“What is self?"
The self, the
soul or Atman or consciousness,is pure knowing.” When there is a duality, doubt comes. And so
long as a man thinks there is a second thing to be obtained, he can never be
happy because the duality is always there. The Gnani, on the other hand,
regards nothing as different, i.e. as a second thing, and therefore escapes experiencing
the duality as reality.
The experience of the pain and pleasure are within the
waking or dream, but the witness of the three states does not disappear, for that
which is called soul or Atman, uncuttable, indestructible. It is infinite because
one cannot say where it begins or ends. It is immortal, because one has never
seen it die.
The earliest ancients sages used the word ‘I’ to the witness
of the three states not to the ego as moderns use it and think the ‘I’ without
the body is self. The seeker has to understand the fact that the fact that ‘i’
is not the self but the witness of the ‘I’ is the true self, which is eternal.
People
think that the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ is something different from the mind.
They believe that the mind is really two. This is the confusion among religionists
and intellectuals. If ‘Soul’ has any meaning, if ‘spirit’ has any meaning, so
long as one thinks of them, they are merely ideas. No, Mind is the highest: it
is consciousness, non dual wisdom.
The individual is a bundle of memories, desires within
the waking or dream. The memories and desires are part of the duality. Therefore
the individual self is entirely part and parcel of the mirage. Peoples ideas of
that they will go to some world after death, some astral plane or religious
heavens will disappear as nonsense with the disappearance of belief in the
reality of the ‘I’.
