Q: Does my realization help others?
A: Yes, certainly. It is the best help possible. But there are no others to be helped. For a realized being sees only the Self, just like a goldsmith estimating the gold in various items of jewellery sees only gold. When you identify yourself with the body then only the forms and shapes are there. But when you transcend your body the others disappear along with your body-consciousness.
Q: Is it so with plants, trees, etc.?
A: Do they exist at all apart from the Self? Find it out. You think that you see them. The thought is projected out from the Self. Find out from where it rises. Thoughts will cease to rise and the Self alone will remain.
Q: I understand theoretically. But they are still there.
A: Yes. It is like a cinema-show. There is the light on the screen and the shadows flitting across it impress the audience as the enactment of some piece. If in the same play an audience also is shown on the screen as part of the performance, the seer and the seen will then both be on the screen. Apply it to yourself. You are the screen, the Self has created the ego, the ego has its accretions of thoughts which are displayed as the world, the trees and the plants of which you are asking. In reality, all these are nothing but the Self. If you see the Self, the same will be found to be all, everywhere and always. Nothing but the Self exists.
Q: Yes, I still understand only theoretically. Yet the answers are simple, beautiful and convincing.
A: Even the thought ‘I do not realize’ is a hindrance. In fact, the Self alone is.
Our real nature is mukti. But we are imagining we are bound and are making various, strenuous attempts to become free, while we are all the while free. This will be understood only when we reach that stage. We will be surprised that we were frantically trying to attain something which we have always been and are. An illustration will make this clear. A man goes to sleep in this hall. He dreams he has gone on a world tour, is roaming over hill and dale, forest and country, desert and sea, across various continents and after many years of weary and strenuous travel, returns to this country, reaches Tiruvannamalai, enters the ashram and walks into the hall. Just at that moment he wakes up and finds he has not moved an inch but was sleeping where he lay down. He has not returned after great effort to this hall, but is and always has been in the hall. It is exactly like that. If it is asked, ‘Why being free do we imagine that we are bound?’ I answer, ‘Why being in the hall did you imagine you were on a world adventure, crossing hill and dale, desert and sea? It is all mind or maya [illusion].’
Q: How then does ignorance of this one and only reality unhappily arise in the case of the ajnani [one who has not realized the Self]?
A: The ajnani sees only the mind which is a mere reflection of the light of pure consciousness arising from the Heart.
Of the Heart itself he is ignorant. Why? Because his mind is extroverted and has never sought its source.
Q: What prevents the infinite, undifferentiated light of consciousness arising from the Heart from revealing itself to the ajnani?
A: Just as water in a pot reflects the enormous sun within the narrow limits of the pot, even so the vasanas or latent tendencies of the mind of the individual, acting as the reflecting medium, catch the all-pervading, infinite light of consciousness arising from the Heart. The form of this reflection is the phenomenon called the mind. Seeing only this reflection, the ajnani is deluded into the belief that he is a finite being, the jiva, the individual self.
Q: What are the obstacles which hinder realization of the Self?
A: They are habits of mind [vasanas].
Q: How to overcome the mental habits [vasanas]?
A: By realising the Self.
Q: This is a vicious circle.
6
Self-Enquiry 