Sunday, December 2, 2012

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."


 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.