Maharshi-The Jnani, #1 corr. & last from this chapter

[Guest guest]

Q: Then what is the difference between the baddha and the mukta,

the bound man and the one liberated?

 

A: The ordinary man lives in the brain unaware of himself in the Heart.

The jnana-siddha [jnani] lives in the Heart. When he moves about and

deals with men and things, he knows that what he sees is not separate

from the one supreme reality, the Brahman which he realised in the Heart

as his own Self, the real.

 

Q: What about the ordinary man?

 

A: I have just said that he sees things outside himself. He is separate from

the world, from his own deeper truth, from the truth that supports him and

what he sees. The man who has realised the supreme truth of his own

existence realises that it is the one supreme reality that is there behind

him, behind the world. In fact, he is aware of the one, as the real, the Self

in all selves, in all things, eternal and immutable, in all that is impermanent

and mutable.

 

 

Q: What is the relation between the pure consciousness realised by the jnani and the ‘I am’-ness, which is accepted as the primary datum of experience?

 

A: The undifferentiated consciousness of pure being is the Heart or hridayam, which is what you really are. From the Heart arises the ‘I am’-ness as the primary datum of one's experience. By itself it is completely pure [suddha-sattva] in character. It is in this form of pristine purity [suddha-sattva-swarupa], uncontaminated by rajas and tamas [activity and inertia], that the "I" appears to subsist in the jnani.

 

............ BE AS YOU ARE, David Godman