Excerpts from:
. John Grimes, Ramana Maharshi _ The Crown Jewel of Advaita, India 2010
. Ramana Maharshi, Be As You Are
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In the waking state, you are there, aware, the sun is the light of the world, the world with all this multiplicity is perceived as real, and the world exists external to oneself. The gifts of waking state is that it creates an awareness in each individuality that there is a reality (even though what this reality actually is, is incorrectly understood). In the dreaming state, you are there, aware, the mind is the light of all you perceive, you create the experienced universe, and the world you perceive is internal to yoursef. The gifts of the dreaming stat reveal that the world may quite possibly and logically neither be real nor external to oneself and that is just maybe the case that nothing really happens. The dream state also points to the possibility that the waking state may be but a dream.
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There is only one state, that of Consciousness or Awareness or Existence. The three states of waking, dream, and sleep cannot be real. They simple come and go. The Real will always exists. The “I” or existence that alone persists in all the three states is real. The other ones are not real and so it is not possible to say they have such and such a degree of reality. We may roughly put it like this. Existence or Consciousness is the only reality. Consciousness plus waking, we call waking. Consciousness plus dream, we call dream. Consciousness plus sleep, we call sleep. Consciousness is the screen on which the pictures come and go. The screen is real, the pictures are mere shadows on it. Because by long habit we have regarding these three states as real (…) The screen is always there nothing sticks to the screen, it remains a screen. Similarly, you remain your own Self in all the three states of existence.
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Reality must be always real. It is not with forms and names. That which underlies these is the reality. It underlies limitations, being itself limitless. It is not bound. It underlies unrealities, itself being real. Reality is that which is. It is as it is. It transcends speech. It is beyond the expressions ‘existence, non-existence, etc.
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Q: It is easy to accept tentatively that the world is not ultimately real, but it is hard to have the conviction that it is really unreal.
A: Even so is your dream world real while you are dreaming. So long as the dream lasts everything you see and feel in it is real.
Q: Is then the world no better than a dream?
A: What is wrong with the sense of reality you have while you are dreaming? You may be dreaming of something quite impossible, for instance, of having a happy chat with a dead person.
Just for a moment, you may doubt in the dream, saying to yourself, ‘Was he not dead?’, but somehow your mind reconciles itself to the dream-vision, and the person is as good as alive for the purposes of the dream. In other words, the dream as a dream does not permit you to doubt its reality. It is the same in the waking state, for you are unable to doubt the reality of the world which you see while you are awake. How can the mind which has itself created the world accept it as unreal? That is the significance of the comparison made between the world of the waking state and the dream world. Both are creations of the mind and, so long as the mind is engrossed in either, it finds itself unable to
deny their reality. It cannot deny the reality of the dream world while it is dreaming and it cannot deny the reality of the waking world while it is awake. If, on the contrary, you withdraw your mind completely from the world and turn it within and abide there, that is, if you keep awake always to the Self which is the substratum of all experiences, you will find the world of which you are now aware is just as unreal as the world in which you lived in your dream.
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You seem to be an exponent of ajata doctrine of advaita vedanta.
A: I do not teach only the ajata doctrine. I approve of all schools. The same truth has to be expressed in different ways to suit the capacity of the hearer. The ajata doctrine says, ‘Nothing exists except the one reality. There is no birth or death, no projection or drawing in, no seeker, no bondage, no liberation. The one unity alone exists.’ To such as find it difficult to grasp this truth and who ask, ‘How can we ignore this solid world we see all around us?’, the dream experience is pointed out and they are told, ‘All that you see depends on the seer. Apart from the seer, there is no seen.’ This is called the drishti-srishti vada or the argument that one first creates out of one’s mind and then sees what one’s mind itself has created. Some people cannot grasp even this and they continue to argue in the following terms:
‘The dream experience is so short, while the world always exists. The dream experience was limited to me. But theworld is felt and seen not only by me, but by so many others. We cannot call such a world non-existent.’ When people argue in this way they can be given a srishti-drishti theory, for example, ‘God first created such and such a thing, out of such and such an element, and then something else was created, and so on.’ That alone will satisfy this class. Their minds are otherwise not satisfied and they ask themselves, ‘How can all geography, all maps, all sciences, stars, planets and the rules governing or relating to them and all knowledge be totally untrue?’ To such it is best to say, ‘Yes, God created all this and so you see it.’
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Q: Sri Bhagavan often says that maya [illusion] and reality are the same. How can that be?
A: Sankara was criticised for his views on maya without being understood. He said that
(1) Brahman is real,
(2) the universe is unreal, and
(3) The universe is Brahman.
He did not stop at the second, because the third explains the other two. It signifies that the universe is real if perceived
as the Self, and unreal if perceived apart from the Self. Hence maya and reality are one and the same.
Q: So the world is not really illusory?
A: At the level of the spiritual seeker you have got to say that the world is an illusion. There is no other way. When a man forgets that he is Brahman, who is real, permanent and omnipresent, and deludes himself into thinking that he is a body in the universe which is filled with bodies that are transitory, and labours under that delusion, you have got to remind him that the world is unreal and a delusion. Why? Because his vision which has forgotten its own Self is dwelling in the external, material universe. It will not turn inwards into introspection unless you impress on him that
all this external, material universe is unreal. When once he realises his own Self he will know that there is nothing other than his own Self and he will come to look upon the whole universe as Brahman.
