Every living being in this world wants liberation from bondage. There is nobody without this desire. Everyone is making efforts to attain liberation and is praying to God for the same. Everybody wants liberation from diseases, pains, loans, problems, sorrows, mental instability, fears, enemies etc. If we are liberated from our bondage from this earthy existence, liberated from this body, from our mind, from our intelligence, liberated from everything which we call as ‘mine’ (my wife, my children, my relatives, my profession, my money, my status, my education, all my attachments in this world), it should logically mean that we are free from all kinds of bondage! Can we not then get rid of this body by jumping into fire or water, by eating poison, by hanging overselves etc and attain liberation? It has been said by yogis and gurus that this is not a solution to get liberation. If a man commits suicide, he would be born again with greater attachments or would become a ghost. It has been mentioned in the scriptures that the method followed by gnanis to end their bodies in this world is different form suicide. The problem of bondage should be solved permanently. By committing suicide, it is solved only temporarily and is postponed to another birth.
Spiritual practices in all religions are aimed at setting the man free from all bondages and attain liberation. All the religious rituals, worship, pilgrimage, yagnas, donations, the limbs of yoga, pranayamas etc are directed towards the same. But Bhagavan Ramana has said something different to this. He said that bondage means the feeling of ‘I am the body’. To realise that ‘I am not the body’ is liberation. If I am not the body, then who am I? I am not the Mind, I am not the Intelligence, I am not the Vitality, and I am not the Living. If I am not all these, then who am I? I am Satchitananda (existence, consciousness, bliss), I am ever liberated. I am not in bondage; I am Self Realized, God Realized. There is no such thing as bondage for me. If there is bondage, only then I should aim for liberation. Why should I make an effort for liberation when there is no bondage? There is no person on this earth who does not have the experience of the Self. Hence nobody ever needs to make an effort for Self Realization. Nobody can say that he has already experienced the Self, or that he is different from the Atman, or that he is the embodiment of this Body. It is very clear that everybody has experienced the Self. This has been said by Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. When there is no bondage at all, the pain, the diseases, the problems, the sorrows, the enemies and other fears the man suffers because of this bondage get totally destroyed. This great message has been given to this world by Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. This single message destroys all sorrows, clears all doubts and fears a man encounters in his life. By giving this message, Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi has granted a boon of Liberation to all human beings. Where else can we find a greater message which eliminates all sorrows and gives everlasting peace to us?
Although one gets immense pleasure on hearing this message of Sri Ramana Maharshi, and even though it has been said that this is the straightest path in self realisation and also the easiest one, somehow one finds it too far to reach. But this is natural. While explaining this topic, one devotee of Sri Ramana Maharshi gave this example. A man was standing on top of a hill. There was not enough place to stand still on both legs on the top of this hill. On seeing downhill, he saw a deep valley. Even a small slip of his leg, or a slight bend forward or a small stone falling from the top, the man would be thrown into the deep valley and would be killed. His friend then advised him, “you just need to bend a little further or backwards and you will fall into the valley. You need not make much effort, bend a little and you would be relieved of all your problems. It is an easy, straight and a simple way”. The man then said “Oh No, there is a deep valley down, what will happen to me if I bend”. In the same way, the message given by Sri Ramana Maharshi although does look simple and easy to follow, is very difficult to practice and implement. It is an easy path to follow for realized and mature souls, but is very difficult for the immature, unrealised and persons with material attachments. Hence for a person to understand the teachings of Sri Ramana Bhagavan, he should be mature and realised. He should follow the methods which would free his mind to enable him to understand the teachings of Bhagavan easily.
By giving the above example, the devotee tried to prove that Sri Ramana’s path is a difficult one to follow and is not meant for all. But Bhagavan Sri Ramana never said anything like this. Sri Ramana’s path is meant for all, men, women, educated, uneducated, realised, unrealised and anybody can follow this path unhesitatingly. The man who sets out in Ramana’s way would attain his eligibility and authority just by following it. This path is meant for people who are trying to get rid of their sufferings in this material world, for those who are striving or desirous of final emancipation or salvation, and also for those who have enjoyed all the fruits of this material world and are eager to take the next step. Practice is important here and there is no scope for conclusive arguments.
What did Sri Ramana Maharshi actually say? Did he not say ‘there is no bondage, we are all liberated’? These are the words of Sri Ramana Bhagavan, the God. Not only this, even the Upanishads have told the same. The concepts of ‘Aham brahmasmi’, ‘tatvamasi’, ‘ayamaatmabhrahma’ etc give the same meaning. Even as the gurus, the teachers and the scriptures preach the contrary, man always falls prey to the misconception of ‘I am the body’, ‘I am the living’, and ‘I am in bondage”. This is quite surprising and appalling. ‘How unfortunate’ is what Sri Sankara had said, regretting man’s above dilemma. Bhagavan Sri Ramana had said that if man makes constant enquiry about the true nature of his Self, he would experience the self and realise the truth by this self experience.
Every day when we say, ‘my wife, my son, my house, my village, my country’, we know that all these are not ME but my things. Similarly, when we say, ‘my shirt, my book, my spectacles, my watch, my slippers’, we mean to say that these are MY things but not ME. In the same manner when we say, ‘my body, my life, my heart, my mind’, we clearly mean to say that ‘I am not the body, I am not the life, I am not the heart and I am not the mind’. Then where is the scope of the feeling of ‘I am the body, I am the life, I am the heart and I am the mind’? As long as this feeling is not there, it can be sai that that man is free from the misconception of ‘Dehatma’ (I am the body), and is free from ignorance. Can it therefore be said that there nothing else to be enquired and found out? The same truth can be proved in another way also. My wife is an image to me and I am the seer. The image and the seer are different from each other. So I can only say that she is my wife, but on second thoughts the relation exists only in images. The rest is all our imagination and artificial. The entire world is an image to me and I am only a seer. I being the seer am different from the world which is an image. The relation between me and the world is imaginary and is based on these images. Similarly this body is a part of this world which is an image to me and I am seeing it. I am a seer to this body. How can I being a seer become the sight? The relation between me and my body is imaginary. It is based on the image I have created about my body. The rest of it is artificial. The I and my body are two different entities. I am aware of all the activities of my body. I am also aware of my consciousness. I am a seer for it. This subtle body is only the means for the activities of the Self which is ever aware. I am also aware of the thoughts that come to my mind. I am seer for these thoughts. These thoughts are images to me. My mind which is formed out of an image is different from me. The relationship between me and my mind is imaginary. My intellect is also different from me. This relationship is also based on the images that are created about it. In this way, I am different from my body, my consciousness, my mind, my intellect etc. I am having an independent identity which is not dependent on all the above. This identity relates to seeing things as they are and to grasp them as they are. Not only me, nobody in this world is having any bondage. It means that there is no I am the body feeling at all. Nothing else but enquiry would reveal this truth. This truth can be experienced through enquiry. If one can realise this truth that there is no bondage and we are ever liberated, one can be happy always. One would then realise by experience that there is no need to crave for getting liberated from bondage. A drunken man in his inebriated state would sometimes ask ‘where am I’. Similarly when one realises that he is ever liberated, the question of ‘who am I’ would never arise to him. If we say the tree is holding me after holding it firmly, it would be like saying that I am in bondage after entangling ourselves in this material world. Just as we cannot hunt a non-existent lion in the darkness, we cannot destroy the non-existent ‘I am the body’ misconception. The fear, the anxiety, the urgency and the discord is non-existent. It has been said that
Srunvantu viswe amrutasya putra:
We have been referred to as Amrutaputras. The doctrines of ‘tatvamasi’, ‘aham brahmasmi’, have told us the known fact of ‘ayamatmabrahma’. It has also been said ‘Sarvam khalidwam brahma’, which asks us to see the world as it is. There is no need to invent something new and if this fact is not known to us immediately, it has to be reminded repeatedly. ‘Avritti Rasakrudupadesaat’ (brahma sutras) is the doctrine which tells us the above. The ever existing self consciousness and self experience should be reminisced. The experience should be reminisced as an experience. It should be remembered always that we do not have the ‘I am the body’ feeling. We should also think whether there is anything else to be done? What is to be done is enquiry. When we do enquiry, the rope which was thought to be a snake would be seen by us only as a rope. The non-existent snake would not be visible to us. The necklace which was thought have been lost would be visible in the neck. The lion cub which was thought be a goat would be visible as a lion cub. The mirage which was visible as water would be known as a mirage. Even after we know that it is a mirage, water would be visible. But then we would now know that there is actually no water there. After we experience that the Self is not the gross body, we would still be having an affair with the gross body. But the idea of ‘I am the body’ would be totally non-existent.
There is a procedure called the reversal of the sight. Even though it is known to me that the ‘I’ is not the gross body, my sight is set on it. Because of this I am under a false impression that the ‘I’ is the gross body. This is a fact. But this illusion is accidental. To remove this illusion, the sight has to be turned from the gross body towards the real ‘I’. A woodcutter went to the forest, climbed a tree and started to cut a branch of it. He then saw a strange animal in the forest. He thought to himself, what is this? This animal is looking very peculiar. ‘What is this? This animal is looking very peculiar’. The animal spoke in the woodcutter’s language. He was surprised. Can this animal speak? He thought to himself. ‘Are you thinking, can this animal speak?’ said that animal. This process continued. Whatever the woodcutter used to think, that animal used to speak loudly. ‘Oh, I have to kill this animal’, ‘how to escape from this animal’, ‘what shall I do now?’, ‘Will this animal never leave me?’ All such thoughts came to the woodcutter’s mind.The animal too reflected the same thoughts through words. The woodcutter was finally frustrated. ‘Let me not bother about this animal and do my own work’ he said to himself and immersed himself in his work. The moment the woodcutter stopped thinking about the animal, it stopped speaking. After sometime, the axe which was being used by the woodcutter slipped from his hand and hit the animal which was standing motionless on its head. As a result the animal died. This is story the Zen Masters tell their disciples. This story can also be used to
understand the philosophy of Sri Ramana Bhagavan. The first thing that should be done is to turn back the sight from this worldly pleasures. This is similar to the woodcutter turning his sight from the strange animal to the tree. One needs to turn back his sight and then question himself ‘Who am I?’ This is the second stage. After questioning himself, one needs to immerse himself in thee, reach out for the heart and be as his original Self. This is the later stage. This would mean experiencing the ever existing Self. This would also mean re-experiencing the true nature of the Self. This is not attaining something which is non-existent. This is observing the actuality instead of abstraction.This is the Ramana Way. This is straight whisky, unmixed by soda. There are no stages in this. The procedure may have been explained in stages. But there are no resting places in between. This is not a step by step practice to attain liberation. This is an ever liberated way. This is a flight path, not a creepy-crawly path. When we have to jump from one mountain to another, we need to take one long jump. We cannot climb it walking step by step. It is not climbing the stairs one by one to reach the mountain top. It is also not like a man standing at the foot of the hill reaching its top suddenly. It is like a man, who is under the feeling that he is standing at the foot of the hill, who realises that he is actually on top of it. There is no question of this taking a lot of time. How much time it would take to look at the moon in the sky instead of seeing its image in the moving waters of a pond? We just need to divert our sight towards it. But if we close our eyes, we can never see the real moon in our lifetime. If we do not concentrate our mind, we can never remember the forgotten. When our mind is at peace, we instantly remember everything. There is no need to differentiate the ‘I’ thought between the real and the unreal ‘I’. This has been used to remove the doubts and to explain the subject. The unreal ‘I’ is always unreal, whenever and wherever. When we speak forgetting the ‘I’, it is then that the real ‘I’ speaks.
A Christian Pastor once came to the Master and said ‘whenever I speak with you, you ask me not to mention anything about God. This is not right for you. You should have belief in God’. This happened number of times. The Master then said ‘I am ready to have belief in God. But tell me one thing. After you die, will your soul reach your God’? ‘Yes’ replied the Christian Pastor. ‘Then will your body will be buried in the graveyard?’ asked the Master. ‘Yes’, replied the Christian Pastor. ‘Where will “You” go then?’ questioned the Master. The Pastor did not know what to reply and kept silent. He then never ever spoke to the Master about faith in God. The Pastor was taught about his soul and his body, but was never told about his real ‘I’.
Bhagavan Sri Ramana has taught precisely the same thing.
The body manifestations which I experience in the waking state are also visible in dreams in the form of beautiful scenes in the dream world. The dream which I see is my experience. I am a seer who is different from the dreams I see. I do not know anything in the sleep. The experience of not knowing anything is my experience. Who will have an experience of ignorance? It must be only to a gnani, the realised. How can the ignored have an experience of ignorance? The seer is different from the sight. If ignorance is the sight, its opposite would be knowledge. There is an experience of bliss in sleep. That too to me. I am the embodiment of bliss who is different from the experience of bliss. The being which is full of heavenly bliss can only experience the bliss. The being which is suffering cannot experience this bliss. The sleep experience manifests myself into Being-Conscious-Bliss. Even though I am in the three different states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep, I am a seer who is different from these three states. I am in the state of everlasting bliss that is different from physical, vital, mental, intellectual and blissful sheaths in which the human soul encased. There is no question of seeking liberation afresh when there is no bondage. Only the pure self who is not worried about bondage and liberation would remain. What will also remain is the transcendent state which is called turiya and it is beyond comprehension of the wisest souls in this world.
Spiritual practices in all religions are aimed at setting the man free from all bondages and attain liberation. All the religious rituals, worship, pilgrimage, yagnas, donations, the limbs of yoga, pranayamas etc are directed towards the same. But Bhagavan Ramana has said something different to this. He said that bondage means the feeling of ‘I am the body’. To realise that ‘I am not the body’ is liberation. If I am not the body, then who am I? I am not the Mind, I am not the Intelligence, I am not the Vitality, and I am not the Living. If I am not all these, then who am I? I am Satchitananda (existence, consciousness, bliss), I am ever liberated. I am not in bondage; I am Self Realized, God Realized. There is no such thing as bondage for me. If there is bondage, only then I should aim for liberation. Why should I make an effort for liberation when there is no bondage? There is no person on this earth who does not have the experience of the Self. Hence nobody ever needs to make an effort for Self Realization. Nobody can say that he has already experienced the Self, or that he is different from the Atman, or that he is the embodiment of this Body. It is very clear that everybody has experienced the Self. This has been said by Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. When there is no bondage at all, the pain, the diseases, the problems, the sorrows, the enemies and other fears the man suffers because of this bondage get totally destroyed. This great message has been given to this world by Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. This single message destroys all sorrows, clears all doubts and fears a man encounters in his life. By giving this message, Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi has granted a boon of Liberation to all human beings. Where else can we find a greater message which eliminates all sorrows and gives everlasting peace to us?
Although one gets immense pleasure on hearing this message of Sri Ramana Maharshi, and even though it has been said that this is the straightest path in self realisation and also the easiest one, somehow one finds it too far to reach. But this is natural. While explaining this topic, one devotee of Sri Ramana Maharshi gave this example. A man was standing on top of a hill. There was not enough place to stand still on both legs on the top of this hill. On seeing downhill, he saw a deep valley. Even a small slip of his leg, or a slight bend forward or a small stone falling from the top, the man would be thrown into the deep valley and would be killed. His friend then advised him, “you just need to bend a little further or backwards and you will fall into the valley. You need not make much effort, bend a little and you would be relieved of all your problems. It is an easy, straight and a simple way”. The man then said “Oh No, there is a deep valley down, what will happen to me if I bend”. In the same way, the message given by Sri Ramana Maharshi although does look simple and easy to follow, is very difficult to practice and implement. It is an easy path to follow for realized and mature souls, but is very difficult for the immature, unrealised and persons with material attachments. Hence for a person to understand the teachings of Sri Ramana Bhagavan, he should be mature and realised. He should follow the methods which would free his mind to enable him to understand the teachings of Bhagavan easily.
By giving the above example, the devotee tried to prove that Sri Ramana’s path is a difficult one to follow and is not meant for all. But Bhagavan Sri Ramana never said anything like this. Sri Ramana’s path is meant for all, men, women, educated, uneducated, realised, unrealised and anybody can follow this path unhesitatingly. The man who sets out in Ramana’s way would attain his eligibility and authority just by following it. This path is meant for people who are trying to get rid of their sufferings in this material world, for those who are striving or desirous of final emancipation or salvation, and also for those who have enjoyed all the fruits of this material world and are eager to take the next step. Practice is important here and there is no scope for conclusive arguments.
What did Sri Ramana Maharshi actually say? Did he not say ‘there is no bondage, we are all liberated’? These are the words of Sri Ramana Bhagavan, the God. Not only this, even the Upanishads have told the same. The concepts of ‘Aham brahmasmi’, ‘tatvamasi’, ‘ayamaatmabhrahma’ etc give the same meaning. Even as the gurus, the teachers and the scriptures preach the contrary, man always falls prey to the misconception of ‘I am the body’, ‘I am the living’, and ‘I am in bondage”. This is quite surprising and appalling. ‘How unfortunate’ is what Sri Sankara had said, regretting man’s above dilemma. Bhagavan Sri Ramana had said that if man makes constant enquiry about the true nature of his Self, he would experience the self and realise the truth by this self experience.
Every day when we say, ‘my wife, my son, my house, my village, my country’, we know that all these are not ME but my things. Similarly, when we say, ‘my shirt, my book, my spectacles, my watch, my slippers’, we mean to say that these are MY things but not ME. In the same manner when we say, ‘my body, my life, my heart, my mind’, we clearly mean to say that ‘I am not the body, I am not the life, I am not the heart and I am not the mind’. Then where is the scope of the feeling of ‘I am the body, I am the life, I am the heart and I am the mind’? As long as this feeling is not there, it can be sai that that man is free from the misconception of ‘Dehatma’ (I am the body), and is free from ignorance. Can it therefore be said that there nothing else to be enquired and found out? The same truth can be proved in another way also. My wife is an image to me and I am the seer. The image and the seer are different from each other. So I can only say that she is my wife, but on second thoughts the relation exists only in images. The rest is all our imagination and artificial. The entire world is an image to me and I am only a seer. I being the seer am different from the world which is an image. The relation between me and the world is imaginary and is based on these images. Similarly this body is a part of this world which is an image to me and I am seeing it. I am a seer to this body. How can I being a seer become the sight? The relation between me and my body is imaginary. It is based on the image I have created about my body. The rest of it is artificial. The I and my body are two different entities. I am aware of all the activities of my body. I am also aware of my consciousness. I am a seer for it. This subtle body is only the means for the activities of the Self which is ever aware. I am also aware of the thoughts that come to my mind. I am seer for these thoughts. These thoughts are images to me. My mind which is formed out of an image is different from me. The relationship between me and my mind is imaginary. My intellect is also different from me. This relationship is also based on the images that are created about it. In this way, I am different from my body, my consciousness, my mind, my intellect etc. I am having an independent identity which is not dependent on all the above. This identity relates to seeing things as they are and to grasp them as they are. Not only me, nobody in this world is having any bondage. It means that there is no I am the body feeling at all. Nothing else but enquiry would reveal this truth. This truth can be experienced through enquiry. If one can realise this truth that there is no bondage and we are ever liberated, one can be happy always. One would then realise by experience that there is no need to crave for getting liberated from bondage. A drunken man in his inebriated state would sometimes ask ‘where am I’. Similarly when one realises that he is ever liberated, the question of ‘who am I’ would never arise to him. If we say the tree is holding me after holding it firmly, it would be like saying that I am in bondage after entangling ourselves in this material world. Just as we cannot hunt a non-existent lion in the darkness, we cannot destroy the non-existent ‘I am the body’ misconception. The fear, the anxiety, the urgency and the discord is non-existent. It has been said that
Srunvantu viswe amrutasya putra:
We have been referred to as Amrutaputras. The doctrines of ‘tatvamasi’, ‘aham brahmasmi’, have told us the known fact of ‘ayamatmabrahma’. It has also been said ‘Sarvam khalidwam brahma’, which asks us to see the world as it is. There is no need to invent something new and if this fact is not known to us immediately, it has to be reminded repeatedly. ‘Avritti Rasakrudupadesaat’ (brahma sutras) is the doctrine which tells us the above. The ever existing self consciousness and self experience should be reminisced. The experience should be reminisced as an experience. It should be remembered always that we do not have the ‘I am the body’ feeling. We should also think whether there is anything else to be done? What is to be done is enquiry. When we do enquiry, the rope which was thought to be a snake would be seen by us only as a rope. The non-existent snake would not be visible to us. The necklace which was thought have been lost would be visible in the neck. The lion cub which was thought be a goat would be visible as a lion cub. The mirage which was visible as water would be known as a mirage. Even after we know that it is a mirage, water would be visible. But then we would now know that there is actually no water there. After we experience that the Self is not the gross body, we would still be having an affair with the gross body. But the idea of ‘I am the body’ would be totally non-existent.
There is a procedure called the reversal of the sight. Even though it is known to me that the ‘I’ is not the gross body, my sight is set on it. Because of this I am under a false impression that the ‘I’ is the gross body. This is a fact. But this illusion is accidental. To remove this illusion, the sight has to be turned from the gross body towards the real ‘I’. A woodcutter went to the forest, climbed a tree and started to cut a branch of it. He then saw a strange animal in the forest. He thought to himself, what is this? This animal is looking very peculiar. ‘What is this? This animal is looking very peculiar’. The animal spoke in the woodcutter’s language. He was surprised. Can this animal speak? He thought to himself. ‘Are you thinking, can this animal speak?’ said that animal. This process continued. Whatever the woodcutter used to think, that animal used to speak loudly. ‘Oh, I have to kill this animal’, ‘how to escape from this animal’, ‘what shall I do now?’, ‘Will this animal never leave me?’ All such thoughts came to the woodcutter’s mind.The animal too reflected the same thoughts through words. The woodcutter was finally frustrated. ‘Let me not bother about this animal and do my own work’ he said to himself and immersed himself in his work. The moment the woodcutter stopped thinking about the animal, it stopped speaking. After sometime, the axe which was being used by the woodcutter slipped from his hand and hit the animal which was standing motionless on its head. As a result the animal died. This is story the Zen Masters tell their disciples. This story can also be used to
understand the philosophy of Sri Ramana Bhagavan. The first thing that should be done is to turn back the sight from this worldly pleasures. This is similar to the woodcutter turning his sight from the strange animal to the tree. One needs to turn back his sight and then question himself ‘Who am I?’ This is the second stage. After questioning himself, one needs to immerse himself in thee, reach out for the heart and be as his original Self. This is the later stage. This would mean experiencing the ever existing Self. This would also mean re-experiencing the true nature of the Self. This is not attaining something which is non-existent. This is observing the actuality instead of abstraction.This is the Ramana Way. This is straight whisky, unmixed by soda. There are no stages in this. The procedure may have been explained in stages. But there are no resting places in between. This is not a step by step practice to attain liberation. This is an ever liberated way. This is a flight path, not a creepy-crawly path. When we have to jump from one mountain to another, we need to take one long jump. We cannot climb it walking step by step. It is not climbing the stairs one by one to reach the mountain top. It is also not like a man standing at the foot of the hill reaching its top suddenly. It is like a man, who is under the feeling that he is standing at the foot of the hill, who realises that he is actually on top of it. There is no question of this taking a lot of time. How much time it would take to look at the moon in the sky instead of seeing its image in the moving waters of a pond? We just need to divert our sight towards it. But if we close our eyes, we can never see the real moon in our lifetime. If we do not concentrate our mind, we can never remember the forgotten. When our mind is at peace, we instantly remember everything. There is no need to differentiate the ‘I’ thought between the real and the unreal ‘I’. This has been used to remove the doubts and to explain the subject. The unreal ‘I’ is always unreal, whenever and wherever. When we speak forgetting the ‘I’, it is then that the real ‘I’ speaks.
A Christian Pastor once came to the Master and said ‘whenever I speak with you, you ask me not to mention anything about God. This is not right for you. You should have belief in God’. This happened number of times. The Master then said ‘I am ready to have belief in God. But tell me one thing. After you die, will your soul reach your God’? ‘Yes’ replied the Christian Pastor. ‘Then will your body will be buried in the graveyard?’ asked the Master. ‘Yes’, replied the Christian Pastor. ‘Where will “You” go then?’ questioned the Master. The Pastor did not know what to reply and kept silent. He then never ever spoke to the Master about faith in God. The Pastor was taught about his soul and his body, but was never told about his real ‘I’.
Bhagavan Sri Ramana has taught precisely the same thing.
The body manifestations which I experience in the waking state are also visible in dreams in the form of beautiful scenes in the dream world. The dream which I see is my experience. I am a seer who is different from the dreams I see. I do not know anything in the sleep. The experience of not knowing anything is my experience. Who will have an experience of ignorance? It must be only to a gnani, the realised. How can the ignored have an experience of ignorance? The seer is different from the sight. If ignorance is the sight, its opposite would be knowledge. There is an experience of bliss in sleep. That too to me. I am the embodiment of bliss who is different from the experience of bliss. The being which is full of heavenly bliss can only experience the bliss. The being which is suffering cannot experience this bliss. The sleep experience manifests myself into Being-Conscious-Bliss. Even though I am in the three different states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep, I am a seer who is different from these three states. I am in the state of everlasting bliss that is different from physical, vital, mental, intellectual and blissful sheaths in which the human soul encased. There is no question of seeking liberation afresh when there is no bondage. Only the pure self who is not worried about bondage and liberation would remain. What will also remain is the transcendent state which is called turiya and it is beyond comprehension of the wisest souls in this world.
