The Way of Knowing

This book of hidden knowledge reveals the nature of the false knowledge and assumptions that obscure the truth about our own true nature. There are many books about these traditions and translations from the original Sanskrit sources but this book is not an exposition, explanation or exegesis – it is a step-by-step journey you can take to your real Self with your intelligence, faith and sincerity as your guide.

Raja, Tantra, Bhakti and other forms of yoga have the ultimate goal of Jnana Yoga. Jnana means transcendental wisdom or knowledge. Jnana Yoga is based largely upon Advaita Vedanta, the Hindu philosophy of non-duality. Its goal is the realization of the unity of all life through the knowledge of one’s intrinsic Self. This book makes it possible for anyone to explore this most fascinating philosophy - not in an academic way but as an enquiry into the nature of your own being through revealing the delusions, illusions, errors and assumptions produced by a misreading of everyday experience.

This non-dualistic philosophy is so all-encompassing that it does not deny dualistic philosophies, but integrates them into a higher understanding. It regards dualistic religions and philosophies as being necessary steps to a unified knowledge, just as the ‘old science’ of Newton has been superseded by the startling new science of quantum physics.  

The possibility of non-duality being the one great truth within and behind our experience of duality is beginning to dawn in the shared mind of the world as spiritual evolution brings the cosmos to the season of springtime. While not denigrating nor neglecting the ancient writings, spiritual evolution makes necessary new expressions of the esoteric wisdom of the Hindus. In order for them to be spread throughout the modern world they must be expressed in terms acceptable to the times. To paraphrase Shri Ramakrishna, the coins of the Moguls are no longer legal tender, though their value in gold is now greater. The Way of Knowing seeks to make this revelation easily understandable through an enquiry into the unique significance of what we take for granted – our everyday experience. Though our relative consciousness is indeed a light, that light shines in darkness. The Way of Knowing shines light on that darkness.

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THE WAY OF KNOWING

An inquiry into the extraordinary significance of ordinary experience.

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Foreword

Pursuing an absorbing interest in Yoga and Indian philosophy I visited India in 1952. Browsing through a second hand bookshop in Sydney Australia later in that decade I found a small book with a hard black cover without a title and one scarcely readable on the spine - not the sort of book that would inspire one to look at it further; however, I did.

A brief scan so fascinated me that I spent a whole ten shillings and sixpence to acquire it. That little book has inspired me for years. Its title was ‘The nature of man according to the Vedanta’ by John Levi. It was a brilliant exposition of Advaita Vedanta. Wishing to become familiar with its content I copied much of it. In the early 1970’s I acquired a typewriter and adding asides and additions from my understandings, put it into a binder.

The first year of the 21st century I bought a computer and onto the hard drive it went. For the next thirteen years I worked on it, attempting to make it more easily understandable with explanatory chapters and including a description of the position of Advaita in Hindu philosophy and other material, adding quotes from the Sanskrit translations I was studying as well as appropriate sayings of Sri Ramana Maharishi whose ashram I visited in 1952.

There was no copyright or other proscriptions claimed in Levi’s book; it seemed to me that the author wanted the text to be available for any purpose. It is in this spirit that it is on the website, so that the excellence of the original can inspire others for many more generations to come.

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Since this entire gross and subtle universe is impure, transitory, composed of ends and means, painful, and within the category of ignorance one becomes disgusted with it. For

one thus disgusted the Knowledge of Atman has to be introduced. Shankara

The Self which is free from sin, free from old age, free from death, free from grief, free from hunger, free from thirst, whose desires come true, and whose thoughts come true – That it is which should be searched out, That it is which one should desire to understand. He who knows this Self from the scriptures and a teacher and understood It obtains all

the worlds and all desires. From the Chhandogya Upanishad.

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CONTENTSForeword

Background and rationale

Part 1 The three states –waking and dreaming

dreamless sleepobjective experience

sense and objectssense and self

body, sense and commonsensesummation

Part 2 Materiality

space and continuitycause and change

time, space and beyondtime and the present eternity

Part 3 The human being

thinker and thoughtthe fundamental dualitymemory and the witness

ego and selfsolvable and insolvable problems

Part 4 Non-duality

non-dualitywitness and object

mindobjectivity

remembrance and durationdesire, aversion and fulfilment.

willPart 5. Summation

Conclusion

Quotations from Sanskrit texts are accredited by capitals as AG (Avadhuta Gita) VC (Viveka Chudamani) AS (Astravakra Samhita) BP (Bhasya Pariccheda) BG (Bhagavad Gita) and AB (Atma Bodha) CU (Chhandogya Upanishad.)

Nasrudin stories have been taken from“The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin” by Idries Shah, Pan Books Ltd.,33 Tothill St., London SW 1.

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Sri Ramana Maharishi quotes are taken from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharishi published by T.N Venkataraman. Sri Ramanasramam Tiruvannamalai

Background and rationale

“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive back where we started, and to know the place for the first time” From “The Wasteland” T.S. Eliott

The Way of Knowing is taken from the Hindu philosophy known as Advaita Vedanta. In the Sanskrit language, which is the philosophical language of India, Dvaita means Dual, the negative prefix ‘A’ converting the meaning to Non-dual. Advaita is therefore a philosophy which seeks to reveal the non-duality upon and through which, the relative world appears to exist.

The most famous propounders of this philosophy are the great teachers Gaudapada, Shankara and others. Shankara expressed it through his commentaries on the 10 major Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, and his Vivekachudamani (‘The Crest Jewel of Wisdom’) and other writings. Gaudapada wrote the famous Advaita treatise to the Mandukya Upanishad. The Way of Knowing seeks to express the essence of Advaita for Westerners unfamiliar with Hindu culture and philosophy. It seeks to reveal the extraordinary significance of ordinary experience in easily understood terms. It requires no understanding or acquaintance with Hindu culture or philosophy, and can be joyously freeing or revealing to Theists, Deists, Agnostics and Atheists alike. This is the uniqueness of Advaita Vedanta.

Early scholars found no equivalent word for the Sanskrit ‘Atman’, which posed great difficulties. They decided on the word Self, as with the necessary philosophical understanding it comes as close to the core of identity as possible, when spelt with a capital S.

This decision has had some unfortunate ramifications which have to be ignored now, as the precedent has been set by almost two centuries of use. In Advaita Vedanta, the Atman means the Supreme Identity, behind, in and through our personality. Shankara defines the word Atman as:

‘The Supreme Reality, omniscient, all-powerful, free from all phenomenal characteristics such as hunger and thirst, eternal, pure, illumined, free, unborn, undecaying, deathless, immortal, fearless and non-dual.’

The way of knowledge is for those who are disillusioned with the paraphernalia of religion, the obscurity of mysticism and the scaffolds of speculative philosophy. A study of the way of discrimination will also help those who, having been faithful to their own

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path, have found the final understanding ever illusive and the final number of the combination obscured.

The way of knowledge, is the direct and pure way, for it requires only one’s immediate circumstances and intelligence as the method. It is entirely free from ordinances, dogmas and crutches of any kind. The rigors of the investigation are the discipline.

As fire is the direct cause of cooking, so Knowledge and not any other form of discipline is the direct cause of Liberation; for Liberation cannot be obtained without Knowledge. AB

The cultural inheritance.

‘All people naturally seek to attain what is good and avoid what is evil. The means to this realization of these two ends are not always known through perception and inference. The scriptures are therefore devoted to revealing these means so far as they are not known through perception and inference’. Shankara

This book is a new documentation of the process and discoveries that ultimately bridge the gap between all the horns of all our dilemmas. Doubts and dilemmas are the results of our attitudes and thoughts based upon dualistic experience. By revealing this truth, the study frees those who persevere with it. Advaita Vedanta is the highest expression of human endeavour and the result of centuries of spiritual development.

The systematic formulation of it as a philosophy is uniquely and specifically Hindu. That it is necessarily imperfect is admitted. No mirror can reflect without some distortion. Consequently and refreshingly, the philosophy does not claim to be anything more than a bold attempt to express the inexpressible. Advaita Vedanta is the crest-jewel of Hindu thought. It courageously seeks to demonstrate non-duality as the ever-present reality, in the face of all the apparent evidence to the contrary. Furthermore it does so with startling clarity in both breadth and fine focus.

Though a brief description of the development of Vedanta cannot do its philosophies justice and may be misleading, some idea of the three main schools is necessary to explain Advaita. The following schools of thought are all based upon various interpretations of scriptures called the Upanishads which are the philosophical sections of the ancient Vedas.

The same scriptures have produced the Samkhya System of Kapila - a dualistic philosophy that includes incidentally, man’s first exposition of a psychological analysis. Similar to the Christian idea, each soul was distinct and related to a sort of “oversoul”, and hence the philosophy is one of duality. Kapila believed in separate and individual realities or cores, which related to a “reality of realities” or universal consciousness. Kapila’s contribution to philosophy and psychology is profound and cannot be disputed, yet his genius waned and his analysis broke down inasmuch as he failed to reconcile the contradictions of a theory that proposes a number of separate absolutes or two separate realities.

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A religious philosophy known as “Qualified Non Dualism” ascribed to the sage Ramanuja, hinted at the equivalence of all human spirits, to which God was regarded as the sum total of parts. The inconsistencies here are similar to the contradictions of Kapila, for no amount of parts can finally make a whole, any more than a mass of divisions can make a unity. Other philosophers interpreted the Upanishads differently. The result was “absolute non-dualism” or Advaita Vedanta. The motive was not knowledge of details, but a comprehensive knowledge of all things. The frequently repeated statement was “by knowing the substance clay, all things made of clay can be known; what is it, that once known, all things can be known?” The knowledge sought was not only utter and otherworldly, but a knowledge that could reveal all else as well. To Advaita only knowledge of the origin, or the fundamental reality was regarded as true knowledge. Anything else was ignorance, no matter how well informed.

Advaita Vedanta affirms that the individual self (Atman) is not different from the Cosmic Self (Brahman). Absolute consciousness (Brahman) is unmanifested (Avyakta). It is not possible to describe what it is. The universe has sprung from the ‘power’ of Brahman, but Brahman remains undifferentiated and unmanifest. The creative power of Brahman is called Maya. All things, from the unstable micro-particles of nuclear physics to the elements, micro-organisms, plants, animals, and humans possess some of the consciousness of Brahman, consciousness absolute. Therefore everything is conscious. Brahman is apolar, but Maya is bipolar. Therefore everything in nature is dual. Duality arises from Maya which conceals reality as it reveals duality. The first element manifested is Ether (Akasha) the finest form of matter, from which all other forms are projected into increasingly grosser forms to manifest the subtle and physical worlds. The concept of creation as we know it is not used in this cosmogony. Projection or transformation through concordant levels of Akashic vibrations is closer to the Vedantic idea.

The God of religions is not Brahman, but the power of Brahman (Maya). The manifesting energy of the universe has many names in various Hindu traditions. Many of them are Goddesses, such as Kali, Durga, Rada, and Pavarti.

In Advaita Vedanta, God is not the unmanifest, undifferentiated Brahman, but Brahman in creation (called Ishvara and many other names). God as the creator must be relative to the creation. God arises with it, and so must be absorbed back into the unmanifested at the end of time. It is by serving or worshipping God that the grace is obtained to free oneself from relative existence with its trials and suffering. The two main ways to do so are surrender to God, or knowledge of God. The first way is through devotion known as Bhakti Yoga; the way of knowledge is called Jnana Yoga. The most famous Jnana Yogi of last century is Ramana Maharishi who is quoted throughout the text.

Those of us who find revelation and joy in the way of knowledge thus owe a debt of gratitude to the millions of Hindus who added their genius together to produce Gaudapada, Shankara and the other sages, and to those who have kept the living springs of realization flowing.

Religions and systems that rely on beliefs, rituals and techniques only lean wistfully towards the realization of the intrinsic beauty of the Self, where they don’t wilfully

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obscure it altogether. The Self is the Way and what this “Self” is and how its realization comes about is the crux of Advaita Vedanta.

There are four famous sayings from the Upanishads that encapsulate the intrinsic meaning of Vedanta philosophy. They are bold uncompromising dicta that tend to confound our understanding. They are ‘Thou art That’, ‘I am Brahman’, ‘Pure consciousness is Brahman’, and ‘This self is Brahman’. The ‘Way of knowing’ attempts to show how this is so.

‘It is God’s grace alone which gives wise people the desire to realize the non-dual Brahman; thus are they set free from great fear’ AG

The severance from cultural tradition.

However the foregoing may seem, this book is not a scholarly formal treatise of the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara. It contains few Sanskrit words. It does contain, however, the living soul of Advaita, as expressed in an inquiry that the reader can share, day by day, chapter by chapter. You only need will and life itself. These are the only ingredients needed to set out on the way of direct knowledge. The situations and circumstances of your life are the living laboratory in which you can confront the issues raised by following the Way. Your experiments are mostly ones of watching, so nobody else need know or be inconvenienced. No changes are called for. Continue being as you were until you start to be what you are, then the changes will come about spontaneously.

The subjects of each chapter will not be exhaustingly investigated with data, proofs, references and arguments, for the motive is not to convince the reader of the infallibility of the ideas, nor is it to provide an intellectual framework to read the world by. The motive is to reveal the living significance of experience, confirmable from within anybody’s ordinary knowledge and experience. Each chapter is then a point of departure for unique, personal insights.

It may be asked why a Westerner presumes to write a book purporting to explain an Eastern philosophy when there are many well versed Indian scholars who do so. One reason is that so few Westerners take the trouble to find and study the translations from the original Sanskrit works or spend years learning the complexities of the culture, the bewildering range of epithets used, understanding the many analogies and obscure metaphors and the accurate meanings of the terms. As David Frawley writes in his book Gods, Sages and Kings:

‘The modern intellectual mind, predominantly materialistic, humanistic and scientific by nature, can have a limited ability to understand ancient spiritual texts.’

Further, the original Sanskrit works are mostly in terse aphoristic form or as emphatic statements that are not further developed, making an understanding difficult; certainty without the personal assistance of a competent guru. Commentaries on the original texts are open to various interpretations - which fact has given rise to the contending schools of Vedanta philosophy. A simpler explanation without the technical terms, couched in a

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manner easily followed and organised into a logical sequence is here offered with support from Sanskrit texts and a sage’s teachings.

Some Ways to use the Book

The book needs much re-reading, for as many times as it is read, as many times will its meaning alter. A few readings will reveal the fact that there is a repetition of subject matter. But the level of their significance changes as both the understanding grasps the premises and the inquiry unfolds.

A straight read-through is best to begin with, not stopping to fathom out the details. The next, a little slower, working over the basis and making a note of the queries that arise, for the queries and objections should be kept. They will become interesting clues as you proceed into the different nuances of meaning and understanding.

The serious student should then spend some time on each separate chapter, reflecting deeply and often on the subject, its implications and any objections and queries, being aware meanwhile of all the machinations of common sense in regards to it. Then let it all lie fallow for a time and after a month or two, keep the book handy, and read a page or two as often as the inclination occurs. This type of random reading may well be the most rewarding.

Persevere with those sections that at first seem incomprehensible, or perhaps nonsensical. Read on, but keep coming back to consider them again. Once used to the strange concepts reading them can be of extra interest; for to a contemplative mind there is much more to be derived than the stanzas apparently convey. In some strange way, subtle intuitions can be derived from contemplating stanzas expressing obscure or seemingly illogical concepts; in this way ancient scripture can reveal understanding beyond the known. Patience may be rewarded with your own unique insights, perhaps even revelations!

Nevertheless there is little doubt that reading this book will challenge some of your beliefs - perhaps to the point of discomfort. At that stage you will either cease reading it or put the beliefs on hold for a while. Whether this happens or not, the following is an important precursor to the text – as it is to any philosophical enquiry.

Belief and truth.

In relation to belief, discrimination is of paramount importance because unless it is used to uncover the reasons why certain beliefs are preferred over others or what the beliefs are founded upon, prejudice and opinion may take the place of realized truth.

The need to have belief systems is a very strange thing, not to be confused with opinions and such like. Insecurity from feeling small and vulnerable in the apparently intimidating immensity of the Universe is a likely cause – as is a state of bewilderment at the diversity and confusion of doctrines and opinions. Also, we love knowledge and so hate the feeling of not knowing. We don’t like to admit being ignorant. It is so powerful a need that we will substitute belief for knowledge rather than admit ignorance. So for many centuries erroneous beliefs have been taught in Universities throughout Europe as established truth, more particularly in anatomy and physiology. It was only when these

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cherished beliefs based upon other beliefs and ancient authority were put aside and true investigation began that the truth began to be revealed. It is worth noting that much of physiological and anatomical truth was there for all to discover but the belief systems based upon old authority apparently prevented such direct and simple seeing. The same may be true for modern belief systems and our uninvestigated personal notions when they are based upon faulty evidence or thinking or authority and tradition.

In Europe centuries ago a person could be ostracized or burnt at the stake for not believing in an item of doctrine or advocating theories that opposed them – Galileo is one such victim. Within the context of that culture it was because holding to a belief system upheld the authority of the Church and protected the believer from eternal damnation. Political systems may do similar things.

In order to finance its wars the Church of Rome fostered the belief that remission of sins and a place in heaven could be purchased from the Church by buying an ‘indulgence’ as it was called. This was a diploma about as likely to achieve those ends as its owner would be to become Pope. Nevertheless, people did so. This kind of belief can only exist when there is a wilful subjugation of intelligence imposed by fear exploited by a powerful authority.

Belief systems fostered by religion, philosophy and even science are rather like clothes we put on to shield ourselves from inclement weather; often only put on when the climate turns against us. A system of beliefs is not the same as a belief in the possibility of something. Belief systems are structures of ideas organized to support each other and perhaps another more abstract concept. In order to select whatever idea support the system and deny those that don’t, require the exercise of prejudice. Rigid belief systems whether within science, religions or whatever, are based upon prejudice and lead to fanaticism or error. That is their danger.

For the most part belief systems cause inner and outer disharmony and make mischief enough, but it is the subtle uninvestigated beliefs that often govern our lives. We can have no measure of freedom until they are unearthed. If a person believes they are inferior they certainly are. If a person believes that they are superior, they may not be, but the attitude may win out. If it is believed that humans are merely smart animals it justifies living with the sole intention of gratifying the animal nature and justifies being self-centred. In this way life tends to be experienced as it is believed to be. It is as just as important to take great care with what we choose to believe as it is to take care about what we eat, drink and desire.

There can be little value in any belief that can not stand the clear light of applied intelligence or denies all firm evidence to the contrary - as the history of science has shown. Yet there are some ideas for which there can be no firm evidence. They are best not turned into articles of faith or belief but acknowledged as speculations that future experience might or might not verify. So much strife could have been saved by this simple attitude!

For an individual concerned for the truth, fixed beliefs of any kind are of no benefit. To be open to truth, personal preferred beliefs must be held in abeyance. Persistent reasoning, experiment and discussion followed by contemplation until it yields its truth, should be the method of investigating any issue. This process is important in the

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beginning for the intimations of truth must come from outside and are then slowly confirmed by reason and conformity with other data and experience. A spiritual truth when first heard will resonate with an unpleasant clang on an unregenerate mind whereas on a regenerate one it will sing like a song. The soul recognizes it instantly. It feels ‘Yes! I know that!’ but until it was heard the person was not aware of knowing it. Later one’s truth comes through gentle revelations directly from the Self.

What a person believes because they have been told to believe it and what is believed through personal understanding are not the same. Truth obtained by investigation is different from belief systems adopted from authority, tradition or rational argument. Natural beliefs about the nature of life are views obtained from one’s individual nature and intelligence so should not be held on to too strongly. The view is sure to change as the understanding grows. Only those on the summit of a mountain can get a true picture of the lay of the land. Though the different views as one ascends a mountain are true they are only partially so. This is why there are lesser and greater truths.

Opinions based upon one’s own investigation are not the same as fixed beliefs and are very different from beliefs in doctrines. Rather, they might be called ‘operational concepts’ – that is, a provisional concept that operates efficiently and is not contradicted by any other concepts held. If contrary facts come to light the concept is then abandoned or modified accordingly because to such a person truth is more important than fixed opinions. As far as I am aware, there is no specific dissertation on belief in the sage’s writings, except for a saying that seems to give belief a potent force – ‘If you believe you are bound, bound you become. If you believe you are free, free you are.’ For most people, the teachings of the Hindu sages seem to challenge many of their belief systems, and that is as it should be. It is not so much the beliefs we might hold in metaphysical or religious concepts they challenge, but also the common-sense notions we have accepted as true.

However, the sages affirm that fine discrimination shows where the boundaries of beliefs, concepts, thoughts, operational concepts and reasoning lie. They say that spiritual philosophy should not conflict with, or be contrary to, reason and logic, though it may require them to become free from their own limitations. It is another paradox that the astute application of both logic and reason in fine discrimination reveals their limitations. It reveals that the living truth lies beyond reason and logic. It resides within our souls. Philosophy, reason and logic are of value only in honing the mental understanding and the verbal expression of spiritual truth, not the uncovering of it. While humbly accepting the fact that there is a force tending to self-deception the sages tell us that there are three things that can be used as guides. They are the spiritual truths taught by a proficient teacher, reasoning them out, and the personal conviction that arises after sincere inquiry and living a life of moral discipline with a mind trained in thinking objectively and aware of its own tendencies as described in the section about discrimination. Ultimately it is personal experience alone that can confirm spiritual truth.

A book may be able to impart knowledge, but wisdom must be experienced.

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‘The teachings of a guru should not be judged from the standpoint of literary merit. Intelligent people accept the quintessence. Is not a boat, though unpainted and ugly, capable of carrying passengers across the ocean?’ AG.

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PART ONE

The three states

‘The Self which is absolute, effortless, immutable, and spotless, is neither far way nor limited. It is verily ever attained.’ AS.

The seeker must be enabled to realise that the essential Self, far from being what the individual patterns of thought would make it seem, is beyond limitation and thus infinite and eternal. So long as a person firmly believes in the common categories of sense life and ego, the reality of their essential being will remain hidden.

When understood, the realisation of the Self produces a state beyond every possible circumstance, including death. But to discern the changeless principle within us we must examine all human experience. We experience three states - waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep. All our experience comes as a result of these three phases of consciousness. Here is the first difficulty, for habitually being in the waking phase precludes the direct apprehension of the other two, so in our present state, dreaming and sleep can only be considered from the sole standpoint of waking.

Little can be learned of a whole from the limited standpoints of one of its parts, hence we must consider each state from different points of view; its own, and from its complementary, and from the one that transcends them. One can finally see them from the standpoint of the “real Self” which continues unmodified throughout these three states.

`THE WAKING STATE

This phase is commonly held to consist of thinking and feeling in the presence of tangible objects. Tangible objects appear to be there through the agency of the five sensory faculties. It is characterised by the feeling of being a subject experiencing the objective.

THE DREAM STATE

This state appears to consist of thinking and feeling only, because tangible objects, as known by the waking state, cannot be present in a dream state, or so it appears from the standpoint of the waking state. Yet this is not so from within the dream state itself, for it is the firm conviction and experience of the dreamer that tangible objects are perceived

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and are real. Thus the dream state is definable in exactly the same terms as the waking state, that is, thinking and feeling in the presence of apparently tangible sense objects. Each being viewed from its own standpoint no difference can be found. A difference appears however, when we consider dreams from the standpoint of waking, according to which, waking alone is the real experience. (In this fact lies a clue to the nature of realisation. for on waking we know that the dream world and the dream body whose senses perceived it were all products of the mind. Similarly on waking in the Self all states and the world are perceived to be the products of Mind.)

A dream is not an illusion as it comprises an entire state of experience; an illusion is only a fragment or part of a state. The activity of the senses, the feeling of ego, the apparent reality of external objects, and the whole range of thoughts, feelings, and emotions are just as real to the dreamer as they are in the waking state. Nor are dreams a private experience as it seems to be from the waking state, for in the dream state others share the dreamer’s experience just as others do in the waking state. Both states share the sense of time, space, cause, purpose, and being, though they might be different and variable- just as they are in the waking state. To a person in the waking state considering dreaming the dream state is refuted, though from within the dream state, the dream is considered as being a waking experience. Both states are characterised by the subject/object duality and are, to that extent identical states of consciousness.

To those in a waking state dreams are considered to be mere mental ideas, whereas waking is real. However, it can be shown that what we are proud to call reality is no more than the senses sensing and they too, ultimately becomes an idea. This will be become clearer as the enquiry continues.

There is no essential difference between thinking and feeling in either the waking or the dream state, for both are equally real to the experiencer. The main difference between the two states seems to be that the dream experience exists without the action of the various organs of sensory perception – but the organs are not the senses, according to Vedanta. Bereft of a physical nose, eyes and other sense organs, the dreamer sees, feels, hears, and touches. Dreams are recollections based on the mysterious nature of memory. Basically, there is no difference between recollections or ideas, waking or dreaming. The most salient difference between the two states is that in the dream state there is no volition as dream experience is beyond the control of the will.

‘In the dream state where there is no actual object, the mind, by its own power, creates everything. It has created all we see in the waking state as well. There is no difference between waking and dream states. Everything is the creation of mind.’ VC.

‘If you understand waking and sleep properly you will understand life and death. Only waking and sleep happen daily, so people don’t notice the wonder of it’.

‘The three states of waking dream and sleep are not real, for they come and go. The real always exists. The ‘I’, or existence that alone persists throughout these three states is real. Consciousness is the screen upon which, all the pictures come and go. The screen is real; the pictures are mere shadows on it.’ Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the Eleventh of January 1946

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*In a dream Mulla Nasrudin saw himself being counted out coins. When there were nine silver pieces in his hand, the invisible donor stopped giving them. Nasrudin shouted, ‘I must have ten’ so loudly that he woke himself up.

Finding that all the money had disappeared he closed his eyes again and murmured, ‘All right, then, give them back - I’ll take the nine.’*

DREAMLESS SLEEP

‘Attachment, desire, pleasure, pain and the rest are perceived to exist as long as the mind is active. They are not perceived in deep sleep when the mind ceases to exist. Therefore they belong to the mind alone and not to the Atman.’ AB

‘When a person has entered into deep sleep, he becomes united with Pure Being; he has gone to his own Self. That is why they say that he is deeply asleep – it is because he has gone to his own.’ CU

Dreamless sleep is that state in which the seeming duality of subject and object has disappeared. It is negative from the standpoint of commonsense, but very positive from its own, for it totally annihilates the world of our experience.

Though it appears as blankness to the waking state, we apprehend it positively in subtle ways.

1. We do not cease to exist though nothing exists for us in profound sleep. There must be present then, a principle transcending qualities and experiences pertaining to the duality of ordinary experience. If no such principle existed, there would be no continuation of experience, after the complete absence of experience that characterizes deep sleep. The principle responsible for this continuance must be independent of both the existence and non-existence of experience. As such, it must be absolute being, or, “I-myself”, that has subsisted throughout.

2. Upon waking we can be conscious of having slept soundly. Paradoxically we are then conscious of having been totally “unconscious”. This is illogical. One cannot be conscious of the absence of consciousness. It must be this: Deep sleep is consciousness in its pristine state, while it is not assuming the duality of subject and object. It is the state of non-duality.

3. We look forward to sleep, become sick when deprived of it, and desire it with confidence of enjoyment. It must be this: It is the state of profound contentment, peace, desirelessness, for all desiring and struggle to fulfil desires is then at an end.

Our consciousness of deep sleep then appears synonymous with the Self, or supreme identity. Unconditioned being, non-dual consciousness, perfect peace; these three characteristics of profound sleep correspond to the three constituents of individual experience - life, thought and feeling. Thus these three have their origin in the Self. They

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are aspects of the real Self, which is single and immutable. Single, because it observes and therefore transcends the varieties of objective experiences whenever they arise, and immutable because it remains unaffected by the appearance or non-appearance of that variety.

In deep sleep what becomes of the objects of experience whether considered as external (matter, things) or internal, (thoughts, feelings)? The conclusion of Vedanta is that all relative experiences rise and fall in Mind or the Self, as the wave arrises and disappears out of and into the ocean; so with bubbles and foam. They are nothing but forms of the ocean and cannot exist by themselves. The indisputable fact remains that the person in deep sleep is unaware of the existence of anything – including the ego.

It cannot be held that all the categories of experience is then absorbed into the ego or the personal mind since neither are known to exist in that state as they are apparent realities of the waking state. Nor can the absence of the subject/object consciousness mean that the consciousness that illuminates them is non-existent. It follows that there must be a hidden existence as absolute non-existence is not possible as there must be an existent awareness to know it as such. Similarly, the absence of all experience cannot establish the absence of the perceiver of it.

We could not know anything at all if we departed from our unconditioned state at any time, or on seeming to enter the objective domain of waking, for only the unconditioned can take cognizance of the endless flux of experience. This will be explained in later chapters.

It follows then, that the origin, the real, the supreme identity as the non-dual consciousness continues as the background of all three phases of experience and so of all perception and knowledge. This will be explored fully in a later section.

So, both waking and dreaming are states of mental activity, as dreamless sleep is the absence of such. If any difference can be discovered between waking and dreaming, it is no more than the difference between one mode of thought and another.

We are now looking at waking and dreaming from the standpoint of the conscious Self, which pervades and illuminates all our objective experience.

From that vantage point we realise that there is no essential difference between one state of objective experience and another, so a term to cover them all must be found, for clarity. Duality will be that term. Its characteristic is the presence of knower and known, thinker and thought, the duality of subject and object.

‘Is there death for you? For whom is death? The body dies. Were you aware of it, did you have it in deep sleep? The body was not when you slept, but you existed even then. When you woke you got a body. In the waking state you still exist. You existed both in sleep and waking. But the body did not exist in sleep and exists only on waking. That which does not exist always, but exists at one time and not another cannot be real. You exist always and you alone are therefore real.’ Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the ninth of June 1946.

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*“After a long journey, Nasrudin found himself amid the milling throng in Baghdad. This was the biggest place he had ever seen, and the people pouring through the streets confused him.

‘I wonder how people manage to keep track of themselves, who they are, in a place like this,’ he mused.

Then he thought, ‘I must remember myself well, otherwise I might lose myself.’

He rushed to a caravanserai. A wag was sitting on his bed, next to the one which Nasrudin was allotted. Nasrudin thought he would have a siesta, but he had a problem: how to find himself again when he woke up.

He confided in his neighbour.

‘Simple,’ said the joker. ‘Here is an inflated bladder. Tie it around your leg and go to sleep. When you wake up, look for the man with the balloon, and that will be you’. ‘Excellent idea,’ said Nasrudin.

A couple of hours later, the Mulla awoke. He looked for the bladder, and found it tied to the leg of the wag.

‘Yes, that is me,’ he thought. Then, in a frenzy of fear he started pummelling the other man ‘Wake up! Something has happened, as I thought it would! Your idea was no good!” The man woke up and asked him what the trouble was. Nasrudin pointed to the bladder. ‘I can tell by the bladder that you are me. But if you are me, who, for the love of goodness, am I?’*

DUALITY

The inquiry into objective experience, from the point of view of the ego, is the inquiry into the objective, from and by the subjective. A real inquiry however, must be from the vantage point of the Self, to which everything is objective including the ‘subjective’ ego. The Self is the one true subject by which every other manifestation in nature is known both within and without.

Cognition however is either introspective or extrospective, as thinking or consciousness is directed either “outside” to objects or “inside” to thoughts and feelings. Later we may see that both are the names we give to the same function of consciousness, for both are characterized by the same “objectification” of consciousness when looked at from the highest standpoint of the Self.

It is important here to see that “abstract” thought and generalizations, however subtle or tenuous, are not introversion, as we will come to understand it, for thought will always embody an image borrowed from sensory perception, even if it is only a cipher or a symbol. Hence, there is no thought without form, and form is objective. Further, abstractions are projected from the immediate categories of sense-life.

All abstract notions whether they refer to qualities, numbers, relations or concepts require the support of some object of sensory perception. Within ordinary waking consciousness there is no experience that is not fundamentally sensory.

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‘Oh, the root of misery is duality. There is no other remedy except the realization that all objects of experience are unreal and that you are pure, One, Consciousness, and Bliss’. AS.

SENSE AND OBJECTS

External objects are never actually perceived.Sensory activity is not perception. The action of the senses presents nothing but the bare sensation or chemical-electrical changes in tissues. They cannot present us with ready-made notions of objects.

We derive from an excitation of nerve fibres and an electrical charge in certain minute brain cells, the complex notion of a world of objects, of space, time, and causality. All these supposedly “external realities” are derived from purely internal changes. Tangible objects can therefore have no independent existence. They exist as notions in the perceiver’s mind. This being so, no clear distinction can be found between what we call matter and what we call mind. On the same basis the distinction between thoughts and tangible objects must be a delusion.

SENSE AND SELF

The notion of separate objects is learnt by habit. The bare sensations of sound, touch, light, taste and smell, when repeatedly and similarly experienced, slowly builds up a notion of a specific object, or kinds of objects.

Observe the correlation of sense objects and the senses themselves as light and seeing, sound and hearing. They are at one. The same stimulus may give rise to sensations of sound in the language of the ears, sight in the language of the eyes, smell in the language of the nose. Something has been apprehended no doubt, but whatever it is, is not what the senses report, no matter how accurately. That something is unknown by the senses, which merely report according to the limitations of their spectrums. The substance of the stimulus is unknown, for the substance transcends both the dualities of knower and known, while the sensed object is merely the senses sensing. The mysterious substance is consequently identical with the unconditioned consciousness of deep sleep, which has been defined as our original state, identical with the Self.

Such a removal of qualities from what we called a ‘foreign object’ implies that we have, in the process, transcended the mind that perceived it and the senses as well. If this is so, then obviously both the world and its perceiver are both simultaneously void of the qualities the senses impart. They are consequently equivalent. Thus it is not possible to find any difference between the perceiver and the perceived for both are resolved into the eternal reality beyond sensory qualities. (This concept can be experienced, though it may be difficult to grasp intellectually. To experience it is enlightenment.)

There is another aspect of this to do with relative experience, for we perceive according to what we are and we are what we perceive. The world we see and inhabit is equivalent

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to what we are, be it vegetable, insect, animal, or human. There is a strict similarity and equivalence, between the knower, process of knowing and knowledge, for all creatures.

For the purposes of our study, introversion means the cessation of sensory activity. This is not strange or foreign to us, for we make it unwittingly whenever we cease to be conscious of objects, which we do in the interval between two thoughts, when a desire is fulfilled, or in dreamless sleep. When we do so, introversion occurs though the relative mind is not aware of it. The truth is that what we experience as ‘life’ is at all times the unconditioned appearing as the relative. This is Maya. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is neither true nor false, real nor unreal, a dream nor a fact, or an illusion, though we place it in categories of knowledge through exercising observation, reason and logic; it is in truth, inexplicable.

Along with all other creatures, our world is our senses, and if we abstract the qualities our senses have given it, its materiality and objectivity vanish. What remains is nameless, formless being, an aspect of the non-dual principle of consciousness. This happens in deep sleep, yet the significance of this escapes us. When this state is realized, the world of diversity collapses into a single unit. Accordingly appearances are nothing more than the senses sensing on the screen or background of the timeless, non-dual principle of consciousness, or from the standpoint of identity, the Self.

Clearly, it is the nature of the auditory faculty to manifest sounds, of the visual faculty to manifest shapes and colours etc. What we take to be an object is the visibility of vision, the audibility of hearing and the rest. Similarly the correlation of bare sensations is all we receive. No real object has actually been cognized in these excitations of nervous tissue.

This is contrary to common sense, which dictates that sensations are caused by specific and fixed stimuli external to the senses, and not that it is the senses themselves that determine the relative nature of the supposed external stimuli.

That the world as we know it is created by the senses is proven by the fact that each life form inhabits at the same time, a unique and yet common world. Unique in that its consciousness, as it functions through its senses is different, and common, in that it is the same fundamental reality that it sees differently. Imagine what sort of world you would inhabit if you had four senses, or eight instead of five - it would certainly not be the same world whose real existence you now accept and believe in. Our notions of the world, therefore, cannot be separated from the limitations and acuity of the senses, determined by the nature of the creature in which they function. Again, we are one, the perceiver, the process of perception and the perceived.

* “Nasrudin was sent by the King to investigate the lore of various kinds of Eastern mystical teachers. They all recounted to him tales of the miracles and the sayings of the founders and great teachers, all long dead, of their schools.

When he returned home, he submitted his report, which contained the single word ‘Carrots’.

He was called upon to explain himself. Nasrudin told the King: ‘The best part is buried, few know - except the farmer by the green, that there is orange underground; if you don’t work for it, it will deteriorate; there are a great many donkeys associated with it’.*

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BODY AWARENESS AND COMMON SENSE.

‘As long as one does not give up the idea of the Self being the body, there is no hope of liberation, though all the philosophies and laws of logic are known.’ VC.

Common sense regards the body as “subject” and the world as “object”. This is a common misconception, and like all others due to a confusion of standpoints.

We infer subjectivity as the opposite to objectivity. Subjectivity being our senses reporting, and objectivity our subsequent projection of these stimuli as an ‘outside’ object.

Hence it seems that the sensory faculty and its supporting body must be on the side of subjectivity and so, apart from the rest of the world, which is termed objective.

Yet we have seen how the objective world is wholly conceived by inference based on sense data, which is in fact, wholly subjective, and that the world obtains its reality from the fact that we project these sensations outwardly.

Neither the body nor the senses can exist without each other. On waking, one is aware firstly of one’s own body, and then of all else. Thus, our body and world form an indivisible whole, one being impossible without the other.

One’s body then, is like all else, an object of consciousness, and as such, a notion in the same way as the world has been seen to be. Thus from the standpoint of reality the body and senses, and the response to sensory activity, are all in fact, parts of a total experience, and do not stand as subjects to a supposed object. Rather it is all objective to one witness, or Supreme Identity, or Self, which is the real ‘subject’, if such a dualistic term may be applied to it.

‘The ignorant person thinks, ‘I am the body’. The learned think, ‘I am the sentient soul in this body’. The sage, who is full of discrimination and knowledge, thinks only the Self ’. VC.

COMMON SENSE.

Common sense relies on the testimony of the senses, and so, on ground which is sometimes reliable, sometimes not. Being so much in flux and being influenced by so many factors, both internal (psychological, chemical, and physical) and external (season, temperature, moon, cosmos, environment) there is no wonder so much confusion and chaos abounds.

If we took the reports of the senses as absolute truths our understanding of the Universe would still be back in the dark ages. According to sensory experience it is obvious that the sun orbits the earth; that the earth, though bumpy, is flat, that two upright poles a mile apart are parallel, that heavy things cannot be made to fly, that energy and matter are different, or that the earth is stationary in space and does not rotate. The

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testimony of the senses had to be transcended before the truth of all these things could be proved. In the same way, ordinary sense-life has to be transcended in order to discover truth, hence the need for spiritual disciplines.

Common sense is dependent on the testimony of other living beings, or on man-made adjuncts to the sensory faculties, all subject to the same in-built errors of perception. Further, its testimony is held together by a sort of conspiracy of opinion, which protects these comfortable, common sense notions from detection, thus perpetuating the system, the institutions and the person, all of which have their foundation in the conspiracy of opinion, which is really, a sort of ignorance.

Common sense maintains its premises by simply denying the existence of any data, fact, or opinion that contradicts them. (For instance the common sense attitude to magical or super-normal feats). Or it may accept them provisionally without admitting or seeing the full consequences to common sense that the para-normal may contain.

The spiritual view is contrary to common sense. This does not mean that the canons of common sense should be disregarded within the purely human situations to which they apply. Indeed, only the wise, having understood their limitation and transcended them may use them well and fittingly, or not at all. Only from the standpoint of transcendental wisdom can we view with complete objectivity, all aspects of our experience. In this way we may discriminate between its transient and its imperishable sides. We cannot know the true nature of our experience if we persist in viewing it from the standpoint of individuality, and common sense, or ego, or name -and -form consciousness. Thus commonsense and personality must be surpassed if we are to understand aright. However, they will start a clamour of “yes but,” and “all the same” and familiar ploys to protect the ideas that appear to be the very basis of their being.

Be careful to check the motive behind your philosophical questions, for their purpose may be to elicit an answer tending to establish the validity of the common sense outlook, and one then goes chasing one’s tail into confusion. When most questions are considered from the highest standpoint they are seen in their proper perspective, or vanish altogether.

If one is earnest enough, the confrontation with general opinion, and one’s privately held conclusions, will be the very stuff that will be ignited to provide the light to see by. No chicken ever emerged into the world without first destroying the egg.

Those who have come thus far will know what they want, and whether or not they wish to continue the way of discrimination. If there is joy in it, let us continue.

‘Oh! I am spotless, tranquil, pure consciousness and beyond nature. All this time I was merely duped by delusion!’ AS.

*“Nasrudin gave his wife some meat to cook for guests.

When the meal arrived, there was no meat. She had eaten it.

‘The cat ate it, all three pounds of it,’ she said. Nasrudin put the cat on the scales. It weighted three pounds.

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‘If this is the cat,’ said Nasrudin, ‘where is the meat? If, on the other hand, this is the meat - where is the cat?’ “*

TO SUM UP

Fact 1. There are two kinds of cognition. That which apprehends duality (objective), and that which (however vaguely to waking ego life) is one with the Self, reality etc. (introversive, intuitive.)

Fact 2. All we know, in waking and sleeping ego-life is sensory brain activity “projected” “outside” and believed in.

Fact 3. The nature of a sensation is wholly determined by the receiving organ, not by the supposed “external” stimulus.

Fact 4. In sensory life, a substantial substance unknown to the senses is their support but all we know is only the senses sensing. A reality does exist, but we cannot sense it.

Fact 5. This accounts for our confusion, longing, searching and frustration. The truth, which is actual conformity with reality, ever eludes us, for in sensory ego-life we appear not to be in it or of it, and so cannot see it.

Fact 6. Understanding reality is knowledge of the truth. Reality is that which is beyond change. (Analysis of dreamless sleep showed this immutable reality to be the Self, the Self being that single consciousness in which the many and various aspects of objective consciousness come and go.) Reality transcends these changes. It is changeless, immutable.

Fact 7. It follows that we cannot have an objective knowledge of reality, for objective knowledge is a characteristic of duality, (subject-object) in which reality is obscured by name and form. (That is, sensory and mental clouding). Nor can it be subjective, for a subjective understanding is impossible for precisely the same reasons. True introversion (or intuition) alone reveals it. Intuition and introversion are to be understood in their uncommon sense, as applied directly to our method.

Introversion and intuition are synonymous terms related to deep sleep, the gap between two thoughts, and the sense of joy at the fulfilment of desire, immediate knowledge of reality, the realisation of non-duality, or the intuitive perception of the Self depending on the context in which they appear. In all cases however, intuition or introversion lead to absolute knowledge. Meditate on each of these seven facts. Seek for an eclectic understanding, which is a synthesis of them all.

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SENSE AND THE WORLD

The notion of a world is a generalization obtained by inferring its presence from a wholly internal excitation of brain cells. It is totally dependent on the nature and receptivity of the senses. Further the world-idea is based on the illusion of the simultaneous, independent, coexistence of objects, though this is a notion based on inference from memory.

This will be easier to grasp if you consider that no object exists for us unless we think it or perceive it. As we cannot have but one thought or perception at a time (however rapid the sequence or complex the perception) consequently no two things can co-exist in our experience. Memory of past notions also provides the illusion of the presence of a world. Like thought, only one memory can be present to consciousness at a time, and so memory, which is the past, converts the unknown every second into “what - has - gone - before”. Consequently the real is not perceived in introspection, but the world as experienced is inferred over it by the sequence of thoughts, be they memory or any other mental function. (Introspection is looking into aspects of subjective consciousness; introversion is the cessation of that consciousness). The gradual standardization and reliability of these functions is known as growing-up. The establishment of such functions constitutes the difference between babies children and adults. Such an establishment must be learnt and so takes time. The presence of a world is an inference whose apparent reality appears precisely in the same way as motion in a film or a circle of light from a whirling lighted stick. That is by a rapid succession of perceptions, which are slightly blurred into each other. This phenomenon gives rise to the notion of time. (Both memory and time will be investigated at a later stage).

PART TWO

MATERIALITY

‘The tangible universe is verily Atman; nothing whatsoever exists that is other than Atman. As pots and jars are nothing but clay and cannot be anything but clay, so to the enlightened all that is perceived is the Self.’ AB

We have seen that waking experience, like dreaming, is a product of the mind, and that all sense-objects, whether subjective or objective exist solely as notions, and so can only exist when thought of. Therefore nothing can exist for an embodied consciousness unless it is present as an object of consciousness. Further, no two objects can actually co-exist, because there cannot be two objects of consciousness present simultaneously.

So, by these considerations we have seen that what we call objective experience, is in fact, a mental occurrence and the notion of objective qualities nothing more than the senses sensing - in other words, a mental occurrence.

Reflecting on this it becomes obvious that there can be no real distinction between mind and matter for matter is only the name we give to the infinite qualities of objective

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experience. Whatever matter is, cannot be known. Only the senses’ activity can be known, and this is mental.

Just as any apparent difference between waking and dreaming experience can be understood as no more than the difference between two kinds of thoughts, so it is with “mind” and “matter”. The difference lies, not in the nature of the experience, but in the quality of the thoughts.

Now let us look at the idea of materiality closely. The belief in the actual, external reality of matter is founded on twin delusions. Firstly that objects exist independently of being perceived, and that these objects, be they solid, liquid or gaseous, consist of three dimensions. Yet if matter is a mental occurrence, so are its qualities, and so are the dimensions attributed to matter.

Therefore it is necessary to account for the ideas of dimension, which are inextricably associated with our notion of materiality.

‘Non-attachment to sense objects is liberation. Love for sense objects is bondage. Such verily is Knowledge. Now, do as you please’. AS.

LENGTH AND BREADTH

‘There is the world perceived but the perception is only apparent; it requires location and light for existence. Such existence and light are simultaneous with the rise of the mind. So the physical existence and illumination are part of mental existence and illumination. The later is not absolute for the mind rises and sinks. The mind has its substratum in the Self…that is absolute being continuous in sleep, waking and dream states also.’ Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the 20th April 1937

Extension in length and breadth, or in both together, is an idea formed from our memory of discontinuous, successive sensations, in the same way as a tune is the memory of discontinuous and successive notes. Dimensions are not absolute entities. They are relative to an arbitrarily chosen frame of reference equated with the idea of space.

So we get the notion of a surface, but there has been no immediate perception of a surface, just as there has been no actual perception of an actual tune, but simply the notion of one, inferred by projection, to exist externally and independent of its separate sensations. A tune or a surface can not exist apart from the separate sensations upon which its inference is built. The idea of depth is inferred because the idea of surface without a substance is inconceivable. The physical act of grasping confirms the idea of surface and substance. Physiologically, the notion of depth and of tridimensionality is based on the nature of touch and vision.

The appreciation of depth and distance depends on the fact that dual images are formed in the brain without appearing double. This occurs in normal binocular vision. Physiologically, two distinct perceptions, one from each eye, appear to consciousness as one. Stranger still, they are upside-down, relative to the observer’s body. Nevertheless they appear to the mind as one and right way up. Such unification of diverse perceptions is made possible because of the underlying unity of consciousness – the Self. These strange psycho-physical phenomena are an aspect of the magic of maya.

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This fact and the following experiment will be used to show that what we call purely physiological aspects of perception cannot be separated from the psychological.

A pencil slid between the tips of the middle and index finger is felt as one stimulus because the skin surfaces are normally adjacent, and we habitually fuse their sensations “psychologically”. Physiologically, there must be and is, two distinct sensations. If the fingers are now crossed, surfaces that are never normally in contact are brought together, and a pencil placed between them is now felt to be double. This experiment reveals the psychological nature of sensory functions, showing that binocular vision depends upon psychological habits. Psychologically, two dissimilar images are fused into one and turned right-way-up.

The act of grasping, based on touch, is possible because we project the notion that a graspable object has another side, even though no sensual proof is there, for only one side or surface can be seen at a time. If only one side or surface can be seen where did the notion of tridimensionality come from in the beginning?

It is the result of combining tactile, visual, and other sensations and projecting the resultant notions into a supposed objective reality. An identical process takes place when we apparently recognize in a painting, non-existent objects in non-existent space. It cannot come from the painting. The appearance is purely psychological.

Similarly, we project the whole world of our psychological make-up into the viewing of a motion picture, and from the play of light upon a screen and sound waves floating about in the air, construct an imaginary world.

To some, this imaginary world is just as “real” as daily life. Stage hypnotism, where people see and react to a non-existent environment, is the result of a similar projection induced by suggestion.

Whether or not such a projection is in accordance with a “real” environment is not the issue. The “unreal” projection of a hypnotized person is only “unreal” to others who are in another context of reality, just as theirs must be to the hypnotized person. No matter, the process of projection and then reaction is identical.

The illusion of reality comes wholly from the perceiver, and is unique to that perceiver. When our attention goes outward we become conscious of sensations and instinctively perform the mental process that appears to manifest a world.

The sensations themselves cannot do so for they only measure an unknown something in terms of their own limitations. The sensory reporting alone cannot result in the world-idea, for they are only electro-chemical changes in brain cells.

It is our habit, trained into us from birth, and inherited in our human consciousness, to associate physically experienced and imaginary notions to form ideas. Our notion of this world is formed in the same way, and is in fact, an idea.

Materiality then is an idea created by the combination of visual and tactile sensations, either “physical” or “mental” related to actual and imaginary movements of the perceiver’s body and senses. This is commonplace, everyday magic.

‘The whole universe appears to me as an uninterrupted entity. Ah, what a terrible delusion of maya has created the distinction between duality and non -duality!’ AV.

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*“Time and again Nasrudin passed from Persia to Greece on donkey-back. Each time he had two panniers of straw, and trudged back without them. Every time the guard searched him for contraband. They never found any.

‘What are you carrying, Nasrudin?’‘I am a smuggler’.Years later, more and more prosperous in appearance, Nasrudin moved to Egypt. One of

the customs men met him there.‘Tell me, Mulla, now that you are out of the jurisdiction of Greece and Persia, living here in such luxury - what was it that you were smuggling when we could never catch you?’

‘Donkeys,’ said Nasrudin.’*

SPACE AND CONTINUITY

Space, for us, is the absence of solid matter, and so depends upon the perception of such matter for its existence. However, the gap between bodies is full of matter that we cannot see. Therefore the perception of space is produced by the nature, extent and limitation of our sensory faculties.

Space appears negative, because it is the absence of anything that corresponds to the common notion of an object. Compared to tangible bodies, space seems independent and vast, and to this visually vacant space, we ascribe absolute existence, though space is dependent on the delusions of sense, and the apparent simultaneous existence of objects. With space comes the idea of location, and with location, distance. Both are assumed, and convenient, generalities.

Reflection on this fact will help reveal the way we produce abstract notions, by inference and extension from immediate sense data, converting them into absolute entities.

Yet they cannot be actual entities, for we cannot think of an interval or a vacancy in the abstract. They must always be in reference to tangible objects. Our idea of space is the same. It is the no-thing between things.

Space, location and distance, far from having their own independent existence, coincide with the notion of matter, particularly starting with the notion of our own body.

The feeling we have of space, upon reflection, is profounder than that of objects, in so far as objects come and go, though space remains. It appears as the infinity in which things are located and as such, subtler and basic. So it is, for our feeling regarding space and continuity is derived from the intuition of reality, not from the objective experience of living, as is commonly accepted. We will now consider this fact in the light of continuity, as well.

In normal circumstance, distinct groups of sensations and their prolongation succeed each other in such swift succession as to appear continuous and in an unbroken line. This is similar to the illusion of movement produced by the separate sensations of slightly different images, which blend together because the sensory stimuli fade into one another, so appearing one. But we have seen that thoughts occur one at a time, however rapidly.

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The interval between thoughts is the presence of the Self, and it is this that produces the sense of continuity, for it cannot come from the unlinked beads of thought, any more than a melody can come from separate notes not joined by memory.

Continuity cannot come from the objective physiological side of perception, for each thought, image, etc., is separate, and like beads on a string, must be linked. What links them however is consciousness itself, though we normally do not take note of this interval, for when nothing objective is present to consciousness, what appears to exist is nothingness.

Similarly, the idea of space, as an actual entity, does not come from our non-perception of the matter between objects, but is derived from the intuition of the infinity in which all things, visible and invisible appear to be. Both space and continuity are derived from the single, immutable, and non-temporal consciousness in which all perceptions occur.

Conclusion: If material objects and their continuity and spatial situation are seen as separate notions linked only by memory, it must be true that objects are situated not in some invisible and external space, but in the consciousness of their perceiver. This is of profound significance.A common objection is usually expressed in this way, “If objects are notions that arise and abide solely in my head, should not a distant object, when I think of it, appear before me here?”Like so many questions whose origin is within duality, it first appears plausible. Like all questions regarding abstract notions, particularly those that refer to causes and origins of the world, it is a contradiction.

As an object of consciousness is a thought of an object that is now present to consciousness, it follows that it is indeed present, but not yet “here” for it requires a separate series of thoughts to position it in space, along with the other objects of consciousness now perceived. This we cannot do, for we cannot believe it possible. A belief in its possibility would destroy both the question and the asker of the question, for it would imply the breaking of the limitations of sense life, duality and common sense.

The question is the product of a misunderstanding based on the illusions of sense-life.

‘Time is the cause of things that are produced and is the substratum of the universe. It is the cause of the notions of before and after. It is converted into a moment by its limitations. The cause of the notion of distance, nearness, etc is called space. It is one and eternal’ PB.

…’The Self is always there, only you do not see it on account of the objects in your mind. If a room is filled with various articles, the space in the room has not vanished anywhere. To have space we do not have to create it, but only to remove the articles stacked in the room. If you turn the mind inward, instead of outward towards things, then you will see the mind merge into the one unity which alone exists. Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the fifteenth of March 1946.

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CAUSE AND CHANGE

A characteristic of experience is that of mutation, of things changing. Yet it is the idea of continuity being the property of objects that causes the appearance of cause and effect, while by the nature of perception each of the never-ending, though discontinuous, images fade. So there cannot be a strict continuity of objects at all.

If the object supposedly altered has ceased to exist in its previous form, we cannot then say that the present form is anything but a new form that is another and original object of consciousness. Further, when the prototype changes it has ceased to exist, and if it has ceased to exist, how can it be transformed into another? On the other hand, how can that which has ceased to exist, be the cause of that that now appears to exist?

Memory again holds these separate perceptions together, yet memory is merely one kind of thought amongst others, each memory forming the present and therefore an entirely new object of consciousness. Further, any event must be complete, or over, before we know it. It is only after the occurrence that we can take it to be the effect of a previous cause, by which time the ostensible cause must be presumed to have passed over entirely into the effect, the two never being seen together.

The same applies to relationship, for like continuity, relationship between separate objects of consciousness can only be possible when we transfer the real continuity of consciousness to the objects of consciousness. This continuity is the presence of the Self. Though we experience the Self as an unbroken continuity behind all the changes and manifestations of our life, we take no note of its existence. In the same way light is not usually seen during waking experience but only the objects it reveals. To be aware of the Self is enlightenment. Not to do so, is ignorance, which is synonymous with common sense and duality-consciousness.

As with space, continuity and relationship, it is the Self, which appears as memory making the appearance of relationship possible.

‘He who is the knower of all changes never undergoes any change. We have seen over and over again the unreality of these things of imagination, dream and dreamless sleep’ VC.

‘Everything we see is always changing. There must be something unchanging as the basis of all this change… the ‘I’ is unchanging. This is a fact of which everyone is aware. The ‘I’ remains changeless in all states of relative consciousness while everything else comes and goes’. Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the Fifteenth of June 1946.

Summary:

A thought or perception is the consciousness of an object in the mind and every new thought is a new object of consciousness. Since two thoughts cannot occur together, it follows that two objects cannot co-exist. How then can they be related?

Thus the ideas of change and causality as products of materiality are erroneous. Change, or the relationship of cause to effect, is a figment, from the point of view of reality. This is not to deny the practicability of causation and relationship in our world, for it is our world and it is impossible to live in the world unless we accept causation at least as a

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“Modus Operandi”. It is also impossible to understand the nature and origin of the world while causality etc., is accepted, as we shall see later.

The foregoing considerations of change, relationships and cause are inseparably linked to another, and that is time. What is time and how does the notion of time come about?

*“‘What is Fate?’ Nasrudin was asked by a scholar.‘An endless succession of intertwined events, each influencing the other.’‘That is hardly a satisfactory answer. I believe in cause and effect.’‘Very well,’ said the Mulla, ‘look at that.’ He pointed to a procession passing the street.

‘That man is being taken to be hanged. Is that because someone gave him a silver piece and enabled him to buy the knife with which he committed the murder, or because someone saw him do it, or because nobody stopped him?’ “*

TIME, SPACE AND BEYOND.

From within common sense it can be seen that granting the separate reality of space and the percipient’s body, the various extensions and projection etc., are successive, that is, they take time. Time is therefore linked inseparably to space and the memory of successive perceptions. Space and time are two modes of mental activity. To the physicist, energy multiplied by time is action. There can be no concept of time in the absence of action because time is inextricably associated with motion and change. Action produces events, which are motion and change. The concept of time is impossible without events and the space in which they occur.

Time must be an object of consciousness, for we experience time only in those states and conditions of duality. Time is absent in introversion and deep sleep. Within duality it is relative. Like all the other links in the chain of appearances, time too, only exists when we think of it. The immediate link is memory, for time is dependent on the memory of the past, and of the ideas of past, present and future. Past present and future are observations based on common sense notions, but from the experience of the Self, no such notions can exist and so time has no absolute reality.

Recalling that Self and dreamless sleep is synonymous, we may say that we slept for several hours, yet from within the actual experience, no time was present at all. Thus we have ascribed a time from within time experience, to the timeless.

Similarly, when we say that the interval between two thoughts is “brief”, we attribute an existence in time to the unconditioned (and therefore timeless) Self. If we consider both carefully, we see that time or duration has no part in these states at all. Consequently, we have repeated, in another context, the projection of the fundamental error, which is common sense. All the divisions of time like time itself are mere notions.

The thought of a past, or of a future, or of an actual present event, can only occur as a present object of consciousness, and so whatever event is projected “forward” or “backward” or “here-now” is a present experience. “I thought or did” really means “I am at present conscious of the kind of thought called a memory”: “I shall think (or do) really

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means “I am at present conscious of the kind of thought called an expectation”: “I think” really means “I am at present conscious of the kind of thought called an actuality or a present occurrence”.

“I slept” or “I was unconscious” really means, “I am at present conscious of a memory that relates to the absence of thought”. We think deep sleep has a beginning and an end, thus making it a part of waking experience, but sleep, like intuition and introversion has no part in it, and so cannot be said to occur at all. Nor is it truly a “state”. We must however use such terms though the nature of the imperishable and immutable consciousness does not come and go, and so cannot be here now, for all these are categories of time.

It is much easier to see the unreal nature of the notions of past and future than it is to see the unreal nature of the present. This must be significant. It seems that common sense regards the notion of the present as the last straw to cling to, when all else may be dissolved into sheer being. (The understanding of time therefore, can easily result in the direct knowledge of the Self as pure consciousness.) Yet the notion of a present time is dependent on the twin notions of past and future, and if they go, the present notion must go too. Strictly speaking, an experience must be over before we can position it by another thought process, into the present, by which time the supposed “present” has become the “past”. Further, a past event has vanished totally, and a future event is wholly inexistent. Indeed, there cannot be a present event either, for without a subsistent past and future a present for them to relate to is not possible. In truth there cannot be a present time since there is neither a past nor a future. This is a strange concept to common sense. The fact is that only consciousness subsists and consciousness alone is ever present.

‘It manifests Itself through the functioning of all the senses, yet It is without senses. It is unattached, though It sustains all. It is free from relative existence, yet It is the experiencer of it. BG.

‘As a lighted lamp does not need another lamp to manifest its light, so Atman being Consciousness itself, does not need any other instrument of consciousness to illumine itself.’ AB

TIME AND THE PRESENT ETERNITY.

Like space, time is never directly experienced. It is relative to sense life. As space is the apparent interval between apparent objects, so time is the apparent interval between apparent events. Time is the notion of duration projected onto all the other separate, discrete notions of duality.

We measure the passage of time by the observation of movements in natural bodies, such as the sun. Yet such an observation implies the remembrance of successive sensory perceptions. It immediately becomes psychological. The distinction between subjective and objective, or chronological and psychological time is therefore unreal. If it were not for such memories, both or any other form of time would fade into timelessness. If we be bold enough to consider the “now” as it is, just as it really occurs in experience, time of any sort; need not be postulated at all.

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Every apparent reality of the spatio-temporal experience appears through, by and of, the Self. The categories of sense-life, of space, distance, continuity, time and causality, are all a seeming, for the Self, as non-duality, pervades them all, as the water pervades the ocean. It abides as the substratum and support, moment to moment, of all the worlds. Wisdom is discriminating the true from the false, the substratum and phantasm, and seeing that every falsehood is founded on a truth.

Our notion of absolute space is false. It does not universally and independently exist, though it is based on our intuitive knowledge of the present infinity, which is universal, independent and beyond mutation. Our notion of present time, likewise, is the immediate apprehension of pure consciousness, or present eternity, as our notion of continuity is the intuition of the same principle of absolute existence.

The Self is ever present, not in terms of succession, but as the present eternity. This immediate knowledge, intuited equally in everyone finds expression as the personal pronoun “I”. We all share an equal sense of existence. This gives rise to the idea of equality.

In the final analysis, the pronoun “I”, even when supposedly meaning our individual consciousness really means non-duality.

‘Where is the past, where is the future, where is the present. Where is space, or even eternity, for me, who abide in my own glory?’ AS.

PART THREE

THE HUMAN BEING

Now we will attempt to see what we can know beyond doubt, of our human condition, without resort to theoretical notions and text book definitions, but directly from within our ordinary experience.

The first ground of individual experience is the consciousness of a separate, corporeal existence and our personality. We are in no doubt as to either of these things, for we experience them whenever we are conscious, extroversively.

Individuality is the consciousness of a separate existence. Personality is the sum of physical and mental straits that characterize that individual existence. To be conscious of a sense of individual experience implies the presence of a conscious principle, as there is a distinction between consciousness and the object of consciousness, in this case the object being the sense of individual experience. Being conscious of our individual experience we must therefore transcend it, inasmuch as it takes a higher conscious principle to be aware of an individual consciousness.

What is it that transcends individual existence and its changes? It must be an awareness that is unmodified by change. The impersonal Self, Shankara affirms, is the real support,

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ground and basis of both individuality and personality. Both are part of the world delusion that results in the unconscious identification of the real Self with the body, and hence with the whole play and flux of nature.

Things, like the body, constantly change and we identify with each change as it arises, though we who claim a change as our own are changeless. Otherwise we could not say “this is a portrait of me as a child”. The only thing that subsists throughout the shifting transformations of the body from birth to death is the changeless, immutable, ever present sense of Self. We ignore this evidence which causes us to personify the impersonal Self as “my personality”, and the immutable Self as “I who think, know, enjoy, suffer, act etc.” and all their opposites.

‘This body is mortal, always subject to death. It is the abode of the Self, which is immortal and incorporeal. The embodied Self is the victim of pleasure and pain. So long as one is identified with the body, there can be no cessation of pleasure and pain. But neither pleasure nor pain touches one who is not identified with the body.’ CU

What do we know of ourselves as human beings? We are individual existences, born of the identification of Self with the body, though the changeless Self and the changeful body cannot be identical. “I am 5 feet tall”, “I am hungry”, I am English”, I hurt my leg”, “this is me as a child”, “I am Catholic”: this supposed identity of incompatibles is called a human being; their condition, contradiction.

The human being’s nature, while ever identification continues, is one of ignorance, conflict and contradiction. Ignorance, for the not-self is taken as the Self, and the real, original nature totally ignored, while the world appears to be the known. Conflict, because ignorance producing egoism sets all egos at variance with each other. Exploitation, competition and their train all follow. Contradiction, for ignorance and conflict within and without, cause us to do what we would not do, say what we do not mean; say one thing and do another, act with an ulterior motive and pretend another.

Society, institutions, legal systems and religions can do no more than attempt to organize, contain or modify human nature. Being products of the original ignorance they can do no more than perpetuate it all. Transcendental realisation alone is cessation, for it removes the ignorance, conflict and contradiction, and hence the confusion of the human condition.

The anatomy of ignorance and identification need to be understood. Identification, that is, the use of the personal pronoun “I”, can relate to what appears to us to be three distinct levels. “I am 5 feet tall”, or “I see”, to the body and senses; “I think” “I am happy” “I am moved” to thoughts and affections, and lastly to the state of nescience, void or unconsciousness supposed to exist in the absence of thought, such as, “I slept soundly” or “I was unconscious”. All of these statements are contradictions, inasmuch as the “I” can only relate to the Self (however obscured this knowledge is). The non-dual Self cannot be any one of these categories of sense-life. Further, the term “I was unconscious” is a contradiction in terms, for it really means, “I, the thinker, had no thoughts”. But there cannot be a thinker if there are no thoughts.

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As we know by reflecting on deep sleep and allied states, we remain in being though the consciousness of an individual existence has vanished. What we really mean by “I was (or shall be) asleep or unconscious” is “I continued (or shall continue) to exist without individuality”. We choose to ignore again, the testimony of sleep, for if there was any fear lest the loss of individual consciousness meant annihilation, no one of us would dare to fall asleep, or undergo anaesthesia.

The ego-feeling or “I-thought” causes the real Self to appear as the sense of personal identity, and thus identical with the body, senses, mind and affections, yet it is only a seeming, for “I think” really means, “I am conscious of thoughts”. “I see” or “hear” means “I am conscious of visual or auditory perceptions”; and “I am happy” means “I am conscious of a feeling called happiness”.

What is that “I” that is conscious of all this? No matter how it is used, it can only denote the immutable Self or the single consciousness in which the totality of objective experience seems to occur, including the object of the “I thought” or ego.

Until the delusions inherent in sensory life are transcended by the realisation of the Self, the human being is a harmony of contradictions.

‘Filled with insatiable desires; obsessed by ostentation, pride and arrogance; holding evil ideas through delusion – they work with impure resolve. BG.

*A Sufi mystic stopped Nasrudin in the street. In order to test whether the Mulla was sensitive to inner knowledge he made a sign, pointing at the sky.

The Sufi meant, 'there is only one truth, which covers all’.

Nasrudin’s companion, an ordinary man, thought: ‘The Sufi is mad. I wonder what precautions Nasrudin will take?’

Nasrudin looked in a knapsack and took out a coil of rope. This he handed to his companion.

‘Excellent’, thought the companion, ‘we will bind him up if he becomes violent.’

The Sufi saw that Nasrudin meant: - Ordinary humanity tries to find truth by methods as unsuitable as attempting to climb into the sky with a rope.*

THE THINKER AND THE THOUGHT

‘Such a notion as ‘I know’ is produced by the union, due to non-discrimination, of a modification of the mind with two aspects of Atman, namely, Existence and Consciousness.’ AB

If the commonsense distinctions and divisions of mind and matter, waking and dreaming, God and creation and other notions born of dualistic confusion, have not been clearly understood, the last sections of our inquiry will be just that much harder to fathom. Perhaps it would be wise to meditate upon it before reading on.

Commonsense questions should not be allowed to block one’s understanding. Most of them will disappear as the inquiry unfolds. Some will be anticipated and looked into,

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though most of the questions posed by commonsense are unreal or absurd, as will be seen. As far as it is possible, let seekers concentrate on the real problem of 'who am I?' for once this has been solved so are all lesser ones.

Persons wishing to enlarge their sphere of power and knowledge, and so to rise in their own esteem or in the esteem of others, will not enjoy continuing with this inquiry. It will console only those to whom the removal of darkness and incertitude alone counts. For such, the basic analysis and the understanding derived from continuous reflection on one’s nature will be further unravelled. For them, revelation is joy.

Assuming that the foregoing and the chapters on the nature of mind and matter and their equivalence have been well considered, it should be apparent that objective experience cannot be divided except for expediencies sake. The total field of human experience cannot be called inner or outer, for though thoughts seem to occur within, so does every thing else.

Thinker and thought include all functions, aspects and activities of individual experience and personality, such as reasoning, intellection, imagination, feeling, and the “I thought”. The notion of matter, or tangible sense objects, is herein included, for this has been seen to be a wholly mental thought. All mental activity shall be covered by the term ‘objective or individual experience’ for the term mental assumes the obverse of material, to which it seems to stand opposed. As no such opposition exists, the term mental will now be dropped. Though a thought is in fact the consciousness of something, and this consciousness of something becomes “I who think” we shall continue to use the word “thought” for the sake of simplicity.

The thinker is commonly supposed to think thoughts. Yet this becomes an unfounded supposition if actual experience is investigated, for no ‘thinker’ thinks.

The confusion arises when the ego or I-thought arises and affirms, “I think”. As the I-thought is itself a thought, it cannot affirm “I think”, for when the I-thought is present, the flow of thinking stops, so that the process of identification can take place. It then appears that it is possible to say therefore, “I thought”, past tense, for the ego can only claim an action after it has ceased. Understanding how this can be is the unravelling of duality, which is the seeming division of a non-dual consciousness. We shall now see why duality is only a figment.

‘Beyond these three – knower, known and knowledge, - endless, where there is no change at all, one consciousness exists - the Supreme. Sages alone know It.’ VC.

THE FUNDAMENTAL DUALITY

When the consciousness of an object arises that object alone is present. When I am conscious of being a perceiver, the notion of being a perceiver alone appears to consciousness. Therefore, the notion of being a perceiver is also an entirely separate object of consciousness.

This is the key to the illusion of duality and a most important fact. Let us consider it again. Firstly one cannot claim to be the thought, but only apparently to be the thinker,

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after the thought has gone. But if this is so the claim is the memory of having thought, and the memory becomes the ‘I’ who claims it. As two thoughts cannot coexist, the thinker and the thought cannot exist at the same time. They must be separate objects of consciousness. The thinker and the thought, or the so-called subject who thinks, and its apparent object, have no immediate relation, causal or otherwise. One object of consciousness cannot claim to be the cause of the other. Further, the thought can claim to be the cause of the thinker, with as much reality as the thinker the cause of the thought. However, neither is in fact possible, for no immediate relation exists either way. Confirmation of this strange fact can be found from within everyday life, for we know that while we are absorbed in some activity such as reading, that we experience a steady flow of thoughts relating to its contents. The notion “I am reading” cannot occur while we are thus absorbed. A little reflection reveals that at no time is it possible for the subject, (I) who afterwards lays claim to the action, to be present while the action takes place. The idea of us being an agent is a wholly separate thought. At the time of an occurrence we as the ‘I’ cannot be present as thinker, agent, percipient or enjoyer. The clue to the cause of our claiming actions which belong to body consciousness lies in the nature of memory, which is responsible for the erroneous habit of identification, which we will shortly investigate. If the notion of subject and object are both separate objects of consciousness as we have just seen, neither term has any real meaning.

An object in the absence of a subject loses all significance and cannot be called an object; just as in the absence of an object a subject is impossible. The truth is they are given apparent individual and dependent reality by memory that combines the two notions to form an entirely new notion “I am the perceiver, thinker or knower”.

Obviously the next step must be to find out what memory is and where the faculty of recalling past and thus wholly nonexistent thoughts comes from, and how memory appearing as a separate object of consciousness, can fuse two past thoughts, and appear as individuality. However, we will approach the issue differently by first seeing a wider perspective, including life and desire.

What did not affect us we do not remember. We can remember only what we have known, and everything we have known is coloured by the subtleties of pleasure and pain. The memory of pleasure and pain give rise to desire and aversion, and these two in action become will.

Will and conation make us seek what memory tells us is agreeable and augments life, and makes us avoid what is disagreeable and damaging. Individual existence is inextricably woven with aversion and desire; (aversion is the negative obversion of desire, so the will-to and the will-not-to are identical).

We have seen that identifying the Self with the not–self produces the notion of individual existence. Yet individual existence proceeds in terms of desire and aversion. Both of these are the expression of non-duality, for the obvious end of desire is desirelessness. This manner of regarding pleasure and pain will be developed further in a later chapter. It is abundantly evident that the search for one and the avoidance of the other are the sole and complementary aims of individual existence at all levels. Neither would be possible without memory.

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‘Virtue and vice, pleasure and pain are of the mind, not of you, oh all pervading one. You are neither doer nor enjoyer. Verily you are ever free!’ AS.

MEMORY AND THE WITNESS

Memory is verily greater than Akasha*. Therefore even when many people assemble, if they had no memory they would not hear anyone at all they would not think, they would not understand. But surely, if they had memory they would hear, think and understand. Through memory one knows one’s relations, through memory one knows ones possessions. Meditate on memory. CU *primordial space

We can remember only what we have known. We also remember having remembered. As a memory the individual is an object of consciousness, but as the knower of this fact and of all others, it follows that the real knower is consciousness itself. When consciousness gets identified with the body the false notion of consciousness being the thinker springs up. That which erroneously claims to be conscious of an event at which it is not present is the ego, or “I-thought”. Thus the ego can claim only that which has gone before and the experience so claimed is a remembrance. The effect of this is to divide the indivisible non-duality as a mass of water may appear to be divided by a rope floating on its surface, or space divided by a frame, though it remains one, or waves appear separate though they are one with water.Like waves in water, both the supposed thought and its apparent thinker appear discontinuously, so the consciousness that illuminates them both appears to come and go. When the non-dual consciousness functions within time, it appears as the faculty of remembering. It is non-duality itself, appearing as remembering, that gives cohesion to what would otherwise be total flux. Such a chaos could not be known by a knower other than the non-dual, for a relative knower, having no continuity, would be part of the utter flux, and could not know anything, even ignorance. Memory and the consciousness of individual existence are synonymous. Both are the presence of pure consciousness when apparently conditioned by time.

Such consciousness is felt to be an impassive witness to all events, rather than a mere faculty of remembrance, and since we can look forward as well as remember, it seems more accurate to refer to it as the witness than to the faculty of remembrance. The witness is the consciousness in which all objects appear; the thread through all the distinct and separate thoughts of all kinds, including the thought-object called an ego.

The ego or I-thought sometimes assumes the qualities of the body and sometimes of the Self. In all ways it is duplicity itself. When the ego says “my body” “I am the doer” it is of the body and active. When it says “I knew nothing” “I slept” or “I was unconscious” it assumes unknowingly the nature of the Self and is inactive. However, the Self transcends both action and inaction, transcending as it does, time and the individual ego.

So whenever experience appears, the Self assumes the role of the witness.

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It is this aspect of the Self as the witness that has given rise to the idea of an individual soul, confused with the idea of an everlasting personality. Such an idea is the product of an unclear seeing, or a compromise of expression, or both.

‘The Self is witness, all pervading, perfect, one, free, Consciousness, actionless, unattached, desireless and quiet. Through delusion It appears as if It is of the world.’ AS.

‘What good will it do you to go on thinking about memory and perception? Ask who has this perception or memory. That ‘I’ that has this perception or memory, whence does it arise? Find out that.’ Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the Third of July 1946.

EGO AND SELF

‘Objects or feelings or thoughts are all mental concepts. The mind arises after the rise of the ‘I” thought or ego. Wherefrom does the ego arise? From the abstract consciousness or Pure Intelligence…soul, mind and ego are mere words. There are no entities of the kind. Consciousness is the only truth.’ Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the 29th of August 1936

The ego is not an entity in itself. It is a highly complex notion of an embodied existence, arising out of a confusion of the Self with the body as we have seen. It appears to partake of the nature of both, though the eternal and the temporal cannot cohabit. Further, the body, being full of change is unreal and cannot combine in actuality with the changeless, as previously defined.

The non-dual appears as the witness of thoughts whenever they appear, and identification follows as “I am the thinker”, but it stands to reason that since I can remember having thought, something must be substantial to both thought and the thinker. This is the witnessing consciousness, before which all phases of experience come and go. When this is realized identification ceases. It is intuited, or revealed by pure introversion. Every human is aware of this truth as ‘I am”. This is the intuition of the Self, which is known to all. Though there may be many doubts, no one can doubt the fact of their own existence. “I am” is the only thing we know for certain. Should a person say, “I doubt my being”, and is asked, ‘Who doubts?’ the positive answer must be “I do”, which means, “I am conscious of an experience called a doubt” which the “I” referred to must transcend in order to be conscious of it.

The only genuine doubt that can exist is the doubt of existence as an ego, and in this there is an intuited guessing that the ego cannot lay claim to identity, and that the ego is not an entity in its own right. Though we can doubt the reality of the ego, we cannot doubt the reality of that which is aware of it. The knowledge of “I am” is direct and undeniable. When this is realized illusory and erroneous identification comes to an end. This is not the end of life, but the beginning of a life wholly new, though it may not appear to change at all.

Though identification with the body ceases for a Self-realized person, the “I-thought” must appear along with the body-thought and so the brain will continue to provide the notion of an agent, perceiver or enjoyer. The ego will cease to rule consciousness. Mind will appear as a film, or as a latent impression, so relative knowledge will not appear as

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ignorance clouding the immediate knowledge of the Self. Knowing the Self, there will be no attachment to the body, and the vicissitudes inherent in it.

Nothing will then lure one’s attention away from one’s true being, for the ego will be a subservient tool and life in all its variety, a game to be played with joy and without fear. One will then know that duality is a dream and nothing within it can bring the Self to an end nor touch it in any way.

No amount of ritual, techniques, formula, prayer, psychic experience or communication will ever bring identification and ego-life to an end. Indeed, they generally reinforce its presence, and so add another dimension to the overall bondage and confusion.

If by constant reflection one sees oneself as the witnessing consciousness before which all objects appear, consciousness alone is apprehended, no longer as a witness, for this can exist only in the presence of an object, but as the non-dual Self. This is a state of transcendental consciousness in which the physiological functions cease and there is no mentation. This is the highest type of realisation.

By adopting the standpoint of the witness we not only overcome the erroneous habit of identification, but it will enable us to realise, once and for all, that our true Self rests in non-duality. The sure knowledge that circumstances affect the body and not the Self gives rise to absolute freedom and independence from everything, including life and death.

‘You are always present within and without. You are that Supreme Beatitude always and everywhere! Why then do you run hither and thither like a confused ghost?’ AG.

The philosophers, logicians and doctors of law were drawn up at Court to examine Nasrudin. This was a serious case, because he had admitted going from village to village saying: ‘The so-called wise men are ignorant, irresolute and confused.’ He was charged with undermining the security of the State.

‘You may speak first,’ said the King.‘Have paper and pens brought,’ said the Mulla.Paper and pens were brought.‘Give some to each of the first seven savants.’They were distributed.‘Have them separately write an answer to this question: “What is bread?” ‘

This was done. The papers were handed to the King, who read them out:The first said: ‘Bread is a food.’The second: ‘It is flour and water.’The third: ‘A gift of God.’The fourth: ‘Baked dough.’The fifth: ‘Changeable, according to how you mean “bread”.’The sixth: ‘A nutritious substance.’The seventh: ‘nobody really knows.’‘When they decide what bread is,’ said Nasurdin, ‘it will be possible for them to decide other things. For example, whether I am right or wrong. Can you entrust matter of

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assessment and judgement to people like this? Is it or is it not strange that they cannot agree about something which they eat each day, yet are unanimous that I am a heretic?’*

SOLVABLE AND UNSOLVABLE PROBLEMS

The non-dual nature of the Self is unalterable, for there can be no mutation whatsoever in the immutable, no change in the changeless, nor temporal in the eternal, nor space in the infinite. This is the fundamental paradox. It follows that either the world of the senses is utter reality and the Self a figment; or the Self is utter reality and the world of sense a figment, since they are at absolute variance and mutually exclusive. As two separate and opposite realities cannot co-exist, one or both must be false. All problems of relation, such as God and the World, mind and matter, consciousness and the brain, consciousness and objectivity, are similarly constructed.

The problem is only resolvable when one or both opposites are shown to be either a figment, or different aspects of the same thing. Until this is done, confusion, argument and further misconceptions can only be compounded.

The same formula that unlocks one relation serves to unlock all others. We may discover it in the problem of the location of consciousness. The brain and non-dual consciousness are the ultimate ends of all experience. The brain is matter; non-dual consciousness is the “infinite” “eternal” “changeless” Self. How can they function together, what is their relation?

The problem of the relationship between consciousness and the brain is usually expressed as the relation of mind to matter, matter having location, and mind none. It appears that the difference lies in the fact that matter exists in space and the mind in time, as one may ask when but not where a thought occurred. To ask when matter occurred or where a thought occurred appears illogical, unless by asking where a thought occurred, one means “where was the body when such and such thought occurred”. Which really means, “where was matter (body) when a certain thought occurred”. But what is the mind as apprehended by the human consciousness that is supposed to possess it? The mind is a notion that is the result of a subtle form of remembrance. It is a remembrance of successive thoughts having taken place and therefore arises in the same way as the I-thought.

Such a succession of thoughts is sensory and conditioned. They can only arise during and after consciousness has identified itself with the body. It then follows that both mind and matter is equivalent, both being objects of consciousness, based on sensory perception. Hence all attempts to reconcile them are necessarily futile, as both are inseparably united in the illusion of sensory perception, the subject-object consciousness, and are in fact, two different words for the same thing. The problem is resolved by the realisation of identity. The brain is material and hence its functions are of the nature of materiality; as all experience occurs in the brain, all experience is therefore material. The brain’s nature and function are mechanical. Without consciousness they could not be known.

The I-thought or ego claims to be the subjective perceiver. Yet we have seen that the ego is another object of consciousness, and hence a part of total flux. It usurps the real position of the witnessing consciousness, through memory, and so appears continuous.

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What is it then that gives reality to all this unstable flux of brain activity? It can only be the truly ‘subjective’ conscious Self that remains totally unaffected. This as we have seen, is synonymous with non-duality.

The brain being matter is composed of parts and subject to imperfections, disease and decomposition, and yet all we seem to be, know or do, takes place in it. That the non-dual Self exists as the background of duality we also know, yet the two are utterly contradictory and mutually exclusive, and so any relationship between the two appears impossible. They appear forever incompatible.

Both problems are problems of relationship. In the first case, the terms were discovered to be identical and so no problem exists, and in the second case the terms were seen to be totally irreconcilable. The problem as stated is unsolvable. Any attempted solutions are an utter waste of energy for there is no way to reconcile the irreconcilable. It is maya.

Such questions as the relation between God and the world, creator and created, are of this second type.

However this is not to say that there is no solution at all, but the solution lies outside the terms in which the problems are stated, and beyond the duality within which the solution is sought. Such solutions are frequently unpalatable to our preconceptions, and to our cherished notions. One does not then qualify for the understanding of the solution.

We not only invent problems from within our ignorance, but also demand that the problem remain as formulated, and that the solution be acceptable to the very ignorance that caused the problem to appear in the first place!

Ultimately the solution to any problem lies in the accurate statement of the problem and not separately. The correct formulation of the problem often provides the solution. Often, unsolvable problems are problems of inaccurate expression. The relation of brain and consciousness can be understood in the light of a rephrasing of terms. It is the old subject-object notion represented in a different way. In this case however the problem gets closer to the bone, and nearer to reality.

Notions, percepts, cognition, volition, conation, emotion, imagination, intellection, egoism, sensations and their retention, all cerebration of all and any variation appear subjective, in and of the brain. They are actually objective to the subjective witnessing consciousness. Yet the subjective witnessing consciousness only appears when the objects themselves appear. Hence the two are inseparable, and united. However only the non-dual Self exists, appearing as the witness to sensation when sensations and everything else appears and as itself only when they are not.

As the apparent transition is immediate and spontaneous, and as the supposed opposites are really a unity, the problem is therefore delusive, in that it supposes an unreal division or duality of subject and object.

Ultimately the problem of relation and all other problems subside when they are resolved into the one reality in which they seemed to appear. All such divisions and opposites are aspects of an undivided and indivisible reality.

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That such problems of mind, matter and brain are disposed of in this way does not deny the validity from within duality, of the various concepts of science, which are now tending to support, in altogether different ways, the basic concepts of Vedanta.

‘I am the Self, existent in the hearts of all. I am the beginning, the middle and the end of all beings. BG.

Someone saw Nasrudin searching for something on the ground.

‘What have you lost, Mulla?’ he asked. ‘My key,’ said the Mulla. So they both went down on their knees and looked for it.

After a time the other man asked: ‘Where exactly did you drop it?’‘In my house.’‘Then why are you looking here?’‘There is more light here than inside my own house.’*

PART FOUR

NON DUALITY

We will now attempt to see the foregoing in the light of non-duality itself. An apology must be made at this stage for the difficulty inherent in conveying a hint of non-duality through the medium of the written word. It is the most remote means, for such knowledge is traditionally communicated by silence, song or the spoken word (frequently in paradox or nonsense), by discussion, accompanied by gestures, mime and dance, and the most difficult, by the written word. Words must be taken from commonsense use to serve the purpose of metaphysical inquiry, so some confusion may result, but will be resolved as the nature of the subject is understood and we gradually mount to the highest possible standpoint.

The understanding of non-duality is spontaneous and ever-new, for it cannot be held in the grasp of the mind, though the following attempts to express it will be in terms of the previously considered evidence and based on an understanding of the inquiry so far. The further understanding of non-duality will involve reviewing the subjects previously outlined.

‘Brahman, the absolute Consciousness, pervades all living beings as well as motionless objects in the world. Again, It shines of Itself devoid of other beings. Being the self-same Brahman Oh mind, why do you weep?’ AG.

WITNESS AND OBJECT

When we speak of an object it implies the presence of a conscious subject. When we speak of a subject it implies the presence of an object perceived; the knower and the known, or the seer and the seen. No other terms need be coined, for these cover all, and

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express the whole of experience. The seer and the seen are both within duality and one is never found without the other. They must be two aspects of one original. Again, we have seen the dependence, similarity and identity of the witnessing consciousness and its object, and that one cannot arise without the other.

Seeing that it is consciousness that illuminates all, and nothing can be without it, it seems that consciousness is not only the witness but the object as well. Materialists try to deny the independent existence of consciousness, affirming that it is produced from matter. This is not only illogical, but can only gain credence by flatly ignoring the considered and contrary evidence, for we have seen that the unique principle from which we derive our sense of being and reality is our one certainty, for no one can doubt the fact that they exist. Ultimately we are the actual principle of consciousness itself, or absolute existence.

The witness and the object being joint phenomena cannot produce each other. They are both appearances produced out of the principle of consciousness and are wholly dependent upon it. They have no independent and separate being and are like reflections in a window. The non-dual Self as the very principle of consciousness cannot cease to be itself and become another, whether “material” or “mental” or “spiritual”. Seer and seen, thinker and thought, witness and object are appearances. Hence only non-duality subsists. Non-duality alone is real. It is beyond all categories of relative experience.

‘You are not the body, nor is the body yours; you are not the doer or the enjoyer. You are Consciousness Itself, the eternal Witness, and free. Go about happily. AS.

MIND

‘How may one destroy the mind?’ ‘Is there a mind in the first place? What you call mind is an illusion. It starts from the ‘I’ thought. Without the gross and subtle senses you cannot be aware of the mind or the body. Remain what you truly are and this question will not arise.’ Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the 29th of June 1936.

The distinction between mind and matter is unreal. It is a verbal convenience only. Objective experience takes place in the brain and mind is a notion amongst others. Granting the commonsense notions that mind and matter are distinct realities, how can mind cognize matter? To do so mind would have to leave its reality as mind and enter the reality of matter, so would lose its characteristics of mind. Even were this possible, what would be left to be aware of the process and the resultant knowledge? Further, how would this observing part develop the notion that it was a person? If some of the mind could become matter and yet leave a part of it to be the knower, it would be divided, and how would the knower be aware of that part of itself that had ceased to be it? The proposition and its implications and problems are absurd.

Many metaphysical philosophies have proposed that no distinction exists at all, and that all is nothing but mind. They have then rested content with what seems to be an august and final conclusion. Having come thus far, we can appreciate the temptation to accept a compromise and take a rest. But the notion, however satisfying to many, is fundamentally fallacious.

Matter is said to be without the faculty of consciousness itself and as such can have no awareness of materiality, dimension, time, space, cause etc. Yet if mind and matter are

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identical, where have those notions and awareness come from? If mind possesses them and matter doesn’t, then mind and matter cannot be identical for material objects are notions obtained by generalizations, extensions and conventions, from the excitation of brain cells. Granting, once again, the existence of mind as an entity, such notions may be regarded as presenting themselves to the mind, or to be objects of the mind.

We have seen that the idea of mind is a notion based on the remembrance of separate thoughts. The notion of a mind is itself a thought amongst others. How can a thought be conscious of another thought? Each perception of an object is a new thought. Therefore no difference exists between them. A thought and its object are one thing. This one thing cannot be material, as we have shown, and it cannot be mental, for one thought cannot cognize another. The final truth is inevitable; they are both delusions. The principle of consciousness can never cease to be non-dual, and so become any other thing, whether gross (material) or subtle (mind). According to Advaita philosophers the mind is naturally unconscious though it appears to be so because as a crystal appears to glow in the presence of a light, the mind-stuff appears to have a consciousness of its own because of the presence of the immutable witness.

Just as waves rise and fall, but are in fact the ocean itself, all things, no matter what, consist of consciousness itself. There is no distinction. This principle of consciousness is none other than the non-dual Self.

Hence only non-duality subsists.

‘The mind is nothing more than a bundle of thoughts and the ‘I’ thought is the root of them all. When you see who this ‘I’ is and whence it proceeds, all thoughts will merge into the Self’. Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on Eighteenth of July 1946.

OBJECTIVITY

The non-existence of objects is a daily experience for all of us, though most of us ignore the fact. It is understood best in reference to the deep sleep state but appears in the gap between two thoughts, the introversion of desirelessness and realisation.

In this state objects, gross or subtle, have no existence. We have seen that nothing exists for us unless thought of, and so before its appearance as an object of consciousness it could not have previously existed for its existence depends upon the illumination of our awareness. When no object exists to consciousness pure consciousness remains. Then it must be that before and after any modification exists as an object, it cannot be a mere nothing, but the principle of consciousness itself, or absolute existence. If any appearance is absolute existence in the beginning and fades into absolute existence at the end, it must be absolute existence in the middle. This means that objectivity as we know it is a delusion. It cannot be separated from the absolute ground from which it has arisen.

Just as waves rise and fall taking apparent shape though are one water, so all things are actually none other than the principle of consciousness itself, which no matter how diverse, is never different. (We accept that the ocean, ponds, rivers, streams, waves, ice, dew, and snowflakes are all nothing but water though is not easy to understand in relation to consciousness.) Only a sage who has realized the truth can really know what it means.

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To others the duality of experience is real beyond question. To the seeker of truth, who has glanced behind the veils, it appears unreal. To the sage it is neither, for he has transcended the opposites. It is unreal inasmuch as it is characterized by flux, which depends wholly upon consciousness to inform it and yet real because it is therefore inseparable from that consciousness. Thus he is aware that only non-duality subsists.

There is more to say regarding non-duality, for as many ways as we glimpse it, the deeper and more integrated is the understanding.

‘Eternal, one without a second, indivisible consciousness, the witness of the intellect, separate from the manifested and the unmanifested, the subject ‘I’ is ever blissful – that is the Supreme!’ VC.

DURATION AND MEMORY

We have seen that the thinker and thought are separate experiences and that one does not subsist as the source of the other, and yet we experience duration only in states characterized by a succession of thoughts.

We divide the elements of succession into separate, present experiences, though the consciousness in which thoughts seem to occur is a single, timeless and non-dual perpetuity. In the same way we divide the changes of planetary motion into years, days, hours, seconds and so on. The notion of present time is inexplicably linked to the remembrance of a past and the projection of it into a future. The expectation of a future is inseparable from the conviction that a persistent individual consciousness exists to experience such a future. In spite of this, the knower and the known are separate and distinct phenomena and can have no past or future. That which appears as the thread joining all these separate and distinct impressions, and which appears as the persistent individual consciousness is non-duality.

All the events in time are experienced as real, though they are shadows or reflections of the non-dual principle of consciousness. In reality it is not succession which is experienced, but the non-dual perpetuity of consciousness itself.

When the I-thought dawns to claim an experience, the experience itself is over. A memory is an object of consciousness and a separate thought. As one thought cannot know another, how can we know it? Memory being a form of thought is part of the flux, so how can it know past thoughts?

The only answer is that remembrance is only a seeming by the very nature of objectivity. What appears as remembrance, within the flux, is in truth, the spontaneous expression of absolute knowledge. The limitation we force upon ourselves causes us to recall only what has happened, or anticipate what will happen to the witness the memories relate to. A psychic or a prophet can remember or anticipate what has or will happen to any other being. Both are making use of non-duality in its aspect of absolute knowledge. Therefore, memory as we think of it does not exist in reality. It is actually an aspect of nonduality.

The Self shines by its own light; no other luminary can reveal it, for there is no other. The non-dual principle of consciousness appears as space, in its aspect of infinity, and time in its aspect of eternity. It appears as cause in its aspect of creation, as the knower in its

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aspect of intelligence and as the known in the aspect of existence. In the aspect of bliss it is the enjoyer. Only within the absolute can infinite divisions appear to exist, for all these pertain only to relative consciousness and all its categories are ultimately unreal. Hence only non-duality subsists

DESIRE, AVERSION AND FEELING

The very nature of the Self is peace and happiness, for having no parts there can be no friction. It is the state of perfect rest. And though it is our very Self we are ignorant of it, save for its presence in deep sleep, at the fulfilment of desire, and at the introversion of realisation. Yet only in the latter are we truly aware of its significance.

For most of us the release from ego and the grim cycle of time is closest in the timeless state that follows the orgasm. This is why sex is such an important pre-occupation with us, though this reason is not understood. At climax a state is achieved of absolute introversion and nothing exists at all. All sensory function is suspended. The same happens to some degree whenever we enjoy an object of desire. We are then reabsorbed in the Self and so become one with Felicity. In other words, identification and all its train are obliterated.

We then experience all the agreeable feelings attending a sense of harmony. The object cannot cause these feelings, for the object was obliterated in the non-dual during the flash of reabsorption. If this is not realized, it is for the same reason that the gap between thoughts, and deep sleep both appear as a void to commonsense sight.

When fulfilments are denied and desire is thwarted, all the feelings attending the state of disharmony arise. When the agitation of unsatisfied desire continues it produces grief, anger, frustration and all the rest, because the direct apprehension of non-duality is then not possible.

Feelings like all else are objects of consciousness. They are manifestations of those aspects of the Self that relate to happiness. Our will always strives for happiness. As we have demonstrated that our Self is happiness itself, it follows that will directs every act to that end. It has the Self for its target and the desire of all humanity for happiness is in reality a desire to be established in one’s Self or true nature. All desire and love are propelled by an intuition of the nature of the Self, and so all love is ultimately love for the Self.

To be true to one’s Self is the only real good. True Selfishness, properly understood, is the highest virtue, for its end is the goal of life. The relative selfishness of the ego is a lower expression of this truth. Both the desire to please ourselves and the desire to please others are identical in so far as the motive is concerned. The virtue of one over the other is a matter of relative values. The motive behind both sin and virtue is happiness. All actions, good and bad, are an expression of Self-love. The fulfilment of desire is a clouded awareness of non-duality.

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‘Faith is in things unknown, but the Self is self - evident…who is there who will not have faith in their own existence or love for themselves? That is because faith and love are our real nature.’ Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the Twenty second of July 1946.

‘It is through your ignorance alone that the universe exists. In Reality you are One. There is no individual self or Supreme Self other than you. AS.

WILL

Will is part of a triad. The other two are pleasure and pain, and the link is memory. All remembered events carry the colours or tints of one or the other. The memory of pain gives rise to aversion and the desire to avoid such. The memory of pleasure gives rise to the desire for a continuance and repetition of it. Desire and aversion are really two aspects of the one feeling, one being the obverse of the other. Our life is a flux between the two. The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain fuels desire.

The ultimate object of desire is to achieve the desire and hence for a time to be in a state of desirelessness and so peace. Will is the instinctive push to fulfil desire, just as desire is the pull towards peace and desirelessness. We have seen that individual existence and memory are synonymous, and whenever they exist there is always something for the individual to desire. Desire implies time, effort and possible frustration. It is therefore an agitation like a burr in underclothing. It prevents peace of mind and makes the serene impossible. Serenity and tranquillity arise immediately the desire is completed and it is this that we are seeking, in fact, when we appear to be seeking an object of desire. This is another way of saying that the ultimate end of will is the presence of the non-dual Self.

One of the confusions of ego-life is to regard the feeling of pleasure, peace or happiness as intrinsic qualities of the object desired and not to see that the object can in no way supply them. It is the cessation of desire and the pleasure of desirelessness that produces the sense of satisfaction.

Will operates through desire and aversion and has for its object the presence of non-duality. Maya obscures this fact, and so all but the wise struggle to fulfil will by chasing the shadows of non-duality, such as sensory pleasure, power, success, security and so on.

This struggle is life itself, the seeing of it, freedom. Life proceeds through will working within memory. The presence or absence of desired objects gives rise to a complex of feelings: relief, frustration, conation, motivation, grief, fear, longing, excitement, happiness, anger and the rest; and the corresponding acts that relate to them and to the laws and morals that govern and circumscribe acts. It is a vast complex that has many names, such as society, humanity, the world, or civilization and so on. Will is the crux of it all. Operating in ignorance, through time and personal identity, will is the sum total of all motivation, urging towards the fulfilment of desire. It is both the wellspring of all action and the lock on the chains of bondage. Through all this only non-duality subsists.

‘Having attained the Self, the sages gain satisfaction through knowledge. They become Self-realized, tranquil and free from all desires. Those Self-centred wise ones, who have realized the All-Pervading in all, enter into all.’ Katha Upanishad.

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PART FIVE

SUMMATION. We have investigated the cause of the many assumptions, made automatically, whenever the principle of consciousness gets identified with the body, which includes experiences of all types. The investigations in the foregoing sections reveal certain inevitable conclusions that may not be apparent in full force. They should be listed before we continue.

1. The personal pronoun “I” is not an entity, but a figment to express many different levels of apparent identification of the sole principle of consciousness with its various fluctuations. This causes ignorance, which is the confusion of not being aware of the real nature of experience.

2. Personal identity is ignorance. Ignorance is expelled only at the cost of this identity. It follows that the attachment to personal identity is the cause of bondage and ignorance.

3. Awareness of the real nature of experience is true knowledge. Personal identity is not completely obliterated, but continues as a subordinate tool of the Self.

4. The ego is a thought amongst others and so cannot be the thinker, doer, or agent of any manifestation whatsoever. It is a sort of usurper who can only claim a happening when it is over and gone, no matter when such a happening occurs in the divisions of time. Consequently no ego thinks.

5. All things are thought. Thought is not an entity either. What we call thought is a consciousness of something. It is this consciousness alone that has real existence. This consciousness is what becomes personified as “I who think”.

6. Memory manifests life. It is the cohesive bridge between discrete and discontinuous perceptions. The ego, not being the thinker cannot be the rememberer either. Memory then appears as an aspect of the Self. It is the witness to all objective experience. Therefore consciousness of individual existence is memory itself. It follows that the witness is free in time, and may see up and down. That is, may remember the future or the past. From the highest standpoint however, memory is not even a faculty of the witness, but is none other than the spontaneous presence of knowledge.

7. Those who have understood thus far will be aware that the Self and the brain are the final and ultimate terms. All things no matter what, how or when, come down to these two. No greater mystery exists than this inexplicable fact. Because their relationship is inexplicable it is stupid to labour at a solution. When one is aware of the non-dual Self there is no brain, and when one is aware of the functions of brain, consciousness itself becomes it. The statement of the illogical and inexplicable nature of the world-appearance is a beautiful statement of fact only fully developed in Advaita, where the final ultimate term used to express the foregoing is the word Maya.

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8. All problems of relation or causation etc. are similar, being Maya itself. This is why the question ‘why did God create the world?’ should not be asked, and why it cannot be answered.

9. In truth, only true awareness exists. Ignorance is the state of ignoring. Ignore means to wilfully pay no attention to what one knows is there. It is to take no heed. One cannot ignore what one is utterly unaware of. Hence to ignore a thing, one must be aware of its presence, however obscurely, and to continue in a state of ignorance requires an act of will.

CONCLUSION

Most of what religions call sinning is a blind effort to obtain some release from the awful round of conditioned being, and while ever the condition exists, sinning is as inevitable to life as breathing. Those who know this may go beyond sinning.

It is the action of the ego-coloured mind, speculating, motivating, ego-wishing, desiring and scheming that makes freshness, newness, discovery, impossible to be experienced. Consequently, love, truth, bliss, freedom are never directly experienced though we live our dark ego-life in their shadow. All these things we desperately need and perpetually seek are unobtainable by the ego searching in time.

These things must be deeply contemplated, and the mind made quiet and finely textured by health and harmony to perceive the presence of the Self. Not only do we derive our mortal sense of self from that one reality, but we are that reality, for there cannot be two.

Thus does this One appear as many, does spirit appear as matter, does that one Selfhood seem many different selves, and the Self appear to become not-Self, and the one truth so many partial facts, and the one love multitudinous attachments, the universal intelligence small minds, and the ocean of bliss partial pleasures, and the freedom to be, lost in becoming. The more we discover about the fundamental nature of the world, the more the discoveries embarrass materialists, mechanists, and pronouncers of immutable law. Life is a mad game, and all our attempts to make it appear logical, methodical and reasonable meet in failure.

The world seems to be what it is because we insist on regarding it that way. There are as many worlds as there are creatures to regard them, and what we think of as spiritual evolution is actually the transition from ignorance to abiding in the Self.

In truth, the highest knowledge is simply the understanding of ignorance and not the knowledge of the Self, for the Self cannot be “known” for what should now be obvious reasons. Such a “knower” may or may not be disposed to assume the cloak of virtue and help others, for transcending duality means independence from all opposites including notions of good and bad. Such a one is a breath of fresh air in a musty room and does good beyond virtue, without trying.

The person in whom this awareness flowers is no longer dependent on the struggle of will, or hopeful of fulfilments, being established in peace and deep felicity once and for

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all. They are free from desire and aversion. This also means that happiness is ever present as the Self. They alone are secure, for they are not dependent on any thing. Time cannot affect them.

When the things the sages have to tell us are well understood it becomes obvious that the core of our identity and the core of all being in the Universe do not exist in some rarefied spiritual plane or an extra-cosmic heaven but in every aspect of our being. The final realization is that the uncreated absolute is here in the present, infinite, blissful and eternal. You can no more be separated from it than a mirage can be separated from the desert in which it appears. This is the great truth the sages have told us over and over again so that one day some wise person, hearing it, might suddenly get a glimpse of their own hidden glory.

Those sincere souls who have laboured to arrive at this point, may feel confused, enlightened, or a little of both. Having come this far, they will be unable go back or stand still. This philosophical quest is the handle to a door that can never be totally closed again, come what may.

There is nothing further to do; there is no sequel. No higher threshold. No deeper knowledge. No more obtuse and complicated meditations, for the ramifications of these startling truths in your consciousness are in themselves the Way. They are the truths, which will set you free.

The sun is up, and the light must dawn. The erroneous habit of identification will fade into the awareness that only the Self really exists, and with this awareness, perfect peace, happiness and absolute independence will be the ever-present reality, without end, for those who will.

‘Everything happens in its own time. The one who is ready for absolute knowledge will be made somehow to hear of it and follow it up. They will realize that Self-Knowledge is the highest of all virtues and also the end of the journey.’ Spoken by Ramana Maharishi on the 20th April 1937

SUMMATION AND RESUME

Here is the philosophy again, but this time, as a cryptic summation, which will serve as a useful reminder of the basic principles, once the full text has been grasped. The following can be used for purposes of contemplation and for understanding the main text, as differing statements on the same subject can sometimes reveal the truth. However, the resume does not follow the previous text, but is another approach. It relates knowledge to freedom.

That which is not perceived is alone real. Objects of consciousness are subject to change and liable to destruction. Witness alone is real. Waking and dreaming experiences inasmuch as they are objects of consciousness are not real. However they are spun from the real, like a web from the body of the spider. The witness assumes three states: waking or identification with the body, dreaming or identification with the subtle body, and dreamless sleep, or identification with the Self. This is knowledge of realty.

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Who makes the images, pictures, sets, circumstances of a dream? Where do they come from, if not the consciousness of the dreamer? A dream is consciousness given form, by, with and for consciousness itself. The world is consciousness given forms with names, likewise. Dreamless sleep is consciousness without form, nameless. Experience can exist only in time. It is the name of consciousness going through its modifications. They are the field for the witness to experience. This knowledge is freedom in action.

Experience is full of contradictions. Space, time and cause are not real in an ultimate sense as they are merely forms of experience. Without their distinctions the world of diversity collapses into a single unit. It becomes consciousness itself, achieved and known by all in obtaining desire, dreamless sleep, introversion, realisation, and as the intuition “I-am”. This knowledge equals freedom from worldliness.

The real is present at all times. Experience is not and is therefore not real. Everything changes. All is becoming. It is neither being nor non-being. At no point can a creature reach being through becoming. This knowledge equals freedom from striving.

The relation of being to non-being is one of contradiction and is untenable to the logical process. There is no principle of reconciliation in the phenomenal world by which its contradictions are resolved. World is indescribable, dualistic, contradictory. This knowledge equals freedom from dogma.

What is the relation between the world and reality? The question has no answer. It is the product of an unreal mentation or the logical process attempting to work beyond its legitimate levels. When we intuit reality the question of the nature of its relations is impossible to conceive, as intuited absolute consciousness can have no relations. Similarly, when the world is known no absolute reality is intuited for it to be related to. There can be no real solution to an imaginary problem. However imaginary ones abound. This knowledge equals freedom from vain intellection.

As with all opposites good and bad are kept in perfect balance for all opposites are correlative. It is impossible to increase or decrease either. This knowledge equals humility.

Moral injunctions do not produce moral people. Truly moral people are those who intuit non-duality. Morality is not a matter of ‘Do unto others’ for there are no ‘others’, when all is One Self. True Selfishness and morality is the same thing. It flows from Truth as water does from a spring. It is natural, spontaneous, and appropriate at all times. This knowledge equals natural morality.

Maya is essential, both to life and philosophy. All other explanations of the world are unsatisfactory and do not commend themselves to intelligence.

The notion of a world created from nothing by a sublime creator is a myth, for cause and effect, time and place are finite categories of relative experience. If the world had a cause, something must have existed before it existed to produce it as an effect. What then produced the cause? If the world was created, it must have appeared at some point in time, and so time must have pre-existed. How could time be, before the world of time existed? Within experience there is no escape from absurd questions and illogical answers, nor any principle or law by which its difficulties and inconsistencies are

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resolved. This is Maya. This knowledge equals balance, humour, and freedom from idealism.

Cause is of two types - progressive and projective. The first is where observation reveals a transformation - ice into water, milk into cheese. The second is where the integrity of the cause is not changed by consecutive transformations - or where the effect is of a different order to the cause as the appearance of a snake may reside in a rope. The world appears in this way. The absolute appears as name and form, space, time and cause, like a prism divides unseen white light into the colours of the spectrum. Light itself is unchanged.

Ignorance is Maya, Maya is ignorance. It gives rise to the notion of a world. Maya is the apparent projector of the apparent world. The notions we conjure up in regard to God cannot be applied to the non-dual. The Self is innocent of them, being beyond the framework of common (or uncommon) sense. God exists, in the same way as the world and is therefore phenomenal, but universal. This knowledge equals right worship.

Ignorance is not a negative blank, but is false knowledge. Even a mirage cannot exist without a real basis. The hand can exist without the glove, but the glove cannot exist without the hand. Therefore ‘I’ is not ‘me.’ This knowledge equals right perspectives.

Continuously higher and higher expressions reveal themselves throughout the world from mineral and amoebae up to man and from man up to gods. The difference is not so much of quality but of quantity; biological function endowed with greater or lesser degrees of consciousness. This knowledge equals love of life.

The play of life demands a villain. Hence the appropriating ego, that claims ownership or creator of whatever degree of consciousness it manifests. The world is a field where the desires of its countless egos may be conceived and fulfilled. This conceiving and striving operates the laws of motive, action and reaction that manifest as fate, or karma. According to the laws of karma the manifested worlds consists of various orders of beings, where different modes of existence exist to meet the conditions necessary for the fulfilment of their desires. This gives rise to all the worlds, levels and beings. This knowledge equals wonder, reflection, and effortless meditation.

The witness observes the world it has created, and so appears to become the limitations of the world, but is really ever-free, just as a rope is really continuous throughout many knots. The unknotting is the true process of knowing. Involution is becoming on the downward hemisphere, evolution becoming on the upward hemisphere. This is the wheel of life. Those who are involving and those who are evolving are at constant loggerheads. Within society they engage in an everlasting conflict. No side wins. This knowledge equals right action.

The ego is not the Self, for the ego is not the cause of its own consciousness, but is the felt unity of the empirical consciousness, which is revolving in time. The Self is like a stage light, lighting the staff, actors and audience. In their absence, it shines alone. This knowledge equals integration.

The Self is like space in a jar. Space is the same within the jar as without. There is no change in space. Yet if the space in the jar becomes dusty and smoky the rest of space is unaffected. If the jar is broken space itself is unaffected though it may be said that the

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space inside the jar has become one with all-space, though it was never different. Burn the jar, space does not burn; move the jar, space does not move. What is in one place cannot be everywhere; yet what is everywhere can certainly be in one place. This knowledge gives absolute independence and freedom from the fear of death.

To be one’s Self is the end purpose of the game of life. For life is a game, the purpose of which is to escape the net of becoming against countless odds, obstacles, and illusions. This knowledge equals right gamesmanship.

To remove the knots of ignorance is the true purpose of religion, science and philosophy. This knowledge equals right purpose.

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Sons of the infinite may we be infinite, perfect, oh beings of light, in the Godhead and in humanity. Winning Divine Lord and Friend, may we win you, becoming, oh Heaven and Earth, may we welcome you. Rig Veda V11.52.1

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The challenge of Jnana yoga

Spoken by Swami Vivekananda in San Francisco, March 23rd 1900

“…Blessed am I that I know this moment that I have always been eternally free. That I know that in worshipping that I worship only myself; that no nature, no delusion has any hold upon me. Vanish nature from me, vanish gods; vanish worship; vanish superstitions, for I know myself. I am infinite. All these – Mr So-and-so, Mrs So-and-so, responsibility, happiness, misery, have vanished. I am the Infinite. How can there be death or birth for me? Whom shall I fear? I am the One. Shall I be afraid of myself? Who is to be afraid of whom? I am the One existence. Nothing else exists. I am everything.”

It is only the question of memory of your true nature, not salvation by works. Do you get salvation? No! You are already free.Go on saying “I am free!” Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and tells you that you are bound. Dehypnotize yourself.

This truth is first to he heard; having heard, think on it day and night. Fill the mind with it - “I am It. I am the Lord of the universe. Never was there any delusion…” Meditate on it with all the strength of your mind till you actually see these walls, houses, everything melt away until even the body vanishes. “I will stand alone. I am the One”. Struggle on! “Who cares! We want freedom; we do not want any supernatural powers. World we renounce; heaven we renounce; hells we renounce. What do I care about all these powers and this and that! What do I care if the mind is controlled or not controlled! Let it run on. What of that! I am not the mind. Let it go on!”

The sun shines on the just and the unjust – is it touched by the defective character of anyone? “I am He. Whatever my mind does, I am not touched. The sun is not touched by shining upon filthy places. I am Existence”

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…This is the religion of non-dual philosophy. It is difficult. Struggle on! Down with all superstitions! Neither teachers, gods, nor scriptures are any help. Down with temples, with priests, gods, with incarnations, with God Himself! I am all the Gods that ever existed! There! Stand up philosophers! No fear! Speak no more of God and the superstitions of the world. Truth alone triumphs and this is the truth – I am the Infinite.

All religious superstitions are vain imaginings. This society, that I see you all before me – that I am talking to you and that you are listening – all this is superstition; all must be given up – this is the path of Jnana Yoga – the way through knowledge. Other paths are easy, slow but this is pure strength of mind. No weakling can follow this path of knowledge. You must be able to say “I am the Soul, the ever-free; I never was bound. Time is in me, not me in time. God the Father, Father of the Universe is created by me in my own mind….”

Just see what it takes to become a philosopher! Do you call yourselves philosophers? Show it! Think of this, talk of this, and help each other in this path and give up all superstition!

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The beginning

To make a better presentSet the will to the highest fulfilment.

Take care in desiring.Dare to dream a new world.

Love yourself as you would another,Will what you do so you may

Do what you will; or love,And do what you like.

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