The Nature of the Self - [13]

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Q: Is Mukti the same as realisation?

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi:

 

Mukti or liberation is our nature. It is another name for us. Our wanting mukti

is a very funny thing. It is like a man who is in the shade, voluntarily leaving

the shade, going into the sun, feeling the severity of the heat there, making

great efforts to get back into the shade and then rejoicing, ‘How sweet is the

shade! I have reached the shade at last!’ We are all doing exactly the same.

We are not different from the reality. We imagine we are different, that is we

create the bheda bhava (the feeling of difference) and then undergo great

sadhana (spiritual practices) to get rid of the bhed bhava and realise the oneness.

Why imagine or create bheda bhava and then destroy it?

 

Q: This can be realised only by the grace of the master.

I was reading Sri Bhagavata (Purana). It says that bliss can be had only by the dust

of the master’s feet. I pray for grace.

 

A:

What is bliss but your own being? You are not apart from being which is the same as bliss. You are now thinking that you are the mind or the body which are both changing and trnsient. But you are unchanging and eternal. That is what you should know.

 

Q: It is darkness and I am ignorant.

 

A: This ignorance must go. Again, who says, ‘I am ignorant’? he must be the witness of ignorance.

That is what you are. Socrates said, ‘I know that I do not know.’ Can it be ignorance? It is wisdom.

 

Q: Why then do I feel unhappy when I am in Vallore and feel peace in your presence?

 

A: Can the feeling in this place be bliss? When you leave this place you say you are unhappy. Therefore, this peace is not permanent, it is mixed with unhappiness which is felt in another place. Therefore you cannot find bliss in places and in periods of time. It must be permanent in order that it may be useful. It is your own being which is permanent. Be the Self and that is bliss. You are always that.

The Self is always realised. It is not necessary to seek to realise what is already and always realised. For you cannot deny your own existence. That existence is consciousness, the Self.

Unless you exist, you cannot ask questions. So you must admit your own existence. That existence is the Self. It is already realised. Therefore the effort to realise results only in your realising your present mistake- that you have not realised your Self. There is no fresh realisation. The Self becomes revealed.

 

Q: That will take some years.

 

A: Why years? The idea of time is only in your mind. It is not in the Self. There is no time for the Self. Time arises as an idea after the ego arises. But you are the Self beyond time and space. You exist even in the absence of time and space.

Were it true that you realise it later it means that you are not realised now. Absence of realisation in the present moment may be repeated at any moment in the future, for time is infinite. So too, such realisation is impermanent. It is the true eternal state, which cannot change.

 

Q: Yes, I shall understand it in course of time.

 

A: You are already that. Time and space cannot affect the Self. They are in you. So also all that you see around you is in you. There is a story to illustrate this point.

A lady had a precious necklace around her neck. Once in her excitement she forgot it and thought that the necklace was lost. She became anxious and looked for it in her home but could not find it. She asked her friends and neighbours if they knew anything about the necklace. They did not. At last a kind friend told her to feel the necklace round her neck. She found that it had all along been round her neck and she was happy. When others asked her later if she had found the necklace which was lost, she said, ‘Yes, I have found it.’ She still felt that she had recovered a lost jewel.

Now did she lose it at all? It was all along round her neck. But judge her feelings. She was as happy as if she had recovered a lost jewel. Similarly with us, we imagine that we will realise that Self some time, whereas we are never anything but the Self.

 

Q: there must be something that I can do to reach this state.

 

A: The conception that there is a goal and a path to it is wrong. We are the goal or peace always. To get rid of the notion that we are not peace is all that is required.