Does an ornament exist apart from the gold of which it is
made? Where is the body apart from the Self? He who considers the body to be
himself is an ignorant man. He who regards himself as the Self is the
Enlightened One who has realised the Self. (Sri Ramana Maharshi)
When I meditate on the Lord of Pandhari the body becomes
transformed together with the mind. Where is there room for speech then? My
I-ness has become Hari. With the mind merging in Divine Consciousness all
creation looks divine. Tuka says : How shall I put it? All at once I become
lost in God Consciousness.
Total absorption of the ego in the Self is realization. Ego
is consciousness which has identified itself with the body, and, "
I-am-the-body" is the experience thereof. The ego sees the world of souls
and inanimate objects, gets involved in them, experiences varying degrees of
pleasure and pain, suffers from hopes and fears, and, in the extremities of
anguish and despair, appeals to God for succour with varying degrees of success
in proportion to its devotion to that Supreme Power. Dreamless deep sleep which
is free from thoughts.
Thinking we are this body, we imagine That Heaven exists
somewhere afar. Shiva's world is not a place to go to. Nowhere but in your
heart alone It is.
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Suppose you go to a firewood depot, buy a faggot of firewood
and engage a worker to carry it to your house. As you walk along with him, he
will be anxiously looking forward to his destination so that he can throw off
his burden and be happy and relieved. In the same way the Jnani is eager to
throw off his body. However, after explaining this he added: The above exposition is all right as far it
goes. But strictly speaking even this is not quite accurate. The true Jnani is
not even eager to shed his body. He is indiffeient alike to the existence or
non-existence of the body, being almost unaware of it. (A. Devaraja Mudaliar's
My Recollections, p. 148)