Part21 - Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad By Lakshman Sarma

567 In those who are ignorant,the real Self appears to have become circumscribed and made finite by the sheaths.The real Self, infinite like the sky and completely free from all limiting factors, is the state in which none of the sheaths remain.

It is the sheaths that create the false sense of finiteness for the soul.

The Buddhist teaching of nirvana is next compared with this state.

568 Guru [Ramana] has said that the state of nirvana that was taught by Buddha to be the state in which samsara and suffering are ended is the same as remaining in the supreme state, having discarded all the sheaths.

So the Buddhist goal is the same as the state of deliverance taught in the Vedantas.

It is next shown that by the experience of the true nature of the Self, doubts become impossible.

569 In that state doubts do not arise since the sage is ever firm in his awareness of the true Self. There he remains without affirmations and vacillations, immersed in the depths of peace, the mind having become extinct.

It is next shown that in that state death is transcended.

570 Becoming aware of the real Self, which has neither beginning nor end, the sage transcends death. Surely no one in the world transcends death without experiencing the truth of the Self as deathless.

571 That exalted one who has attained, by enquiring ‘Whence am I?’, birth in his own source, the supreme one – only he can be said to be truly born. He has been born once and for all time, and is eternally new. He is the Lord of the Munis [a title reserved for God].

572 He that is established in his own natural state, in perfect identity with Brahman, is free from disease and beyond time and space. This is the supreme state that has been taught to us by the great Guru.

The body itself is disease, says Bhagavan. So true health is to be aware that the body is not the Self. Bodily disease does not detract from the perfectly healthy state of the sage, as we all know.

The truth about birth and death is next discussed.

573 For the ignorant one in the world, birth is for dying and his death is for being reborn again. Consequently, the most holy one [Sri Ramana] has told us that this birth and this death are unreal.

The kosas, usually translated as ‘sheaths’, are the five forms through which the ego functions, and by doing so, cover the Self.

Each cancels the other and so samsara is without end.

574 Real death is death of the ego. Real birth is to dwell in one’s natural state. In that state, in which pairs of opposites have no existence, birth and death have never become one.

Another aspect of the supreme state is next discussed.

575 How can the sage, who is forever established in the state of non-duality, become aware of differences? The world that appears to the ignorant as riddled with differences is to the sage only the undifferentiated Self.

576 Some speak of the sage as having two attributes: ‘equal vision’ and ‘not seeing differences’. This amounts to saying that he is free from the state in which differences are seen. In the state in which one knows that the Self alone exists, nothing is seen.

577 In all persons the sage sees only that real Self who is eternally aware of the truth. He does not see anyone as separate from himself, nor does he look upon anyone as ignorant. In his sight all are sages.

This was exactly what Bhagavan was heard to say. This brings out the uniqueness of the sage. He does not look down upon anyone or anything as inferior to himself.

Now the question of the actions of sages is taken up.

578 The sage in his worldly activities may appear to be aware of worldly differences, but he is really no more aware of them than a sleepwalker who moves about, performing actions.

This point will become clear later on while dealing with the distinction between the yogic (kevala) samadhi and the natural (sahaja) samadhi of the sage.

The crucial test of the sage, by which he is distinguished from the ignorant, is next given.

579 The difference between a sage and an ignorant one can be plainly seen in respect to censure and praise. The sage does not know the difference between the two since, for him, this pair of opposites, like all others, is unreal.

580-1 There are those who have not attained the permanent abode of the natural state of the Self by following the quest for the truth. These people, who have not freed themselves from the feeling that identifies the body with the Self, are still subject to the delusion that jivas are different from one another. Though these people may have understood well the subtle meanings of Vedanta, even if they may have renounced the whole world as mere trash, they inevitably become a slave to the harlot named ‘praise’.

This refers to an incident in the life of Sri Sadasiva Brahmendra, who for long lived in the woods, practising sadhana. Once a co-pupil of his met him in a forest and began praising him for a long time. At last Sadasiva became so elated by it that he exhibited horripilation. Noticing this, the other questioned Sadasiva how such an exalted person could be so affected. Sadasiva replied by a verse in Sanskrit to the effect that even such a one, if he had not reached the experience of the real Self, cannot help feeling pleasure from praise. This verse has been translated by Bhagavan and placed in the Supplement (Anubandham) of Ulladu Narpadu. That the sage is not so affected is shown next.

582 The sage, who does not know anyone as other than himself, and hence never swerves from his own true state, is unaffected by censure, or praise, because for him censure or praise appear to be made by himself.

This is the uniqueness of egolessness. The sage is really bodiless. Those that see his body judge him as if he were like them.

583 Though he appears as embodied, he is really bodiless, being egoless. His subtle body does not survive and go forth somewhere when the gross body falls, but undergoes disintegration here.

Adherents of sects, whose doctrines are different, have raised controversy, stating that the soul remains an individual after enlightenment, being endowed with a sort of body.

On this point there are two views: one that the liberated soul has a body always, and another that he has no body, but can assume a body when he pleases. Bhagavan’s teaching is that all forms are unreal, and hence neither of these two is acceptable. This is dealt with below.

584 Some believers in the reality of the world say that the sage has a body. Others say that the sage, being bodiless, can assume a body if he so pleases.

585 By the dawn of right awareness of the real Self, the ego, the root cause of the appearance of forms, has been lost. Therefore for the sage, all forms are unreal, and hence this talk of forms is foolishness.

Bhagavan has made it clear, by adopting the simile of the river mingling with the ocean, that the soul as such does not survive the dawn of right awareness. The soul has been declared to be a false appearance due to confusion of the body with the Self, which cannot survive the extinction of ignorance, its parent.

586 Since it is not proper to say that this [world] existed before [enlightenment], but was lost afterwards, and since [even in ignorance] no one has a form from the point of view of the reality, how can the sage have a form?

Forms belong to duality, but duality, it has been declared, is never real. Non-duality is true always, being unaffected by time.

587 In the case of the sage who is established in his own natural state, free of all the three bodies, how can a desire arise to have a body? This talk of forms is in vain, being merely a concession to the unenlightened.

Even in the Upanishads there are passages suggesting that in salvation there are forms, but they are interpreted as a means of enabling unripe souls to take to sadhana for salvation. The real teaching of the Upanishads appears in texts such as the following.

588 As a river reaching the ocean loses its river-form and becomes indistinguishable from it, so too the sage, losing his form as a soul, becomes non-different from that Supreme Being, to whom all else is inferior.

589 Thus revelation says that the sage in that supreme state becomes one with the Supreme Being. Even when alive, the liberated one is bodiless because he does not think of himself as having a body.

Bhagavan defines liberation as follows.

590 Bhagavan our Guru says that liberation is just the extinction of the ego, who becomes a disputant concerning the form of the sage. So, this dispute about forms is meaningless.

It is to be noted that those who raise this controversy, do so without losing their ego-sense. Can they raise this question after getting rid of their ego?

591 Therefore, on the fall of the body his subtle form does not go forth, as in the case of the ignorant; it goes back and merges into its cause, and nothing survives for going forth.

The cause of the subtle body is the unquintuplicated five bhutas (materials of creation).

There is an incidental misconception which is next dispelled.

592 The popular notion that there are many sages is also not true. All differences belong to the world. In the worldless state they do not exist.

The controversy about the plurality of selves, which has been discussed and settled before, is relevant here also.

593 He who says, ‘I have today seen this sage; I shall see others also,’ does not know the true nature of sages, which is reality-consciousness-bliss. This is what Bhagavan has told us on this point.

594 For him who knows not the sage who is within himself there appear many sages. For him who knows that one, which is his own Self, this plurality [of sages] is non-existent.

The absurdity of these questions is thus pointed out by Bhagavan. Questions about the egoless state cannot be decided by the ego-ridden ones.

The following is the corollary from the above discussion.

Source: http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/rpv_intro.shtml