Reality

Swami:           Well! You look so full of joy today! 

Bhakta:          You have yourself said that man is the embodiment of joy, isn’t it?

Swami:            Then you must always be in this mood; do you remain so?

Bhakta:          I am trying as far as possible.

Swami:           Why say ‘trying’? Does not sorrow flee the instant Reality is known?

Bhakta:          But what is the Reality, Swami?

Swami:           All that ‘is’ is unreal! The efforts you under­take, the words you utter, are all unreal; when you know this, the Reality will be evident. Remove all the unreal ideas, opinions, acts, and the Truth that is hidden can be seen. Piling up all this on top, if you ask, what is Reality. how can it be seen?

Bhakta:          How is it possible to take all that is done, spoken, seen, felt, listened to, as unreal?

Swami:           First, understand who is experiencing all these. You refer to the body as ‘I’, ‘I’, isn’t it? That is unreal. When the experiencing ‘I’ is itself unreal, how can the experiences be real? All have the same atma. The person who experienced is not ‘you’, the person who list­ened is not ‘you’. You only witnessed all this.

Bhakta:          You said, Swami, that in everything there is atma; is there atma in a dead man?

Swami:           Oh! A good question, indeed! Is it more to solve your doubt or the doubt of a dead person?

Bhakta:          Mine.

Swami:           Well, it is only when you have awakened from deep sleep or sushupthi that you are aware there is an ‘I’, isn’t it? In the same manner, there is the atma in the corpse also.

Bhakta:          Then how can it be called dead, how can death happen when there is atma?

Swami:           If you discriminate properly, there is no dying and no living. A moving body is called living and a still one dead. In dreams any number of living bodies and corpses are seen. On waking they do not exist. Similarly, this world, both moving and still, is non-existent. Death means the fading out of the ‘I’ consciousness. Re-birth happens when ‘I’ consciousness comes again. This is what is called birth and death, my boy! Ahamkara [ego] is born, ahamkara dies, that is all.

Bhakta:          So, I exist always, is it?

Swami:           Of course, you do! When the ‘I’ consciousness is there, you exist. When it is not there also you exist. You are only the base for the awareness; you are not the awareness.

Bhakta:          But they say, ‘attained liberation’, ‘attained mukti’, etc. What is that?

Swami:           Understanding the root of death and birth, one must destroy completely the awareness of the separate ‘I’; that condition is ‘mukti’.

Bhakta:          So, when I die, I and You are One, isn’t it?

Swami:           Who said ‘No’? That feeling of One, when you are firmly established in it, there is nothing separate at all.

Bhakta:          Until then, in order to identify the real ‘I’ in the unreal ‘I’, they say that the support of a Guru is wanted; how far is that true, Swami?

Swami:           It is only when you have so many ‘I’s that you need someone’s support, is it not? When all is One, why seek another? Still, until that aham or that ‘I’ fades out, this speaking ‘I’ and this listening ‘You’ have to be there. When that I is gone, whom to speak to? Who list­ens? All are One: The reflection of atma, conditioned by chith is Easwara: Easwara conditioned by the anthah­karana is the jiva, is it not?

Source: Sandeha Nivarini