Reality of the world

[Rajesh Venkataraman]

The following is excerpt from talks with Ramana
Maharshi. It is probably useful for the current
dicussion about establishing the reality of the world.
We can also keep in mind that Ramana Maharshi, when
asked about the external world used to say - "know
your self and everything else will fall into place".
And Sankara also says that 'nishprayojanAyam srishtau
mumukshUNAm AryANAm na Adarah (Mandukya bhashyam) -
Mumukshus and Aryans are not interested in the useless
knowledge of srishti'. Whether the objects external to
'our' Self have a consciousness or not amounts to
examining the srishti I guess...

D stands for Disciple and M for Maharshi

D - You often say, 'the whole world exists not without
you', 'everything depends upon you', 'what is there
without you?', etc. This is really baffling. The whole
world was there before my birth. It will be there
after my death even as it has survived the deaths of
so many who once lived as I am living now.

M - Did I ever say that the world is there because of
you? But I have put to you the question, 'what is
there without your self?' You must know that by the
self the body, subtle or gross, was not meant.

Besides, the idea is to put to you that if you once
know the self in which all the ideas move, not
excluding the idea of yourself, of others like
yourself and of the world, you can realise the truth
that there is a Reality, a supreme truth which is the
self of all the world you now see, the Self of all the
selves, the one Real, which is the parama Atman, the
supreme Eternal, as distinguished from the jIva, the
ego-self which is impermanent. You must not mistake
the ego-self of the bodily idea for the Atman.

D - Then you mean the Atman is God?

M- You see the difficulty. The vichAra 'to know the
self' is different in method from the meditation
"shivoham" or "soham", "Lord Shiva I am" or "He I am".
I rather lay stress upon self-knowledge, for, you are
first concerned with yourself before you proceed to
know the world and its Lord. The "soham" meditation or
'I am Brahman' meditation is more or less a mental
thought. But the quest for the self I speak of is a
direct method, indeed superior to the other
meditation; for, the moment you get into a movement of
quest for the self and go deeper and deeper, the real
Self is waiting there to take you in and then whatever
is done is done by something else and you have no hand
in it. In this process, all doubts and discussions are
automatically given up just as one who sleeps forgets,
for the time being, all his cares.

Hari Om..

Rajesh


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