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Who or what knows the three states?
The soul/self knows the three states.
The duality can exist only in mind or ’I’.
Unless the soul or consciousness is there, there would not have been the three states.
What one can say is only that three states appear and
disappear in the soul or consciousness or self.
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What is appearance and
disappearance?
These are mere mirage within the consciousness or soul.
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What is Mind?
It is objective awareness.
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Where do these three states stand?
Can it stand in the void?
No. There should be
a substratum for the three states to stand on and this is the soul/self. Ataman/soul
cannot be indicated by words for words indicate ideas and it is only that in
which the three states comes and goes. One can grasp the three states in the soul/self.
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What is the relation between the three states and the Ataman?
There is no relation. The three states are object and the soul/self
is the subject.
Anything can be contradicted in
waking/dream, but not that which knows the three states. Hence that Formless
Witness is the truth. This non-contradictability characteristic exists because
all the other things pass away, but Formless Witness, consciousness or soul or true self does
not change and it is eternal.
Three states come and go; now the
state arises and disappears: the states change and vanish in succession:
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What has become of the states? What
is state?
State is that which has no independent
existence; it can't stand alone.
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Where does it go?
It goes back into consciousness or soul or self. Hence the first stage is to see the three
states as illusion/mirage; the higher stage is to see it as essence of Mind and
realize it to be the consciousness or soul.
One must not fallaciously say soul
is immortal merely because he cannot see it die. This is bad logic. Because a
thing cannot be disproved, this does not prove it to be true. To prove
immortality one has to rise higher he has to go to the more advanced state of
understanding.
What has become of the dream of last
night? It was reality until waking took place it was only a passing experience.
If dream was real where it is now, after it disappeared? If dream was a real
and not mirage why one cannot locate it again? Hence the meaning of change is
that it is only appearances.
Man unconsciously superimpose the
permanence of the consciousness or soul upon the flux of the visible world, and thus
deceive himself. This is illusion. The sense of reality and permanence which one
ascribes to the appearance arises from within formless soul or self. It is a genuine sense
but it is misapplied.
The first stage is to regard all three
states as an object, and separate them from the soul or self which is the
subject. But this is tentative and is for those who still labour under the
ego-complex. The next and higher stage is to see all the three states as consciousness because their substance and witness is consciousness, then one no longer turn away
from them; all is then ‘soul or consciousness’.
If one analyzes the three states, he will find
that ultimately there is only one substance, one thing which changes into all
these different states. One then go further and say that this unitary substance
can be traced to consciousness or soul.
The seeker of truth has to look for the
formless substance of the three states. Formless Witness is the formless
substance of the three states. The thinking faculty is present only in
experience of diversity [waking or dream] and limited to the individuality, hence
never towards the formless witness of the three states. Anything that one may
say, any answer he may receive, it will be in the waking or dream: it will never
approach their formless witness. Hence objectiveness implies duality. Ideation
implies duality, and duality denies the real.
Unless one grasp that the three
worlds are mere mirage, there is no other way of proceeding to the higher truth
of non duality.
All the past history of the world
is now only a series of accumulated ideas. Thus what one consider so real
now is known a little later as idea.
Everything in this waking is being converted into ideas constantly.
The first stage is to know the three states are an
object to the formless witness which is the subject; the higher stage is to
inquire what they are and to know all ideas are only mirage.
Death means conversion of the three states considered
real into its true substance.
Death is the problem which faces every man; he
cannot escape and therefore ought to study it. This study of what death means
is pursuit of truth! But what is it that knows these things as dying, these three
states as appearing and vanishing? That Witness is what we call the consciousness or soul:
that does not pass away and hence does not die. In this sense one can see all
these three states which vanish, vanishes only back into consciousness or soul and live
perpetually therein.
