1) When, forgetting the Self, one thinks that the body is
oneself and goes through innumerable births and in the end remembers and
becomes the Self, know this is only like awakening from a dream wherein one has
wandered all over the world.
In a dream, one may go on a world-tour and in the dream,
itself return home and lie down in one’s own bed; but when one awakes one knows
that it was all a dream. In the same way all of one’s samsaric reincarnations
are only a long-drawn out dream, at the end of which only the Self remains,
unaffected by all this. There is a difference here, because it was not the Self
that dreamed, but only the ego-mind.
2 ) One ever is the Self. To ask oneself ‘Who and
whereabouts am I?’ is like the drunken man enquiring, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where am
I?’
Here the difference is that the drunken man puts the
question to others, but the sadhaka puts the question to his own ignorant,
false self. The real Self remains unaffected all the time.
3) The body is within the Self. And yet one thinks one is
inside the inert body, like some spectator who supposes that the screen on
which the film is thrown is within the picture.
4) Does the ornament of gold exist apart from the gold? Can
the body exist apart from the Self? The ignorant one thinks ‘I am the body’.
The enlightened one knows ‘I am the Self’.
Here the truth is that the one Self is the substratum of all
appearances. This has been explained before. In the true state there is no
superimposition, only the substratum remains, but it is no longer a substratum.
5) The Self alone, the sole reality, exists forever. If of
yore the first of teachers revealed it through unbroken silence, say, who can
reveal it in spoken words?
So this is the rationale of the silent teaching by God as
Dakshinamurti, the first Guru. Rightly to teach the Self is to be perfectly
quiet. That is teaching by being only the Self, without ego and without mind.
He who likewise remains as the Self, mind-free and egoless, understands this
silent teaching.
Thus the truth of non-becoming is confirmed.
The knowledge thus far imparted is only preparatory to the
teaching of the means of obtaining the right awareness. It is not itself that
awareness.
Source - Sri Ramana
Paravidyopanishad