Sage Sri Sankara:- "The world, filled with attachments and
avrsions, and the rest, is like a dream: it appears to be real as long as one
is ignorant, but becomes unreal when one is awake.
Sage Sri Sankara:- "As fire is the direct cause of cooking,
so knowledge, and not any other form of discipline, is the direct cause of
Liberation; for Liberation cannot be attained without Knowledge." (Self-Knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana).
Sage Sri Sankara:- As the moon appears
to be moving when the clouds move in the sky, so also to the
non-discriminating. Atman appears to be active when in reality the senses are
active.
When one is thirsty, he cannot sit idle he runs about for water.
Until the thirst for truth has not come, he is immersed in the worldly
pleasures. The desire for knowledge has not grown strong in people; therefore
they are satisfied with the worldly or religious life. One who is in quest for
truth begins to inquire deeply until he reaches his destination.
The seeker has to discriminate between the three states and
realize the fact that, body, world, people are all in waking and waking
experience is absolutely unreal like a dream.
The seeker has to always think that this body is only an
illusory apparatus created out of consciousness within the illusory experience (mind). The mind is contained within the consciousness which is the true self.
The indivisible changeless, effulgent consciousness is lying
hidden under these delusive veils; therefore its real nature is unknown to
waking or dream. The direction of the waking or dream which always runs after
the senses has to be turned within. One has to overcome the ignorance in order
overcome the illusion.
The body and universe are but gross -- it dissolves as the
consciousness. Because of the accumulated mental impressions it remains until
the Self - knowledge arises. Therefore, the seeker has to indulge in spiritualistic
discrimination plunge this mind in the consciousness, which is ultimate
reality. When the mind becomes aware of its formless substance, all limiting
adjuncts vanish and one is established in ultimate reality.
It is difficult for people to direct their uncontrolled ego (waking
entity) towards the ultimate truth because of their inherited conditioning.
To navigate along the way, language can be very useful, if it is
used to point beyond its symbols and descriptions. Its function is to sacrifice
itself, to burn up so completely that no trace of smoke or ash remains, so as
to interfere with what its meaning shows. It is the ‘higher reason’ that uses
language in this way. The function of the higher reason is precisely to burn up
all obscuring residues that language leaves behind.
The reasoning base has to be rectified from form to formless in
order to discover, understand, assimilate and realize the non-dualistic or Advaitic truth. The
rectified reason functions, through discerning inquiry, to dissolve the mind into
pure consciousness, from where the mind rises and subsides. And as the
rectified reason functions, it makes use of mind reflectively, in order to
bring the mind back to consciousness, which is the source from where the mind
rises and subsides. There is no question of the rectified reason being an
instrument of any mind. It is always the other way about.
The thoughts and feelings did not exist prior to the appearance
of waking or dream. Only after the appearance of the waking or dream the
man became aware of the universe and his individuality. Only in waking
experience one is aware of the birth, life, death and the world. Thus waking or
dream appears as a whole and disappears as a whole. Deeper inquiry reveals
the fact that, the self is not physical, therefore the waking, dream and deep
sleep are not the experience of the physical body but the formless soul,
which is in the form of consciousness.
The process of ‘rectified reason’ is purely empirical. Each
question is tried out to see what result it leads to. And then, further
questions rise empirically. They arise from actual experience of the result,
not just from imagining or theorizing in advance what it might be. Thus, the
process must go on relentlessly, until the actual experience of a truth where
questions do not further rise – where all possibility of questioning is utterly
dissolved. All this requires that each questioning attack is turned back upon
one’s own mistakes of assumption and belief. Otherwise, the reasoning is merely
theoretical based on the waking or dream.
The deeper self-search is required to get the un-contradictable truth. That is
possible only through reasoning based on the soul as a self.
Since change and time do not apply to consciousness, that
consciousness is a changeless and a timeless principle of all experience.
Consciousness illuminates the whole waking experience. Consciousness
illuminates the whole Dream. In deep sleep, consciousness shines alone. In all
these states, it remains the same. It is always utterly unchanged in its own
existence, which illuminates itself.
Ultimate truth is accessible to anyone who has an intense urge
to know the ultimate truth or Brahman. The one who is ready to drop all his accumulated dross
in order to acquire Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana will succeed. The seeker has to hold the deep sleep
experience as a ‘key to the ultimate reality. If a seeker is ready to consider
deep sleep as true self, then this alone is enough, without the need for a
yogic cultivation of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. On the standpoint of the deep
sleep, the waking and dream are mere appearances.
In
the realm of duality one seeks truth. In the realm of Non-duality all
contradictions are dissolved. The soul or consciousness never parts within any
of the three states. In deep sleep, the conscious is in its true nature. In
waking or dream, it witnesses the experience as the whole. It is nothing to
with the individual experience happening within the waking or dream because the
three states are mere an object to the consciousness, which is the subject.
