Satsang with Nome: None in Bondage, None Liberated More Q & A

[Guest guest]

Satsang at Sociaty of Abidance in Truth, (SAT) www.satramana.org

None in Bondage, None Liberated

January 5, 2004

 

[N. signifies Nome; Q. signifies Questioner; laughter means that

everyone was laughing, not just the speaker.]

 

Questions and Answers 2

 

Another Q.: I am trying to understand what is Self-Knowledge. We also

speak of gaining Self-Knowledge. I know that I have gained some Self-

Knowledge. I ask myself who it is that is gaining that Self-

Knowledge. It collapses on itself.

 

N.: Thus, you gained some more. (laughter)

 

Q.: The Self doesn't really gain Self-Knowledge. An ego can't know

the Self. So, what is this Self-Knowledge? I know what it is, but,

logically, it does not work out.

 

N.: What do you mean?

 

Q.: If somebody was gaining Self-Knowledge, it means that he lacked

something that he has gained. The Self, though, has not gained

anything, and the ego has not gained it. The more I think about it,

the more confused I become. If I don't think about it, everything is

fine.

 

N.: You need to determine deeply within yourself, on the path of Self-

Knowledge, who you are. Yes, the ego doesn't gain anything. What it

has is an absence. The Self is not in need of anything. If, though,

in your experience, there seems be some deviation from that pristine

bliss and peace of the Self, due to ignorance, Knowledge is needed.

Self-Knowledge alone is needed, and it is essential. Without it,

there is no Liberation. With it, there is none bound and none

liberated.

 

If you contemplate upon the ego and the Self, you must know who you

are. As far as the attempt to describe what happens in Self Knowledge

is concerned, one the Upanishads says that it is like tracing the

tracks of the birds in the sky. An expedient description can made of

footprints, but they are not really there.

 

Practicing the path of Self-Knowledge, there is great precision. Yet,

it a formless path to realize the Formless. It is questioning that

which is most immediate. "The ego, the Self": who are you who knows

about these? When you thus practice, you say that everything

collapses. The whole superstructure of notions and concepts in the

mind collapses. What is constituted of mere imagination and based on

the foundation of a false assumption is bound to collapse. The

inquiry is merely the revelation of what is real and an utter

dismissal of what is unreal. To discern what is unreal and what is

real is in keeping with Self-Knowledge. Thus you come to the

conclusion, as stated in the Gita, that the Real ever is and the

unreal has never come to be. That conclusion must be reached

experientially.

 

The experience is of your own Existence. Nothing could be more

experiential than your own Existence. Indeed, other than your own

Existence, treat all else as merely theoretical—-a mere hypotheses, a

bad rumor.

 

There are not selves in the one of you. For everyone, existence,

itself, is singular. The ideas about oneself constituting a mind,

personality, the body, etc. may be multiple, but Existence itself is

singular and indivisible. It is most immediate. There are not two of

them. Just continue with the Knowledge of that Self, negating from

your identity everything that is objective, discontinuous,

conceivable or perceivable. What remain is what is. It is not a

thing.

 

Q.: I see now that, when I was talking about Self-Knowledge, I was

speaking about it conceptually and not experientially. That is why it

collapses. The actual experience does not collapse though everything

may collapse around it into a singular existence.

 

 

N.: So, Self-Knowledge is real and Self-ignorance is illusory.

 

Q.: Could one say that Self-Knowledge is just getting rid of the

ignorance?

 

N.: Just get rid of the ignorance, and then you can define Self-

Knowledge,

 

 

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Not two,

Richard