A true student and seeker continues to practice contemplation as advised in the previous verse, slowly bringing into his life the fulfillment of all the four conditions. These four cannot be achieved all of a sudden: the seeker has to put forth much conscious effort at self-discipline and learn to ease his way slowly toward the state of pure Self. It is slow, at times exhausting, evolutionary progress.
Once successful, the Self-realized individual remains ever liberated from all bondages. The equipments of experience (body-mind-intellect) and the fields of experience (objects-emotions-thoughts) can no longer condition him. In short, he is no more the little ego (perceiver-feeler-thinker). This egoless state becomes natural to him. In the beginning, such a state can be frighteningly shocking, confusing to those who have no devotion to the Lord. It is a new dimension of experience: no ego – yet, we experience with the “no-experiencer” in us ! One is then no more in the objective world of things and beings, but within a realm where the objective world is not and yet is fully included. Nothing is excluded from the Self.
Such a Self-realized master’s mere existence in this world is in itself a blessing to the people and their whole era.
If the Self-realized one has no identification with his equipment, if he has no vasanas to exhaust – he wants nothing, desires nothing, expects nothing – if he has gained all that is to be gained, why does he live on ? Why shouldn’t his body fall off ? What propels such a master to continue living to vigorously and continuously work for the spiritual upliftment of the people ?
Following the Upanisads’ own assertion, Sri Rama declares that such an individual “lives his share of destiny” (prarabdham-asnan). Everyone of us is living to exhaust our past vasanas, but the master lives without any identification with such happenings – he passes through such events without ego and its selfishness. Success or failure, joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure do not affect him. He does what is to be done as best as he can. He lives on, rejecting nothing, accepting all, reflecting everything, keeping nothing – like a mirror.
At the end of the body’s allotted time, when it falls off to rest in peace, the master merges to be one with Sri Rama, the supreme Self.
Text LV
adau ca madhye ca tathaiva cantato bhavam viditva bhayasokakaranam hitva samastam vidhivadacoditam bhajetsvamatmanamathakhilatmanam
Understanding this samsara to be the cause of fear and grief in the beginning (childhood), in the middle (youth), and similarly also in the end (old age), the seeker should give up all identification with the equipments. Renouncing all other sadhanas prescribed in the Vedas, let him learn to contemplate steadily upon the Self in him as the one infinite Self everywhere.
In the earlier days of the spiritual sadhana, in order to learn how to fold up his or her attention from the outer world of dissipation, every student must have diligently followed, for a long period of time, the various yogas recommended by our scriptural textbooks – karma, bhakti, jnana, worship of the Lord through eleborate rituals, and so on. The samskaras (innate tendencies) are so powerful that even after the mind has become single-pointed and quiet, a seeker generally hesitates to leave his old desires and enter into a pure state of contemplation.
Sri Rama unhesitatingly insists that the student should totally give up (hitva samastam) what has been prescribed by our sacred books as something that we must diligently pursue (vidhivat coditam).
With the integrated mind and intellect rendered single-pointed, quiet, alert, and vigilant, let the seeker exclusively turn his entire attention to the Self within (sva-atmanan) and realize that it is Self everywhere (akhila-atmanam bhajet).
In the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, Yajnavalkya insists that “this Self is to be ‘seen’: you must hear, reflect, and meditate upon it.”
Through such steady practice, when the successful seeker satisfies the four necessary conditions of the mind, he or she glides effortlessly into the higher state of the pure Self, the Rama-state. The individual becomes fully liberated from all the encumbrances of the body-mind-intellect – the equipments of experience – and is forever freed from all shackles of objects-emotions-thoughts–the fields of experience. Never can these conditionings entrap him again, as he has awakened to the state of the Self. He lives blessing the world with his pure holiness, even if he is not “doing” anything: his mere presence is an inspiration to the rest of society.
If he is thus liberated from all equipments, why are the equipments not falling away dead, when their owner, the ego, has been liberated ? The answer is that the force of its prarabdha karma keeps the body alive. The body is the product of our own karma (vasanas), and it is also a product of the karmas of others. One can redeem oneself of all one’s own karmas, but the body still lives and functions, sustained by the karmas of others. This macrocosmic vasana (samasti karma( is the equipment of the Lord (Isvara). Thus, a man of perfection is functioning under the Lord’s will only. Without any sense of “I-do” (ahankara) and any attachment (asakti), he appears to be functioning in the world, himself ever living the experience of the infinite Self, Sri Rama.
Once his share of destiny is exhausted, he merges into Brahman. This state is called videha-mukti. Even earlier, when others were considering him as a member of the community, he was already a liberated person (jivan-mukti).
atmanyabheden vibhavayannidam bhavatyabheden mayatmana tada yatha jalam varinidhau yatha payah ksire viyadvyomnyanile yathanilah.
Just as when water is poured into the ocean, as milk is poured into milk, as space is merged into space, as air is merged into air to mingle together and become one indistinguishable sameness, so, too, when the seeker contemplates upon this world of plurality as identical in essence with the Self, he comes to realize and live his total oneness with Me, the Self.
In the seat of meditation, through intense contemplation, the seeker persuades his individualized self to entirely drop all its identifications with the body-mind-intellect. He then effortlessly glides into the higher state of Conciousness and becomes indistinguishably one with it. When a river reaches the ocean, it loses both its name and form and becomes one with all the oceans around the world.
