both knowledge and ignorance.

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 Some people assume that there is Atman or Brahman, and
that they are ignorant of that. The moment I gain the
knowledge of that Atman or Brahman, I will be liberated.
This is a wrong assumption. In this assumption, there lies a
state of mind that is ignorant of Brahman, and that state of
mind should be improved and replaced by a state that knows
Brahman. But you can take this approach for a hundred years,
and you will remain where you are. Brahman remains as the
other and as an object of your knowledge, and hence that is
not Brahman.
Knowledge and ignorance are two aspects of mind
Knowledge is intellectual; it is an aspect of mind that is
memory. You may unconsciously assume that the truth, the
reality of Brahman, is approachable through this faculty
called knowledge, in contrast to ignorance. But if you
approach Brahman in this way, you may have all the verses
and scriptural statements about Brahman in your memory, yet
you remain nothing more than a bag of bones.
Therefore we must come out of this assumption and look
at knowledge and ignorance as two aspects of mind opposed
to each other. Then we ask the question, For whom is this
knowledge? For me. Who am I? Then there is ignorance. For
whom is this ignorance? For me. With your identification
with the mind you make those statements. So you put the
question, dvayaṁ ca kasya, for whom are these two,
knowledge and ignorance?

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The need for wonderment
Ramana Maharshi’s teaching is always in the form of
questions. He asks, ‘Who am I? what am I? what am I upto?’
That is the vicāra, inquiry. Vicāra is observation without
condemnation. In this inquiry, do not try to answer the
question the very moment you ask it. That is not the purpose
of the question. If you answer immediately, the answer comes
from memory and therefore it does not serve any purpose. So
just leave the question there. The question is not about an
answer, the question is about giving rise to wonderment.
Do you know how to wonder, or have you long since
forgotten it? I wonder when I read a poem; I wonder, ‘Oh, my
goodness, what a beautiful vision this poet had.’ I wonder at
the beauty of his heart. Sometimes people lose the capacity to
wonder. Therefore, I would ask you to learn to be amazed,
learn to wonder.
Silent observation
Obviously there is ignorance and there is knowledge,
which are nothing but two aspects of memory. But do not
condemn the ignorance as, for example, ‘Oh, I am an ajñānī, I
am fit for nothing.’ Instead, observe the ignorance. Are you in
the habit of becoming happy or unhappy alternately? That is
due to ignorance of yourself. Observe that habit, without
condemnation and also without identifying with any one of
them. Such an observation brings understanding, an insight,
which is not of the intellect. It is your understanding, it is not
of memory. That understanding is a product of silent
observation.

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 That observation also has no end in view. Suppose you
say, ‘I observe the mind so that I will be free from ignorance
and I will become an ātma-jñānī,’ or ‘I observe sukha-duḥkha
so that I will be free from sukha-duḥkha and I will gain bliss.’
If you have an end in view, you have already converted
yourself into an entity called ego. If you now seek ātma-
ānanda or brahma-ānanda like you seek sukha, namely as
something that is the other, the same problem will arise.
Therefore, do not have an end in view. Śrī Kṛṣṇa tells us to
act without seeking the end (Gita, 2-47). Similarly, if you
pursue Self-knowledge while keeping Atman as the end in
view, Atman itself becomes the other, anātmā. Similarly, if
you study a scripture with the aim of self-improvement,
thinking that in the absence of the scriptural knowledge you
are inferior, and by studying the scripture there will be self-
improvement, then what is that ‘self’? Is it the real self?
Therefore even self-improvement is not the goal. The point is
that Vedanta should not be reduced to Personality
Development.
Both knowledge and ignorance shine in awareness
There is no effort at self-improvement, no condemnation,
no identification, no justification – just observation. As you
observe the mind and its states, there could be sukha or
duḥkha and there could as well be knowledge or ignorance
depending on the context. Just watch these opposite states of
mind. In doing so, you snap this bond of identity with the
states of mind. Unfortunately we are addicted to
unconsciously identify with the alternating states of mind:
sometimes with sukha, sometimes with duḥkha, and
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sometimes with knowledge, sometimes with ignorance. To
break that identification, learn to observe the mind and its
states. In doing so, you go beyond the level of mind. Both
knowledge and ignorance are at the level of the mind, and you
rise yourself to a level beyond these opposites; that is the
mūla, origin or source.
Just as we talked about the fact that diamond is diamond
and gravel is gravel only because of seeing, similarly ‘this is
knowledge, that is ignorance’ is there only because of
caitanya, awareness. Knowledge is known as much as
ignorance is known; knowledge shines as much as ignorance
shines. If you know that you are ignorant, it means that
ignorance is shining in your awareness. You know that you
know. Not only do you know, you also know that you know.
Knowledge and ignorance are two states of the mind that
are always together. The moment you talk of knowledge,
ignorance follows it, and vice versa. Never try to separate
them, just as you should never separate sukha and duḥkha.
Understand that sukha has the seed of duḥkha in it. Never
separate beauty and ugliness. Do not say, ‘Oh, this is ugly,
throw it away,’ or ‘This is beautiful, let me wear it on my
head.’ Rise above both – there is nothing beautiful or ugly in
an absolute sense. What you call beauty is just the opposite of
ugliness and hence related to ugliness. The reality is satyaṁ
śivaṁ sundaram, truth, auspiciousness, and beauty.
Here satya, truth, is not the opposite of untruth, śiva,
auspiciousness, is not the opposite of inauspiciousness, and
sundara, beauty, is not the opposite of ugliness. This is the
mūla, the absolute, the substratum of the opposites, and you
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reach it by rising above the opposites of knowledge and
ignorance, sukha and duḥkha, beauty and ugliness, birth and
death, etc.
Abiding in the mūla
The mūla is awareness, the light in which knowledge
becomes knowledge. Knowledge and ignorance are as such
only because of that light, and that light is you. It is not about
doing; it is about seeing. I am asking you to see, that is all –
yaḥ paśyati sah ̣ paśyati, the one who sees, sees (Gita, 5-5).
What is to be done after seeing or knowing? Nothing.
After seeing your svarūpa, seeing yourself correctly as the
mūla, abide there. This is niṣṭhā, abidance. Just be yourself.
People are anxious to do things, but you need not do
anything. Nature takes care of itself, you need not do
anything. What needs to be done, gets done. Therefore abide
silently; that is niṣṭhā.
This is the real vidyā – paramārtha-vidyā, (Knowledge
Awareness). Cramming many scriptures is also kind of vidyā,
but it is knowledge that is opposed to ignorance. The one who
knows only scriptures knows nothing. But the one who knows
the light in which the knowledge and ignorance of scriptures
shines, that person knows. See the light in which both vidyā
and avidyā shine, and abide in it. That is the real knowledge
of the self.

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 Verse 13

बोद्धारमात्मानमजानिो यो बोधः स िकं स्याि् परमाथयबोधः ।

बोधस्य बोध्यस्य च सं श्रयं स्वं ििजानिस्तििियं ििनश्येि्।। १३
boddhāramātmānamajānato yo
bodhassa kiṁ syāt paramārthabodhaḥ,
bodhasya bodhyasya ca saṁśrayaṁ svaṁ
vijānatastaddvitayaṁ vinaśyet. 13
boddhāram – the knower; ātmānam – the self; ajānataḥ – to
the one who does not know; yaḥ – which, bodhaḥ –
knowledge; saḥ – that knowledge; paramārtha-bodhaḥ –
knowledge of the reality; kiṁ syāt – would that be? (No);
bodhasya – of the knowledge; ca – and; bodhyasya – of the
object of knowledge; saṁśrayam – basis (the substratum);
svam – himself; vijānataḥ – to the one who knows; tat – that;
dvitayam – the pair (of knowing and the known); vinaśyet –
vanishes.
Can it be true knowledge, if the knower does not
know the Self which is the real knower? For the one
who knows himself as the basis (substratum) of
knowledge and the object of knowledge, that dualism
(of knowing and known) vanishes.
Knowledge without knowledge of the knower is ignorance
A person may know a lot, but he may not know the
boddhā, the one which knows, which is the Atman. He may
have studied Vedanta and have all knowledge, including
scriptural knowledge of Brahman, Atman, etc. There is only

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one small thing he does not know! And that is the one who
knows. Knowing is not possible without the one who knows.
You cannot altogether dismiss whatever knowledge this
person has, but it is not paramārtha-bodha, the real
knowledge. If you know many things without having even a
hint of yourself, i.e. the one who knows all in the first place,
then whatever you know, is it knowledge at all? Cannot be.
Then, what is it? Ignorance. This is how we come to the
conclusion that all knowledge is nescience. This is a very
interesting conclusion, and we will pursue it as we go along.
The essence of human existence is being, not doing
Most people are exhausted by the desire for doing and do
not pay any attention to knowing. This is a great misfortune.
Doing is incidental and knowing is the fundamental reality of
human being. There will be some doing – everybody eats
food and lives a life, gets married, begets children, and so on.
As the body grows, we do a few things, like getting a
university degree and making a career etc. Then the ability to
do reduces gradually, even the ability to walk diminishes.
People pay so much attention to doing, but a day comes when
if you are able to go from your bed to the bathroom, that is
the greatest doing! Therefore doing is not the essence of
human being; bodha, knowing, is the essence because you
have to know.
If knowing is the essence of human existence, then what is
it that I have to know? There will be knowing of many things,
but then you come to a point where there is a higher bodha,
which we call paramārtha-bodha, the knowledge of the higher
truth. When you know the higher truth, then what was
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previously considered truth is no longer truth. It becomes
untruth. For example, when you see a snake, you are afraid.
You are afraid of a real snake, not an unreal snake. But by the
time you know it as the rope, the truth of the snake is not
snake anymore. The truth of the snake is the rope. The snake,
does not remain a kind of truth, it becomes untruth. Similarly,
there is knowledge such as of physics, chemistry, or political
science. You study them and then call it knowledge, but
Ramana Maharshi asks, ‘By studying one subject, such as
medicine, did you understand yourself?’ No. You know only
medicine, you do not know that one which knows the
medicine.
Knowledge versus skill
Provisionally we call this knowledge of medicine as
knowledge. But when you consider the same thing in the light
of the higher knowledge, the knowledge of that which knows
the known, it is a quantum leap. By the time you come to that
knowing, the other types of knowledge pale in comparison.
They are some kind of knowledge all right, but more properly
we can call it a skill. Medicine or engineering is a skill
because you use that skill to perform a few things in society
and make a living. Therefore a physician makes a living and a
cab driver also makes a living.
What people generally call knowledge is therefore but a
skill. It is very useful for making a living, and that is all. Once
you realize this, you are ready for paramārtha-bodha. So we
have come from karma to bodha, that is jñāna. And in jñāna
also we have come from the level of skill to the level of Self-

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knowledge. Thus what I have to know is the one who knows
the entire known – the true Self.
The seen is unreal, only seeing is real
The fact is that what you see is unreal and that you see is
real. The seer and seen come together, like north pole and
south pole arise when there is magnetism. Similarly, when
there is seeing, the seer and the seen come together, and when
there is knowing, the knower and the known rise and set
together. The source from which the bodha, knowing (or
knower), and the bodhya, the known, rise and set is you. You
take the mind to be the real knower in an absolute sense, but
the mind is not the knower, it is always the known. It is the
knower only relative to the known. The real knower, or even
better, the real ‘knowingness’ in which knower and known
rise and set together, is you, the Atman.
Atman is the source of knowing itself
So how are you to know Atman now? You cannot know it
the way you know all other things because you know all other
things by taking the mind as the knower. The mind has its
own ways of knowing, which are broadly perception and
inference. Perception is cognizing forms and colors with the
eyes, hearing sounds with the ears, etc. Sometimes the mind
can infer things, as when you see the smoke you infer fire.
Then there is śábda. The mind knows it when somebody
makes a statement or the scripture vouches for it. But when
you have to know Atman, which is the very basis of the mind,
these means are futile. You may end up knowing something
else and assume that to be the Atman. But that is not Atman,

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it is merely a concept of Atman. The mind can indeed work
out beautiful concepts of Atman. This is how often the
teachers and students of Vedanta make tall claims of Self-
knowledge.
Abandoning the normal methods of knowing
To know the Self, you have to stop adopting the normal
methods of knowing altogether. If you adopt the normal
methods of knowing, which is by identifying with the mind,
you will become the knower, which is but the mind. Such a
method only gives you a few concepts of Atman, nothing
more than that. In fact, the mind is clogged up with ideas and
images of Atman. People go after ideas and then claim, ‘My
idea of God is superior to your idea of God.’ Trying to know
Atman like any other object, employing the usual methods of
the mind, cannot work. So you have to understand that which
is the very basis for this process of cognition. That basis is the
knowingness, and that knowingness is Atman.
You have to reach a point where this dipole of knower and
known vanishes. When you look at the mind, the mind stops
moving and becomes quiet. When the mind stops moving, the
dynamic of knowing has come to an end. The process of
cognizing is present only as long as the mind is moving,
whereas when you look at the mind and allow it to become
quiet, the process of knowing in the normal sense comes to an
end. Then you shine as that light in which the normal process
of knowing happens. The absence of the knower-known
dipole leads you to the real Self. Vijānataḥ tad dvitayaṁ
vinaśyet – for the one knowing the Self, the dipole of knower-
known vanishes.
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 I have pointed out some of the issues involved in Self-
knowledge: first, you should not try to know the Self the way
you know all other things. Second, the idea of the truth is not
the truth, and a concept of the truth is not the truth. Third,
what we normally call knowledge is nothing but from
memory. Knowledge that has its origin in memory cannot be
Self-knowledge.
True knowledge is not from memory or from outside
Paramārtha-bodha, true knowledge, cannot be the
remembrance (i.e. from memory) because what you
remember is the past and true knowledge is of the present.
Suppose I tell you that Atman is the same as Brahman. So I
have remembered some beautiful statement from the
scriptures and told you that. What is fresh or new in it?
Atman is a word I recollected from my memory, and
Brahman is another such word. English language and
sentence construction is a mental game. There is nothing fresh
in it. True knowledge is ever fresh, ever new, and also ever
unexpected. Coming to know something that is expected is
not true knowledge. True knowledge does not come from
outside either, like the knowledge of a pot. People assume
that all knowledge flows from the outside to the inside. But
Self-knowledge wells up within, it does not come from
outside. This is in contrast to every other kind of knowledge.
Self-knowledge is knowingness but not knowing. When
you know the Self by abiding in the Self, in that realization
there would be no knowing. If there is knowing in the
realization of the Self, then the Self becomes the other. In the
realization of the Self there will be no knowing, but only
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being, unless you say, in the case of the Self, the Being itself
is the knowing or we know by being the Being. This is not
knowing by perception or thought, this is knowing by being.
Knowingness without knowing
You may wonder what kind of knowing could it be, a
‘knowing without knowing.’ So let us examine this thing
called knowing. How do we know anything in the first place?
As we have already discussed, there are three fundamental
pramāṇas, ways of knowing: pratyakṣa, direct perception,
anumāna, inference, and śabda, the word. Some people accept
other means such as arthāpatti, postulation, upamā,
illustration, anupalabdhi, cognition of absence, and others.
Ultimately, all means of knowledge are included in the above
pramāṇas. What you know by these three means cannot be
Atman, however, because there is a very forceful statement
from the śruti, vijñātāramare kena vijānīyāt, (Bṛhadāraṇyaka
Upaniṣad, 4.5.15), by what means of knowing will you know
the Self that is the very knower (or the very knowingness)? It
means that you cannot know the Self by any means of
knowing.
Is the situation hopeless? No. There is another way of
knowing, one that is more fundamental than all the known
means of knowledge. That is to know by being. If I ask, ‘Are
you?’ the answer must be yes, I am! How do you know that
you are? You know that you are by being yourself. You
know the entire world, and also the gods and goddesses that
you worship, by pratyakṣa or anumāna or śabda pramāṇa. But
when you look at yourself, you know that you are. Is there
any doubt about it? No. Nobody can assert that he does not
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exist. Nobody has the doubt regarding ‘Am I or am I not?’ ‘I
am’ is the incontrovertible truth.
Therefore the knowledge which is free from its opposite,
the knowledge that ‘I am’ – that is the true knowledge. It is
free from the opposite ‘I am not’ and also free from any
doubt. Now, when you say, ‘I am,’ how do you know? Not by
perception, because ‘I am’ is the very origin of perception:
first I am and then perception. And you cannot say by
inference, which is but a thought, because ‘I am’ is the very
origin of thought itself. ‘I am’ is not an idea or a concept. And
lastly, you do not need another person or scripture to tell you
that you exist.
When I say, ‘I know that I am,’ it also means that ‘I am
and I know.’ ‘I know that I am,’ is knowing and ‘I am and I
know’ is being. I am that by which I know that I am.
Therefore the difference between knowing and being is gone,
and I know by being. This is paramārtha-bodha.
To summarize: the knower comes and goes with the
known. Both the knower and the known are transient, and the
process of knowing is also transient. But there is another kind
of reality, which knows without knowing. I know that I am,
and there, knowing and being are one and the same. It is a
very peculiar kind of knowing: that which knows without
knowing.
Self-knowledge is timeless
There is another critical aspect here. For example, when
someone looks at the smoke and knows that it comes from
fire, memory is involved. There is vyāpti-jnāna, knowledge of
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concordance, namely that ‘wherever there is smoke, there is
certainly fire.’ This comes from memory, it was jñāna gained
through observation in the kitchen. This knowing is because
of that memory. When I know myself, however, I know that I
am and there is no memory involved. I know that I am by
being, not because of memory. In this knowing. the normal
process of knowing is dismissed altogether. It is a knowing in
which there is no memory and no anticipation. It has no past
and no future, which means the element of time is dismissed.
The reality, which is you, is timeless. When you know
yourself, that knowing is timeless, whereas when you know
the world, that knowing is timebound and therefore transient
(The world appears as long as you pay attention to it). This
timeless knowing is the Self-knowledge.
The veil of thought
How to get Self-knowledge in practice? As long as there is
thought, the cognition dynamic is on and therefore the
knower-known dipole is in place. As long as the normal
process of knowing is on, the paramārtha-bodha, knowing of
the truth, cannot take place because it acts like a veil. The
knowing of the Self is altogether different. It does not fit into
the normal process of knowing, even if that process of
knowing is connected with a scripture about the Self.
The normal process of knowing has its value, to be sure. It
is very useful and valuable. You study books and acquire
great skills and get social status and make a lot of money and
do some charity also. All that is glorious. But at the same
time, this normal process of knowing acts as a barrier when it
comes to knowing your true Self.
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 Therefore you should become silent and allow this dipole
of knower-known to recede. When it recedes, there is silence.
That is the inner silence. In that silence, the normal process of
knowing is suspended, and you are not sleeping. It is true that
the normal process of knowing is absent in sleep also, but that
does not help to know your Self. If it did, there would be
nothing like Self-knowledge because everybody sleeps.
Maharshi is going to say in the next verse that nidrā na vidyā,
sleeping is not knowledge. Therefore you must be awareful
and totally alert, and yet the mind is silent.
Silence requires only watching the mind
There are two ways of arriving at this silence of the mind.
The haṭha-yoga way, namely citta-vṛtti-nirodha (Yoga sutra,
1-2), restraining (or arresting) the mind, is not the Vedanta
way. We need to use the mind for various things, so we need
not destroy it. That is violence; and we need not employ
violence against the mind. Do not make your mind an enemy;
just watch it and be aware of it. The mind refuses to be
watched. It is like a child who is dancing on the stage, but it is
shy and does not want to dance before the parents. Similarly,
the mind does not like to be watched, so it will resist your
watching. It does this by producing a flow of thoughts to
distract you. The mind knows all kinds of tricks to make you
conveniently forget watching and the mind wanders. You
have to be alert to its tricks and watch the mind. The mind
will try to neutralize your watching, but do not allow that. It
means that you do not allow yourself to be distracted. That is
all; there is no ‘how’ to it, you have to just do it. When you
keep watching the mind, it becomes silent. Then the normal
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process of knowing, in which the knower and the known arise
together, is absent because that pair exists only when the
mind is active and parades as the knower.
You become silent. The silence is neither emptiness nor a
void. It is existence, the being, shining as the knowing. In that
being, you know by being. There the gap between being and
knowing is overcome. Just because you do not employ the
normal methods of knowing – pratyakṣa, anumāna, and śabda
– you cannot conclude that the knowing of the being is
fictitious or illusory. It is the reality, not a fiction, and it is
already in you. It is not only in you, it is present in everyone.
Words cannot reach there because it is beyond the scope of
the words. Words have a role to play, they have an occasion
and a context. But once the words have done their job, they
are redundant and the silence begins. Words cannot reach
there, but you can reach because it is in you all the time as the
very core of your being.
The timeless being is the presence
Do not assume that the Guru will take you there. The Guru
cannot. The Guru is not a person. The most unfortunate thing
that we do is to convert the teaching into a teacher. The
teaching is not the teacher, rather the teacher is the teaching.
Therefore Guru is in the words because Guru is the teaching.
Words from the outside can help, but they cannot reach there.
Nobody can take you there. It is not a piece of property to be
given by somebody or inherited from somebody. It is already
there within you. Whatever happens to you cannot affect your
being because it is timeless. Everything happens in time, and
what happens in time cannot affect the timeless. Days come
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and go, years come and go, but time does not affect the being
because the being is ever the same, ever the present. In fact, it
is the very presence.
The presence, which is the being, is ever new. It is not the
present that is sandwiched between past and future. It is the
timeless present and transcendence of all that is mortal. The
body is mortal, the senses are mortal, the mind is mortal, the
world is mortal, whereas you rise above the mortal. That is
amṛta, immortality.
That silence, the being which shines as the knowing, is not
your silence or your being – it is you, the being. You can still
call it ‘my being,’ if you like, but it is not something that you
possess like some jewelry or like a bank account you have.
You do not possess that silence, that being, that Atman. It is
not your Atman. You are of the Atman; it possesses you. The
very idea of ‘I’ is an intrusion and disturbance in that silence.
That is the truth, the love, the being which shines as the
knowing. You know that being by abiding as that being
without knowing. This is the paramārtha-bodha.
Verse 14

िनद्रा न ििद्या ग्रहणं न ििद्या गृह्णािि िकञ्चिन्न यथाऽथयबोधे ।

िनद्रापदाथयग्रहणेिरा स्याच्चिदे ि ििद्या ििलसन्त्यशून्या ।। १४
nidrā na vidyā grahaṇaṁ na vidyā
gṛhṇāti kiñcinna yathā’rthabodhe,
nidrāpadārthagrahaṇetarā syā-
ccideva vidyā vilasantyaśūnyā. 14

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 nidrā – sleep; na vidyā – (is) not Self-knowledge;
grahaṇam – cognitive (waking or dreaming) state; na vidyā –
(is) not Self-knowledge; yathā-artha-bodhe – in the
realization of the true Self; kiñcit – anything; na gṛhṇāti –
does not cognize; nidrā-padārtha-grahaṇa-itarā – other than
sleep or the states of cognizing the things; cid eva –
awareness alone; vidyā – knowledge; syāt – would be;
vilasantī – shining; aśunyā – not void.
Sleep is not Self-knowledge. Cognition of objects in
waking and dream states is also not Self-knowledge. In
the realization of the true Self, there is no cognition of
things. It is Awareness Absolute alone, shining
brilliantly. It is not void.
The three states of experience
In life, we go through three states of experience: waking,
dream, and sleep. The waking state is a unique kind of
experience, in which you stand apart from everything else.
The knower-known duality is in place and padārtha-
grahaṇam, the non-stop process of knowing things, is also on.
Even when you close the eyes, thoughts are going on. There
are things such as a building, a clock, and even people. But
‘thing’ does not just mean an object like a table alone.
Everybody is an object because people take themselves to be
the body. When you say ‘my wife,’ it is the body’s wife!
Similarly the son is the body’s son. And things need not be
only physical. They could be mental also, like caste, creed,
race, religion, and so on. These are the padārthas, things, and
you constantly know these things. That is the waking state.

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 The dream state is much the same. Because in dream state
you are the knower of the things of the dream world. The
scenes may change and the person’s character may change,
e.g. he is a poet in the waking state but a beggar in the dream.
But the knower-known dipole persists in dream and the
process continues. Therefore, the dream state is also called
padārtha-grahaṇa.
It is worth noting that the Maharshi puts the states of both
waking and dream in the same category. People believe that
waking and dream are different states! Because if they are
equally unreal, what will happen to my bank account, to my
wife and children? People accept that dream is not real, but
when it comes to the waking state, they are not so sure. In
Vedanta, the waking and the dream are recognized as two
different and distinct states. However, that does not mean that
the reality of the waking state is different from that of the
dream state. Ontologically both are the same, meaning they
are equally unreal.
This leaves one more state, which is nidrā, sleep. In this
state there is no padārtha-grahaṇa, cognition of things,
because there is nothing to see. We assume that these three
states happen to us. But they do not happen to us, they simply
happen in the light of awareness, just as a movie shines in the
light of the projector. The movie-goers do not pay any
attention to the light in which the scenes appear. I remember
watching a movie as a child, and it occurred to me, ‘All these
marvelous scenes playing out on the screen, where are they
coming from?’ In those days there was no ban on smoking, so
the village folk would smoke while watching the movie.
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There was a lot of smoke in the hall, and in that smoke a
pencil of light was clearly visible. As the heroine was
dancing, I looked and saw that in that smoke the pencil of
light was dancing. Then I looked to see where this pencil of
light was coming from, and saw it emerging from a hole in
the wall (projector). I realized that all the dancing etc. was
coming from this light alone.
All experience is illumined by awareness
We should learn from the movie and see how our waking
day experience is similar. There is no movie without that
light. In our life too, the waking state experiences are shining
in the light of awareness. Without that light, there is no
waking state. Then there is a light which lights up the dream
state and a light that lights up the sleep state also.
We say there is a light even in sleep because sleep is also
an experience; it is an experience of the absence of
everything. If everything is an experience, the absence of
everything is also an experience. The next morning you say,
‘I slept happily without knowing anything.’ Who is saying
that? Nothing cannot assert nothing. The one who
experienced the nothing is saying it. Therefore sleep state is
not nothing. If you say that the sleep state is nothing, that is
śūnya-vāda, one of the traditions of Buddhism. We do not
accept that. In sleep state you are aware that you are
unconscious and that you do not know anything. In waking
state you are aware that you are conscious and know
everything – whatever that ‘everything’ may be – and in the
dream state you are aware that you know everything of the
dream state. Therefore in all the three states, you are aware.
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This means that you are not one of these states, nor you are
the combination of the three states. You are the light of
awareness in which the three states become evident, the light
that pervades all the three states.
Maharshi says nidrā na vidyā, sleep is not Self-realization.
First we must understand what Self-realization is not. This is
negative understanding, which is the highest understanding.
The waking state is not a state of Self-realization and dream
state also is not a state of Self-realization. According to the
nihilists, the nothingness of the deep sleep is the truth of Self.
But even that is not Self-realization. In sleep there is the
awareness of nothingness.
Before going any further, we should look at a few
important implications of the three states. On the whole, we
give far too much importance to just one state, namely the
waking state. When we go through the three states of
experience, why do we give so much importance to just one?
There is a flaw here. If you are a business man in the waking
state, that does not make you essentially a businessman. You
are a businessman only with reference to the waking state. Or
if one is a father, he is so only in the waking state. You may
be someone else in the dream state, and you are not anybody
at all in the sleep! We should think of the origin of the waking
state.
Waking consciousness is its content
What is the waking state? It is the content of waking
consciousness. Unless you are conscious of a particular thing,
it cannot be part of your waking state. Thus your waking state

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is populated by all those things of which you are conscious.
The waking consciousness is the light in which all the things
of the waking state come to light. They are called vyakta, i.e.
seen, or apprehended. You may see with the eyes or may
know with the mind. It is something which is cognized one
way or the other. That is waking consciousness.
Waking consciousness with its content has its origin in the
Awareness Absolute. For example, when you see, it is
obvious that so many things exist, living and non-living. You
see them, but is there not a light in which you see them?
There is a light, and that light is the daylight. You see all
these things only in daylight. The content of your waking
consciousness corresponds to what all you see in daylight.
Therefore the world shines in waking consciousness, just as it
shines in daylight.
Now daylight has an origin, which is the sunlight. Sunlight
reflecting in the atmosphere of the earth becomes daylight,
but it is not the same as daylight. For example, you can see
the daylight with your eyes, but sunlight cannot be seen.
Some object must reflect the sunlight in order to convert into
daylight. As sunlight reflects in the atmosphere, it gets
scattered and the result is daylight. And in daylight you see
the world.
Similarly, the Awareness Absolute, the light of lights,
which is called Atman, reflects in the mind, like sunlight
reflects in the atmosphere. This reflection results in what is
called waking consciousness. The world comes to light in this
waking consciousness. When the mind is only partly active,
as in dream state, the sunlight-like Awareness reflects in that
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mind, and the result is dream consciousness. The dream world
is not as solid or concrete as the waking world, and it comes
to light in the dream consciousness. In the sleep state, the
mind goes into deep sleep and therefore there is no reflection
and the result is unconsciousness. Thus all the three states
have the same origin, which is the light of lights, the Atman.
The content of waking consciousness is phenomenal
The content of waking consciousness is a flow, it is not an
assembly of static objects. The universe is dynamic, and
phenomenal. Therefore the content of waking consciousness
is a process, like a movie. In a movie there is light and there is
movement, but not objects. When you are watching a movie,
for example, you see a mountain peak. It looks as if there is
an object there, but it is only a movement. The movement
gives the impression of a static object. Similarly, in the world
when you say that there is a mountain, that mountain is an
impression gained by the mind. The mountain is not the truth.
A mountain means something static, but it is not static as the
world in which it appears is not static. The mind gives the
impression that it is static, stable, real, but it is ever changeful
and phenomenal.
The content of the waking consciousness is not existential,
it is an appearance and phenomenal. It is like a wave, if you
will. Therefore do not give so much importance to the content
of waking consciousness. What you thought was real
yesterday is gone today. Something else came in its place, so
why do you think of it as real? Everything is changing, the
entire content of the waking state is a process, a phenomenon.

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 The analysis of the three states is needed because you may
imagine yourself to be a process, but that is not true – you are
the witness of the entire process. When you are watching a
movie, the movie is the process, not you. Similarly, the
waking state is a process, but unfortunately you take yourself
to be the process. The body is a process, it is not a thing. The
mind is also a process.
Past and future belong to the body and mind, not to the
Self
A process has a past and it will have a future, but you do
not have a past and you will not have a future too. Therefore
you do not have a history, and yet you take yourself to be a
historic self. You say, ‘I am a husband or wife, or a father or
mother,’ but that is your history, not your svarūpa. It is sad
that people identify themselves with history, but that is not
Vedanta. Vedanta will demolish your historic self. The
statement aham brahmāsmi is not talking of the historic self.
The ‘I’ has no history, no past; it is not a process. It is the
mind that makes you believe that you have a past and a
future, development and decay. Learn to see all of this as
process – history, past, future, development, decay – as a
dream. When you see it as a dream, you are already out of it.
The three states appear in the usual fashion; one happens
after the other, but nothing ever happens to you, just as scenes
in a movie do not affect light; they just happen. Similarly, the
states succeed each other, but there is something changeless,
immovable, rock-like, unassailable – that is the light of
awareness. It is a pure mass of existence-awareness-bliss, sat-
cid-ānanda. That is vidyā, Self-knowledge.
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Self-realization is not a process of knowing
In waking consciousness there is always something that
you are conscious of. In dream consciousness also, there is
always something that you are conscious of. Padārtha-grahaṇa
means becoming conscious of the various things in waking or
dream. That is the very basis of the these two states; therefore
knowing is always there. In the waking state you know a pot
and other things, in the dream state you know similar things.
There is a process of knowing in which there is always a
knower-known duality. Maharshi points out that the very
process of knowing defines these states; but Self-realization is
not a process of knowing. Yathārtha-bodhe, in the realization
of the truth, in Self-realization, one does not know anything in
particular, because there is nothing other than the Self.
Realization of the Self is through negative understanding
When you assume that you have to know the Atman, you
are all obsessed and preoccupied with the process of
knowing; you have all the means of knowing – pratyakṣa,
anumāna, arthāpatti, śabda, and so on – all trimmed to your
views and ready to operate. But what Maharshi says is that in
realizing the Self, you do not know anything in particular.
Someone may ask, ‘OK, then what does the Upaniṣad do?’
The answer for that can be found in Sri Śaṅkara’s
commentary to Bhagavad Gītā, verse 2.18. There he tells you
what śruti as the śabda-pramāṇa will and will not do. It will
not say, ‘This is Atman.’ What it would do is to help you to
know what all is not Atman. Negative understanding is the
highest understanding.

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 You have become very adept at employing the process of
knowing as you are endowed with the senses and mind and
the multifarious methods such as pratyakṣa, anumāna, etc.
But if you try to use them to know the Self, you may do it for
10, 20, or even 30 years, and nothing happens. Then you have
to reexamine the whole blessed thing. If something had to
happen, surely it would have happened by now! The glory of
the Maharshi is that he says: yathā’rthabodhe kiñcinna
gṛhṇāti, when you realize the Self, you do not know anything
in particular. Therefore conventional process of knowing is
not going to help.
Atman is distinct from the three states
So what to do now? The Maharshi says: nidrā-padārtha-
grahaṇa-itarā, you have to focus on that which is other than
sleep, and also other than the waking and dream states in
which you perceive the objects. In the movie the heroine is
dancing most beautifully, but the truth is not there, however
attractive it may seem to be. You have to leave it alone and
realize that the truth is elsewhere.
Maharshi includes deep sleep because he has to include all
the three states, but our problem is not deep sleep. We do not
claim that deep sleep has the truth in it. There are some who
claim that the deep sleep has truth in it. That aside, somehow
we are very certain that the waking state has the truth in it.
People are miserably caught in this process called the waking
state, which does not contain the reality in itself.
As we saw, the sun has nothing to do with the content of
the things that you see on the earth, including the day and

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night that you experience, yet it is the sun that pervades the
entire daylight. Similarly, Atman is distinct from the three
states. It is other than deep sleep state in which nothing is
perceived and also other than the waking and dream, which
are characterized by knowing of things. In self-realization
there is nothing like grasping anything through knowing.
Here we have to desist from employing the tools of grasping
or knowing. Suppose I want to grasp a form – I open the eyes;
grasp the sounds with the ears. Or I use the grasping power of
the mind to infer the unseen things. Atman is very much
outside of this grasping mechanism.
Awareness absolute is the Self, always shining, free of all
content
Then what remains? We have dismissed the content of
both the waking consciousness and the dream consciousness,
and also the unconsciousness of sleep. What remains is that
which is distinct from all the three states, and yet which
pervades all of them. It is the cit eva, Awareness Absolute
alone. This cit is Atman, vilasantī, shining brilliantly. And it
is aśūnya, not a void, even though it is totally free from all
content.
Verse 15

सत्यञ्चिदात्मा ििििधाकृ ििञ्चिि् ञ्चसध्येि् पृथक् सत्यञ्चचिो न ञ्चभन्ना ।

भूषाििकाराः िकमु सच्चि सत्यं ििना सुिणं पृथगत्र लोके ।। १५
satyaścidātmā vividhākṛtiścit
sidhyet pṛthak satyacito na bhinnā,

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 bhūṣāvikārāḥ kimu santi satyaṁ
vinā suvarṇaṁ pṛthagatra loke. 15
cid-ātmā – Atman that is the Awareness Absolute; satyaḥ -
the Truth; vividha-ākṛtiḥ - having various forms; cit –
knowledge (awareness); satya-citaḥ – with respect to
Existence-Awareness (or Awareness that is the Truth); pṛthak
– apart; bhinnā – different; na sidhyet – cannot exist; atra –
here; loke – in the world; bhūṣā-vikārāḥ – various
modifications as ornaments; suvarṇam – gold; vinā – without
; satyam – real; pṛthak – separately; kimu santi – do they
exist?
The Awareness that is the Self is the Truth. It alone
manifests in various forms of knowledge (as the
consciousness with a content) which are (is) not
different from Existence-Awareness. Here in the world,
do the various gold ornaments exist separately, apart
from gold?
Information is not knowledge
This verse takes forward the discussion concerning the
experiences of the three states. The waking and dream states
are characterized by cognition. People take cognition as
knowledge, and that is the problem. It is like Google: Google
provides information using search engine and they call it
‘information technology.’ Even they do not call it ‘knowledge
technology.’ Information is different from the knowledge that
we are discussing here. In the context of Self-knowledge, this
knowledge is unlike any other knowledge. Therefore, in the

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context of Self-knowledge, what is otherwise considered
‘knowledge’ is merely ‘information.’
When this information that we gather becomes a means of
making a living, acquiring social status, lots of money etc., it
is not some ordinary information. It is a valuable information,
and it may be called expertise.
Cognition is not the truth
People should understand something about cognition. Just
because they cognize something, it is not necessarily the
truth. Quite often what you cognize is the untruth. In fact
mahātmās like Gauḍapādācārya take the significance of
cognition to its extreme. He declares that whatever you
cognize is unreal. Why? Because you are cognizing it: yad
dṛśyaṁ tannāśyam tan mithyā.1 People struggle to define
mithyā. There is one beautiful definition of mithyā: whatever
you do not experience in sleep is mithyā. Therefore we do not
want to give too much importance to cognition. Cognition is
entirely dependent upon the sense organs and the mind. If you
put on glasses your cognition is one way, and when you
remove them the cognition changes. With a microscope you
cognize something and without a microscope you may
cognize something different.
Therefore cognition is not always uniform. For a man who
is born blind, for example, the cognitions are unique. For
instance, there is nothing like what normal people understand
as light and darkness. That pair of opposites just does not

1
‘What is seen is subject to destruction and hence unreal (see
discussion to verse 11)
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exist for a man born blind. You must be born with eyesight to
experience the pair of opposites. Cognition is not so
sacrosanct and therefore the object of cognition need not be
assumed as real.
Cognition is the integration of sensations
We have to examine cognition deeply. There are sense
organs and there is something behind them that interprets the
sensations. When you look at a flower, it throws some light
upon the retina, which generates millions of optical sensations
in the form of alternating electrical current. All those
sensations go to a particular locale in the brain. A specific
area in the brain is reserved for every sense organ and
therefore all these optical sensations are fed into that part of
the brain. The brain cells receive those sensations and
perform a function called integration. This integration is very
important thing because multiple, diverse and differentiated
species of information are all collated and a meaningful sense
is created out of them. When the brain cells integrate all these
optical sensations and they throw up an idea, and the name of
that idea is e.g. ‘rose.’ God knows what it really is, but what
you make out of it is ‘rose.’
Cognition requires the cognizer
There is no truth in cognition per se. If you assume that
there is truth in cognition, you are irrevocably caught in
saṁsāra. As rational thinkers, we should not be sentimental
and emotional when it comes to the truth. We should rise
above emotions and sentimentality, which have no value at
all, and must be very precise in our approach to the truth.

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Cognition is not sacrosanct, and more over it is divisive.
There cannot be cognition unless you are a self-conscious
person. There cannot be cognition of rose in the absence of a
body-mind-identified, self-conscious persona. The ego must
be there. This is the knower in the duality of the knower and
the known.
So where is the known? You may say it is outside, but
there is nothing like outside. Whatever is outside is inside and
whatever is inside is outside. This is pure physics. What you
call flower is within the cognition alone. The seer is also
within the cognition. And the process of seeing is also part
and parcel of the cognition. This process is time-bound
because of the time taken for the light to travel from the
object to the eyes, the creation of the electrical sensations, and
conveying these sensations to the brain. These sensations
travel with a certain velocity and so the laws of physics
operate there. Cognition takes place in a fraction of a second.
Because it is such a small time, that you assume it to be
instantaneous, but it is a process.
Cognition is time-bound, reality is not
The process is time-bound, but reality is not time-bound.
Sri Śaṅkara maintains that whatever is time-bound cannot be
the truth. He connects the truth to time, saying that nityam
eva satyam, timeless alone is real. That which is timebound is
mithyā, unreal, in spite of its making an appearance. Even the
time scale is variable; when you are resting on the earth and
watching a process, that is one particular time scale, whereas
when you are in a speeding rocket and watching, the time
scale changes.
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 We experience this relativity of time in dream very well.
You may experience a time of ten or twenty years in the
dream, but when compared with the waking time scale, it may
not be more than five to ten minutes. Albert Einstein
described the relativity of time by saying that when a young
man is sitting in the park and his beloved is by his side
whispering in his ear, one hour feels like one minute; and
when he is sitting on a hot stove, one minute feels like one
hour. Theory of relativity is lot more complex, but the point is
that cognition is not the truth – it is a process, it is time-
bound, and it is also like a dipole.
When I say unreal, I am not saying that the flower alone is
unreal. I am saying that the flower is unreal, the person who
sees the flower is unreal, and the process of seeing is also
unreal. People assume that the flower is mithyā but the guy
seeing it is real. That is not Vedanta. The world is a process, a
phenomenon, and therefore anitya, timebound. Being anitya,
it is asatya, another word for mithyā.
The unreal requires the real as its basis
Then what is the truth? You cannot have the unreal
without the truth. There are some philosophers and great
thinkers, who are Nihilists. They subscribe to the view that
the cognition is false. This is fine because cognition is
invariably conditioned by society, family, etc. The question
is, does the unreal have a real background or not? Śūnyavādīs
say, ‘Why do you want to bring another thing? What is
cognized is unreal and there is nothing more to it. Therefore
śūnya, nothingness, is the truth.’ Sri Śaṅkara retorts: Does
śūnya assert itself? Or you proclaim that śūnya is the truth?’
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There must be a conscious being to testify the śūnya, and
therefore sākṣī-caitanya, witnessing awareness, must be there.
That is the satya, that is the cid-ātmā. That caitanya is the
light in which cognitions arise and disappear.
The movie example is very much valid in this context. The
movie you see is a process, but the amazing thing about this
process is that the movement you perceive does not come
from the light; it comes from the film and also from your
head. Light doesn’t dance, the figure in the light dances. The
dance is illumined by the light, which itself has no dancing.
That is the beauty.
Reality is immanent, yet transcendent
This is what we call ‘immanent yet transcendent.’ This is a
very important expression. There is no dance without light;
light pervades every pixel of that dancing screen on which
you see the dance, and yet light itself is not connected with
any movement called dance. Light is immanent yet
transcendent.
I will give you another example: take a piece of paper and
put a pinhole in it. This hole is in the paper, yet it is not of the
paper, just as the light is in the movement but not of the
movement. Paper is a material thing, but the hole is space.
The paper has certain qualities, such as a weight, shape etc.
The hole has nothing to do with all that. The paper is brown,
but what about the hole? Thus the hole is immanent yet
transcendent.
The dualists do not agree with this vision. For them,
transcendent is not acceptable because then the transcendent
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alone would be real and what is left behind is unreal. And
they want everything to be real. This is the true vision:
immanent, yet transcendent. You are in the body but you are
not of the body. This distinction of body and the embodied
comes in the Gītā (2-13) in the very beginning. Body and the
embodied belong to different orders of reality, like the scene
on the screen and the light which illuminates the scene. They
are not of the same order of reality: the scene is unreal,
transient, and purely an appearance, whereas the light is real,
timeless, and it is the truth of the entire movie. Similarly, the
cognitive process of the waking and dream states, and
experience of the absence of this process in the sleep state, is
made possible by the light of awareness. We have to find out
which is the truth. Is the cognitive process with its content the
truth? Or is the light that makes them evident the truth? Or
both of them are the truth?
You have to be precise about it. There is a nyāya, logical
convention, called ardha-jaratīya, ‘half-egg logic.’ It means
you take one egg and cut it in the center, then let one half
hatch to become the chick and use the other half to make an
omelet (aṇḍasya ardhaṁ pākāya ardhaṁ prasavāya). We have
to settle whether this world is real or unreal. This question is
necessary because the world appears to us and also bothers
us. If it does not appear, or does not bother us, there is no
problem, e.g. no one discusses whether the horn of a human,
is real or unreal. Even the dualists, who generally do not say
anything is unreal, agree that the horn of a human is unreal. Is
the world real or unreal?
One Reality assumes all forms
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 In fact, the entire cognitive process and its content are
unreal. Only Atman is real. The cit, light of awareness, which
lights up all the cognitive processes, alone is real. Light alone
assumes all the forms, living, and non-living. Vividha-ākṛtiḥ
cit, means that awareness alone acquires all these forms.
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (1-4-7) proclaims: paśyaṁścakṣuḥ
śṛṇvan śrotram --- ātmetyeva upāsitavyam; Atman reflecting
in the eye enabling eyesight is called eyesight, reflecting in
the ears is called hearing. Atman reflecting in the mind
enables the process of thinking. We must contemplate upon
the fact that Atman alone is shining in the form of all these
faculties. The light of awareness acquires a form, which is the
thought, and thus the light of awareness alone acquires a
name according to the form of the object of the thought. The
form is mind and the mind is a movement in the cit.
Prajñāna is another name for cit
Cit is prajñāna. Pañcadaśī (5-1) defines prajñāna as
yenekṣate śṛṇotīdaṁ jighrati vyākaroti ca, svādvasvādū
vijānāti tat prajñānamudīritam. Prajñāna is that by which we
see this world, we listen, we pick up the smells, we know the
tasty and not tasty, and by which we think and speak.
Prajñāna or cit is that reality which cannot be seen, heard,
tasted, or thought of. That is the light which alone acquires all
these forms.
Is the world a manifestation or an apparition?
Then there is another issue: people are so much attached to
the world, that they want to prove that the world is real. With
respect to a movie, such people would say, ‘We agree that the

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light alone appears in the forms of hero, heroine, villain etc.
But the hero, heroine, and villain are the manifest forms of
the light.’ This word ‘manifest’ is a problem. Did the rajju,
rope, manifest as a serpent? You cannot say that unless you
give some special meaning to the word ‘manifest.’ This is
how the dualists present it. There are many varieties of
dualists, and they say that the light which is Brahman, the
reality, has manifested as all these forms. For them, what has
manifested is real and the outcome of the manifestation is also
real. This is the issue, and our response must be that
manifestation can only mean apparition or appearance.
A question is posed: is the jagat a pariṇāma,
transformational effect, or a vivarta, just an apparition, of
Brahman? If you say jagat is a transformational effect of
Brahman, you are a pariṇāma-vādī and you come into the
category of the schools of thought called sāṅkhya, yoga,
viśiṣṭa-advaita, śuddhādvaita, dvaitādvaita etc. They take the
stance that it is transformational because probably they do not
want their various devotional forms like rāsa-līlā etc. to be put
into the category of mithyā. But we are not in favor of this
transformational causation because in the case of the rope-
snake, your fear is not caused by a transformed serpent, it is
caused by an apparent serpent. That is why you can get rid of
the fear. If it were caused by a transformed serpent, how
would you get rid of that fear?
Transformational causation is not acceptable in advaita.
We are vivarta-vādīs because we accept apparitional
causation. The rope is the apparitional cause of the serpent,
not its transformational cause. The movie scenes are
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apparitional products of the light, not transformational. The
ontological reality is that light alone is. The name given to
this by Vedanta scholars in the commentaries of Brahma-
sūtra, etc. is prakṛti-vikāra-ananyatva-nyāya, and that is being
pointed out here. Prakṛti is the upādāna, material cause.
Vikāra means the effect, and this effect is ananya, never
separate from its cause.
Forms are not separate from the reality
In the movie what is, is the light. The scenes appear, but
they are not separate from the light. Similarly, satya-citaḥ
pṛthag bhinnā na sidhyet, all these forms of the world are not
pṛthag bhinna, separate and different, from satya-cit, the
reality that is the Awareness Absolute. It is not like a mother
giving birth to a child, which is real and the child is separate
from the mother. It is not that there is the cit and also the
world of experiences, which are separate from cit and appear
within that cit. That kind of duality na sidhyet, cannot be
established.
Therefore in the entire process of rūpa-jñāna, knowledge
of form, what you see is not real, the process of seeing is not
real, and the means by which you see are not real. Only the
light in which this process and rūpa, form, etc. appear is real.
This light reflects in the mind and a sense organ, and then a
rūpa is cognized. Without light there is no mind and no sense
organ and hence no form. When light is there, the mind, sense
organ, and form come to light, and without light they are just
not there. If they are real, then they must be there with
light and without light also. But they do not get established
that way.
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 In the movie example, the light alone is real, whereas the
impressions on the film and the scenes are not real. This is
just a dṛṣṭānta, example; there could be some differences
between the dṛṣṭānta and the dārṣṭantikā, the topic that is
being explained. In the case of the movie, you may say that
the film is real and the screen is real, but you should not
stretch the example like that. In the example, the light
corresponds to the Atman, the light of Awareness, the mind is
the film, the sense objects are what we experience, and space-
time is the canvas. In all of this, the light alone is real. Things
do not exist independently, they just appear in that light.
Ornaments are only an effect of gold
Maharshi gives the standard example with a rhetorical
question: does a variety of ornaments exist? If you say yes,
then you have to answer the next question: do these
ornaments have any existence without gold? Are they
separate from it? People have a misconception that somehow
the clay-pot example is qualitatively different from the rope-
serpent example. This needs to be examined carefully. First,
check where Sri Śaṅkara stands. There is the statement in the
Chāndogya Upaniṣad (6-2-1) : vācārambhaṇaṁ vikāro
nāmadheyam.
Here Bhagawan Ramana Maharshi is making the same
point. Note that he employs the word vikāra. This word
relates to the Upaniṣadic statement mentioned above. Vikāra
means a product or an effect. It is nāma-dheya, a mere name.
Then what is the substance or essence of which it is the
effect? If you say that the basis for the necklace is in gold, it
is wrong. It is not what the śruti is saying. Śruti says vācā
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ārambhaṇam, and Sri Śaṅkara explains as vāg-ālambanam.
Ālambana means basis. So the basis for the necklace is in
vāk, speech. This necklace is not in the gold, it is only in the
mind. From the mind it comes into our speech. Therefore the
basis for the necklace is not gold, it is in vāk, speech, which is
an expression of the mind. Being a projection of the mind, it
cannot be real. It does not exist independently of the gold; it
is unlike the child that exists independent of the mother.
In Kālidāsa’s story of Śakuntalā, the heroine grew up in
the forest, so she does not know what an ornament is. She
would know it only after coming to the city inhabited and
ruled by Duṣyanta. If you show a necklace to her, she would
tell that it is a metal because she knew what metal is. But she
would not say that it is a necklace because ‘necklace’ is not in
her mind. Therefore the light of awareness alone is real. In
this example, gold alone is real and all the ornaments are
unreal. That is advaita. We always end up with ekaṁ sat, one
reality.
Verse 16

िद्युष्मदोरस्मिद सं प्रििष्ठा िच्चस्मन् ििनष्टेऽस्मिद मूलबोधाि् ।

िद्युष्मदस्मन्मिििञ्चजयिैका च्चिििर्ज्यलिी सहजाऽऽत्मनस्स्याि् ।।१६
tadyuṣmadorasmadi saṁpratiṣṭhā
tasmin vinaṣṭe’smadi mūlabodhāt,
tadyuṣmadasmanmativarjitaikā
sthitirjvalantī sahaj’’ātmanassyāt. 16
tad-yuṣmadoḥ – to ‘he (or that)’ and ‘you (or this)’; asmadi
– in ‘myself’; saṁpratiṣṭhā – well established abode
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(substratum); mūla-bodhāt – because of the knowledge of the
substratum (Atman); tasmin – that; asmadi – ‘myself’; vinaṣṭe
– when vanished; ātmanaḥ – to oneself; tad-yuṣmad-asman-
mati-varjitā – divested of the notions of ‘he’ (or ‘that’), ‘you’
(or ‘this’) and ‘me’; ekā – one; sthitiḥ – state; jvalantī –
shining; sahaja – natural; syāt – occurs.
‘He’ (or ‘that’) and ‘you’ (or ‘this) are based firmly
in ‘myself.’ When the Self which is their origin is
realized, the Self divested of the notions of ‘he’ (or
‘that’), ‘you’ (or ‘this’) and ‘myself’ shines in its
natural state. It occurs because of such realization.
The separation between scriptures and life
While studying the scriptures, we generally tend to make
the mistake of looking at the śāstra as something separate
from life. We call it a scripture and then we create a halo
around it, as in the case of the Upaniṣad, the Veda, and so on.
In doing so, we create a sort of distance – you are where you
are, which is what we call ‘practical life’ or ‘normal life,’ and
the scripture is there at a safe distance. We do this
unconsciously and there are many traditions involved in this.
Some of them have a positive content, such as doing
elaborate prayers before studying Brahma Sūtra bhāṣya. In
doing so, however, you have already created a big gap
between yourself and the bhāṣya, whereas Sri Śaṅkara is
talking about the sense of ‘you and me.’ Is this sense of ‘you
and me’ part of life or is it a scriptural issue? It is life, but
even before mentioning the first word, you have already
created a kind of halo around it and now you are looking at it

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from a safe distance so that it would not disturb you. Thus we
study bhāṣyas and other scriptures for an entire life time and
then give a name to it, calling it ‘philosophy.’ It is
philosophy, of course, but it is more than philosophy – it is
very simple and it is life itself. It is not complex or difficult or
unrelated to you, and it is not some hallowed thing that you
cannot reach.
Life is always now and here
It is life that we are talking about, and life is always now
and here; it is never at some time in the future. The glory of
Bhagawan Ramana Maharshi is that he brought all the
scriptures down to the earth from the high pedestal, where the
society has placed them. He taught them in a very simple way
that even a common man can understand them. There are
certain things a simple, innocent person can easily understand
which even the scholars cannot understand because the latter
are highly conditioned. We say ‘life’ and give it some
attribute like ‘practical life’ or ‘normal life,’ but the truth is
that what we call practical or normal life is almost completely
impractical and abnormal life. There is no pragmatism in it;
our fears and desires have no meaning, and the kind of actions
that they prompt us into are equally meaningless. We are very
superstitious people. Therefore we have to first acknowledge
some of these things.
‘You’ and ‘he’ have their basis in ‘me’
Tad-yuṣmadoḥ asmadi sampratiṣṭhā – what we call
‘normal’ is the most abnormal thing. For example, we
experience ‘you’ and ‘he.’ Yuṣmad, you, means whatever is

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in front, which is called the second person. And whatever is
away is tad, ‘he (or that),’ which is in the third person. These
are not absolute, however; they are relative. Relative to what?
To asmad, me. Without the sense of ‘me,’ there can never be
the sense of ‘you’ and ‘him.’ Thus what we call normal or
practical life is centered around ‘me.’ Then other
relationships come, such as friend or foe. We divide things
into the opposites as usual, forgetting all the time that there is
no ‘you ‘or ‘he’ without ‘me.’ This is the meaning of the very
amazing statement, tad-yuṣmador-asmadi sampratiṣṭhā.
The ‘me’ sense is not real
The question now is whether this ‘me’ is real or unreal.
Another name for that sense of ‘me’ is ‘the self-conscious
person.’ Is this self-conscious person, which is experienced or
sensed by all of us as ‘me,’ real? And is there anything else in
myself other than this ‘me’? You should examine these
things. If you just take the book of Sad-darśanam, put in a
glass case, offer flowers and worship, it fails to inspire us. But
Maharishi is talking about basic human existence, which is
me and you. That is why he is raising this issue.
The sense of ‘me’ is the ego. Sometimes the word ‘I’ is
used in the sense of ‘me’ to mean the ego, but to make it very
clear, I am saying ‘me.’ ‘I’ is very straightforward, whereas
‘me’ is very mischievous. Even in English language we can
see that.
The ‘me’ is always the body-identified, self-conscious
person. We always take ourselves to be such a ‘me’ and live a
life as dictated by that sense. We assume that as a practical

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and normal way to live. But this is wrong all the way because
you are not always this self-conscious person. We are
particularly self-conscious in certain situations. When a newly
wedded man goes to his wife’s village to meet his in-laws for
the first time, he is the most self-conscious person in the
entire village. But when he goes to a movie, it takes him away
from this silly ‘me’ and he is absorbed in that movie. When
you are absorbed in a good movie, the ‘me’ is totally absent
for about two hours. Or when you are out in Nature and in
communion with that beauty, there is no ‘me.’ But when a
friend comes by and you see him, the ‘me’ is again in place.
The real I and the shadow I
So this ‘me’ is not permanent; it is there and it is not there.
The question is, what are you? There is a change in that self-
conscious state, which shows that there is another dimension
to yourself, when the ‘me’ is not there. That is awareness, the
knowingness. Just because ‘me’ has disappeared, you do not
turn into a piece of stone. If I am looking at the open sky, the
‘me’ is gone, but it does not mean I have become a statue. I
am fully alert and aware and awake to a beauty which is
beyond the mind. When I was ‘me,’ I missed that beauty, but
when the ‘me’ is gone, I am suddenly awake to that beauty.
Therefore I am not a non-entity in the absence of ‘me.’ I am
what I am; that is the real ‘I.’ This ‘me’ is a shadow or a fake.
Thus we have two ‘I’s in place: which is real and which is
unreal? Which is the first and which is an offshoot? When
you wake up, you do not wake up as the ‘me.’ You just wake
up and become aware. Then the body comes into focus and
you routinely identify with the body and become the ‘me.’
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What you are, you are, but you become and unbecome ‘me.’
Therefore ‘me’ emerges out of the awareful being due to the
predilections of the mind. Then you identify with that and
become that. But to begin with, there is no ‘me,’ there is just
the pure awareful being.
Ramana Maharshi says that that from which the ‘me’
arises is the mūla, origin. This mūla, the awareful being, is
not ‘me,’ which is why we call the mūla the egoless
awareness. The mūla is not a person, it is impersonal
awareness. For example, necklace is an ornament, but gold is
not an ornament. Gold is something that is the origin of the
ornament, but in itself it is not an ornament. Similarly, the
mūla is the awareness, which is not a person. Realization of
this truth that you are the mūla is called mūla-bodha. Bodha is
realization. Mūla-bodhāt, when you realize yourself as that
impersonal awareness, the ‘me’ vanishes. And when the ‘me’
vanishes, the sense of ‘you’ and ‘he’ or ‘she’ also vanishes.
The walls that divide and separate vanish, and you experience
the oneness with all. This is a great thing. You have to look at
these two things – the ‘me’ and the mūla – and ascertain
which of the two you are.
The story of the shadow
In one of his teachings, Swami Rama Tirtha mentions a
fairy tale by a Danish author named Hans Christian Anderson.
This story captures the ‘I’ as described by Swami Rama
Tirtha. In this story, there is a great man who is a poet and is
well acclaimed in the society. One evening, while on a
journey in Africa, he is on his terrace and a fire is lighted up
in the fireplace because it is a bit cold. He is watching the
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stars when he notices that these flames behind him are casting
a shadow of himself at some distance. He looks at the flames,
then at the shadow, and again at himself and is amused by
that shadow. The fire is put out and he goes inside and sleeps.
The next morning, when he wakes up, the sun is shining
brilliantly and he is thinking about his shadow again. He
looks around, but he finds no shadow. This is a fairy tale, you
know! He leaves that place and goes home in Denmark. One
day, years later, a man arrives at his door and tells him, ‘I am
your shadow.’ ‘Where were you all these days?,’ the author
asks. ‘I went elsewhere, but now I am back,’ says the shadow.
The shadow tells the author how he, a shadow, turned man-
like. The story goes on and on. Over time, this shadow man
becomes richer and fatter, while the poet grows thin. After
that, the author meets a beautiful young lady. He tries to
befriend this lady, but one day the shadow tells him, ‘I have
seen you befriending that lady. Stop that from now on,
because I have myself fallen in love with her.’ ‘What do you
mean?,’ asks the author, ‘I love her and I want to marry her.’
‘No,’ replies the shadow, ‘I am giving you a very strict
warning. Do not go anywhere near her because I am going to
marry her myself.’ The author is worried that his own shadow
is plotting against him. The shadow has become an enemy.
The next day, the shadow meets that lady, who is from a
very rich family. To cut a long story short, this heavy-set,
well-built shadow guy marries the rich woman, while the
poet, very thin, disappointed and unhappy, is lying in a
corner. The lady sees him and asks the shadow, ‘Who is that
guy? He seems to resemble you in some fashion! He seems to
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be unhappy, why is he looking at us like that?’ The shadow
tells her, ‘He is only my shadow, but he is crazy and thinks he
is real and original. Do not bother about him. I am the real
guy and he is a fake and nuisance.’ ‘Then if he is a nuisance,
why do not you get rid of him?’ ‘That’s a good idea,’ says the
shadow. So the shadow executes this poet and marries the
beautiful lady. That is the story.
This story is highly philosophical. The shadow is the false
‘me.’ So in life we gain the shadow and lose the original. I
feel that this story perfectly portrays our life because the real
‘I,’ the true self, is obliterated. The only way to kill the real is
to just ignore it and falsify it. It is as though the real ‘I,’
Atman, is executed. Only the shadow is left to go through life.
This is the real suicide. What a misfortune!
Getting rid of the shadow
We need to reverse the whole situation by getting rid of the
sense of ‘me.’ This is practical life, it is not some utopia. In
the Gītā, the last two verses of the second chapter (2-71,72),
which strike me as the most powerful verses with the most
direct statement: --- nirmamo nirahaṅkāraḥ --- eṣā brāhmī
sthitiḥ pārtha. In a way, this is the end of the teaching of the
Gītā. But then it all begins again because Arjuna comes up
with a question, leading to the next chapter. Otherwise the
teaching is over.
The message is: look at yourself and give up all the
desires. People do not want to give up desires. They ask,
‘Without desires, how can we live a practical, normal life?’
Who told you that your present life is practical or normal?

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What is normal about it? You are dreaming. The kind of
obsessive desires that we have and the kind of actions –
secular and religious – that we undertake are the most
abnormal thing. There is nothing normal about them.
Therefore when a person lives a life truly, he does not run
away from life. Those vāsanās which give rise to desires are
gone. When you stop pursuing desires, the vāsanās will
slowly go away. Unless you pursue a desire, the vāsanā
cannot survive. Just do not pursue the desire; allow it to go;
the vāsanā will also be gone.
Desire creates the ‘me’ sense
You may wonder, ‘What has this got to do with the ‘me’
sense that we were talking about?’ It has got everything to do
with it because every time you strive after a desire, you have
precipitated the ‘me.’ When you do not pursue a desire, there
is no ‘me’ sense. You remain the pure impersonal awareness,
aham brahma asmi.
Two things we should clearly understand about aham
brahma asmi: one is that aham is not the ‘me’, and the other is
that Brahman is not the personal God. This should be clear
because every ‘me’ has a mediate God. There are different
personal gods for different ‘me’s. There are many ‘me’s’
fighting with each other about the superiority of their
respective personal gods.
Every time you pursue a desire, the ‘me’ sense gets
crystallized. This also happens when you feel afraid or
insecure, but when you give up the desires, all fears go away
by themselves. Every fear has its roots in desire, so
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desirelessness automatically leads to fearlessness. Therefore
give up the desires and even the tendency to desire. When you
fulfill that condition, then you will find that there is
nirmamatva, no sense of ‘mine.’ This ‘mine’ sense belongs to
the ‘me.’ Another name for nirmamatva is vairāgya,
dispassion. First ‘mine’ will go, and once the ‘mine’ is gone,
the ‘me’ will also go.
Losing the notion of ‘mine’
Let us examine this notion of ‘mine.’ Suppose there is no
‘mine,’ there are no possessions. Did you ever examine such a
situation? No possessions means that I do not own anything. I
am not poor because I am giving things to others. I am not
rich either, because I do not own anything. The feeling of
rich-poor duality is transcended. The poor person is
struggling to become rich and the rich to become richer. Both
are saṁsārīs. A jñānī is neither poor nor rich. One is poor
because the sense of ‘mine’ rules his life. Another is rich for
the same reason. But when there are no possessions, there is a
marvelous freedom.
Also, when you do not possess anything, a few things may
be still lingering around, or somebody may take them away.
In the USA, people put the items they do not want outside on
the sidewalk. It means ‘I do not possess them.’ When you put
things inside, it means that you possess all of them. But if I do
not possess them, they will be there for a day or two, and then
suddenly the next morning they are gone because somebody
has taken them away. You lose them apparently, but you do
not lose them really because you do not possess them. And
your apparent loss is somebody else’s gain, which is
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wonderful. You can see the beauty of getting rid of ‘mine’
sense because other people who are needy will get them.
The question of survival
Then the question of how to survive may arise. Survival is
not your problem. Please understand that survival is not the
problem of Atman. Atman is timeless and it is not going to
die. I am telling you a very practical thing, not something
philosophical. You are not going to die. ‘No, this body will
die.’ True, the body will die, but na hanyate hanyamāne
śarīre, but you are not going to die.
But what about the survival of the body at least? That is
also not your problem. The survival of the body is the
problem of the body and the mind; that is how it works out
even now. The body wants food, and the mind arranges food.
The mind knows when and where the food is available, and
the places where the food is better, and so on, and it will take
care of the body. You are not involved. Between them, the
body and mind will work it out. If you examine what is going
on in life, you will see that this is what is exactly happening.
The body and mind work it out happily between themselves;
you need not interfere.
Therefore, survival is the body’s problem and it will be
solved by eating food, drinking water, sleeping, and taking
medicine when it is needed. There is enough food for every
life form in the world. Do not worry on that account; there is
food enough to share. Therefore it is practical and doable to
get rid of the sense of ‘mine.’ Once the sense of ‘mine’ is

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gone, more than 50% of ‘me’ is gone, because this ‘me’ has
evolved around the possessions.
Attachment to the familiar is human nature
There is a way of living, which we can call the ‘present
way of living.’ This is not about a particular person or group
of persons. As long as you are interested in or attached to the
present way of living, you will not abandon it. This present
way of living is also called ‘the familiar.’ You cling to the
familiar, which is human nature. For example, you go into a
hall and there are a hundred people. Then suddenly you see
one person who is familiar to you, whereas the others are not,
so you make your way through the crowd and stick to that
person alone. Like this, we have created an ambience around
us consisting of things and people that we are interested in.
We are attached to those things and hang on to them. It is the
same way with all people. We casually say sarve bhavantu
sukhinaḥ, may all beings be happy, but can you open your
heart to a totally unknown person? Can you love a person for
no reason whatsoever? That is an altogether different thing.
We cling to the familiar and we are attached to that which
is the immediate. The immediate consists of things, objects,
including the bank account, and then some near and dear
ones. You can recognize the saṁsārī in every step. This
clinging strengthens the sense of ‘mine’ and ‘me,’ and as long
as it remains, there will be no discovery of the Truth.
This feeling of ‘me and mine’ is a very cunning. Like the
shadow who destroyed the original guy, it takes over so
totally that now you start saying, ‘my God’ is stronger than

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‘his God,’ ‘my religion is better than his religion,’ ‘my garden
is better than his garden,’ even ‘my Vedanta is better than the
Vedanta of the other.’ Then the ‘me’ has led you away from
the truth. We have to fully realize the bondage in which we
find ourselves. We live in great sorrow and how hard we are
trying to escape from this sorrow. Our celebrations, festivals,
parties, friendships, tourism, and pilgrimages are mostly
attempts to escape from this plight. It is mostly escapism.
Most of the rituals are an attempt to escape from that unhappy
situation.
The need for inner revolution
Sorrow is not just crying; it is the immense sense of
insecurity with which we live. You have to realize all that,
and then you have to revolt against it. Self-knowledge is
nothing short of an inner revolution, a radical transformation.
The discovery of the truth cannot take place until and unless
you revolt against the present way of living, in which you
retain the sense of ‘me-and-mine’ intact without ever
examining its validity. Did you ever doubt whether there can
be a state without ego? Did you start applying some faulty
circular logic such as, ‘How can there be no ego? Who is it
that has to give up the ego? Ego has to give up ego?’ If so,
you have only brought in some clever logic to keep your
shadow intact, which can overwhelm the real even further.
Therefore, do not ask who has to give up the ego or how –
just allow it to go and it will go. Do not pursue things that
precipitate the ‘me-and-mine.’ The value system you have put
in place in your present way of living, you have built a prison
around you, and you have to demolish that prison yourself.
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No one else can do it on your behalf. A Guru cannot do it, not
even God can do it. You built the prison, and so you must
demolish it. Investigate whether you are exploiting the other
person in a relationship; if so, that is the ‘me.’ Are you taking
psychological advantage of the spouse or the children? If so,
that is the ‘me.’ Watch the mind. See how it is moving in a
given relationship and examine the machinations of the mind.
Be aware of the worthless systems that you have created
around you, and dismantle them.
Dropping ‘me-mine’ facilitates discovery of the true Self
When you do this perseveringly, you discover the false me
and mine. Śrī Kṛṣṇa says (Gita, 2-71) that if you fulfill just
this one condition, namely nirmamo nirahaṅkāraḥ, losing the
sense of mine and also of me, then you gain śānti. Sri Śaṅkara
points out here that śānti is mokṣa, liberation. Śrī Kṛṣṇa
concludes by saying that this state of egoless awareness, in
which there is no ‘me’ or ‘mine’ is brāhmī, of Brahman. We
should aim at this state of awareness before the body perishes.
Who knows when this body will perish? One can attain
mokṣa even while living.
Therefore, we have to pay attention and work for the
vināṣa, total annihilation, of the sense of ‘me,’ of the egoism.
Wisdom does not emanate from the ego. When that small self
rules the life, we are burdened with the bondage of ignorance.
Knowledge of the true self dawns only when one has effaced
egoism and selfishness. Therefore, you have to find out what
are the elements that precipitate the ego. Preoccupation with
name and form are the hallmarks of ego. People are attached
to a name, like a family name, titles, degrees, caste, creed,
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religion, occupation, residence in a given locality, and so on.
None of these things constitute the real self. This nāma-rūpa-
buddhi is a very important source of strength for the ego.
Therefore we have to work at it. We must reach a state of
awareness in which nāma and rūpa become irrelevant. They
are not the real you. You are not the egoistic self that is
constituted of all these elements. That is the shadow self, and
it is an obstacle in the realization of God.
The ego also manifests in the form of passions. People
have a passion for something or the other, which is a
manifestation of ego. Some interest is okay, but being
passionate about the things of the world crystallizes and
strengthens the ego. The opposite of passion is vairāgya,
dispassion. Vairāgya really helps to neutralize the ego.
The story of Bhasmāsura
In the Puranas there are some very interesting and valuable
stories on this topic. One is the story of Bhasmāsura. He was
an asura (asuṣu ramate), a passionate person. Asu means the
senses, so those who enjoy the sense pleasures are called
asuras. Such people also worship God. Hiraṇyakṣa,
Hiraṇyakaśipu, and even Rāvaṇa, all the famous asuras, were
worshipers of God. In fact, the asuras worship even more than
the good people. In India, the blackmailers and mafia dons
worship a lot. They donate costly – cost running into millions
of rupees -- crowns and other ornaments to gods. Therefore,
one can even use the worship of God to aggrandize the ego.
This Bhasmāsura worshiped God, and God, Lord Śiva,
appeared before him. He said, ‘You have performed great

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penance, so I will grant you a boon. What do you want?’
Bhasmāsura told him, ‘When I put my hand on anyone’s
head, he should turn into ashes.’ This is the expression of the
ego. Lord Śiva thought about it for a while and agreed to the
request of Bhasmāsura. Previously he had some other name,
but now he is called Bhasmāsura because bhasma means
ashes. Now when he puts his hand on someone’s head, that
person will turn into ashes. Bhasmāsura got up and said, ‘Let
me test whether the boon works or not,’ and he tried to put his
hand on Lord Śiva’s head. Lord Śiva pretended to be afraid
and started running, with Bhasmāsura running behind him.
Then Lord Śiva created with his power a beautiful woman, a
celestial dancer, sitting on the bank of a lake and singing a
melodious song. This song came through the soft breeze of
the woods and Bhasmāsura heard it. Even while running after
Śiva, he saw this woman and stopped there. ‘I can take care of
Śiva later,’ he thought. Then he came to the lady, professed
his love to her and proposed marriage. She accepted his
proposal, but on the condition that he must take the sacred
bath in the lake. He entered into the waters, but while bathing,
he touched his own head and it turned into ashes.
This Bhasmāsura story symbolizes the ego. People earn
some wealth, and based on that they develop ego. That ego
ultimately leads them to total destruction. Or one acquires
some scholarship and has bloated ego. That ego ultimately
destroys the scholarship. Or one may even worship God and
may develop ego due to that. Ultimately it destroys the
devotion. Ego is the Bhasmāsura, and you should do away
with it by reminding yourself that your mūla, foundation, is

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not the ego. Ego parades as the subject but it is really an
object, and you can watch its movement.
Relationships mirror the ego
There is a meditation in which you watch the movement of
the ego. Choose any instance from your life and see how this
ego functioned then. For example, take a relationship and see
how the ego functions in that relationship. A relationship is
like a mirror to observe yourself. If you experience conflict in
a relationship, that is an acid test that proves the operation of
the ego. Or if you experience peace, happiness, comradeship
in the relationship, it means there is love, peace, and good
will in the heart therefore the ego is not in charge. Examine a
relationship and see the ego’s impact on it. We tend to take
advantage of relationship for psychological reasons. I am not
talking about physical help, which we all do because we all
depend upon one another in some way. Somebody has to
prepare food and serve us, and so on. But deriving
psychological advantage is the characteristic of the ego. If I
am not seeking any psychological advantage, but instead
interested in giving and loving, that is the sign of the absence
of ego.
Awarefulness removes desire and fear
Being aware or watchful of the ego will take you to the
higher dimension of awareness, which is other than the ego.
This is how you do away with your ego. When the ego is not
there, there are no desires and you do not feel like wanting
something. If someone asks, ‘What do you want?, ‘you exert
yourself to come up with an answer because you do not want

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anything. Similarly, there is no fear because what is there to
be afraid of in this world? You are immortal; why should you
be afraid of anything?
There is a story about Alexander the Great. He was on the
road and met a monk standing there. The monk would not
move out to make way for Alexander. Alexander had already
conquered half the world, so he took out his sword and said,
‘I will behead you!’ The monk just smiled. ‘Are you not
afraid?,’ asked Alexander ‘No, I am not afraid.’ ‘I will kill
you!’ ‘You cannot,’ said the monk, ‘na hanyate hanyamāne
śarīre, when the body falls, the Self does not die.’ Alexander
was stunned and left the monk alone. Then there is another
story about Bhagavān Buddha and the dacoit Aṅgulīmāla, a
terrible robber who loved to kill people. Aṅgulīmāla took his
sword and was about to behead Bhagavān Buddha. Buddha
was smiling, and Aṅgulīmāla hesitated. Then a dialogue
ensued, which caused Aṅgulīmāla to change his heart and
become a mendicant.
Therefore there is nothing to be afraid of in this world. We
are afraid of some loss, but what will you lose? Even the body
is not yours. Money certainly cannot be lost because it is
never yours. If somebody is trying to steal my purse, I will
give him the purse and also something more and send him
away. There is nothing to lose and there is nothing to gain.
Therefore what is there to be afraid of?
No need to fear God
There is no conceivable reason to fear God. This is how
the religions work in practice; the basis for religion is fear of

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God, whereas the basis for spirituality is love of God. Fear of
God is not desirable at all. Why should you be afraid of God?
For example, suppose you are driving and suddenly you see a
police car. If you are afraid, it means that you are driving too
fast. Otherwise why should you be afraid of the police car?
Keep below 65 mph and you need not be afraid of the cop.
Similarly, why should you be afraid of God? If I am stealing
someone else’s property or doing something wrong, I should
be afraid of God, but not otherwise. The fear of God is a
product of superstition, and superstition is again the
characteristic of the ego. Therefore there is nothing to be
afraid of and nothing to desire. Then when you look within,
you find no desires, no fears, no ego.
You are the pure space-like awareful being, which is called
sat. You are that awareness, which is totally free from the
notions of ‘he, you, and me.’ That divisive thinking, which is
the characteristic of the ego, is totally gone. When a religious
person meets another person of the same religion, he
immediately feels a kind of bond. But if the other person is of
a different religion, he immediately becomes uneasy and feels
an acute sense of otherness, separateness. This is how the ego
operates by picking and choosing. But in the absence of ego,
these divisions vanish. It is like when a black cloud is hanging
in the sky, you miss the glory of the sky and are focused only
on the black cloud; whereas when the black cloud is totally
gone, you have clear sky in whichever direction you see –
unbounded space. Similarly, your core will be pure cit,
spacious awareness. Cit is awareness, or you can as well say
‘awareful being’ because this is Sad-darśanam. You come to

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cit, and from cit you go to sat. There is no gap between being
and knowing. This awareful being, in which the divisions of
ego and other things are absent, is jvalantī, shining most
brilliantly. This is called sahaja-yoga.
This is yoga, knowledge or dhyāna, meditation.
Meditation, knowledge, realization – whatever word you use,
it is the interior in which there is no sense of division because
there are no desires, no fears, no ego, no ‘me,’ no ‘non-me,’
no idea of possession, etc. It is your core or centre, abidance
with yourself, in yourself or just being yourself.
Being shining as knowing, in which there is no doing
Jvalantī means ‘the being shining as the knowing, in which
there is no doing.’ It is the supreme state. It is our goal and as
students of Vedanta we are striving to reach it. But we should
be careful not to imagine a halo around it thereby creating a
sort of distance. Therefore, Maharshi says that this is sahaja,
normal state. We think that ‘me-and-mine’ is the normal state,
but as we have seen, it is the most abnormal.
To summarize: in order that the reality, the truth, shine in
you, the ideas of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ must go. It may sound like
an insurmountable obstacle, but they will go if you let them
go. What keeps you from letting go is your attachment to
those ideas, your wild imagination that you may need those
ideas to live happily, and a practical life requires those things.
People say, ‘In the workplace where we are working, one
cannot function without me and mine.’ or ‘While doing
business, you cannot live a life of truth. You have to tell lies.’
It is the vāsanā that is talking thus.

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The natural state is letting go
We are attached to too many things, and therefore it looks
as if in the absence of ‘me-and-mine,’ there will be a calamity
or catastrophe. This is all delusion born out of your vāsanās.
The life of ego appears normal and what is presented here
appears abnormal, but it is just the opposite. This is the
normal state of your core. Therefore develop an attitude to let
go, the vāsanās will go and sahajā, your natural state,
manifests.
In that natural state, you are not the body and the mind
anymore. The body and mind act according to their nature,
but you are the witnessing awareness – you are not the ‘me’
and not the ‘mine.’ It is a different state of being altogether
when compared with egoistic existence. It is pure awareness
of the being, without any self-identification. Saṁsārīs identify
with everything: you name it and they identify with it. They
live in a house, so they identify with that house – what to
speak of identifying with wife or husband or children. They
identify with the car, and then they go to a temple and say,
‘This is my temple, that is not my temple.’ They identify with
God, ‘my God,’ and follow a particular religious practice and
identify with the religion, live in a state and identify with the
state, belong to a country and identify with the country, and
so on. I am not saying anything about patriotism. That is not
patriotism. You need not identify in order to be a patriot. If
you let all this identification go, it will go.

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The story of Siddhartha
Once upon a time there was a rich man called Siddhartha.
He lived in a palace with his wife and son, and one day he
was sitting under a mango tree in the palace garden. He
looked up and saw fruits growing. He thought, ‘These are my
fruits, this is my tree, my garden, my palace, my wife, my
son.’ People live in this as the normal state. He looked up
again and thought, ‘Is this really my fruit? How can it be?,’
and a cascade of purifying thoughts came: the tree, the palace,
the lady, a boy, and he realized that ‘nothing is mine.’ Then
he got up and the silken cloth he was wearing fell to the
ground. He was about to bend and pick it up and then he
thought, ‘Oh, is it my cloth?’ and just walked away. He did
not return to the palace. This is a story called ‘Siddhartha’ by
Hermann Hesse.
I am not suggesting you should walk out that way, but you
have to walk away from some things. Suppose you are a
member of a club – just walk out. Why should you hold onto
to the club anymore? Do not object and say, ‘No, they owe
me a lot of money.’ Just leave it and walk out. ‘No, no, I gave
some jewelry to him, I have to collect it.’ What is there to
collect? Walk out. You can.
Letting go is freedom from ego
If you let go, the ego will go. Once the ego goes, there will
be no self-identification with anything in particular or in
general. Identification in particular means ‘my house,’ and in
general means as ‘my religion, my caste,’ and so on. You
become free of them and you remain as the pure light of

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awareness. Only that light of awareness is there, nothing else.
It is like a movie is going on and the light is shining. Scene
after scene comes, and then suddenly the film ends. Then
what do you find on the screen? No scenes, no people, no
objects – only pure light will be there. That is what you are,
pure white light. There the distinction between ‘mine’ and
‘awareness’ vanishes. Mine is awareness, awareness is mine.
This is the most brilliantly shining pure awareful being.
Every verse is like a chapter: this is the chapter on ego and
its relevance, and how to get rid of it, how things will be with
ego and without ego. We have seen all that, and now we enter
into an entirely new chapter. However, all the chapters have
only one topic, which is sat – that is the goal.
Verse 17

भूिं भििष्यि भिि् स्वकाले िद्वियमानस्य ििहाय ित्त्वम् ।

हास्या न िकं स्याद्गिभाििचचाय ििनैकसङ्ख्ां गणनेि लोके ।। १७
bhūtaṁ bhaviṣyacca bhavat svakāle
tadvartamānasya vihāya tattvam,
hāsya na kiṁ syād gatabhāvicarcā
vinaikasankhyāṁ gaṇaneva loke. (17)
bhūtam – past; ca – and; bhaviṣyat - future; svakāle – in its
own time; bhavat – present; tat – therefore; vartamānasya – of
the present; tattvam – the reality (or the true nature); vihāya –
giving up; gata-bhāvi-carcā – discussion of the past and
future; hāsya – laughable; na kiṁ syāt – would it not be?; loke
– in the world; eka-sankhyāṁ – the number one; vinā –
without; gaṇanā – counting; iva – like.
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 The past and the future are the present (alone) in
their own time,. Giving up the reality of that present,
would not the discussion of the past and the future be
absurd, like counting (things) in the world without
taking into account the number ‘one’?
This verse is very important because it deals with the
element of time in the vision of Vedanta. It also examines
how time dictates our lives, the role it plays in shaping our
lives, and also how it binds us with worldly affairs. What is it
that binds us? It is ‘time.’ It is said that human beings are
bound in a three-walled cell: the three walls are time, space,
and causality. Causality means the principle of cause and
effect. The human mind is always stuck in the framework of
cause and effect. Causality itself is dependent upon time
because the cause-effect relationship exists only in time: the
cause is earlier, the effect is later.
Previously we saw the basic difference between
transformational causation and apparitional causation. If you
go for transformational causation it leads to many
contradictions and fallacies. Transformation is a process,
which means that God is earlier in time and the world, being
an effect, is later. Therefore God becomes bound by time,
operating in time, becoming a process Himself.
When you put God into the process of creation and thus
within the flow of time, it sounds something like this: ‘He
started creating the world on Sunday and finished it by
Saturday.’ This is a very gross way of saying it. If it is
transformational causation, you can say that God manifests as
the jagat. If you add the time element to the manifestation, it
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becomes evolution. You may accept evolution of the sage
Kapila, author of the sāṅkhya philosophy, or the theory of
evolution by Darwin. There God in either case is still an
entity operating in time, which is not acceptable in principle.
If God is timebound, then time is superior to God. It is
impossible. Time is an important factor in the Vedantic
vision. When it becomes so important in the context of God
and creation, it becomes equally important in our lives too.
The two types of time: chronological and psychological
When I say time binds us, I do not mean chronological
time. Time is of two kinds: chronological and psychological.
Chronological time is something you have to pay attention to;
otherwise you must miss your bus. That is obvious, but that is
not we are discussing here. We are discussing psychological
time.
Psychological time is the result of conditioning by the
family and society. It is the acquisition of habits from the
earlier generations, and makes me the product of their beliefs
and habits. If you fear the planet Saturn, for example, it
means you are a product of earlier generations. We are a
product of time because the past shapes us. We say we are
living in the present, but in fact we are a product of the past:
past beliefs, past habits, and past fears. We are a product of
the past in conjunction with the present – with a few
modifications here and there, like having a television and so
on. The life that we live is entirely molded by the past in
terms of our culture, religion, and beliefs. Thus we are
children of the past, but boasting that we are living in the
present. The kind of present we are living in is not the real
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present, however; it is a present that is sandwiched between
the the memory of the past and the imagination of the future.
Our present is based upon past conditioning
What you call present is the past rehashed, and what you
call future is the past again rehashed in a different way. To
illustrate, let us examine this statement: ‘Presently my
financial situation is alright, and I expect that it will improve
further in the coming six months.’ In this statement I am
talking about the present and the future, but what I call
present is a rehash of the past: namely, that I am an individual
with a bank account, having certain wealth. I earned it and I
own it. That is purely the past. Although it is the past, you call
it the present and then you project it into the future.
A poet once said that the past alone is flowing like a
stream; it covers the present entirely and flows into the future
like a river. Whenever you talk of the present or the future –
whenever you talk of yourself, life, your universe, your goals,
your actions, and so on – it is all a rehash of accumulated
conditioning of the past. And then you want Self-knowledge
also to be a part of this! That is the issue here. It is not a
matter of living your daily life; it is the fact that you have put
Self-realization also into this flow and now you are waiting
for Self-realization to take place. You are waiting for the next
year to come. It is as if you have purchased a flight ticket and
you are waiting for that day to come, and similarly you are
waiting for Self-realization to occur in time.

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The bondage of time
The question is: can you step out of that process of
psychological time? If you step out of the process of
psychological time, it means you are not of this religion or at
this stage of life or of that age; you are not any of them. But if
you say, ‘I am a middle-aged guy,’ you are in the process of
time.
How we are caught in the process of time becomes clear
when you consider this example: You look at a painting by a
famous artist for the first time. It is stunningly beautiful and
you are thrilled by the painting. In those moments you are not
in the process of time: you have stepped out of time and met
the painting anew. Then the painting is put up for auction.
You have deep pockets and therefore you purchase it because
you want to regain that thrill of seeing the beautiful painting.
Already you have put that thrill into the flow of time because
‘regain’ means time. Still, the enthusiasm of the first seeing it
is there and that thrusts you forward. So you purchase the
painting, bring it home, and hang it on the wall. Then what
will you do? You look at it. How many times? On the first
day you look at it a few times, but already the thrill started
waning. Still you pat yourself on the back because you put so
much money into it. Now the money you spent keeps you
propped up: ‘Oh, it is beautiful, wonderful,’ and so on. Then
you try to show it to a few friends, but soon even that is over.
And finally, within a week’s time, the painting becomes a part
of your monotonous existence. It has become a part of the
past. It is a painting bought one week ago and now it does not
thrill you anymore. Then its value goes down; you spent one
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hundred thousand on it and now it can be sold for only twenty
thousand. These paintings are like that: when you want to
purchase it costs so much, and when you want to sell it, it
goes for a pittance. So now it is as if weighing on your
head. You want to get rid of it because it does not thrill you
anymore, but nobody wants it either. So that is our fate; this is
how we live.
Meeting everything anew
The question is: can you meet everything anew? When you
look at a tree or a flower, can you look at it anew? Can you
meet life anew? You can either wake up to a dreary past or
wake up to the freshness of the day. In the Vedic vision, God
is the rising sun. The Vedic people were simple, they did not
have concrete and steel at their disposal. They wanted to
worship God, so they looked around and found the rising sun.
That is when they poured out their devotion in beautiful
hymns.
In devotion there is no time
Suppose the sun is rising, and you look at it as the same
sun rising again and again; you have seen it coming up
thousands of times, and now one more time it is coming up. Is
there any freshness of devotion in that? You do the obligatory
prayers: three times a day you take water into the hand, say a
prayer, and give the oblation. OK, we are done for the day,
we will say it again when the sun comes up the next day. This
is not devotion. What you have done is that you converted
devotion into a ritual. You have ritualized the whole thing.
That is an example of the past flowing into the present.

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 On the other hand, suppose you look at the rising sun and
see the event as a very amazing event, an event which has
tremendous universal implications. It is not some mundane
event like a particular stock going up or down. It is a very
significant universal event and I look at it in amazement. I am
stunned by the beauty and the enormity of that event, and
there is a welling of love and wonder. In that welling, a
mantra comes out; that is the outpouring of devotion. In that
devotion, there is no time. That is the real present. Therefore
can you meet life anew in the true present, without time?
Memory is the past
When you are thinking about one thing or another, you are
in the past. Thought is a product of memory, and memory is
the past, not the present. Thought, which emanates from
memory, cannot be anything but the past. Therefore while
thinking is on there is no present; it is the past. But if you
watch and be aware of the thoughts, the mind becomes quiet.
The moment the mind becomes quiet, psychological time has
ended and you are awareful presence. In that awareness there
is no time and you are in the timeless. In that alertness there is
no movement of thought either.
In thinking there is movement. Thought is a movement
because as we know from physics, the movement and time go
together. There is no time without movement: the sun moves
from east to west in a conventional way, and we have day and
night, which is time. In your watch the pointers are moving,
that is why there is time. The mind is encased in time because
the mind is a movement. You cannot have thought and be
without time because thought is encased in time. As long as
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you are thinking, you are in the process of time. That process
is entirely a movement of the past into the present because
thought comes from memory. You cannot make the
knowledge of the Self a part of that movement. If Self-
realization is part of the movement of time, then that self will
be a timebound self. And in a timebound self there is no
freedom or liberation.
We are talking about awareness, which is being, not doing.
Thinking is doing because it is movement, a subtle form of
doing. What you do with the hands and the legs is doing, and
thinking is also doing. But when thinking ends and awareness
is, that is the being; time has no place in being. Therefore the
awareful being is timeless.
When you say it is timeless, it is the real present. It is a
present that is not another form of the past. It is not that kind
of present; it is the true, pure present – the present which is
the presence, the pure being. That presence, that awareful
being, that timelessness, that eternity is with you; it is not
elsewhere. It is with you now; in fact, it is you, when properly
understood. This is called Self-knowledge.
In Vedanta, we discuss desires because desirelessness and
fearlessness lead to the timeless reality. As Kaṭha Upaniṣad
declares (2-3-14), yadā sarve pramucyante kāmā ye’sya hṛdi
śritāḥ, atha martyo’mṛto bhavati hyatra brahma samaśnute;
when the desires lingering in the mind of the individual
vanish, then and there the mortal becomes immortal and in
this life, even while living in this body, he gains (becomes
one with) the Brahman. What happens when the desires are
given up, including the desire for mokṣa? The desire for
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mokṣa is supported or validated for the time being, but
eventually you are advised to give up that also. Thus, every
single desire, even an expectation or an anticipation, takes
you away from timelessness into time. Just be, without any
expectation or anticipation. You are already the timeless.
Using karma to break the hold of time
There is a way of doing karma without being bound by
time, and there is also a way of doing karma driven by the
force of time. This is what Śrī Kṛṣṇa means when he says
(Gita, 2-47) karmaṇyevādhikāraste mā phaleṣu kadācana,
you are qualified (or connected) to action only, not to the
result there of at anytime. If you are working for a reward, the
reward is in the future and you have put yourself in the flow
of time. That wears you down and binds you. You can break
that bondage by giving up the desire for a reward, which puts
an end to psychological time. Chronological time continues
and whatever action has to happen, it happens. There is a
name for this: it is called karma-samādhi. It means that even
while doing karma, you have gone into samādhi, the timeless
awareness. On the other hand, if you work for a reward, that
leads to becoming. So becoming is psychological time, and
being is the timeless reality.
The difference between becoming and being
There is an important difference between becoming and
being: becoming is in time, whereas being is free of time. In
being, the flow of time comes to an end and therefore in being
there is an immediate revolution against a life that is hijacked
by the flow of time. Suppose you say, ‘I am an old man.’ That

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means time has hijacked you. Suppose you say, ‘I am doing
the fourth or fifth gītā-jñāna-yajña.’ That means time has
hijacked your spiritual pursuit. If your actions are pious and
sanctioned by the scriptures, time will bring you the reward:
good results in the form of pleasures, wealth, and so on. That
is what people are working for in any case, so they get them
and they get to go to heaven also. Thus you can flow with
time to the heaven, but then time will also take you out of
heaven. That is becoming vis-a-vis being, and unfortunately
we sacrifice being for the sake of becoming. We sacrifice the
pure present for the sake of an unknown and unknowable
future.
Remaining in the present
Let us consider one more thing, namely understanding. Is
it in the present or in future? Suppose you have to understand
Newton’s or Einstein’s laws – do you understand them in the
present or in the future? Is there anything called
understanding in the future? Now suppose I am waiting to
realize Atman. When will I realize? Will the Guru decide? If
so, you are psychologically dependent upon the Guru. Still
worse, you are psychologically dependent upon time, and thus
the psychological time has already robbed you of the truth.
Therefore, understanding or realization is only in the present,
not in future.
Memory is time, and time is not the door-way for the truth.
Through time you can never come to the timeless. This is
very important to know because vast majority of people are
caught in the net of time, in the net of becoming. They always
want to become something other than what they are. There is
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a sign in a store: ‘Cash today, Credit tomorrow.’ So you go
tomorrow, and it still says ‘Cash today, Credit tomorrow.’ So
you go home and come again the next day. This is not a joke;
it has become our way of life. When Śrī Kṛṣṇa says
karmaṇyevādhikāraste ma phaleṣu kadācana, He wants to
break this strangle hold of psychological time. People do not
appreciate the profundity of the above statement.
Converting the present into the past
Becoming is in a net, the net of time. It is moha, delusion,
which obviously leads to śoka, sorrow. The seeker should put
an end to this process of becoming, thereby ending time. We
talk of the past, but when it happened it was the present. It is
your memory that converted it into the past. You convert the
present into the past, like looking at the rising sun, a beautiful
scene, and immediately taking out a camera to take a picture.
Now you are no longer looking at the rising sun, you are only
looking at that picture – thinking how you can make the best
picture with the camera, and so on. You are not looking at
what is there. You are looking at the past, and the present is
left a-begging.
Your memory is the camera. The eyes act like a mirror,
whereas the mind acts like a camera. A mirror is always
reflecting the present, whereas a camera is always recording
the present converting it into the past. We have become
‘cameras’ in our life. Therefore, avoid converting the present
into the past.

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The future is only in imagination
We are so much anchored to the future: we want to know
the future, like stretching oneself to peep over the wall and
see what is on the other side. If you peep out, however, you
will see only a rehashed past there. The mind cannot see
anything but the past because the mind is the past. How can
you cognize anything other than past with the mind? That is
why Maharshi said that all cognition is re-cognition. There is
nothing called a first cognition; it is always a recognition. So
stop peeping into future because there is nothing called
‘future.’ As the future unfolds, it does so only as the present.
If the future is real, it should unfold itself as the future, but it
unfolds as the present. Only the present is real and the future
is in your imagination.
What you imagine is the future, what you recollect is the
past, and what you imagine is based on what you recollect.
Therefore what you imagine as the future is merely a different
version of the past. But if you go beyond the mind, then what
you call past and future do not exist; only the present exists, it
is real. Try to find out what is the present. Thus, the past is
also the present when it happens, and the future is also the
present when it happens.
The Seers never understood what is called history. It never
entered into their mind that there is such a thing. There is not
even one word of biographical details of Sri Śaṅkara. Some
people quote a verse from Saundaryalaharī and say it refers to
Sri Śaṅkara, but that is not Ādi Śaṅkara; it must be some
other Sankara. The verse says dravida-śiśu, which means a
child born of a Dravida sect. Sri Śaṅkara would never say
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that. He said na me mātā na pitā na putraḥ, for me there is no
mother, no father, no son, etc. To the Seers, biography is a
chronicle of dreams. As one mahātmā said, writing a
biography is like writing on flowing water.
People forget the truth of the present, and engage in
elaborate discussions about the past and the future. Such
discussions may have some relevance in a conference by the
Council of Historical Research. A scholar would present, for
example, a paper on ‘Social Life with Particular Reference to
Agricultural Economics in the Gupta Period;’ that is right for
that context. But in the context of Self-realization, historic
self is irrelevant. Hāsyā na kim syāt, is it not ridiculous to
discuss the past and the future?
Ramana Maharshi has an interesting illustration for this: he
says such a discussion is like counting without the number
‘one.’ In mathematics there are only two fundamental
numbers: zero and one. This aspect of mathematics was
mentioned in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (1-1-20) also. There the
question is asti ityeke nāyam astīti caike, is the truth void or is
it one? Naciketā asks Lord Yama, ‘There are people who talk
of void as the truth and there are others who talk of one as the
truth.’ He never said two; there is no dvaita in the Upaniṣads.
In the Upaniṣads we always ask, ‘Is it void or is it one without
the second?’
One cannot start counting without taking number one into
account. You think that you have two, but you do not have
two. If you look at the history of mathematics, one was
discovered first. Zero was a great discovery in India, and then
it went to Arabia and Europe. Two is another discovery!
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Someone said one, one --. If you count the fruits, for example,
do you have two fruits? You never have two fruits: you have
one fruit, one fruit, one fruit and so on. You cannot add fruits,
you can only add them in your head.
An Italian mathematician called Giuseppe Peano came out
with axioms called ‘Peano axioms.’ These talk of one added
to one becoming two, added to one again becoming three,
adding to one again becoming four. This kind of addition can
go on endlessly, giving rising to real numbers. Therefore zero
and one are the most fundamental aspects of human
understanding of the numbers. Ramana Maharshi might not
have looked into all that; he simply says, ‘You drop one and
start counting now.’ What will you count? Zero plus zero plus
zero. Peano axioms do not work here. However, they work
with one, and then one, and then one. If you take zero and put
one more zero, nothing will happen and the counting remains
where it is, even after a thousand additions. Whereas if you
begin with one, it will increase – one, two, three, four, and so
on. Also if you go on adding zeros to one gradually, the value
of the number goes on increasing ten-fold, 10, 100 etc.
We have missed the present in our life and allowed the
past to blind our vision completely. The past means the mind,
which means time. We have allowed the mind to dictate our
life. We have allowed the mind to decide when we should be
happy and when unhappy. We have allowed the mind to come
out with its own imagination of the future goals, or
imagination of the heavens somewhere above, etc. In handing
over life to the mind, we have lost the beauty of life and the
timelessness of our own being. We put ourselves in the
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process of time, lose sight of our own timeless being, and
then figure out methods to discover the truth while remaining
in the process of time. Is it not a ridiculous effort?
Verse 18

क्व भािि िदक्कालकथा ििनाऽ स्मान् िदक्काललीलेह िपुिययं चेि् ।

न क्वािप भामो न कदाऽ िप भामो ियं िु सियत्र सदा च भामः ।।१८
kva bhāti dikkālakathā vinā’smān
dikkālalīleha vapurvayaṁ cet,
na kvāpi bhāmo na kadā’pi bhāmo
vayaṁ tu sarvatra sadā ca bhāmaḥ. (18)
dik-kāla-kathā – talk of space and time; asmān – us; vinā –
without; kva – where; bhāti - does it appear or shine?; iha –
here; vayam – we; vapuḥ – body; cet – if; dikkāla-līlā – play
of space and time; tu – but; vayam – we; kvāpi - just in a
particular place; na bhāmaḥ – we shine not; kadāpi - just in a
particular time; na bhāmaḥ – we shine not; sarvatra –
everywhere; ca – and; sadā – at all times; bhāmaḥ – we shine.
Without us, where does the talk of space and time
appear? If we consider ourselves as the body, there is a
play of space and time. On the other hand, we shine not
just in a particular place, nor just at a particular time;
we shine everywhere and at all times.
Space as bondage
In the previous verse we discussed the element of time and
how it binds us. Now we will examine the topic of space as
bondage. Even while examining space, time is also taken
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along with it. As I mentioned, we are bound in a prison cell
consisting of three walls – time, space, and causality. When
someone asks, ‘What is the reason for my suffering?,’ he is
referring to the principle of causality. Or if someone is doing
charity and then complains, ‘I have done charity but what am
I getting out of it?,’ he is also looking at the principle of
causality.
Space and time are never separate
In the vision of Indian philosophy, time and space are
never separate. As Sri Śaṅkara said in the Dakṣiṇāmūrti-
stotra (2), deśa-kāla-kalanā vaicitrya-citrī-kṛtam, that which is
without plurality appears as many due to the invariable
relation between space and time. The philosophers had the
genius of keeping space and time together. That is how they
arrived at the conclusion that a rūpa, shape, is necessarily
limited in time; it is temporal and hence it will vanish. This is
because rūpa is a limitation in space, which entails a
limitation in time also.
Once in a museum I saw the most beautiful ancient marble
sculpture of a very attractive young woman. Below the
sculpture there was a caption written by the sculptor himself:
‘Forms are unreal and transient.’ This was the caption for a
sculpture in stone, not of flesh and blood. Even then, the nose
of the sculpture was gone, and one hand and part of the leg
were also gone. They kept this sculpture in the museum with
all kinds of scaffolding around it. I was amazed and thought,
‘My goodness, if a form in stone crumbles in course of time,
what to speak of this flesh-and-blood form?’ Thus any form

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disintegrates, including the form of Hiraṇyagarbha, whose
body is the entire universe.
If you look at classical physics before Einstein, they talked
of space and time separately, not together, as though they are
two separate entities. Newton’s laws begin with a statement
that when bodies move in absolute space and in absolute time,
they follow certain laws. But in fact they are neither absolute
nor independent. The world had to wait for an Einstein to tell
us that.
Therefore it is an amazing vision that these Sages have.
They are not talking of space and time as elements of the
physical world; but as part and parcel of life, and how they
influence one’s thinking. When we say dik-kāla, dik means a
direction, which is indeed space. We give lot of importance to
space. By giving such importance to space you are
establishing yourself as a body-identified person.
Body is space and mind is time
The question of whether you are the body will be
considered in the next verse. But to talk of space as though it
is very important, you must identify with the body. Then you
become bound by space. And as you identify with the mind,
you become bound by time. The body is space and the mind
is time. Maharishi is focusing on space when he says: vapuḥ
vayaṁ cet, ‘if we are the body.’ Notice that he puts an ‘if’
there.
To see how space binds, we can look at a couple of
examples: I went to Manhattan once to visit a friend who
lives in an apartment building by the Hudson river. It is a very
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beautiful area. I went up to the twelfth floor, with a corridor
and apartments on either side. He took me inside his
apartment, and through the window you could see the river. In
the apartment on the other side, through the window you can
see only Manhattan roads and traffic. He told me that this
apartment, which was the same size as the opposite
apartment, cost one and a half times more. Why? It is the
same address, same floor plan, and same floor area, so why
should it cost one and a half times more? The reason is it has
a river view and the name of the building is Riverview
Apartments. I asked my friend, ‘How many times in a day do
you enjoy the river view?’ He said, ‘When I purchased the
place, I enjoyed it once.’ People are crazy. It is the same in
India. In Rishikesh, adjacent to our ashram there is an inn. It
has four rooms facing the river Gaṅgā, and they cost almost
twice as much as the other rooms from which you cannot see
the river. So in both cases, people are bound by space. One is
bound in a worldly way, and the other is bound due to a
religious sentiment.
In this way, ideas of space drive our lives. I gave a couple
of harmless examples, but sometimes the examples can be
very painful too. One person had a house, and then someone
in the family died. Somebody will always die, it is not some
special event in the world. People are constantly dying. But
somebody came to this person and told him, ‘Your house is
facing south and therefore that person died.’ Some people
believe that south means death. How can south be death? But
people believe this because they read something like this in
Sanskrit. This guy puts up the house for sale. And the pitiable

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situation is that the news has spread around and nobody
would purchase that house. Then somebody says, ‘If you
make some changes, make this side the back, and the other
side the front, then it may sell.’ Like this, people are caught in
the ideas of space, both worldly and religious.
We know any number of people who believe that by going
to Rishikesh, they will get mokṣa. How will Rishikesh give
mokṣa to anybody? In India people will pay huge amounts of
money to live in match-box like buildings in Kāśi and
Vrindāvan because they believe that by living in Vrindāvan or
Kāśi one gets mokṣa.
Time and space in rituals
Rituals are also tied to time and space. A ritual is a specific
method to worship Īśvara. Space and time determine the
details of a ritual. In fact, the focus is on the external elements
of the ritual and there is no love lost for Īśvara – they are
disputing whether it is east, west, north, or south, or the
muhūrta, auspicious time. There are many almanacs in India
to provide this information, and none of them agree with each
other. They differ by a few hours, so there is constant fighting
about what is the right time for a ritual. In this way, we are
stuck with space and time. But space does not say ‘I am
space,’ and time does not say ‘I am time.’ Nor does the world
say ‘I am the world.’ You are saying all these things. There
must be a consciousness, a waking consciousness in
particular, only then do the space and time come into picture.

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Meditation after waking
When you are sleeping there is neither space nor time. So
when you just wake up, maintain that inner space. Do not be
in a hurry to go into activities as dictated by the mind. When
coming out of meditation, just stay calm for a while and
continue to be quiet and silent. The rush along with the flow
of mind can wait for a few minutes, or at least a few seconds.
Similarly, when you wake up, and before getting up, take
some time to meditate, remain without thoughts.
The meditation is when the unconscious state has ended
and the conscious state is beginning. That is the sandhi,
conjunction, like when day ends and night begins, or like
when night ends and day begins. This word sandhi is also
used for day-and-night conjunction, and for the conjunction
between sleep and the waking state. It is the small gap of time
when you are slowly coming out of sleep. Therefore, make
good use of that sandhi; be aware of the unconscious state
that has now ended and then be aware of the gap between
sleep and the waking state.
In that gap, you are just aware – there is no space, no time,
no thoughts, nobody and nothing. It is pure awareness. First
there is pure awareness and then there is the sense of ‘I am.’
This sense sprouts up and continues for a short time.
Suddenly you are aware of the waking consciousness as the
mind comes into contact with awareness, and you become
aware of the body through the sense of touch. The moment
you are aware of the body, you routinely identify with it.

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 The moment that the body appears, the ‘I-am-ness,’ which
is already in place intuitively, identifies with the body. The
deha-dharma, characteristics of the body, are superimposed
on ‘I-am-mess’ and you identify with the deha-dharma. Deha-
dharma is space, so now you identify with the body in terms
of space. That is why you feel that ‘I am here.’ It means that
space has come into the consciousness. But it does not stop
there: ‘I am here’ becomes ‘I am here and now,’ early
morning or whenever. Some element of time is there, and that
time is always ‘now.’ Whether you wake up in the morning,
afternoon, or at midnight, it is always ‘now’ and therefore ‘I
am here and now.’ That occurs when space-time shines in the
consciousness. Until then space-time does not exist. Space-
time comes into existence only when you identify with the
body. If the ‘I am-ness’ identifying with the body is not there,
where is space and where is time?
The story of space-time
Space and time simply do not exist on their own until you
identify with the body. People pay much attention to space
and time, and imagine in multiple ways: this direction, that
direction, vāstu, auspicious time and so on. This is how
people are caught in the psychological space-time. You
should examine and know that awareness absolute, which is
what you are, is not of space nor of time. Space and time exist
only in the mind and they shine only when the awareness
comes into contact with the mind. Otherwise there is no space
and there is no time.
If you examine what time is, you see that time is a
succession of moments, a moment followed by another
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moment. A moment by itself is not time. Time starts only
when a moment is followed by another moment. Without the
succession of moments, there is no time. And what is a
moment? It appears out of nothing and from nowhere and
shines in the consciousness. A poet once paid a tribute to his
beloved who is no more, saying something like this, ‘Oh
beloved, you existed in a form which never existed among the
billions and billions of earlier forms, and will never exist
again among the billions and billions of forms that are to
come.’ I was amazed at how he put it in a very unique way.
The moment is like that: it appeared out of nothing and it
disappears into nothing, never to reappear.
The question now is: will you connect to a time defined by
such moments, or will you connect to the eternal, the
timeless? Where will you direct your focus? You have to
think about it – dive deep within and find out what is real in
you. If you look at yourself, the mind throws up some silly
thought bound by space-time, and you run after that. What a
folly! So try to find the real within you, instead of running
after the shadow of this unrealistic space-time.
You are small only when you take space as real. Then you
are insignificant, not even a speck in this vast universe. And
you are short-lived only because you take time as real. So we
have to examine whether space and time are real and
absolute. Then there is one more fundamental question,
namely, do space and time depend on you, or do you depend
on space and time? As a body, you are in space and as mind,
you are in time. But are you a mere mind in a given body, or a
mere body with a mind in it? Or are you the Self?’ The truth
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is that space-time cannot touch Atman, the Self. Therefore
you have to investigate: ‘What am I? Do I fit in space, or do I
fit in time? Am I the body?’
Let us examine both. The first is the concept of ‘here.’ The
amazing thing is that wherever you are in this entire universe,
whether it is in New York or Rishikesh or on the moon, it is
‘here’ and whenever you are it is ‘now.’ Whether it is
morning or evening, in childhood, middle age, or old age, it is
always now. Here is everywhere wherever you are, and now
is always when you are. Therefore here and now do not
validate you, you validate them.
This examination helps us go beyond the idea that ‘I am
the body.’ If you go beyond the idea of the body, you will
discover that space and time are in you, you are not in space
and time. This issue is important because as long as you take
yourself to be in space and time, you will have no chance of
Self-realization, in spite of the fact that you have good
knowledge of Vedanta texts.
Suppose I am here; then am I not elsewhere? No. I am
here, I am elsewhere, I am everywhere. My being is not
limited to a particular place. ‘I am’ is not limited in time also
– it is not that ‘I am’ in the morning, but in the afternoon ‘I
am not.’ I shine sarvatra, everywhere, and sadā, always. In
other words, I have gone beyond the space-time.
The human mind divides time in many ways: good times,
bad times, and so on. Can time be good or bad? Only your
actions or what you say can be good or bad, but not time. So
just go beyond space and time. Be practical and respect space

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and time where you have to. If you have to catch the train at
8:30, do not be late. And when the train starts from
Secunderabad station, respect the space also. Atman is
beyond space-time. Know that and be free.
Verse 19

दे हात्मभािे ज्ञजडौ समानािेकस्य दे हे हृिद दीप्त आत्मा ।

आक्रम्य दे हं च जगि पूणयः परस्य मेयं िनुमात्रमात्मा ।। १९
dehātmabhāve jñajaḍau samānā-
vekasya dehe hṛdi dīpta ātmā,
ākramya dehaṁ ca jagacca pūrṇaḥ
parasya meyaṁ tanumātramātmā. 19
deha-ātma-bhāve – in the matter of understanding the body
as the self; jñajaḍau – the wise and the ignorant; samānau –
the same; ekasya – of one; dehe – in the body; hṛdi – in the
heart; dīptaḥ – shining; ātmā – Atman; deham – the body; ca
– and; jagat – the world; ca – and; ākramya – encompassing;
pūrṇaḥ – full; parasya – to the other (ignorant); ātmā –
Atman; meyam – measurable; tanu-mātram – (in terms of) the
body alone.
In seeing the body as the self, the wise and the
ignorant are the same. For the wise, the self is shining
in the heart within the body, encompassing the body
and the world in its fullness. For the other, the self is
measurable only as the body.

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Two types of people: jña and jaḍa
There are two types of people in this world: one is called
jña, one who knows the truth, and the other is called jaḍa,
ignorant. The word jaḍa literally means ‘insentient.’ Saying
someone is jaḍa means he is alive, awake, and aware, but he
does not know his svarūpa as the sentient being. Instead, he
takes himself to be the physical body and does upāsana on it.
Upāsana means identifying with something, getting
attached to it, and loving it. It is a kind of obsession that one
pursues. For example, professional sportsmen pursue the
sport as an upāsana. No bhakta can come anywhere near
them in their upāsana! Recently a girl from Hyderabad won
an Olympic medal in Rio. She was practicing for two years
for that medal; the coach told her, ‘Do not eat ice cream.’ She
did not eat ice cream for two years, and ate it only after
winning the medal – that is upāsana.
The law of upāsana
The law of upāsana is yad bhāvaṁ tad bhavati – of
whatever you do upāsana, you become that. An example of
this is given in the Vedantic literature: it is called bhramara-
kīṭa-nyāya, the illustration of the wasp becoming the worm.
There is a type of wasp, called parasitoid, that deposits the
larva in a mud-ball-like home that it has prepared. Then it
flies around the mud house and makes a continuous humming
sound. The worm inside is a sentient being. It is constantly
aware of the humming sound of the wasp. Because of its
constant awareness of and contemplation on that sound, the

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worm itself becomes a wasp. Then it breaks out of the mud
house and comes out. This is the nyāya, illustration.
The jaḍa identifies with the insentient
Similarly, suppose you get hold of a BMW or an Audi and
worship it, meaning that you continue to think about it, make
an elaborate plan to upgrade the upholstery, employ a guy to
keep it clean all the time and keep it in tip-top condition, put
perfumes inside, and so on. That is upāsana, worship. Then
you find out which kind of oil is the most suitable for the
engine, align the tires and check the engine once in two or
three weeks, and then wash it once in a week because it
should appear spotless. You are now an upāsaka of the car.
When you worship a car, you become the car; when you
worship a sofa, you become the sofa; when you worship a pet,
you become the pet. You tune your inside to identify with an
outer insentient thing. What can we call such a person other
than jaḍa, insentient or ignorant? When such a person sits in a
class on Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, nothing will happen. He will be
waiting for the book of Vivekacūḍāmaṇi to do miracles, but it
will not also help because Vivekacūḍāmaṇi is also jaḍa, it is
just a book.
The jña identifies with the truth of the Self
Jaḍa means a body-identified person, whereas the jña is
one who knows the truth of everything – the world, God, and
oneself. And how many truths are there? Only one. So the one
who knows that truth of oneself is the jña. The same truth,
which is the Atman, pervades the universe also. For a jña, the
understanding is that Atman inheres in the body; hṛdi dīpta
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ātmā, the Self is shining in the heart. For the jña, the self
shines within the body – for the jaḍa, tanumātram ātmā, the
self is only as much as the body.
Tattva – the thing-in-itself
Atman means sāra-tattva, the essence. Tattva means
anāropita-ākāra, that which has no superimposition of name
and form. The moment you superimpose a name and form, it
becomes only that name and form, and nothing more. This
tattva was given an interesting designation by the famous
German philosopher Immanuel Kant. He called it the ‘thing-
in-itself.’ It is a very beautiful way of presenting the vision. If
you consider a necklace, for example, what is the ‘thing’? It is
a name and a form. Then what is the ‘thing-in-itself’? Gold.
Atman is myself – the true Self, not the apparent self. You
should not go by appearance. Appearance is not the truth.
Appearances are very deceptive, so you have to go to the
essence, which is Atman.
Asking the basic question
Now we have to ask a basic question: ‘Is it not important
to know whether you are a mere body or something else?’ If
you ask most people, the answer you will get is, ‘It is not
important because the business is going on well. Do not put
this kind of a spoke in the wheel. What is important to know
is whether profit jumped twenty percent. That is important,
not this.’ This is how people are. Such a question is not
important to them because some pleasures are waiting, and
only those pleasures are important.

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 Then if you ask this question to some bhaktas, they will
say, ‘What are you talking about? That is not important. Let
us chant and dance.’ They think that if you chant while
dancing, Bhagavān will be immensely pleased. They are also
not in a hurry to know what they are. That is why the question
is not answered. The problem here is Atman cannot be
described in words. Atman is not what you see and it is not
what you think.
Obsession with the body and mind
This question is important because we are obsessed with
the body, and therefore obsessed with food, shelter, name,
fame, and so on. Food becomes something that weighs
heavily in our consciousness and makes us insecure only
because of our obsessive identification with the body. But if I
am not a mere body, and instead I am something else, then
food does not acquire undue importance. It is like having a
car: you need it to drive around, so you need to fill it with
fuel. But if its fuel tank capacity is five liters, will you put in
six liters? Even if you try, it cannot take it. But when it comes
to our lunch, we are already full but then dessert comes, so we
devour that also. Dessert is not essential. The body may be
saying, ‘I do not need it, I cannot take it.’ But how can you
say no to dessert? It is the most important thing! So this is
how we end up because of obsession with the body.
We need some shelter for the body, some sleeping bag or
something, and a chair and table where you can sit and read
or write. But when I see myself as the body, a person emerges
out of that identification. That body-identified person starts
aggrandizing the false self by acquiring property. Property in
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itself has no value, but sense of possession of the building to
aggrandizes my ego, and thus it acquires a value. Therefore
property is another obsession for a body-identified person.
Then there is family and name. Whatever name you have is
just the name given to the physical body, but if you take that
to be yourself, then there is obsession with name and fame.
‘Me-and-my-family’ syndrome
There is this ‘me-and-my-family’ syndrome. Medicine has
its syndromes, as does psychology. And in Vedanta, we also
talk about syndromes. This me-and-my-family syndrome
totally distorts a person’s vision. I am not saying anything
against loving the family members and doing one’s duty to
them. Duty is important, but getting attached to them is an
obstacle to doing one’s duty to them.
The me-and-my-family syndrome distorts the vision. That
is why when somebody comes to attend a class on
Vivekacūḍāmaṇi or Vedanta-Ḍiṇḍima, and the students start
their question by saying, ‘As a family person…,’ the teacher
feels awkward. It is somewhat like going to a diabetes
specialist who is trying to give you some medicine and some
pointers to eating habits, but you say, ‘What about my
laddoos after lunch? I like my dessert, so what about that?’ If
you ask that question, the doctor will feel like throwing up his
hands.
Vedanta begins with vairāgya and viveka, seeing that I am
not the body. That is the starting point. It means that the entire
humanity is my friend. When Christ said ‘Love thy neighbor,’
he meant that the entire humanity is your neighbor. And he

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also said, ‘Love thy enemy.’ It means that there are no
enemies. In the vision of Vedanta, security and survival do
not carry weight; they just do not apply to the vision at all.
There is nothing to be afraid of in this creation.
The story of the mahātmā and the brahma-rākṣasa
Once a mahātmā was walking through a forest and a
brahma-rākṣasa, an erudite evil spirit, appeared before him
and said, ‘I’m going to eat you.’ The mahātmā replied, ‘It
does not matter, it is up to you.’ ‘Are you not afraid?’ asked
the brahma-rākṣasa.
‘No, I’m not afraid.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you are Atman.’
‘What do you mean, I am Atman?’
‘There is no difference between you and me.’
‘What do you mean, no difference? You are standing there,
and I am here,’
‘That is only the body. Look at yourself. Do you have a
body or not?’
‘Yes, I have a body.’
‘Do you know the body or not?’
‘Yes, I know it.’
‘Then who is it that knows the body?’
‘Hey, this is quite interesting,’ said the brahma-rākṣasa,
and so a discussion ensued. It went on and on, and the
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mahātmā imparted some wisdom to him. He asked the
brahma-rākṣasa to question himself ‘who am I?’ Then the
brahma-rākṣasa did namaskāra, took him out of the forest. He
left him at the border of the village and went back to the
banyan tree, which is its abode. He sat there and started
asking the question, ‘Who am I?’ Thereafter it was liberated.
The transformative power of the question ‘Who am I?’
The moment you pay attention and ask ‘Who am I?’ or
‘Am I the mere body, etc.?,’ a remarkable transformation
occurs. Your attitude towards the body gets corrected right
away. You stop identifying with the body leaving it alone. Do
not disturb the body, just leave it alone. It heals itself; the
only machine that can heal itself in this creation is the body.
If it needs your help, it will call for your help and you must
heed that call, do not neglect it. In the meanwhile, leave it
alone. Do not pamper or torture the body in the name of
religion to propitiate gods. Sri Kṛṣṇa says (Gītā, 17-5,6) ‘I am
inside you. By torturing the body, you are putting me in
trouble.’ The idea is to just keep the body going. Most of the
time the body should remain below the threshold of your
consciousness. Occasionally the body comes into your focus,
e.g. when it is hungry. Then you give some good food; you
should be friendly with the body. If you feed it with wrong
food, like desserts, you are inimical to your body. Therefore,
do not be an enemy to the body, be its friend and benefactor.
The point is that you have to correct your attitude towards the
body.

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The body is a form in space
As we are discussing a lot about space-time, we should
understand that the body is a form contained in space. Space
is the base within which the body is moving around.
Therefore, simply speaking, it is space-bound, and the law is
that whatever is bound by space is invariably bound by time.
So the body is time-bound as well. The blessed thing
appeared one day and it will be around for some time, and
then it will disappear. People get worked up when something
happens and ten people die. Did you ever visit the maternity
ward? There are fifteen births every day. The world is a
crammed-up place, so do not worry about people taking birth
or dying; that happens all the time.
Body bound by space-time – Indweller spaceless, timeless
When you identify with the body, a few basic things are
viewed through a distorted lens and you become sentimental
about birth and death. That kind of wishy-washy
sentimentality has no value. First you have to correct your
attitude towards the body, and then you will see that you are
not the body. You are the dehī, the embodied indweller.
These are fundamental truths: the body is time-bound and
space-bound, while the indweller is timeless and spaceless.
When you contemplate on these truths, you will put
yourself on a higher pedestal. The body remains in its place
and there will be an amazing freedom. That is mokṣa. The
body has its way and you are what you are. You are a witness
to your body when it is healthy, but more importantly, you are
also a witness to your body even when it is not so healthy.

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This is a challenge and it provides a marvelous opportunity to
correct your attitude towards the body. Normally, when the
body is hale and healthy, such an opportunity is not there. But
when there is illness, it is an opportunity to correct one’s
attitude towards the body and then deal with the illness. I am
not suggesting that you be foolhardy; you should deal with
illness the right way. People fail to deal the right way when
the body is healthy or when the body is ill. In both cases they
deal with it wrongly because of their identification with the
body.
Vedanta is pragmatic, it is not some kind of foolhardy
renunciation. All you have to give up is your ignorance. You
need not give away your purse, you simply have to know that
you do not own any purse. All you have to give up is the
sense of possession. The purse remains in its place, and you
realize that you do not own anything. To conclude, you need
to discern the timeless and the spaceless dehī is different from
the time-bound and space-bound deha. Then you can correct
your attitude towards the body. If you do not correct it, it
would be a grievous mistake and the cause of endless
suffering.
Limitation pertains only to the body, not to Awareness
You are limited only when you confine yourself to the
body; in awareness you are not limited. Awareness includes
the entire universe. As the awareness, you are sarva-jña,
omniscient. The transition from the level of physical body to
the level of mind level is a quantum leap. And then there is
one more step, which is the step from the mind to Atman.
Once you step away from the mind and are a witness to the
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mind, you do not have issues of birth or death, or security, or
survival. Then you are loved because you are love embodied.
You can love pretty much anything in this universe. It need
not be a well-prepared garden or a bunch of flowers; you can
love a dry leaf or the breeze or a wild flower. A poet once
said that the wildflower is waiting for a poet to come its way,
and when the poet comes, it offers him a poem. William
Wordsworth looked around and saw the daffodils, and the
daffodils offered him a couple of beautiful poems, which are
popular even today.
That is the love: love of the entire universe. Love your
enemy because there is no enemy. Some one may think he is
an enemy to you, but you do not have any enemy. You love
the entire humanity, everything living and nonliving, by
taking this one step from the mind to Atman.
You should develop some clarity of thinking and realize
that you are someone more than the body. Such a person is a
jña, the knower. For the other person, i.e. the jaḍa, there is
identification with the insentient, which leads him to an
obsession with it and so worships it. People worship the
insentient instead of worshiping the sentient. People worship
the body, thereby they cater to the needs of the body all the
time. It is almost like a religion. People design elaborate
bathrooms and kitchens, all of which is essentially worshiping
the physical body. As we end up in total identification with
the body, when we become sick, we are utterly helpless and
do not know how to handle the sickness.

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How to face death
We can look at the examples of great men for dealing with
this physical body identification. For example, there is an
account of the last days of Henry David Thoreau, the great
American poet, whose body died at age 44. In this account an
eyewitness says, ‘Henry was never affected, never reached by
his illness.’ The illness was ravaging the body, but never
reached Thoreau. He continued, ‘Very often have I heard him
tell his visitors that he enjoyed existence as well as ever.’ This
is what we teach all the time, namely that abiding in your
svarūpa, the awareful being, is bliss, so do not abide in or
identify with the body. When Thoreau said that he enjoyed
existence, it means that even before becoming sick, he was
abiding in his being, not in the body. He added that, ‘…there
was as much comfort in perfect disease as in perfect health.’
That is from the point of view of the being, not from the point
of view of the body. From the point of view of the body, you
are happy when in perfect health and you are miserable when
sick, whereas from the point of view of the being, health or
disease are one and the same. Here you can see the tenacity of
Thoreau, who could say such a thing.
Normally the mind conforms to the condition of the body,
whereas he made his mind conform to pure being. He said
that the thought of death ‘could not begin to trouble me.’ At
the age of 44 he died and yet the thought of death did not
trouble him. On the other hand, there are people in their 80s
and 90s who are troubled with the looming of death.
Death is not painful; death is the release from pain. It is the
fear of death that is painful. And there is fear of death only
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because one does not understand the truth of one’s own being.
Thoreau said that if ‘death were to frighten me, this is the
time,’ but it had not yet begun to frighten him. In fact, it never
frightened him. The witness wrote that, ‘during his long
illness, I never heard a murmur escape from him,’ nor did he
express ‘the slightest wish to remain with us.’ His perfect
contentment was truly wonderful, I am amazed to read this
account. All of this is practical and clearly the direct outcome
of non-identification with the body. Such a powerful vision it
is.
Some of his more orthodox friends and relatives tried to
prepare him for death by saying, ‘We will pray for you,’ but
they are not convinced themselves because he never wanted
them to prepare him for death. When his aunt Louisa asked
him if he had made his peace with God, he answered, ‘I did
not know we had ever quarreled.’ Is this not Vedanta? That is
why I say knowledge has no boundaries. It is something more
than scriptural study. You may have to study the scripture, but
it is much more than that. This shows how one has to
overcome the identification with the body.
Head versus heart
As we saw, Atman inheres in the body. The text says it
inheres in the heart. Therefore you should focus on the heart.
Even though Atman inheres in the entire body, the choice is
between the head and the heart. You have to choose the heart,
not the head. There is a huge difference between the two. We
are ‘head’ people, not ‘heart’ people. ‘Head people’ means
we are always reasoning. The head represents logic, while the
heart is the locus of love.
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 I am not suggesting that you should be illogical. Be logical
in your life, but do not allow logic to overtake life. Let love
dominate your life. The head is personal, whereas the heart is
impersonal. The head is nāma-rūpa, but the heart is beyond
nāma-rūpa. When there is a choice between head and heart,
out of ignorance, people are likely to choose the head, and
therefore śruti always alerts you to choose the heart.
Ramana Maharshi used to say jocularly, ‘you need not go
up, you have to come down,’ meaning coming down from
head to heart. This is because the tantra people are always
struggling with going up in the cakras and so on. But he
wants us to come down to the heart from the head. Abide as
the awareful being in the heart. As you practice this, the sense
of locale will eventually drop off, because awareness is not
restricted to the heart alone. It is the spaciousness of the
awareness, and ultimately you enter into it as boundless,
spacious, awareful being. That is the Atman.
This phrase hṛdi dīpta ātmā highlights the meditative
aspect. When you meditate that way, you arrive at a vision
described in the above words in the second line. There is an
expression for that vision of the jñānī – sarva-ātmā-bhava,
seeing all as the Self. That is fullness encompassing the body
and the world. The remainder of the verse line refers to the
ajñānī, who sees the self merely as the body.
Mokṣa is the normal state of being
Mokṣa is not some esoteric or exotic thing. Mokṣa is the
normal state of being, like the sahaja-yoga as we saw in verse
16. It means there are no desires in the heart. If the sense of

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want is not there, there is no desire. We call it the normal
state because the state of desiring is abnormal and a source of
suffering.
The sense of being is always with you. You can verify this
for yourself; even in sleep there is a general sense of well-
being. And when you wake up, the body comes to light and
the sense of awareness is now one with the body. This is
existence, but it is very limited existence, which can be called
bodily existence.
Once you slip into bodily existence, you continue to
remain there. If the body has some pain or illness, this
invariably pulls you into bodily existence. That is fine, but
you should take medicine or do some service to the body, and
come out of that bodily existence. When you do this, you
move forward, meaning you rise above the bodily existence.
When there is identification with the body, you remain
unhappy no matter what or how much you do. Because of
bodily existence, you are caught in an inexorable cycle of
pleasure and pain. Therefore you have to raise yourself from
mere bodily existence into the existence which is all. It is like
the space thinking that it is contained in a pot. This is a great
misfortune. The entire universe is contained in space, but
sadly the space thinks, if it were to have a human mind, that
it is contained in the pot. Suppose space knows better and
realizes ‘my existence is not limited to the pot’s existence.’
The pot can exist; you need not break the pot. Breaking the
pot is haṭha yoga. Haṭha yoga says that you have to break the
pot, and only then there is freedom. But space need not break

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the pot, it simply has to realize that it is not just pot-space
alone. When it realizes this, it becomes mahā-space.
Sarva-ātma-bhāva – a quantum leap
There is no intermediate level in sarva-ātma-bhāva. Either
you are an ignorant saṁsārī or you are a liberated jñānī –
from one to the other is a quantum leap. You are still the
being, but now the being is not limited to the body. Once it is
not limited to the body, it includes all, even your body. It is
like space, which is originally mistaken for the pot-space, but
now it is known as the mahā-space, which includes the entire
brahmāṇḍa and also the pot. It need not exclude the pot! You
are pūrṇa means you are Existence Absolute, the Being
Absolute. Earlier the ignorant man thought that the body is,
and that alone is the self, but now he knows all that is, is the
Self.
This is the sarva-ātma-bhāva. As Īśāvāsya Upaniṣad
declares, yastu sarvāṇi bhūtani atmanyeva anupaśyati …tatra
ko mohaḥ kaḥ śokaḥ ekatvam anupaśyataḥ; he who sees all
beings in the self alone, and the self in all beings … what
delusion and what sorrow can be there for that seer of
oneness? There are two things to understand regarding sarva-
ātma-bhāva. Firstly, what you call mokṣa (liberation) is none
other than sarva-ātma-bhāva. Secondly, sarva-ātma-bhāva is
not a philosophical speculation; it is very practical. That being
so, you can work on it.
A different way of seeing
There is a way of looking at things that many mahātmās
recommend; for example, you stand before a tree and look at
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it. Normally a worldly person does not pay any attention to a
tree unless it comes in his way, and then he wants to cut it
down. If he is a botanist, he asks, ‘What kind of tree is it?’ He
wants to know the botanical name. Then a real estate guy
looks at it in a different way. Everybody wants to see it in
their own way, but there is another way of looking at the tree,
which is to look at the tree with open eyes, without blinking,
and not to allow the mind to intervene.
The reason why I say do not let the mind intervene is
because the moment I see a thing, the mind provides a name
and form to that thing; it converts it into nāma-rūpa. The eyes
provide the basic input of sensation and the mind provides the
nāma-rūpa. The mind synthesizes the rūpa because form
requires space, and space is a mental category. Space is there
in the mind (as a category), so the mind takes these optical
sensations and adds quite a few things. Immanuel Kant gives
a list of things that the mind adds to sensations, which in
themselves do not have all those things. For example, it adds
causality. When you look at a rose, the sensations would not
tell you that the plant is the cause of the rose; it is the mind
which talks of causality. Thus the mind adds space, time, and
causality and synthesizes nāma-rūpa.
Nāma-rūpa is synthesized knowledge
The sensation of the sense organs forms the basis for
cognition. This sensation is contributed by the outside object
and the sense organ. But then you have to add so many other
things for cognition to occur. The mind makes the cognition
of nāma-rūpa through synthesis: rūpa is the spatial element
and the nāma comes from the mind’s software, memory. It is
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like a dictionary inside the head, connecting every form with
the corresponding name.
When looking at a tree, keep the mind in abeyance and do
not allow it to intervene. Do not ask, ‘How?’ – there is no
how, just do it. This is one variety of what is called śāmbhavi-
mudrā, looking without intervention of the mind. Initially the
mind is baffled because it does not like to remain silent. It
wants to intervene and supply the name and form. It wants to
categorize and divide because that is its job. Therefore you
suspend the mind. When you do this, you do not cognize a
tree as the cognizer: the cognizer will not be there and the
cognized would also not be there. You are in a state of
awareness in which you are aware of being. It is not ‘tree’
anymore. The mind would have otherwise categorized it as a
tree, but now the mind is not operating. Therefore you are
aware of the being – a being with which your own being is
somehow connected, not separated. You would feel that the
being you are aware of is not altogether different from your
own being. This is the awareness of one being. This ‘one
being’ is not the one of ‘one, two, three,’ series like the
children count in kindergarten. It is not that kind of one; it is
advaya, non-dual, one without the second.
Śāmbhavi-mudrā – cognition without division
Normally in a cognition there is a division – ‘I am here, it
is there.’ But in śāmbhavi-mudrā you do not experience that
division anymore. It is a division-less, awareful being that
includes the being of ‘that’ and ‘this.’ This is what is meant
by so’ham, ‘I am that.’ And what applies to the tree also

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applies to the whole world: ātmā vā idaṁ sarvam, all that is,
is the Self.
This is expressed by a poet who says, ‘I flame in the fire, I
shine in the sun and moon.’ When you have the vision of
gāyatrī-mantra in your heart and look at the sun, the sun is not
the ‘other’ anymore. If you think that the sun is there and I am
here, there is no gāyatrī-mantra, only a chant. Oneness is
there only when you look at the sun with complete alertness,
thereby meaning you do not allow the mind to intervene.
Then the sun is not different; sun is not the sun and you are
not mister or missus so-and-so. Sun is the being and you are
the being, and the being is undivided – that is gāyatrī-mantra.
The example given in Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (4-3-21),
in the jyotir-brāhmaṇa, says yathā striyā sampariṣvaktaḥ, ‘just
as a young man embraced by his beloved.’ They are
apparently separate, but they are one, and na bāhyaṁ na
kiñcana veda, he does not see anything else outside. If he sees
the beloved and sees the necklace in her neck etc., and then
suddenly sees somebody coming and so on, then that is not
love; that is all in the head. But when he does not know
anything else, he is just looking at her and embracing her,
then he is not he and she is not she. There is oneness of being.
Apparently physically they are separate, but there is oneness
of being – that is called love. Rabindranath Tagore gives a
definition for love, he says: ‘Love is unity of being in the
diversity of the bodies.’
There is a poem written by Swami Rama Tirtha about this
sarva-ātma-bhāva called ‘I am that.’ He starts by saying ‘I
have no scruple of change, nor fear of death, nor was I ever
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born, nor had I parents.’ As long as you believe you were
born to a set of parents at a given time and in a given place, so
long you will not know the truth of the Self. Do not confuse
it with serving the parents as God. That is different and it is to
be done. Suppose you were never born, na me pitā na me
mātā, I have no father or mother – says Sri Śaṅkara multiple
times. Then what are you? Swami Rama Tirtha says, ‘I am
Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
sat-cid-ānanda, I am that, I am that.’ He continues, ‘I cause
no misery, nor am I miserable.’ That is very important: do not
cause misery to anybody, and the other guy cannot cause
misery to you unless you allow it. ‘I have no enemy, nor am I
enemy.’ The other person thinks I am his enemy, but I do not
have any enemy. Then, ‘I am without form,’ You do not have
a nāma and rūpa. Be practical, like suppose you need a shirt,
you go to the store and pick up a shirt, that is alright;
otherwise ‘I am without form, without limit, beyond space,
beyond time.’ He also declares, ‘I am without body or change
of the body.’ Change of the body means, people are stuck
with karma model, which is told in some context and has its
relevance, but it is meant only for explaining a thing or two.
Finally he says, ‘I am neither sin nor virtue,’ So you should
not get caught in the duality of puṇya-pāpa, which is saṁsāra.
Do puṇya and rise above puṇya-pāpa. ‘I am not any of these
things, I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss
Absolute, I am that, I am that.’ This is how sarva-ātma-bhāva
is to be understood, and that is the meaning of this verse.

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 Verse 20

अज्ञस्य ििज्ञस्य च ििश्वमच्चस्त पूियस्य दृश्यं जगदे ि सत्यम् ।

परस्य दृश्याश्रयभूिमेकं सत्यं प्रपूणं प्रििभात्यरूपम् ।। २०
ajñasya vijñasya ca viśvamasti
pūrvasya dṛśyaṁ jagadeva satyam,
parasya dṛśyāśrayabhūtamekaṁ
satyaṁ prapūrṇaṁ pravibhātyarūpam. 20
ajñasya – for the ignorant; ca – and; vijñasya – for the
wise; viśvam – the world; asti – is; pūrvasya – to the former;
dṛśyaṁ – seen; jagat – world; eva – alone (indeed); satyam –
real; parasya – to the latter; dṛśya-āśraya-bhūtam – abiding as
the substratum of the seen; ekam – one; prapūrṇam – perfect;
arūpam – formless; satyam – real; pravibhāti – brilliantly
shines.
World exists for the ignorant as well as for the wise.
To the ignorant, the seen world alone is indeed real. For
the latter, one perfect formless Reality, that is the
substratum of the seen (world), shines brilliantly.
Wisdom regarding the body
Here, as in the earlier verse, Maharshi presents the contrast
between an ajñānī and a jñānī. We have seen how they relate
to the physical body. An ajñānī is so obsessed with the
physical body that it becomes an independent entity in itself.
In reality it is not an independent entity; it is just a
conglomerate of the five elements, nothing more.

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 According to the Vaiśeṣikas and Naiyāyikas (adherents of
Indian schools of philosophy), if we put together a few things,
it will make an entity different from the assembly of those.
Vedantins do not view the assembly as an entity independent
of its constituents. In the vision of Vedanta, body is not an
independent entity; it is only five elements. The body is a
wave, a shadow with no reality of its own. First we give a
reality to an unreal thing, get attached to it, identify with it,
and then suffer.
Jagat stands for the phenomenal nature of the world
Now what about the jagat? Just as the body is made up of
the five elements, the jagat is also made up of the same five
elements. Jagat is a significant word. If you say ‘world,’ we
know what it is, but we do not know why it is called that way.
There must be some etymology to that word, but it is not well
known. The word jagat, however, has a clear etymology: ja
stands for jāyate, born, meaning it always begins in time; and
ga stands for gacchati, going, meaning that it is phenomenal.
Thus the jagat is not something which is forever; it is
momentary. Therefore the jagat begins in time and continues
to change in time. It is a phenomenal universe. That is the
meaning of the word jagat.
Viśva stands for the experiential nature of the world
Viśva is a similar word. It means that which is perceived
with multiple sense organs. Vi means vividhā, manifold, and
śva means śvayati, to go, that is to know. Therefore, the
meaning: ‘that which is experienced or perceived as multiple
sensations. In other words, the jagat is śabda, what you hear;

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sparśa, what you touch; rūpa, what you see; rasa, what you
taste; and gandha, what you smell. There is nothing other than
these five sensations. There are five sense organs through
which you sense the five sense objects, and so the assembly
of the five sense objects is the jagat. That is the meaning of
viśva.
Both the wise and the ignorant experience the world
Although people talk of the sixth sense, that is only in a
figurative sense. The five sense objects experienced through a
conglomerate of five sense organs is called viśva. Everything
else is a projection of the mind, like going to a jeweler’s shop
and seeing many ornaments. All those ornaments are in your
head, whereas what really there is only one thing, namely
gold. In this way, viśvamasti, the world is there in the
experience of both the wise and the ignorant. For example, if
you go to a movie along with a small child of three or four
years, the movie does not make any sense to the child; the
child cannot appreciate anything. But once he grows a little
older, he gets interested in what is going on and he starts
believing that what he sees is real. You also see the same
movie, yet you know it is not real. If it is raining on the
screen, the child believes that it is really raining, whereas you
know that it is just an appearance. You do not judge the child
for believing what it sees is true because you know the child
will grow and understand it one day. Therefore you can even
enjoy the ignorance of the child.
This is how the situation is between a saṁsārī versus a
jñānī, both looking at the world. As Maharshi says, ajñasya
vijñasya ca viśvamasti, the world is there for both of them to
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see. For a jñānī, there is nothing in the world to get excited,
worried, or sad about. If you are happy about what is going on
in the world, you will soon be unhappy; it would not even
take much time. The world is like that: one set of scenes is
soon replaced by a different set of scenes. You are sitting in a
vehicle, a chariot, called the body, and looking at the scenes
of the world. This chariot is going at a certain speed, which is
the speed of time – not the speed of light! Even that speed is
very high, however, and life is hurtling forward. Before you
know it, youth is over and then middle age also over. We are
going to remain here much shorter than we are imagining.
That is how the viśva is.
The jagat appears as long as you are looking at it
The ignorant see the world as something which is. But as
students of Vedanta, we know jagat is dṛśya – something
which is perceived, not something which is. Because the jagat
is but an appearance, it is there only as long as you are
looking at it. If you stop looking at it, it stops appearing. You
should not even say it stops existing, because it never existed.
It appears as long as you are seeing it, and it stops appearing
the moment you stop seeing it. This statement can fit nicely
into a Vedantic text and it can fit equally well into a quantum
physics text. In quantum physics, there is an electron only
when you look at the electron. In fact, quantum physicists say
that there is the moon only when you see the moon. To say
that about an electron is okay because it is a very tiny thing
and therefore it may be true, but at the level of the world it
may not be so. When you come to the moon, that is a
different matter! We are sitting here looking at the moon, are
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we not? If I say there is no moon, one of you will say, ‘What
are you talking about? Look out of the window, there is the
moon!’ Then I will say, ‘Okay, then it is there.’ Why?
Because you see it. That is how the world is; it is dṛśya, the
seen.
We have the word loka, which is usually translated as
‘world.’ We know about bhū-loka, bhuvar-loka, suvar-loka,
svarga-loka, vaikuṇṭha-loka, and so on. This word loka means
lokyate, that which is seen. In other words, it is dṛśya. If you
want a synonym for dṛśya, it is loka. Therefore the world is
that which appears to a conscious being. Now you have to
decide which is the truth – whether the conscious being, or
what appears to him or her. For an ajñānī, what appears is the
truth. The world, which is dṛśyaṁ eva, nothing more than a
mere appearance, is taken as real.
Why do some people take the world as real?
Why is somebody is ignorant and somebody else wise?
What is the difference? Is it about literacy and education?
Does the literate and educated guy see the jagat as unreal and
therefore he is not bound, whereas the illiterate and
uneducated guy is bound? Can you say that? No, it is not
about literacy or education. Then what is the reason?
Two reasons for believing the world is real
There are two things that make you believe that the world
is real: one is your identification with the world and the other
is your constant thinking about the world. These two factors
create a make-believe world and you end up taking that world
as real. If you go to see a movie, for example, watch it as a
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student of Vedanta. Be a student of Vedanta, not a fan of a
particular actor, and then see the movie. If you are looking at
the movie as a fan of some actor, you will think all of that is
real, but as a student of Vedanta you do not take it as real. Of
course it offers entertainment; but more than that, you can
learn a lot, if you see it as a student of Vedanta.
A movie shows different rasas, sentiments. There is
karuṇā-rasa, the sentiment of pity or compassion or pathos.
There are amazing movies wherein – water wells out of the
eyes, voice becomes hoarse, and one may even feel a bit
heavy in the heart. What a misfortune, and yet you enjoy it!
Then there is bloodshed, as in a war movie or a horror film.
This is called bibhatsa-rasa, the sentiment of fear due to gory
scenes. You enjoy that also. What could be the reason for
that? whereas in life you get frightened by just seeing a drop
of blood?
The reason is while seeing the movie, you are firmly
rooted in your own reality: the seat is there, the feet are on the
ground, the popcorn is there, and so you are very much
abiding in your being and looking at the movie. Then the
karuṇā-rasa and every one of the nine rasas are enjoyable.
Whereas when you come to life, some adversity stares you in
the face and you get totally disturbed. This is because in life
you are divorced from your true being and identified with the
things and people outside.
Identification precipitates ego
When you identify with a thing, that identification
precipitates an ego. Suppose you are just watching some birds

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in flight: if you examine your experience, you find there is no
ego. But if you want to take a picture of the birds with a
camera, then the ego is already in place. Now you have
identified with the ego in the sense that you want to save the
picture, put it in your album, so you can look at it later and
feel good about it. Therefore it is identification which makes
the thing appear real. And while making the thing real, it
precipitates the ego, so now you are the ego. There is no
longer an impersonal observation, and hence it all appears to
be real. This identification is a very powerful thing.
Then there is a state of non-identification, like when you
look at the birds in flight. When you watch a movie there is
non-identification, and you experience this non-identification;
it is not something alien to you. We have to understand this
non-identification because it is a tremendous thing. Non-
identification with anything is doable, and you should
practice it. Have an open mind and do not allow your
conditioning to come in the way. All conditioning is a form of
identification. For example, do not identify with birth. If you
do not identify with birth, this yearly rigmarole called
‘birthday’ goes out. Not only that, but this also throws out so
many other identifications: state, religion, nation, caste, creed,
race, religion, a set of parents, a place of birth, and so on.
Non-identification is a wonderful thing. If I have to
describe it, I would say it is death while living. Then you are
unlike any other living person because every other living
person is busy proclaiming his or her identity. In doing so, we
are only reinforcing the ego. which is a mere shadow. Non-
identification is marvelous because even while living, you do
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not feel your age or anything called race, or religion. The
heart is beating, blood is flowing, and the brain is active, yet
it is a kind of death because the person does not have any
identification whatsoever. When there is no ‘mine,’ there is
also no ‘not mine.’ Then what kind of world am I looking at?
What people consider as the world is then utterly falsified; it
just does not appear that way at all.
People say, ‘No, no, I want to know that I am Brahman.’
But first of all you must know that the world is unreal; these
two things are inseparably connected. You cannot keep the
world real and know yourself as Brahman. When the world is
real, you are a silly, insignificant, egoistic entity of that world.
How can you be Brahman? It is blasphemy to say you are
Brahman while you maintain that the world is real. Aham
brahmāsmi is the most profound truth and also the most
blasphemous statement at the same time; it depends upon how
you relate yourself to the world.
Identification prevents negating the world
Sri Śaṅkara and other Mahātmās talk about jagat-
nirākaraṇa, negation of this world. They tell us to just set the
world aside because it is false. But to set the world aside
requires examination of our own conditioning, which is our
identification with the unreal. Identification with religion, for
example, is very deep and intense. You want to realize that
the jagat is unreal and that you are Brahman. At the same
time you also want to be a Hindu or a Christian, or keep some
hyphenated identity like Afro-American or Indo-American.
This is an inherent contradiction. You should be able to see
the contradiction. We are very educated alright, but we are
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not enough educated to the point where we see the falsity of
all these labels and identifications. We need an education that
takes us to the level of wisdom, which helps us to open the
third eye of wisdom, Śiva’s eye, the third eye. But we are
caught in all these identifications. With so many
identifications, you cannot say that the jagat is unreal. This is
one fundamental reason why the jagat appears real for an
ajñānī. It is because every identification strengthens the belief
in the reality of the world.
The second reason is constant thinking. If you constantly
think about something every day, morning, afternoon,
evening, you cannot say that it is unreal. We are constantly
thinking about our home, our family, our work, and so on.
When this kind of constant thinking is going on, and then I
say the world is unreal, it sounds hollow. It is like investing in
the stock market and following it on a daily basis and say the
stocks are unreal. You cannot say sarvaṁ khalvidaṁ brahma,
everything is Brahman – except the stock market. Or that
jagat is mithyā – except the stock market!
Therefore one should not think too much about the world.
See if you can reduce the burden of thinking. There is a thing
known as hyperactive attention deficiency. Hyperactivity and
attention deficiency go together. Why there is attention
deficiency? Because the person is hyperactive. Why is the
person hyperactive? Because of attention deficiency.
Therefore, when you replace thinking with awareness,
attachment will be replaced by dispassion. One hallmark of
mahātmās is that they do not identify with anything. They
step into the world and walk out of it casually because there is
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no identification with the unreal. The second hallmark is that
they are rooted in their awareness, not in the thought-created,
imaginary world. For them, Atman, not the world, is the truth;
whereas an ajñānī thinks that Atman is something you travel
to and reach. For the ajñānī the world is very real, which is
unfortunate.

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