April 13, 2025: Self-Knowledge and Existence-Consciousness
Transcript:
Self-Knowledge and Existence-Consciousness
Om Om Om
(Silence)
You exist without beginning and without end. How do you know it? How do you know that you exist? It is because existence is of the nature of Consciousness. As you always are, similarly, you always know. Your body is not always. It has a beginning and an end. Your existence, though, does not commence with its birth, nor does it end with its perishing. For what exists always must be changeless and of a formless nature. What is formless is undifferentiated. You have no parts. Of an indivisible nature is your existence. It is bodiless. It is imperceptible. It is of an inconceivable nature. Unlimited, boundaryless, undivided, self-luminous, knowing itself by its own light, one without anything other, it is known as Brahman. Such is the Self. You are not a body, nor are you a mind. The individual, or ego, is not you. You are of a mind-transcendent, egoless nature.
Abidance in the knowledge of what is truly the Self is of a perfectly full nature of happiness. Not knowing the Self as it is, but misidentifying oneself with a body, a mind, an ego, etc. is ignorance. It deludes one into thinking what he is not. To be free of ignorance, and its consequent bondage and suffering, inquire. Discern what the Self really is, what you really are. Discern what the Self truly is and is always, and you find that which is of the nature of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. It is Existence without beginning or end. It is Consciousness, but no form of thought. It is happiness which, also, does not come to an end.
Questioner:
Thank you for the very inspiring instruction. The knowledge of the Self, of one’s existence that was described is beyond conception and is not perceptible. It’s difficult to grasp how that is to be experienced from the instruction. It can only be experienced by itself since the Self knows itself. The experience is only by abiding in that knowledge, in that Self-realization, which is always. Still, the attempt is made to understand, to grasp what is taught, as the feeling is that Self-knowledge is not there and has to be gained in some form. It is also mentioned that the means and the end are the same. That leads to a notion that it can only be when there is samadhi or when there is a transcendence from the body, from the mind, a complete detachment from the misidentification. Only then there is clear abidance. Until then, how can one adopt the end as a means, the means being limited in some form?
Nome:
You have answered your own question. You attain the experience by knowing yourself. You must inquire at a depth that is equal to the innate knowledge of existence, so that you know that you are, and you know what you are, which can never be anything objective. The end is knowledge. So, the means must be of the nature of knowledge. It manifests as the discerning inquiry.
How to gain the experience of existence? It is not an experience happening to someone. How do you acquire the knowledge of Existence? It is not something to be added to you or gained anew, for it is the beginningless and the endless. Who wishes to experience this Knowledge? What is his nature? The Existence is itself the Realization. If now you think your experience is limited, for whom is the limitation? If you inquire to find him who supposedly does not know, he will vanish, because he is unreal. The Reality alone can know itself; the Self alone knows the Self. Another cannot do so, for another does not exist. You can dissolve misidentification, and the sense of identity and reality return to their origin.
Q: In the process of inquiring, as described, can one feel the fullness, the Purnatvam, as it’s described, the happiness?
N: Where existence is, there is your happiness. There is no doubt about it. Your search for happiness is actually the search for your Being, your Existence. Existence indeed, is happiness. It is perfectly full.
Another Q:
You just said the intensity of the inquiry has to match the infinite. Can you expand it? Did I understand it correctly?
Nome:
How much do you desire to be happy? How much do you desire to be free of what is perishing, what is mortal? With just such desire, turn inward and inquire, discriminating what is your nature and what is not. What is real and what is unreal? What is the Self and what is not the Self? This ought to be known at the same depth that you now know you exist. You know that you exist without thinking about it. Similarly, you know you exist regardless of the senses. How do you know you exist? You never doubt it.
Q: Staying in it is the challenge. All these doubts flood me, like fear of death. I know Advaita is meant for a very small percentage of souls based on what my Guru has told me. I would really appreciate your guidance in regard to that.
N: Is there anyone who is not the Self? You never doubt your existence; even if you would mentally conjure up a doubt regarding it, you would still assume yourself to be there to entertain the doubt. So, who is the doubter?
Q: An evaporating thing.
Another Q:
Namaste Nome. When I inquire, I get to a state where the mind is calm or emotionally stable and the body is relaxed. That happens when I stay with myself and don’t give attention to the sensations in the body, or the thoughts. I understand that this experience of calmness is actually just a reflection of the Self. Is my understanding correct?
Nome:
Relaxation or calmness of the body is not a permanent state. Look deeper. The mind becomes calm, you say. Who is the one that knows that? What knows the mind? To attribute qualities that belong to the body or to the mind, to superimpose them on the Self, is mistaken. What does not come and go? Only that you are. The entire world is a superimposition upon the Self. The nature of superimposition is imagination. That is the only substance in ignorance. There is nothing else to it but imagination. Free yourself of the merely imagined.
Q: I need to get to a state beyond the sense of calmness to a sense of silence.
N: Silence is that in which no superimposition occurs. Silence is that in which no “I”-notion appears. Abide in that, as that, and thereby, you find peace that is never destroyed.
Another Q:
The discourse helps me to meditate on myself. Listening to the questions and answers, I realize that I take worldly tasks to be real, I take this little thing to be real, and somehow I give up. I don’t know why I give up. I have to focus differently.
Nome:
What do you mean by “give up”?
Q: If I gave up ignorance, that would be good. In this case, I was giving up on Self-inquiry, knowing myself, unfortunately.
N: Sri Bhagavan said that, if you give up on self-inquiry, world inquiry begins. You can inquire into the world or into yourself. The results differ significantly. Why do you think you do anything? That a body engages in activity is commonplace. How do you become involved so that you have the assumption that you are doing? Who is the performer of action?
Q: It is really just thinking.
N: Your nature can never change. What changes is not your actual nature. Thoughts are changeful. There is no such thing as an absolutely changeless thought. So, what is constituted of thought is not you. The thought, “I am the doer of action,” does not make you so.
Q: That is amazing; I try to reflect on just that. Otherwise, I accrue too much karma. Just coming here, this is where karma is destroyed, or seen to be non-existent. That is so important. But I forget and think I’m the inquirer. I think I am a thought, and Self-inquiry is a thought. It can’t be a thought. How can that be?
N: Is the inquiry a thought? If it were, it would have no power to liberate. But the inquiry is of the same nature, Consciousness, as what you are trying to attain. Whose is the karma? Realizing its non-existence is its destruction, which is not a destruction of any real thing. So, what is real? Is the to-do list the reality?
Q: No. That’s a figment of my imagination. I try to meditate on not being the senses or connecting the senses to myself.
N: The senses are as unreal and as objective as the sensed objects. The sensed and the sensing are of the same character. The Self is not defined by such.
Q: Thank you.
(Then followed a recitation in Sanskrit and English from the Brahma-jnana-vali-mala and in Tamil from the Song of Ribhu.)
(Silence)
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti