Ashtavakra says:- "This is your bondage, that you practice Samadhi.

Ashtavakra says:-  "This is your bondage, that you practice Samadhi.

Yoga is practiced on the base of physical body. When the yogi sits down to meditate, he is thinking first of his posture, i.e. his body; next he tries to get rid of his thoughts," i.e. he is already thinking of those thoughts. Thus his mind is filled with body and the thoughts (ego) , never of the formless witness.

When one puts aside the imagination and has the thinker-- what does he get with thinking—he can get only a thought. Meditation is only an effort of the ego within the illusion; it is imagination based on the false self; the consciousness remaining the same with or without ideas.

When formless witness witnesses the waking experience and its attention is fixed to the waking experience, which is an object to it, than it is in ignorance of its formless non-dual true nature and it is in forgetfulness of its own formless non-dual true nature. Same thing is applied to the dream. But when formless witness is free from waking and dream it is in its formless non-dual true nature, which identified as deep sleep in the waking experience, which is the state of ignorance.   Until waking entity traces the formless witness mentally and realizes it itself is not the self but the formless witness, which is in the form of consciousness is the true self, the wisdom will not dawn.   

When one is absorbed in thinking of anything, he forgets the subject, which consciousness the innermost self, that which witnesses all the coming and going of the three states in succession. 

One may think for hundred hours continuously but it is all thoughts, hence not consciousness. But when one becomes aware the thinker of the thoughts are one is essence, one do get consciousness, the knower, the formless witness of the three states. Consciousness the innermost self is the eternal.

One has to get rid of his doubts, But that did not mean, simply go and believe everything he is told. The doubt is to be got rid of "by the sword of wisdom.  

There is a controversy as to the meaning of Maya.

One Advaitic School says it is a Shakti of Brahman whereby both illusion and creation are brought about. But doubt arises-

v  How does one know that it is the truth?

v  If one bases it on the sayings of ancient sages   even, granting that they honestly believed in their experiences, there is still the query how do they know that these experiences were the truth?

For even mentally challenged believe in what they see and feel and yet their experiences are often quite untrue.

v  What is it that ascertains the truth of these experiences within us?

If one says it is mystic experience, then everyone’s experience differs from others.  Such disagreement does not settle the matter.

Objective knowledge arises from experience of object by a subject; that all knowledge of objects will only lead to more thinking but never give one ultimate truth or Brahman. Intellectuals think by thinking more and get more and still more objective experience and then when we have enough we may get reality.

The truth can never change. The nature of truth is, it can never be changed under any circumstances. It may be misrepresented. It must apply to the whole of existence, to the whole of the universe. It is in the object (three states) alone that one has all changes, as deeper analysis points out.

 The subject (formless witness) remains unchanged. The subject (formless witness), as such remains immortal. It can never die for it never changes. The body and world are an object, and goes, but the subject or knower of the body and the universe, can never go. Seeker has to take this principle as his guiding thread and non-dual truth becomes easy to grasp. The formless witness can never be subject to the changes of the object; it is unchanged. The mistake usually made is that subject becomes object, or that object is subject.

If one wants to have absence of contradictions, absence of duality, there must be one entity, one being. If one has experience which is an object (mind), there is contradiction between subject and object, for "mind” is an object.

The duality is reality on the standpoint of the false self (ego or body as Self).  The duality is mere mirage on the base of the true self, which is formless consciousness. This understanding comes only to the serious seeker, who has real urge to know the ultimate truth, which is beyond the all the teachings and teachers. There is neither teaching, nor teacher, nor student in the realm of truth.  

Different paths will not converge to the same Ultimate Reality because they are based on the false self. They are not the different stages in the same path. People fight about the differences and greatness of their chosen paths but only through wisdom one can realize the Ultimate Reality.

One has to have perfect understanding and march a head, surely and steadily, towards that Ultimate Reality, which is consciousness or Brahman or Christ or Buddha. One becomes limited to the concepts, names and forms within the waking or dream. Waking or dream originates from the soul.

The soul is the true self.  The soul is in the form of consciousness. Realizing the consciousness as the true self is truth realization. Consciousness is formless, limitless, permanent and unchanging, and by its nature non-dual and universal. The consciousness is the formless knower of the mirage (universe) which comes and goes.

Realize Brahman or ultimate truth here and now, in this very life, not in next life and in ii next world by realizing the fact that this life itself is illusion.