9. Oh noble one! In this way, through discriminative intelligence and constant contemplation on the Lord, grasp the truth of the Atman amidst Its adjuncts of body-mind complex.
There are three kinds of reality – the Supreme Spirit, the individual spirits and the material principle. There are three kinds of relationship – the relation of the Supreme Spirit to the individual spirits, the relations of the individual spirits to matter and the relation of matter to the Supreme Spirit. Each of the three terms is related to the other two. So each relationship has two directions.
A number of questions arise. For example, are all the relations of the same kind? Are they of the same kind in each of the directions? What is the nature of the differences, if the three relations are of different kinds? If each relation is different in each of its directions, what is the nature of the difference? What is the role of the Brahman as the Supreme Spirit in creation of the matter – the world?
One must practise discrimination to enquire the pros and cons of each issue and to choose the one that leads to God. For instance, “lust and greed” is impermanent. God is the only Eternal Substance. What does a man get with money? Food, clothes and a dwelling place, and nothing more! One cannot realize God with its help. Therefore, money can never be the goal of life. Such is the process of discrimination. Discrimination is the path of reasoning – vichara.
Discrimination leads to the right views or understanding of the nature of the world, the right resolve to follow the truths, the right speech constituting truthfulness, the right action including non-injury, non-stealing, non-sensuality, non-lying and non-intoxication. These, in turn, lead to the right livelihood that does not involve the performing of prohibited actions as means of livelihood, the right endeavour to overcome the temptations of evil, the right mindfulness constantly placing one’s ideal before oneself and the right concentration or meditation. When meditation becomes perfect, one attains realization – nirvana a state of absolute non-disturbance and liberation.
What is knowledge? It is to know one’s own self, dissolving the mind in it. It is to know the pure Atman, which alone is our real nature.
Knowledge is discriminative understanding of WHAT IS. Sri Sathya Sai defines it thus: Advaita Darsanam Jnanam – Knowledge is realization of Non-dualism.
The means for developing it are the scripture, tapas, tradition, reasoning and experience. It consists in the understanding that the Brahman – the Supreme Spirit alone had been before the universe came into being, is what exists in the middle and will continue to be when the universe including Time dissolves itself into IT. The Brahman alone is the Reality and the Truth.
10. If this truth of the Atman is grasped, the serpent Takshaka will not consume you under the prompting of the sage’s son. The causes that bring about death will not even touch you, who are one with the Lord and verily the Death of death itself.
When one ‘dies’, one does not die at all, but only shifts into awareness of the macrocosm where there is no ‘time’ or ‘space’, now and then, before and after. From a macro perspective, all the particles of everything merely look like the whole. This is to say that on ‘death’ one returns in consciousness to the macro reality which is but a micro reality of an even larger macro reality – and so on, and on, and on, for ever and ever, without end. This leads to the realization that life is all a matter of perspective.
Death in that instance is a glorious moment, a wonderful experience, as the soul returns to its natural form, its natural state. This leads to an awareness of a sense of total freedom, an awareness of Oneness that is sublime and blissful.
To learn how to die is to learn how to live. To learn how to live is to learn how to act not only in this life, but in the lives to come. To transform oneself truly and learn how to be reborn as a transformed being to help others is really to help the world in the most powerful way of all.
The actual point of death is when the most profound and beneficial inner experiences can come about. Through repeated acquaintance with the processes of death in meditation, an accomplished seeker can use his actual death to gain great spiritual realization. This is why experienced practitioners of Yoga engage in meditative practices as they pass away. An indication of their attainment is that often their bodies do not begin to decay until long after they are clinically dead.
Highly realized beings awaken in themselves a perception of Reality in a totally purified form, transparent to them in its entire limitless dimension. The experience of death is no surprise to them. In fact, they anticipate and invite it at the moment of their choice. They embrace it as an opportunity for liberation from the bonds of physical life.
11-12. When ‘I am the Brahman, the Transcendent Effulgence’, ‘The Brahman, the Terminal State, am I’ – are your firm convictions, who constantly practise this communion of the individual self with the universal undivided Self in a non-dual attitude, of what consequence is the Takshaka lolling his tongue and belching poison? For, everything – this Takshaka, his poison, your body, the whole manifested world, etc – will have no existence for you apart from the Brahman.
The aspirant initially feels that God alone is real and all else is illusory. Afterwards, he finds that it is God Himself that has become the universe, Maya and all living beings. The process of discrimination involves first negation and then affirmation. The aspirant attains Satchidananda by negating the universe and its living beings. But after the attainment of Satchidananda he finds that Satchidananda Itself has become the universe and the living beings. Every thing is Its manifestation. It is God alone that has become everything. The world by no means exists apart from Him.
“‘I’ and ‘Mine’ – that is ignorance. ‘Thou’ and ‘Thine’ – that is knowledge” is the firm conviction of the aspirant.
Self–realization is realization of one’s self in one’s conscious being. One’s self is one’s atman. One’s atman is seen to be a reflection of the Supreme Spirit or the Brahman. It is, of course, not an object of one’s senses. It is not an object at all. It is also not the subject in the ordinary sense of the term. The subject of one’s experience is oneself. But one is not the Supreme Spirit. As the Supreme Spirit cannot be experienced outside one’s self, it has to be experienced within. This does not mean that this Spirit is something in one’s mind like an idea or feeling.
The way to the Supreme Spirit is the very self of the individual, referring to itself as ‘I’. As the Supreme Spirit is never an object, it has to be understood as an ‘I’ within one’s ‘I’ as the witness (sakshi) of one’s ‘I’ and as transcending it, though within it. It may be said that it is an ‘I-AM’ within one’s ‘I-am’. It may also be said that the Supreme Spirit’s ‘I AM’ is deeper, higher, greater and more comprehensive than one’s “I am”. Spatial meanings have no relevance here.
13. Oh dear one! Whatever you have wanted to know about the working of Sri Hari – the Supreme Brahman, I have imparted to you, established in the Self. Is there any more question remaining to be answered?.
