You are not the self. Till you hold ‘I’ as self you are holding
false as reality. One has to get rid of the ‘I’. 'I' is the physical shackle.
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‘I’ is ignorance.
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‘I’ is illusion.
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‘I’ is duality
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‘I’ is universe.
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‘I’ is waking.
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‘I’ is dream.
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‘I’ is mind
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 grasped by the receptive seekers.
Individuality is illusory.
One is ignorant of the fact that the ‘I’ is present as mind.
Mind is present in the form of universe. The one that comes and goes as waking dream
and has no permanent existence is only a mirage after all.
Soul or consciousness, the innermost self is that which knows
everything, that which sees. Atman alone remains after one gets rid of waking
or dream entity by identification with true self. Atman is the seer. The true
nature of 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 or 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 realize 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 Atman.
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 or 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 Atman, it is only a thought or
word, i.e. a seen (waking or dream). Reason when applied to seen (waking or 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 Atman. Hence Atman is known only in idealessness. It is
impossible to be free from Atman, for it is impossible for any thought to
arise without it.
One must analyze himself and see that whenever there is it seen
(waking or 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 or 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 Atman.
