Ulladu-Narpadu Verse 29: Experience
Channel: Consciousness Research Centre
Date: 25/05/2017

This series is classified Ajata-vāda | Jñāna-yoga | Turīya | Sahasrāra-cakra

"Having discarded the body like a corpse and without uttering ‘I’ by mouth, scrutinizing with an inward-diving mind, “Where does this feeling ‘I’ arise?”, is alone the path of knowledge (jñāṇa-mārga). Merely thinking or meditating, “I am not this body composed of five sheaths, I am That: the Absolute Reality or Brahman”, is in a roundabout way an aid to the path of knowledge or enquiry; but is it really correct practice of Self-enquiry, Ātmā-vicāra, the direct path of Knowledge? "

If we have been told some particulars about a certain place to which we wish to go, repeating and thereby
memorising those particulars may at first be an indirect aid for us to reach that place. But merely repeating and memorising those particulars cannot be the actual journey there. Having learnt those particulars, we must set out and travel to that place. Similar is the case with the truth which the scriptures tell us about our real and natural state, namely that we are not this body, prana, mind and so on, but are only Brahman, the absolute reality. Meditating upon this truth by repeatedly thinking, “I am not this body, I am Brahman”, may in the beginning be an indirect aid to the practice of Self-enquiry, because it will encourage one to try to know one’s own true nature. But merely repeatedly thinking thus, cannot be the actual practice of Self-enquiry. Having understood and become convinced of the truth that we are not the body but Brahman, we must take to the practice of Self-enquiry – that is, we must scrutinize and know the true nature of the feeling ‘I’ -, for then only can we attain the state in which we experience ourself to be Brahman.

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