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Advaita for the 21st Century

Self Revealed, Part 2
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The following extract constitutes Part 2 of a chapter from the above book.

Immortality

Those who are perplexed by observing life and death, who seek a spiritual answer when recognizing the approach of death, and who wish to free themselves of the transitory so as to abide as the eternal, seek the Eternal. Using the desire to be free of death to find their Liberation, they seek the immortality of the Self. They find clarity regarding the desire to endure, and thus turn this innate desire into the desire for Self-Realization. This Realization alone can fulfill that innate desire. Those who perceive transience, who feel the inner urge to find something that does not die, who recognize that everything in the world perishes and therefore what they seek must be found within in a way that transcends what is physical, and who see that it is futile to be attached to that which is only going to pass away sooner or later seek spiritually for immortality. This immortality is to be found in the Self. Abidance as the Self is Knowledge of the Self. An inquiry into the knowledge of immortality reveals that bliss and immortality are the same and that both are realizable by Knowledge. As a result of comprehending this teaching, one is liberated from the illusory connection to the body and to what is mortal. The fusion of the desire for happiness and the desire to exist results in one being endowed with a singular focus upon Self-Realization. This enables one to practice the inquiry to know the Self with the power of undistracted meditation.

Fullness and Perfection, the unceasing Bliss, reside in That which neither rises nor sets, which neither begins nor ceases. The experience of happiness is connected with the experience of eternity, and the desire for happiness is connected with the desire for eternity. No one desires a happiness that will cease, but, rather, the desire is for a happiness that will not cease and is forever. One wishes to exist forever so as to experience that happiness forever. The desire for immortality is as strong as the desire for happiness. The two are inextricably woven together. Just as no one wishes to be unhappy, so no one wishes to cease to exist, though one may wish objective appearances, such as the sensations, the body, and thoughts, to cease. All wish to continue to exist forever. This is an intuition of the true nature of Being.

This desire to exist cannot be fulfilled externally in bodily forms. The true state of Being, when it is unrealized and delusion is present, manifests as the desire for anything to last. Realized, the Self itself is the unborn and the undying, abiding in the state of imperturbable peace, completely detached and not dependent on anything. It is transcendent of the entire universe for all time. The desire to endure springs from the deepest, and it is fulfilled solely by realizing the deepest, which is the eternal Existence of the Self.

Immortality is complete happiness, for the essence of both of them is the same, and only that which is unending is complete. The transitory is not complete, and that which is suffering is not eternal. The Realization of the Self is blissful immortality. It is abidance in and as That which has no beginning or end. The desires for happiness and immortality are the same. They come from the same intuition of the Truth of the Self. Only abidance as the Self, which is the Reality, fulfills both.

The Self is that which has no beginning or end and which is real, or truly existent. It is changeless. Whatever has a beginning, a change, and an end is unreal. This ‘being unreal’ may be understood as being utterly nonexistent or as the Existent entirely misperceived. To experience blissful immortality, one must realize the Existence of the Self as it really is; one must abide as the beginningless and endless, as the changeless. The Knowledge of the Self is the Knowledge of the eternal, the unchanging, and the completely blissful. It is the Knowledge of Reality. This is the only true perception. To see anything else is to see the nonexistent. That is ignorance. Ignorance is composed of assumptions and superimpositions. It is the non-perception of Reality and the misperception of Reality, displaying itself as the non-seeing of real, nondual Being and the hallucination of duality or multiplicity. The knowing of anything, be it gross or subtle, without the Knowledge of the Self, is simply diversified ignorance, or diversified illusion. In the Knowledge of the Reality of the Self, there remains neither multiplicity (or duality) nor anything else.

One formless Existence is, with no differentiation whatsoever. One formless Existence appears as if all this multiplicity. All the multiplicity is only the one formless Existence imagined as such.

To realize the Truth, for the Truth to be Self-revealed, one should abandon ignorance, multiplicity, the transitory, and the illusion of form, and abide as the formless, which is real, non- dual, and ever-existent. This abidance is Knowledge. The destruction of illusion means the destruction of ignorance regarding the Self, or the destruction of misidentification. Such is the destruction of suffering and the death of death. This is blissful immortality. It is simply the vanquishing of ignorance. By the Truth being revealed within, misidentifications, or superimpositions, are destroyed. By the destruction of misidentifications, or superimpositions, Truth is revealed within.

In Self-realization, all notions about the Absolute and the Self are relinquished. Notions about the Absolute are such as that it is separate from oneself, or objective, and that it is not always present. Notions about the Self are such as that it is endowed with form, minuteness, that it is changeful, material, embodied, defined by thought, in time, or endowed with individuality. For Knowledge, the superimposition of the jiva-hood (concept of individuality) is removed from Atman (the Self) and Isvara-hood (idea of the Lord, of God) from Brahman. Upon such removal of superimposition, or ignorance, one realizes the identity, as declared in the Upanishad, Tat tvam asi, That you are. Sri Ramana Maharshi revealed in his teachings, which are most direct and immediate, that if the Self remains undefined, it is only Brahman, and it alone is. Therefore, one should know the Self.

The Knowledge of Reality, which is the Realization of the Self and the Realization of the Absolute, is attained by the direct path of true Knowledge. By liberating oneself from the misidentification with what is not the Self, one knows the Self. When the real nature of what has been considered as the non-Self is seen, it invariably proves to be nonexistent, for it was dependent upon misidentification in order to even ever appear.

Blissful and eternal is the Real Self. One should regard only that which has no beginning or end, is ever existent, is immutable, is transcendent of all that has form, of all that changes, and of all that is in time, and which is continuous and undivided as real and as one's true Being. By this Knowledge, one abides in the natural state, which is the only true state of the Self. The Self may be said to call unto itself, as the Sought and the seeker, as the Guru and the disciple, as God and the devotee. It seeks itself as meditation. It reveals itself as inner experience. It knows and abides in itself for blissful eternity. May this blissful, immortal Knowledge shine clearly.

Go to Part 1 of this chapter. Go to Part 3.

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