Vedic Literature | Ekamsat | Vasista-Gita | The Self - Awareness
1. If you separate yourself from the body and abide at ease in Consciousness you will become one with the sole Reality, everything appearing insignificant like grass.
The Self is empty like space; but IT is not nothingness, since IT is consciousness. IT is; yet IT is not as IT cannot be experienced by the mind and the senses. IT being the self of all, IT is not experienced by anyone as an object. Though one, IT is reflected in the infinite atoms of existence and hence appears to be many. This appearance is unreal even as a bracelet is an appearance of gold, which alone is real. But the Self is not unreal. IT is not a void or nothingness, for IT is the self of all. Further, Its existence can be experienced indirectly, as the existence of camphor can be experienced by its fragrance. IT alone is the self of all as consciousness, and IT alone is the substance that makes the world-appearance possible.
2. After knowing that by which you know this world, turn the mind inward and then you will clearly realize the effulgence of the Self.
The Self is subtler even than space. Neither the mind nor the senses can comprehend IT. IT is Pure Consciousness. The entire universe exists in the Consciousness that is omnipresent. That the Consciousness exists is the experience of all, and it alone is the self of all. Since IT is, all else is.
3. Oh Raghava! That by which you recognize sound, taste, form and smell, know that as your self, the Supreme Brahman, the Lord of lords.
Even as the taste of the juice of sugarcane cultivated in a hundred fields is uniform and the same, so the Consciousness indwelling all beings is the same; that Consciousness is the Self. The Self is that Conscious Energy (cit-sakti) which is larger than the universe and yet subtler than the minutest sub-atomic particle and, therefore, invisible. IT is the Consciousness that exists everywhere like butter in milk, and whose very nature is experiencing. That Consciousness is the Reality that bestows the individual characteristic on each and every substance of the universe. It is continuous and homogenous in waking, dreaming, deep-sleep and the transcendental states of consciousness. It is devoid of desire and ego-sense, and is indivisible. IT is the Supreme Brahman, the Lord of lords, All That Exists.
4. Oh Raghava! That in which the beings vibrate, that which creates them, know that Self to be your real self.
When the Self – the Infinite Consciousness vibrates, the worlds appear to emerge. When IT does not vibrate, they appear to submerge. Vibrating or not vibrating, IT is the same everywhere and ever. Not realizing it, one is subject to delusion of the world-existence that attains expansion by its repeated affirmation.
5. After rejecting, through reasoning, all that can be known as non-truth, which remains as Pure Consciousness, regard that as your real self.
In a golden bracelet there are gold and bracelet, the gold being the reality and the bracelet being the appearance. Similarly, in the Self there are both Consciousness and the notion of material (inert) substantiality. Since Consciousness is omnipresent, it is ever present in the mind in which the notion of substantiality in the nature of universe arises.
The Self, which is Pure Consciousness, exists as the supreme self of all, everywhere, in all bodies at all times.
6. Knowledge is not separate from you and that which is known is not separate from knowledge. Hence there is nothing other than the Self, separate from IT.
The Self is the intelligence dwelling in the body. IT is the universe, though the universe is not IT. IT is Pure Intelligence. The Cosmic Intelligence in which the universe, as it were, ceases to be, is the Self. In IT the subject-object relationship appears to have ceased, as such. IT is the void in which the universe appears to exist. Only if one is firmly established in the unreality of the universe like the blueness of the sky, can the Self be realized.
7. Always think ’All that Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Indra and others always do is done by me, the embodiment of Consciousness.’
The Self is the reality in all, and infinite. The reality in fire is the Self or Consciousness. IT is the eternal light that shines in the sun, the moon and the fire, but independent of them all. IT illumines all from within. IT alone is the intelligence that indwells even trees, plants and creepers and preserves them. From the ordinary point of view, the Self is considered the creator, the protector and the overlord of all. But from the absolute point of view, in reality, being the Self of all, IT has no such limited role.
8. Reflect as ‘I am the whole universe. I am the undecaying Supreme Self. There is neither past nor future.’
In the Infinite Self, there is no creator, no creation, no worlds, no heaven, no humans, no demons, no bodies, no elements, no time, no existence, no destruction, no falsehood, no truth, no ‘you’, no ‘I’, no notion of diversity, no contemplation and no enjoyment. Whatever is is that supreme peace. There is no beginning, no middle and no end. All is all at all times, beyond the comprehension of thought and word.
9. Reflect as ‘Everything is the Brahman, Pure Consciousness, the Self of all, indivisible and immutable.’
The Infinite Self is ever infinite. IT is like the ocean, but without its movement. IT is self-luminous like the sun, but without its activity. In ignorance, the Infinite Self is viewed as the universe. But in truth, the universe is the Brahman existing in the Brahman as the Brahman, as the space exists in space and is one with the space.
10. Meditate calmly on ‘There is neither I nor any other thing. Only the Brahman exists always full of bliss, everywhere.’
The Brahman or the Self alone is the reality in all beings as clay is the real substance in thousands of pots. As wind and its movement are not different, Consciousness and its internal movement (energy) that causes all manifestations of the perceived objects are not different.
The Infinite, which is without beginning and end, exists as pure experiencing Consciousness. That alone is this expanded universe, which is its body, as it were. The essence of existence is pure experiencing, which is, therefore, the essence of Consciousness. Just as liquidity exists inseparable from water or any other liquid, Consciousness and unconsciousness exist together. Since there is neither a contradiction nor a division in Consciousness, it is self-evident. It is, therefore, inappropriate to associate the created universe with the Brahman, and to associate the inert with the Infinite Consciousness. The creation, which is of infinite form, is the self-reflection of the Brahman. It is the Brahman, which knows Itself as the universe and appears to be such.
11. The sense of perceiver and perceived is common to all embodied beings. But the yogi worships the Self – the only One.
Perception is of two kinds – determinate and indeterminate. Determinate perception is the perception of an object as belonging to a class and as determined by a universal. This perception involves memory of the object seen in the past and the distinction between the individual object and the universal.
Indeterminate perception is the knowledge of a mere object without the universal. In it, the individual object and the universal are present and known without being distinguished. All living experience, actual experience or experience in act requires the acceptance of indeterminate cognition (perception) which is “cognition by being”, but not “cognition by facing or opposing”.
When an external object is imagined, a seer has been created. If there is no subject, there is no object either. It is the subject that becomes the object. There is no object (scene) without a subject (seer). Therefore, the seer alone is real, the object being hallucination. Gold alone is real; the ‘bracelet’ is only a name and a form. The subject exists because of the object, and the object is but a reflection of the subject. Duality cannot be if there is not one, and where is need for the notion of ‘unity’ if one alone exists? The enlightened one sees only one – the Self.