Yoga Vasishta says:- that the world is both real and unreal. It is real because it is a manifestation of consciousness, but is unreal, in the sense, that it is not absolute and eternal like consciousness itself.
But people 's approach is more practical, and they are stuck with the reality of the world, they take it as real.
By studying various scriptures one cannot be established in the true self, which is consciousness [soul] unless he drops all accumulated knowledge. Scriptures and yoga are preliminary steps but they are not the means to acquire Self-Knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana .
Getting certainty and irrefutable proof of our true existence without dogmatic assertion and assumption and speculation is the attitude of true seeker. One has to know the self in the truth.
All the study of scriptures and texts and teachings has to be dropped when one becomes aware of the fact that, the self is not physical but self is the soul [consciousness]. One must think of always of the formless Soul or consciousness, the witness of the three states; rather then the three states.
One may enjoy work or practice meditation but he will still yarn of that which is beyond all imagination ,all thinking and the objects and in which all the desire are extinguished. The subconscious goal of one’s search can only be non-duality.
Many seekers are unhappy because they exert themselves by running one teacher to another, one scripture to another, one teaching to another and when they don’t find the truth, they are in uncertainty, they are unable to accept anything else as truth, because they are sentimentally and emotionally involved with the teacher or teaching. And they are unable to drop them, and also unable to accept any new truth. They are interested only which please or attracts them and they do not make an effort to know the higher truth, which requires mental effort to understand and assimilate. They prefer the teachings which are based on imagination.
Both Gnani and the ignorant outwardly exerting and acting, the difference is the Gnani is soul- centric and the ignorant is egocentric. Gnani thinks his body and the world are unreal because he is fully aware they are created out of consciousness.
The ignorant thinks he is an individual separate from the world, and world existed prior to him, and he is born in the world afterwords. Until he has this conviction he will not be able to assimilate non-dual truth.
Activity begets attachment; and abstention from it aversion. The one who is soul –centric is free from pair of opposites, like a child, and is thus established in the soul or consciousness, the innermost self. The nature of the Soul is equilibrium. The psychology proves that ego comes later in life than birth, thus the child consciousness is free and not at egocentric.
One who is egocentric is attached to the world wants to renounce it in order to avoid the miseries of life. But one who is soul- centric – he is in the world but not of it.
The one who is ego-centric feels even towards liberation and considers even the body as his own he is neither Gnani nor yogi he suffers the physical life as reality.
Until one forgets all the accumulated knowledge he cannot be established in ultimate truth.
One has to master the self-knowledge by his own thinking, his own experiences through inquiry analysis and reasoning on the true base.
One may learn the doctrine and master them but he will not be able to realize them that is for certain, not hear say.
The man of truth does not identify his self with body but he considers the self to be the soul, which is in the form of consciousness.
The one who considers his-self as body with the name will not be able to cross the threshold of duality and he keeps experiencing the duality as reality. Therefore, he refuses to accept the physical existence as illusion because he is in the intoxication of its reality.
