Creation theories and the reality of the world, #9 & last

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Q: Are the names and forms of the world real?

A: You won't find them separate from the substratum [adhishtana]. When you try to get at name and form, you will find reality only. Therefore attain the knowledge of that which is real for all time. Q: Why does the waking state look so real?

A: We see so much on the cinema screen, but it is not real. Nothing is real there except the screen. In the same way in the waking state, there is nothing but adhishtana. Knowledge of the world is knowledge of the knower of the world [jagrat-prama is the prama of jagrat-pramata]. Both go away in sleep.

Q: Why do we see such permanency and constancy in the world?

A: It is seen on account of wrong ideas. When someone says that he took a bath in the same river twice he is wrong, because when he bathed for the second time the river is not the same as it was when he bathed for the first time. On looking twice at the brightness of a flame a man says that he sees the same flame, but this flame is changing every moment. The waking state is like this. The stationary appearance is an error of perception.

Q: Where is the error?

A: Pramata [the knower].

 

Q: How did the knower come?

A: On account of the error of perception. In fact the knower and his misperceptions appear simultaneously, and when the knowledge of the Self is obtained, they disappear simultaneously.

Q: From where did the knower and his misperceptions come?

A: Who is asking the question?

Q: I am.

A: Find out that `I' and all your doubts will be solved. Just as in a dream a false knowledge, knower and known rise up, in the waking state the same process operates. In both states on knowing this `I' you know everything and nothing remains to be known. In deep sleep, knower, knowledge and known are absent. In the same way, at the time of experiencing the real `I' they will not exist. Whatever you see happening in the waking state happens only to the knower, and since the knower is unreal, nothing in fact ever happens.

Q: Is the light which gives the `I'-sense identity and knowledge of the world ignorance or chit, consciousness?

A: It is only the reflected light of chit that makes the `I' believe itself different from others. This reflected tight of chit also makes the `I' create objects, but for this reflection there must be a surface on which the reflection takes place.

Q: What is that surface?

A: On realization of the Self you will find that the reflection and the surface on which it takes place do not actually exist, but that both of them are one and the same chit. There is the world, which requires location for its existence and light to make it perceptible. Both rise simultaneously. Therefore physical existence and perception depend upon the light of the mind which is reflected from the Self. Just as cinema pictures can be made visible by a reflected light, and only in darkness, so also the world pictures are perceptible only by the light of the Self reflected in the darkness of avidya [ignorance]. The world can be seen neither in the utter darkness of ignorance, as in deep sleep, nor in the utter light of the Self, as in Self-realization or samadhi.

 

>> taken from >> Be As You Are, The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi>> Edited by David Godman