Maharshi's Gospel - Work and Renunciation 9

[Guest guest]

(From previous post: Maharshi. ... the Self comprises all. It is the

screen, the pictures, the seer, the actors, the operator, the light, the

theatre, and all else. Your confounding the Self with the body and

imagining yourself the actor is like the seer representing himself as actor

in the cinema show. Imagine the actor asking if he can enact a scene without

the screen! Such is the case of the man who thinks of his actions apart

from the Self.)

 

....continued:

 

Disciple: On the other hand, it is like asking the spectator to act in the

cinema picture. So we must learn sleep-waking!

 

Maharshi: Actions and states are according to one's point of view. A crow,

an elephant, a snake, each makes use of one limb for two alternate purposes.

With one eye the crow looks on either side: for the elephant the trunk

serves the purpose of both a hand and a nose and the serpent sees as well as

hears with its eyes. Whether you say the crow has an eye or eyes, or refer

to the trunk of the elephant as 'hand' or 'nose', or call the eyes of the

serpent its ears, it means all the same. Similarly, in the case of the

Jnani, sleep-waking or waking-sleep, or dream-sleep or dreaming wakefulness,

are all much the same thing.

 

D. But we have to deal with a physical body in a physical waking world! If

we sleep while working is going on, or try to work while asleep, the work

will go wrong.

 

M. Sleep is not ignorance, it is one's pure state; wakefulness is not

knowledge, it is ignorance. There is full awareness in sleep and total

ignorance is in waking. Your real nature covers both and extends beyond.

The Self is beyond both knowledge and ignorance. Sleep, dream, and waking

states are only modes passing before the Self: they proceed whether you are

aware of them or not. That is the state of the Jnani, in whom pass the

states of samadhi, waking, dream, and sleep, like the bulls moving,

standing, or being unyoked, while the passenger is asleep. These answers

are from the point of view of the ajnani; otherwise such questions would not

arise.

 

(From Maharshi's Gospel, published by Sri Ramanasramam and available for

download from http://www.ramana-maharshi.org/ )