Continued from Verse Thirty-Three
34. It is due to illusion born of ignorance that men fail to recognize That which is always and for everybody the inherent Reality dwelling in its natural Heart-centre and to abide in it, and that instead they argue that it exists or does not exist, that it has form or has not form, or is non-dual or dual.
Commentary: The ignorance, the forgetfulness, of the Self is the ego, which is the sense that ”I am a separate someone.” This sense needs forgetfulness, because without that, the notion of being a separate entity couldn’t exist. If you kept noticing the movie screen, it would be hard to suspend disbelief and become completely absorbed in the film. You need to forget the background to take what’s playing in the foreground seriously.
Out of the egoic notion come all the incorrect desires and fears that lead the mind to chase happiness in contingent, temporary things instead of simply going quiet, and, in so doing, allowing the light of the true and permanent bliss that is the Self to shine, as it does, in the Heart. That Heart is nothing different from the Self — it’s just another name for where self-inquiry leads. If you imagine yourself in a kind of large sphere, you seem to be “in here” while experience is “out there.” The Heart is the inmost point in the sphere, separated out from all the objects that it experiences. As soon as one gets to the point, of course, it turns out not to be a point at all, at least not a point in the way that it seemed at first. It has, as the scriptures say, suddenly the circumference of the entire universe despite being as tiny as an atom.
All the arguments about whether the Self exists or not, whether it has form or not, etc. are all simply mental debates — that is, they are based on the foundational notion that the ego is real. Conceptual arguments are always based in a sense of separation, because words and thoughts are about bounded entities. And you cannot notice the bounds of other objects unless you are the first bounded object. Only after there is an “in here” (me) and an “out there” (not-me) can the “out there” be split into pieces and named and then argued about.
What is Real is beyond concepts, beyond separation, beyond bounds. So getting embroiled in these kinds of arguments can be a kind of snakepit for the seeker, who gets confused mucking around with them instead of simply looking within and allowing the indisputable, the beyond-concepts, to shine in its wordless way.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.