'I AM' is not the self. Till one holds 'I AM or ‘I’ as self he is holding
falsehood as reality. One has to get rid of the ‘I’ or 'I AM' because it is the physical shackle.
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‘I’ is ignorance.
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‘I’ is an illusion.
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‘I’ is duality
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‘I’ is universal.
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‘I’ is waking experience
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‘I’ is a dream.
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‘I’ is mind
'I' is form,time and space to gather
What is ‘I’? The ‘I’
disappears in deep sleep, so what is the use of being attached to it? It is
illusory.
There is really no ‘I’. It
dies in deep sleep. But the notion of its unreality will gradually grasp by
the receptive seekers. Individuality is illusory.
One is ignorant of the fact
that the ‘I’ is present as mind. The mind is present in the form of the universe. The
one that comes and goes as waking dream and has no permanent existence is only a
mirage after all.
The soul or consciousness,
the innermost self is that which knows everything, that which sees. The soul alone
remains after one gets rid of waking or dream entity by identification with
true self. The soul or is the seer. The true nature of the soul or consciousness, is
formless and nondual.
There must be a perceiver which
knows that all these are illusions. The experience of the diversity is on a
substratum--mind. Imaginations are possible only in duality. Even when one say he
exists he is he exists as a person in duality.
That, which becomes conscious of the experience of
diversity, is the seer/witness, the Atman, the Knower. No one has ever seen the Atman, for it is
never an object. Hence logic, inference, cannot be applied to it, because
intellect, logic is for objective world and waking experience only, the state
where one infers effects from causes. The greatest mistake is considering the
duality as reality, to confuse the object with the subject. There is no proof
that the seer is confined to waking /dream. It is universal.
If the knower also had been
changing along with the changes, how could it ever have known of the changes?
It is only that which is known which is changing, otherwise it could not have
been known. Those who say the self is also changing are uttering words without
meaning. How could one know whether anything is changing unless there were
something which itself did not change and could thus note the changes?
One knows of no changes in
the Atman; one knows only the changes in what is perceived by the Atman. When one
realizes the nature of Atman the true self, he knows the Real can never change,
hence never die. Death is only in the region of the "seen/duality."
That of which one is aware
and which is nearer to him is the Formless Witness. Yet no statement can be
made about it. All words will concern ideas about it, i.e. seen (waking or dream)-never
the Formless Witness.
Without the individual self
one could never think. Through such thinking he is able to prove the existence
of Atman, for the individual is finally identical with the the formless soul or consciousness.
If the unchanging had also
been changing, then the fact of change would never be perceptible to one. The Formless
Witness never alters and is thus the true witness.
The Formless Witness is
immortal, because one sees change always in seen/waking/dream. One never sees
it in Formless Witness because he never sees Formless Witness. Hence one cannot
ascribe mortality to Formless Witness as we can to seen (waking or dream). He can
only remain silent about it.
Everything of which one is
aware is he is aware within the duality (waking or dream). As the ego is something
of which one is aware is part of the duality (waking or dream).
Whatever one says about Ataman,
it is only a thought or word, i.e. a seen [waking/dream]. Reason when applied
to seen [waking/dream he can grasp it; but it can never grasp the Formless
Witness. Reason can tell you the Formless Witness is there, but it cannot grasp
it. This is the limit of reason. But the Formless Witness is always there; it
cannot be known, or understood because knowing implies a second thing. But in
all acts of knowledge, the Formless Witness is there when you are thinking, you
are therefore seeking Ataman. Hence Ataman is known only in idealessness. It is
impossible to be free from Ataman, for it is impossible for any thought to
arise without it.
One must analyze himself
and see that whenever there is it seen [waking/dream], there must be the Formless
Witness which is aware of it. When he sees this, he knows the Atman. Hence Formless
Witness-Seen analysis is so fundamental and so difficult.
People wrongly think that
the ego is the Witness, even though the ego vanishing along with the
waking/dream.
When one inquire and
reasons deeply enough the ego disappears he finds there are no separate
individuals at all, there is no variety of beings, all are really the undivided
the soul or consciousness.