[Advaita-l] Atmajnana

[sreenivasa murthy]

Dear friends,
Here is an excerpt from the book "Immediate Knowledgeand Happiness" written by 

Sri John Levy Who was the disciple of Sri Atmananda and a studyin depth will be very beneficial to a mumukshu. It is a very rare and profoundbook in English  on Vedanta.

QUOTE:

                                     POINTER TO SEEKER

       So long as a man believes that his body is real, for so long is he lost inappearance. With this belief, the ultimate truth will always evade detection;being beyond name and form, it is not with his thoughts that he can descry it.The real in man is the I-Principle, not the small self that claims the body andits actions, the senses and their sensing, and the mind with its thoughts andfeelings, but the Changeless Self that outlives all these changes. Thisimmutable Centre, conceived of at first as the real I, is in fact the realityitself; it has nothing to distinguish it from a like principle in anyone else,nor indeed can it be distinguished from the reality when thought of in theabstract, for there cannot be two realities both of which are final.

 From the above, it isclear that THIS SELF CAN BE KNOWN BY ITSELF and for that, if a man wishes toknow what he is, he must cast aside all that which he is not. The fallaciousalliance of the real with the relative, or the Changeless Self and the changingbody, is the impediment to which reference has been made.

TO BECOME CONSCIOUS OF HISTRUE NATURE IS NOT TO BECOME SOMETHING ELSE. HE IS THAT CHANGELESS EVEN NOW andthat is why he must cast aside all that changes, not by any bodily or mentalmeans, but through the simple understanding that these things are not he. Ifthe body and mind together with the whole world were to be thrown off asspurious without his being first secured to a higher principle, the seekerwould find himself all of a sudden at sea in a terrible void. This is just whathappens to those without proper guidance. That alone which is capable ofawakening in him the awareness of his real Self must of necessity be the realSelf itself through the agency of a being who though he may appear to others inthe form of a man, to himself is no man, since he has gone beyond name and formand realized his Self in perfection.

UNQUOTE.



With respectful namaskaras,Sreenivasa Murthy