Over the last several months I’ve released a series of commentaries via blog on each of Maharshi’s 40 verses. Here is a full and compiled PDF version of the commentary.
Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Forty
Continued from Verse Thirty-Nine
40. If it is said, that Liberation is of three kinds, with form or without form or with and without form, then let me tell you that the extinction of three forms of Liberation is the only true Liberation.
Commentary: Some say liberation occurs to the mind. Some say it occurs to one beyond the mind. Some say it is something that occurs to the body and the mind while alive, but then dissolves into something infinite at the death of the body and the mind.
These are all positions taken from a conceptual, and therefore egoic, stance. The kind of liberation that is subject to that kind of debate is an egoic liberation still. The thought of liberation is the last egoic thought. It, and therefore all the forms of it that could possibly exist, have to go — only in the beyond-concepts is there true Liberation. Even formless liberation is a concept, because it is defined as a certain kind of liberation as opposed to another kind. Anything which has an opposite is a concept.
The true Liberation is no Liberation at all, because it has no opposite. It cannot be described as this or that, because it is not actually a phenomenon, not a thing, not a process of any kind. It merely an indirect description of the Truth that always has been the case, which is that the ignorant idea that there is someone who needs to be liberated, someone who suffers, someone who is limited is and always has been only a playful fiction, and not even that.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Thirty-Nine
Continued from Verse Thirty-Eight
39. Only so long as one considers oneself bound, do thoughts of bondage and Liberation continue. When one enquires who is bound the Self is realized, eternally attained, and eternally free. When thought of bondage comes to an end, can thought of Liberation survive?
Commentary: The idea of bondage or ignorance is itself based in the egoic idea that there you are a person, a body and a mind. It is the one who believes that they are the body and mind that seeks freedom. Yet when you engage in self-inquiry, this one who believes that they are the body-mind is itself seen not to exist. What you actually are is not the body and mind, and not the one who believed they were the body and the mind, therefore you are not the one who wanted liberation. You did not really want liberation because liberation was already yours. You did not need liberation because you were never imprisoned to begin with. Ignorance is itself, and always has been, a misconception.
The idea of bondage is itself a product of dividing the world into “I” and “not-I” and the consequent identification with the I. The idea of liberation is dependent on the idea of bondage. Indeed, language itself, all concepts, and all meanings are only relevant in the context of the egoic identification. Beyond that, they so lose meaning that they cannot even be said to be meaningless; even that would be too much. Realization is the recognition that the structure of division and language is itself mute, is itself merely like strokes or gashes of color on a painting, rather than meaningful in itself. And so bondage and realization are also only abstractions, shapes in clouds as seen by a child — not actually existent.
The end result of realization will be to recognize that there was never any ignorance, and therefore never any solution to it. Realization itself is a mere concept that is destroyed along with the concept of bondage. They annihilate each other like matter and anti-matter. Realization is a ladder the seeker climbs and then tosses away once at the top.
Even as concepts, truly, ignorance and realization didn’t exist; they were misconceptions, and even the idea that they were misconceptions is a misconception, and that is a misconception too, all the way down.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Thirty-Eight
Continued from Verse Thirty-Seven
38. As long as a man is the doer, he also reaps the fruit of his deeds, but, as soon as he realizes the Self through enquiry as to who is the doer, his sense of being the doer falls away and the triple karma is ended. This is the state of eternal Liberation.
Commentary: Identification with the body and the mind is the egoic mode of consciousness. In this mode, you feel like you are doing. You identify with the one who makes decisions and exerts efforts. In this mode, you also enjoy and suffer the consequences of those actions, since both doership and experiencership depend on identification with the body and the mind.
As soon as you look into who seems to be doing things, or, for that matter, who seems to be experiencing them, this identification can no longer stand. It becomes clear that one is not the body and the mind. So doership and experiencership drop away. Or, to be more precise, they are no longer identified with. They become, in Vedantic parlance, like a burnt rope — the form may seem to remain, but the structure has lost its bite.
Karma in this context simply means the actions that you take and their results.
Traditionally in Vedanta, there are said to be three types of karma: sanchita karma, which is supposedly all the karma you have accumulated over your many previous lives; prarabhda karma, which is the karma that is used to make your current body and is supposed to unfold over this particular lifetime; and agamya karma, which is the karma which you generate anew from your actions in this lifetime.
But all three karmas can only affect you so long as you believe that you are the body and the mind. If that is dropped, then only the Self remains, and the Self is beyond action and its results. Thus all karmas are burned to the enlightened one. Some in the past have claimed that the prarabhda karma remains and that only upon physical death is one “fully” liberated, but this is untrue — Realization is the recognition that one was never born. And what was never born can never die a physical death.
The Self alone always is and always has been, which means that the very idea of karma, in the final analysis, cannot be said to be true.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Thirty-Seven
Continued from Verse Thirty-Six
37. The contention, 'Dualism during practice, non-dualism on Attainment', is also false. While one is anxiously searching, as well as when one has found one's Self, who else is one but the tenth man?
Commentary: The story of the tenth man is one where someone in a group knows there are ten people but keeps counting only nine. He wonders where the last one is. It turns out he’s been forgetting to count himself the whole time.
This kind of simple recognition of what is stunningly obvious is akin to the insight of Self-realization; it is the penetration of the usual forgetfulness of what is right in front of our eyes.
Yet this forgetfulness is not real. It’s just a thought. It’s not the case that the tenth man was somehow not the tenth man until he remembered it. He was always the tenth man.
Similarly, it’s not the case that the seeker is truly ignorant until realization. He is the Self at all times, in fact. Duality is false not just before realization but at all times.
But duality seems true to seekers. So it seems, but the end of realization will be to see that that seeming is itself untrue, and always was. Note: what this really means is that not only was the tenth man the tenth man the whole time — but that, in fact, never was it not the case that he did not know it!
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Thirty-Six
Continued from Verse Thirty-Five
36. Only if the thought 'I am the body' occurs will the meditation 'I am not this, I am That', help one to abide as That. Why should we for ever be thinking, 'I am That'? Is it necessary for man to go on thinking 'I am a man'? Are we not always That?
Commentary: Some texts on non-duality emphasize repeating to yourself that you are not the mind and the body and that you are the Self. This is only of temporary use.
The egoic first thought — “I am” — causes separation. It implies the “not-I” and is ultimately connected with the idea that “I am the body,” and then connects to the mind, other relationships, your personal history, etc. It is only if you first buy this “I am” that implies that you are a separate, individual self that you need to continuously remind yourself what you are and are not.
But that’s tiresome. We need a way of cutting to the root of things. If we look into the egoic first thought, we see that it is not what it seems to be. When this is seen, there is then no need to keep asserting over and over what we are and are not. We’ll simply stop crediting — identifying with — the idea that we are anything other than the Self. Indeed, in some profound sense, we’ll stop crediting ideas at all.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Thirty-Five
Continued from Verse Thirty-Four
35. To seek and abide in the Reality that is always attained is the only Attainment. All other attainments (siddhis) are such as are acquired in dreams. Can they appear real to someone who has woken up from sleep? Can they that are established in the Reality and are free from maya be deluded by them?
Commentary: Seekers can also get obsessed with miraculous powers of various kinds — to see past lives, to enter other universes, powers of creation and destruction, and so on. Mythological texts talk about these. These are all irrelevant, mere temporary baubles compared to the infinite beauty that is the Self. In a dream, who cares how far you can fly or how fast you can run? In the end, it’s still a dream. That’s the nature of the world — it is dream-like, and so all the powers that one attains are still limited by that fact.
Realization of the Self is akin to waking up from that dream. Someone who has woken up from a dream is not going to be wowed by miraculous powers that he had in a dream. They’re not going to think they’re somehow any realer than the dream itself.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Thirty-Four
Continued from Verse Thirty-Three
34. It is due to illusion born of ignorance that men fail to recognize That which is always and for everybody the inherent Reality dwelling in its natural Heart-centre and to abide in it, and that instead they argue that it exists or does not exist, that it has form or has not form, or is non-dual or dual.
Commentary: The ignorance, the forgetfulness, of the Self is the ego, which is the sense that ”I am a separate someone.” This sense needs forgetfulness, because without that, the notion of being a separate entity couldn’t exist. If you kept noticing the movie screen, it would be hard to suspend disbelief and become completely absorbed in the film. You need to forget the background to take what’s playing in the foreground seriously.
Out of the egoic notion come all the incorrect desires and fears that lead the mind to chase happiness in contingent, temporary things instead of simply going quiet, and, in so doing, allowing the light of the true and permanent bliss that is the Self to shine, as it does, in the Heart. That Heart is nothing different from the Self — it’s just another name for where self-inquiry leads. If you imagine yourself in a kind of large sphere, you seem to be “in here” while experience is “out there.” The Heart is the inmost point in the sphere, separated out from all the objects that it experiences. As soon as one gets to the point, of course, it turns out not to be a point at all, at least not a point in the way that it seemed at first. It has, as the scriptures say, suddenly the circumference of the entire universe despite being as tiny as an atom.
All the arguments about whether the Self exists or not, whether it has form or not, etc. are all simply mental debates — that is, they are based on the foundational notion that the ego is real. Conceptual arguments are always based in a sense of separation, because words and thoughts are about bounded entities. And you cannot notice the bounds of other objects unless you are the first bounded object. Only after there is an “in here” (me) and an “out there” (not-me) can the “out there” be split into pieces and named and then argued about.
What is Real is beyond concepts, beyond separation, beyond bounds. So getting embroiled in these kinds of arguments can be a kind of snakepit for the seeker, who gets confused mucking around with them instead of simply looking within and allowing the indisputable, the beyond-concepts, to shine in its wordless way.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Thirty-Three
Continued from Verse Thirty-Two
33. It is ridiculous to say either 'I have not realized the Self' or 'I have realized the Self'; are there two selves, for one to be the object of the other's realization? It is a truth within the experience of everyone that there is only one Self.
Commentary: Realization is an event and thus a concept. Events and concepts happen in the land of things, that is, the land of the mind or the ego. This ego, this foundational feeling that “I am,” creates the sense of separation that is the identification with the mind and the body. This is called the veil of ignorance.
It is the purpose of self-inquiry to pierce that veil. But in piercing that veil, it is found that you are not the ego, are not the mind — and never were. Therefore the idea of realization is also inapplicable — and always was. Who identified with the mind and the body? Who was ignorant of their true nature? There was no such entity — that, seemingly paradoxically, is realization.
The “I” that could realize anything is the separate I — precisely the I that is seen to be not what it thought itself to be. It cannot be that I that realizes anything, because realization is seeing how that I is an object. That I cannot realize or not realize anything, any more than a stone can.
And yet the infinite, inexpressible Self which we actually are also cannot realize anything, since it cannot be ignorant in the first place. Pure light cannot admit darkness. The Self does not cognize objects. The Self does not do anything. All doing and all things are only in the egoic perspective.
Realization is the leaving behind of the notion that ”I” am an entity that could realize anything. And yet, despite all that, the seeker must reach for this realization as if they could realize it. The impossibility of realization, the eternality of realization, is itself the realization that will then be clear.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Thirty-Two
Continued from Verse Thirty-One
32. Although the scriptures proclaim 'Thou art That', it is only a sign of weakness of mind to meditate 'I am That, not this', because you are eternally That. What has to be done is to investigate what one really is and remain That.
Commentary: We have to go beyond concepts. Mentally repeating the idea that you are Self over and over, as the scriptures tell us is Truth, keeps you on a certain static thought, and doesn’t permit you to go beyond it. Truth may be put in various words, but it cannot be attained by fixating on any set of words, or on any particular idea. To find Truth, one must exit the network of ideas.
The only way to go beyond that network is to see the egoic illusion at work. This requires looking deeply into the I. That will discern away the false things that you take yourself to be (that have been ‘superimposed’ on the ‘pure’ notion of the I). When that discernment occurs, even for a moment, peace happens, and attachments to normal things of life drops. That discernment is revisited over and over until it becomes absolutely clear and there is an automatic remaining in that without a return to the egoic mode of life. Or, to put it more accurately, it is understood that there never was nor could there ever be such a mode of life.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.