Texter - The Self

Nedanstående text är ett kort extrakt från Ramana Maharshis text:
Awareness is another name for you »

The Self, Being, Awareness, Consciousness and Reality
The real Self or real ‘I’ is, contrary to perceptible experience, not an experience of individuality but a non-personal, all-inclusive awareness. It is not to be confused with the individual self which is essentially non-existent, being a fabrication of the mind which obscures the true experience of the real Self.

The real Self is always present and always experienced but one is only consciously aware of it as it really is when the self-limiting tendencies of the mind have ceased. Permanent and continuous Self-awareness is known as Self-realisation.

The Self is pure being, a subjective awareness of ‘I am’ [the pure feeling of 'I am' prior to words] which is completely devoid of the feeling ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’. There are no subjects or objects in the Self, there is only an awareness of being. Because this awareness is conscious it is also known as consciousness. The direct experience of this consciousness is, a state of unbroken happiness or ananda or bliss. These three aspects, being, consciousness and bliss, are experienced as a unitary whole and not as separate attributes of the Self. They are inseparable in the same way that wetness, transparency and liquidity are inseparable properties of water.

In the state of Self-awareness there is no localised knower and there is nothing that is separate from the Self that can be known. True knowledge, or jnana, is not an object of experience, nor is it an understanding of a state which is different and apart from the subject knower; it is a direct and knowing awareness of the one reality in which subjects and objects have ceased to exist.

The Self is the underlying reality which supports the appearance of the other three temporary states - waking, dream and deep sleep. The Self is turiya avastha or the fourth state.

The Self is one’s real and natural state of being - sahaja sthiti, and swarupa - real form or real nature. The Self is a silent thought-free state of undisturbed peace and total stillness.

The reality which is the mere consciousness that remains when ignorance is destroyed along with knowledge of objects, alone is the Self [atma]. The reality which shines fully, without misery and without a body, not only when the world is known but also when the world is not known, is your real form [nija-swarupa].

Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things [objects], that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.

What kind of help does one require to know oneself?
There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object. Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom? The Self is ever-present. Each one wants to know the Self. What kind of help does one require to know oneself? People want to see the Self as something new. But it is eternal and remains the same all along. They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined. There is no reaching the Self. If Self were to be reached, it would mean that the Self is not here and now and that it is yet to be obtained. What is got afresh will also be lost. So it will be impermanent. What is not permanent is not worth striving for. So I say the Self is not reached. You are the Self, you are already that. The best definition is ‘I am that I am’.

When a man realises the Self, what will he see?
There is no seeing. Seeing is only being. The state of Self-realisation, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been. All that is needed is that you give up your realisation of the not-true as true. All of us are regarding as real that which is not real. We have only to give up this practice on our part. Then we shall realise the Self as the Self; in other words, ‘Be the Self. At one stage you will laugh at yourself for trying to discover the Self which is so self-evident. So, what can we say to this question? That stage transcends the seer and the seen. There is no seer there to see anything. The seer who is seeing all this now ceases to exist and the Self alone remains.

How to know this by direct experience?
If we talk of knowing the Self, there must be two selves, one a knowing self, another the self which is known, and the process of knowing. The state we call realisation is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything. If one has realised, one is that which alone is and which alone has always been. One cannot describe that state. One can only be that.