Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Thirteen

Continued from Verse Twelve

13. The Self, which is Knowledge, is the only Reality. Knowledge of multiplicity is false knowledge. This false knowledge, which is really ignorance, cannot exist apart from the Self, which is Knowledge-Reality. The variety of gold ornaments is unreal, since none of them can exist without the gold of which they are all made.

Commentary: Reality is what is unchanging. Objects of experience — thoughts, feelings, exceptions, the world — have boundaries that are subject to change. They seem to be independent, but they are all merely manifestations of the medium of which they are made, just as a golden ring is not independent of the gold of which it is made.

Even that may be going too far, since even to say that they are manifestations of a medium requires the egoic perspective. The Self alone is true Knowledge, and the knowledge of objects, which assumes the reality of the ego, is therefore false. It’s false, not quite in the sense of being incorrect, but more in the sense of being meaningless. It appears to be meaningful, but it is only so if we assume the ego is true. But if the ego is investigated, it is seen to be untrue — or, to be precise, it is not what it seems to be. That means all the objects which are seen through it are also not what they seem to be. The meaning that comes from those objects is also not what it seems to be.

At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.