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.
Most of the dualistic sages approach was more practical, and they stuck with the reality of the world, they took it as real. Whereas Sri, Sankara says: one must first know what is before him. If he cannot know that, what else can he know or understand? If he gives up the external world in his inquiry, he cannot get the whole truth.
Sage Sri,
Sankara says:- VC- 63. Without causing the
objective universe to vanish and without knowing the truth of the Self, how is
one to achieve Liberation by the mere utterance of the word Brahman? — It would
result merely in an effort of speech.
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 non-dual truth.
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 soul [consciousness] the witness of the three
states; rather than 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 afterwards. 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
consciousness ( formless soul, 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.
