Advaita Vedanta

The Self can Never be a Witness

~ Tom Das ~ Leave a comment

The Self is not a witness at all, and it can never be a witness in Truth, but as long as we think we are a body-mind entity, and as long as we see a world outside of or apart from ourself, the Self is indicated or pointed out as being the Subject or the Witness merely for the purposes of the teaching.

When in Self-Enquiry we turn our attention away from the objects, which means we turn our attention away from the various gross and suble phenomena that are perceived, and towards the Subject or Self (‘Witness’), also known as the I AM or the 1st person, eventually the ego-mind which takes itself to be a body-mind entity dissolves or dies and all that is left is the Subject-Witness-Self.

This Self can no longer truly be said to be either a Subject (for there are no objects present), nor can it be said to be a Witness, as there is nothing to witness. It is All, it is the Sole Reality, ‘One without a second’, as it is often described as being in the Upanishads.

Hence Bhagavan Ramana is recorded as saying:

If you refrain from looking at this

Or that or any other object

Then by that overpowering look

Into absolute Being you become

Yourself the boundless space of pure

Awareness which alone is Real Being.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Vachaka Kovai, Verse 647

The ego/mind, when attending to objects, considers itself to be an object (the body-mind). However, when the ego attends or pays attention to itself (also known as the I-sense, or first person, or I am), and in so doing no longer pays attention to the objects it was previously attending or paying attention to, it discovers its true nature without objects, ie it’s true formless nature, then it has actually discovered its actual or real nature which is Self.

This is why Sri Ramana states In Day by Day with Bhagavan:

‘The mind turned inwards is the Self; turned outwards, it becomes the ego and all the world’

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Conscious sleep (Jagrat Sushupti) is Self-knowledge | Sri Ramana Maharshi | Guru Vachaka Kovai

~ Tom Das ~ 2 Comments

959. O men who, caught by the dangerous snares of the world and struck by the sharp arrows of cruel miseries, are suffering greatly and are wandering in search of the attainment of supreme bliss, the sleep in which there is no loss of consciousness [i.e. wakeful sleep or jagrat-sushupti] alone is the imperishable happiness.

~Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Vachaka Kovai

Commentary by Sri Sadhu Om:

”The sleep in which there is no loss of consciousness’ [arivu-azhiya tukkam] means only the state of Self-knowledge.

‘Here consciousness [arivu] means prajna or the knowledge of one’s own existence, and not the knowledge of other things.

‘That which knows other things is not true knowledge [see Ulladu Narpadu verse 12]. The state we call sleep is the state in which we know no other things, not even the body.

‘The state we call waking is the state in which, along with the knowledge of one’s own existence [‘I am’], there is also knowledge of other things.

‘The state in which we remain conscious merely of our own existence, like in waking, but in which the mind [the knower of other things] does not rise, like in sleep, is called the state of conscious sleep or wakeful sleep.

‘Since no other thing is known in this state, it is a sleep; and since one’s own existence is shining clearly there, it is a state of consciousness or waking.’

960. Those who are sleeping, having given up the habit of [going out through] the deceitful senses and having become established in the heart-lotus, are those who are awake in the abode of real knowledge [mey-jnana]. Others are those who are asleep, being immersed in the dense darkness of this unreal world [poy-jnala].

~Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Vachaka Kovai

Sri Ramana Maharshi: perceiving and creation are one and the same

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147. Creation is not other than seeing; seeing and creating are one and the same process. Annihilation is only the cessation of seeing and nothing else, for the world comes to an end by the right awareness of oneself.

330. There is no creation apart from seeing; seeing and creation are one and the same. And because that seeing is due to ignorance, to cease seeing is the truth of the dissolution (of the world).

~Sri Ramana Maharshi, verses taken from Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad

To understand these verses more deeply see these posts here and here