When Self-realization happens, mind is no longer there. However, you do not get Self-realization by getting rid of the mind. It happens when you understand and know that the mind never existed. It is the recognition of what is real and true, and the abandonment of mistaken ideas about the reality and substantiality of this ephemeral shadow you call the mind.
This is why Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi and many other Hindu
teachers kept bringing up the analogy of the snake and the rope. If you mistake
a rope on the ground for a snake, the snake only exists as an idea in your
mind. That idea might cause you a lot of worry and anxiety, and you may waste a
lot of mental energy wondering how to avoid the snake or kill it, but this fact
remains: there is no snake outside your imagination. When you see the rope, the
substratum upon which your false idea of a snake is superimposed, the idea that
there is a snake, and that it is real, instantly vanishes. It is not a real
snake that has disappeared. The only thing that has disappeared is an erroneous
idea.
The substratum upon which the false idea of the mind has been
superimposed is the Self. When you see the mind, the Self, the underlying
substratum, is not seen. It is hidden by a false but persistent idea. And
conversely, when the Self is seen, there is no mind.
But how to give up this false idea that the mind is real?
Annamalai Swami: The same way that you give up any
wrong idea. You simply stop believing in it. If this does not happen spontaneously
when you hear the truth from a teacher, keep telling yourself, ‘I am not the
mind; I am not the mind. There is no mind; there is no mind. Consciousness
alone exists.’ If you have a firm conviction that this is the truth, one day
this firm conviction will mature to the point where it becomes your direct experience.
Consciousness alone exists. If you generate a firm
conviction that this is the truth, eventually this firm conviction will become your
own direct experience.
Consciousness alone exists. That is to say, whatever exists
is consciousness alone. Keep this in mind and don’t allow yourself to regard
anything else as being real. If you fail and give even a little reality to the
mind, it will become your own false reality.
Once this initial wrong identification - ‘I am the mind, the
mind is real’ - has happened, problems and suffering will follow.
Don’t be afraid of the mind. It’s a false tiger, not a real
one. Something that is not real cannot harm you. Fear and anxiety may come to
you if you believe that there is a real tiger in your vicinity. Someone may be
making tiger noises as a joke to make you afraid, but when he reveals himself,
all your fears go because you suddenly understand that there never was a tiger
outside your imagination.