Why distinction should imply contradiction? What does distinction mean? It implies that two things are not the same, hence duality exists there.
What is the soul as different from mind? Soul is only a mental picture within the duality. Even if one says that he is immortal and exist eternally, only in duality he can say it i.e. The duality itself is mere illusion.
Illusion never reaches the self, which is consciousness. The false self never knows it. He who says he has a vision of the highest or describes it as super consciousness etc. does not understand consciousness, because it is free from all imaginations, because it exists prior to all experience and imagination.
Ordinarily knowledge arises from experience of object by a subject; that all knowledge of objects will only lead to more thinking but never gives one the ultimate reality.
Most thinkers think that, by trying and getting more and more objective experiences and then when they have enough they may get reality. But they can never get at ultimate truth that way, because it leads to endless thoughts and because he ignores the formless witness, one must make the inquiry into formless witness to find reality. One need not give up his investigations into objects; they are useful empirically; but only that one should not delude him-self that it is the correct path to final Reality.
No one has ever seen the awakening of consciousness, because consciousness is prior to anything that exists. No one has seen god creating the universe with all its contents, because he did not exist prior to Gods creation. Such talks are mere speculated hypothesis.
Yogi thinks of his body that is chakras. He imagines thee are chakras within his body, when he sits down to meditate, he is thinking his body; next he is trying to get rid of thoughts i.e. he is already thinking of those thoughts. Thus he never becomes aware of the witness because he is only aware of the witnessed. Thus any physical practice becomes bondage. The ultimate truth lies beyond the body and experience of the world.
One can get only a thought with thinking. Meditation is only an effort to divert the attention; it is mere imagination. Remaining with or without the thoughts is not wisdom. When one’s attention is riveted to an object within the waking or dream, he is unaware of the subject, which is consciousness. Waking or a dream are mere an object to the subject, which is consciousness.
When one absorbed in thinking of anything, he forget the subject, which is consciousness, the true self, that which sees the objects [three states]. One may think for thousand years but it is all thoughts within the object [waking or dream], hence not consciousness [the subject]. But when one asks: - who is the witness [subject] of the three states [object]; he does get consciousness, the knower, and the witness of the three states. The formless witness is the eternal.