Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Twenty-Two

Continued from Verse Twenty-One

22. The Divine gives light to the mind and shines within it. Except by turning the mind inward and fixing it in the Divine, there is no other way to know Him through the mind.

Commentary: God is nothing other than the source of all. By definition God exceeds the ability of the mind to grasp it. It in fact is nothing other than the light that illuminates all attempts at understanding; that light cannot itself be understood. The only way, then, to know that light, is to turn the mind away from the changeable, illuminated objects… there is no place left for it to go then but to the light itself.

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

Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Twenty-One

Continued from Verse Twenty

21. What is the Truth of the scriptures which declare that if one sees the Self one sees God? How can one see one's Self? If, since one is a single being, one cannot see one's Self, how can one see God? Only by becoming a prey to Him.

Commentary: The Self cannot be seen as a separate object, and neither can God, whose essence is of course nothing but the Self. Both are said to be seen if the obstacles to recognizing their existence are removed. This obstacle is the belief that you are a separate, individual self. You cannot directly remove that belief; you can only offer yourself up by letting go as much as you can of your attachments to your identity. This is done by firmly turning the mind away from all the objects of experience through self-inquiry or surrender. Then that sense of separation will be removed by divine Grace, and the Truth — the Self in God, the God in Self — will shine, as in fact it always has. The idea that it ever was obscured will be seen to be a misconception, and even that misconception has never existed.

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

Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Twenty

Continued from Verse Nineteen

20. He who sees God without seeing the Self sees only a mental image. They say that he who sees the Self sees God. He who, having completely lost the ego, sees the Self, has found God, because the Self does not exist apart from God.

Commentary: God is merely an abstraction, a thought, a belief, unless experienced directly. And God can and is experienced directly, as the Self. So one who knows the Self knows God. If the ego has been investigated and its illusion penetrated, then the Self is said to be known. In that same moment, God is also found, since the idea of God is nothing other than the Self with a few illusory attributes superimposed. From the view of the ego, God is the whole. That is, the mind is small and limited, and God is large and unlimited. But when the Self is found, this egoic way of looking at the mind and God falls apart. There is then only the Self, which is nothing other than God’s real formless form. God’s worldly attributes — God’s miraculous powers, etc. — are as true or false as the attributes of any individual mind. There is then to be found no distinction between your true form and the true form of God.

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

Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Nineteen

Continued from Verse Eighteen

19. Only those who have no knowledge of the Source of destiny and free-will dispute as to which of them prevails. They that know the Self as the one Source of destiny and free-will are free from both. Will they again get entangled in them?

Commentary: Free will and destiny are concepts based on the idea that there are real individual minds which could either be free or bound. But when the source of this assumption is investigated, it falls apart. That’s the end of viewing the ego as real. Only if the ego is real — that is, only if there really is a separate, individual, doing, experiencing self — can that self be assessed as either free or bound. Since upon investigation such a self dissolves into the Self, the questions of free will or predetermination are falsely posed. Are the actions of a character in a novel free or bound? Neither, since there is no character, really — there’s merely a set of words on a page which become a hypothetical person in the mind of the reader. Is an elephant you see in a cloud free to wander where it wants? There is no elephant, actually. It is merely the projection of an imagination. Freedom and destiny cannot apply to creatures who are only pretended to exist.

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

In self-inquiry, you’re not looking for “the I” — you should be looking for yourself!

There's a tendency in inquiry to look for yourself as if you were somewhere or something else. It shows up in language like looking for "*the* I," or, worse, "the observer," "awareness, etc." Remember that you are looking for *yourself*. You are looking for you, what feels like you right now. You are trying to turn the gaze back on yourself.

Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Eighteen

Continued from Verse Seventeen

18. To those who have not realized (the Self) as well as to those who have, the world is real. But to those who have not realized, Truth is adapted to the measure of the world, whereas to those that have, Truth shines as the Formless Perfection, and as the Substratum of the world. This is all the difference between them.

Commentary: The phenomenon called the world might be said to appear to both the realized and the non-realized. But the realized view it as nothing other than a modification of the Self, which alone is considered the real truth. The only actual truth is known to be formless and beyond the mind. The world is real only as the Self, but the Self is beyond the egoic thought that says “I am, and therefore the world is.”

So the world is real only as the Self, but the Self does not think the thought that acknowledges the existence of the world.

For the realized ones, then, what appears to be thinking, feeling, perceiving and acting are nothing but the Self that does not admit any of those activities. In other words, thinking is not thinking, feeling is not feeling, perceiving is not perceiving, and acting is not acting. These are not real in themselves; they are all only the Self. They are not what they seem to be. They are semblances.

Whereas for the so-called ones who have not realized, the world is taken to be independently real, and there is thought to be actual truth in it.

“This is all the difference between them” — but what a difference!

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

Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Seventeen

Continued from Verse Sixteen

17. To those who have not realized the Self, as well as to those who have, the word 'I' refers to the body, but with this difference, that for those who have not realized, the 'I' is confined to the body whereas for those who have realized the Self within the body the 'I' shines as the limitless Self.

Commentary: For those who have not realized the Self, the I is basically founded in the body (which includes the mind) and its attachments and linkages. For those who have, so to say, realized the Self, the I is not grounded in the body. The body is seen as merely a mirror for something which is not actually in the body — any more than the Sun reflected in a puddle is actually in the puddle. The I can refer to the body, as a convenient way of naming a limited entity. But that limited entity is seen as nothing other than a reflection of the Self, which has no limits.

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

Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Sixteen

Continued from Verse Fifteen

16. Apart from us, where is time and where is space? If we are bodies, we are involved in time and space, but are we? We are one and identical now, then, and forever, here, and everywhere. Therefore we, timeless, and spaceless Being, alone are.

Commentary: Time and space are only seem to exist through the lens of the mind. The essence of that lens is a sense of individuality that splits things into a me and a not-me. Without these boundaries, the mind could not make its distinctions, including the distinctions of time and space.

Time is a product of memory. Space is a way of organizing physical objects. Both are products of thought, which depends upon the notion of the thinker, the doer — the egoic I.

If the egoic sense is right, then we are bodies and minds, and caught up in time and space. But if the ego is examined carefully, the mind is reduced to silence. It then becomes clear that there is no one to say that we are thinking, that we are in space, or that there is a past, a present, or a future.

This is in fact the eternal truth, that seems merely to be obscured at various times by the thoughts of individuality. We are not really bodies caught up in space and time. Those are merely categories dependent on the illusory ego. That ego penetrated — or more accurately, revealed never to have existed in the way that it seemed to exist — what remains is beyond time and space — and always has been. That we are.

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

Response to Rupert Spira's video "How Can Consciousness Have Multiple Experiences at Once?"

Someone asks Rupert Spira how there can be multiple experiences or points of view in what is supposedly one consciousness. This video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoT_J... .

Spira responds with a series of metaphors. In this video, I argue that these metaphors are not really very good answers to the question posed. I suggest that this kind of explanation to this sort of question misunderstands the real nature of the mind, of advaita and nonduality, and of the mystery of consciousness. If there are questions, there are no answers. If there are questions, there is a questioner. But is there a questioner?

Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Fifteen

Continued from Verse Fourteen

15. Only with reference to the present can the past and the future exist. They too, while current, are the present. To try to determine the nature of the past and the future while ignoring the present is like trying to count without the unit.

Commentary: It’s only the now that gives meaning to the past and the future, and when we think of the past and future, it’s always in the present that we seem to do it. Our minds are often absorbed in what has been and what is yet to come while we fail to examine the mystery of which they are made: the right now.

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