SELF-KNOWLEDGE: PATH TO LIBERATION-1

SELF-KNOWLEDGE: PATH TO LIBERATION-1

Self-Knowledge means knowing the Truth of one’s own Real Nature (the Self). To know this truth, one does not have to acquire anything new. One has to re-cognize this Truth within oneself as the ever-exiting, ever-present Pure Consciousness underlying the three states of waking, dream and deep sleep.

This Truth has to be pointed out by a competent teacher who has seen the Truth within himself as a fact of life, not merely as intellectual knowledge. The competent teacher knows the Truth and lives the Truth. When such a teacher points out the Truth to a competent student, the student has to ‘cognize’ this truth as such within himself, by himself. This cannot be given as a gift or blessing by the teacher.

How does one become a competent student (adhikārī-śiṣya)?

The Vedānta provides a four-foul discipline (4 D’s) as follows:

1. Discernment: Ability to discriminate between the Real and the unreal.
2. Dispassion: Detachment from that which is unreal.
3. Discipline: Cultivating an integrated body and equanimous mind.
4. Desire: Intense desire to be free from all limitations.

Through the operation of Divine Grace, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Out of his infinite compassion, the teacher points out the following to the student:

‘You are not an individual entity you take yourself to be. You take yourself to be a person with name and form (Mr. so and so with body and mind). In your essential nature, you are not the psycho-somatic apparatus consisting of body-mind-senses. In your real nature, you are non-dual Pure Consciousness that illumines the body, mind, and senses.

‘Your only error is ‘mis-taking’ yourself to be a limited body-mind-senses complex.
Because you mis-take yourself to be so, you ascribe the limitations of the body-mind-senses to your Real Nature.

‘You superimpose the properties of the body to your Real Nature. The body is limited by time and space; it is subject to the laws of causality; it is born, grows, becomes old, and eventually, dies. But you are NOT the body. In essence, you are the Consciousness- Principle that inheres and enlivens the body.

‘As Pure Consciousness, you are not subject to time-space-causality limitations. You are like Vast Space. While ‘pot-space’ seems to be confined to the boundaries of the pot, the space per se is limitless. The pots are many and get created and destroyed, the space is One and, without beginning and end.’

This understanding is beautifully captured in the following couplet:

भूमा अचल शाश्वत अमल निर्दोष है तू सर्वदा I
यह देह है पोला घड़ा, बनता बिगड़ता है सदा II

bhūmā acala śāśvata amala nirdoṣa hai tū sarvadā /
yeha deha hai polā ghar̤ā, banatā bigar̤atā hai sadā //

You are forever limitless, changeless, eternal, pure, and taintless.
This body is a frail vessel, subject to creation and destruction.

Śrī Kṛṣṇa succinctly conveys this truth to the warrior prince Arjuna on the eve of the battle of Mahābhārata:

न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन् नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः ।
अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे ॥ २- २० ॥

na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin nāyaṁ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ |
ajo nityaḥ śāśvato’yaṁ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre || 2- 20 ||

The Self is never born nor dies; nor does it come to be after being born.
It is unborn, eternal, everlasting and primeval; it is not killed when the body is killed.

You are That!
Realize your True Nature as such and be free.

To be continued…