Jayanti, December 28, 2003

[Guest guest]

Discourse from Nome of SAT, www.satramana.org

 

N.: Today is celebrated as the Jayanti of Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Jayanti refers to birth, yet he is the Unborn. The Unborn is Brahman,

the infinite, the eternal Absolute. The Jayanti celebrates his birth,

so to speak, in us; that is, our becoming aware of him. Of what do we

become aware? Who is he? In order to truly answer that question, we

would need to answer his question first, which is, "Who am I?"

Otherwise we will view him according to our own aptitude. The only

way to view him properly and truly is to see him with what he has

referred to as the "infinite eye." The infinite eye is the eye of

pure Consciousness. To see with that infinite eye of pure

Consciousness, you must abide as That, without the least trace of any

misidentification with anything else whatsoever.

 

Who is he? It is not possible to place the ineffable in words. It is

not possible to place the inconceivable in thought. It is not

possible to place the "I"-less as an object of perception of an "I."

In order to know him, you must know yourself. If you know yourself,

you know what he is, but you can't say anything about That.

 

What do we celebrate? If we cannot actually celebrate his birth

because he is unborn, and if we cannot celebrate him because he is

the infinite and the eternal and there is no one apart from him to

worship or celebrate, what are we celebrating? It is because he has

revealed that Self-Knowledge that unfailingly puts an end to all of

the imagined bondage, the illusion of samsara. The best way to

celebrate that is to be immersed in the Truth of it. If you are

blissfully immersed in the Truth of it, the Truth that liberates you

from the illusion that samsara exists at all, you are really

celebrating, even silently so.

 

Consider how in all this maya, he, with his liberating teachings, has

somehow appeared so that you can come to know of it and pursue it to

its core. What greater miracle could you want? How is it that you

have come to know about him and the Truth that is revealed? You

didn't do so by your own ego will power. It did not happen because of

some objective cause removed from the Self. If we look at all this

from beyond the "I am the body" misconception, it is all the Self

revealing itself to itself. It is one infinite Self, unborn,

imperishable, nonobjective, One without a second.

 

Liberate yourself from the "I am the body" misidentification, and he

is not a body. Liberate yourself from the misidentification with the

mind, and he is not a mind. Liberate yourself through Self-Knowledge

from the erroneous assumption of being an individual entity, or ego,

and he is not an individual. Then, who is who? Who is revealing what

to whom?

 

When we inquire in this manner and understand like this, then it is

said that something apparently at a distance has been restored to its

proper place. This is the significance of upadesha, or spiritual

instruction. Something that had seemed far away has been shown to be

very close. How close? It is exactly where your Existence is. That is

where he is. You should know yourself to be that Existence and cease

imagining yourself to be otherwise. That you have a doorway, so to

speak, out of the imagined samsara, the illusion of birth, death, and

everything between, is a great blessing. To realize within yourself

that there are not two sides of that doorway is also a great blessing.

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Not two,

Richard