Passage 11

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In plain words

Those flowers turned into green fruit. All the green fruit turned into ripe fruit. Then where did all these come from, these ripe fruits, these green fruits, these flowers, these twigs? For all of them the seed alone is the support. That itself is the truth. That itself is the Ātma. In waking you see everything. You experience everything. But in dream you experience the scenes you have seen and the scenes you have not yet seen. In deep sleep you experience an Ānanda that was not in this dream. But waking, dream and deep sleep, the three states, are each different. Only you, who are in all three states, are true. That is the Ātma itself. We took sugar and put it in a cup. All that sugar dissolved and became all-pervading in the water. You put it in your hand. You saw it with your eye. But once it has dissolved, it cannot be caught in the hand. It cannot be seen by the eye. But its sweetness, present everywhere in experience, is known when you put it on the tongue. The sweetness pervading everywhere is the truth. That is the Ātma itself. It cannot be seen by the eye. It cannot be caught in the hand. That itself is nirguṇa, nirañjana: so it came to have this name. Because he pervades everything, he got the name vibhu. Because he is caught by no means of knowledge, he got the name aprameya. He is not reached by the testimony of words, by inference, or by direct perception. He is the one they called aprameya.

In this way each name of God is filled with inner meaning. They are all joined in oneness. God who is in everyone is one. All are none other than God. So to know oneself is the principle of God. As long as Ahaṅkāra and the sense of mine are there, one cannot recognise it. Only when one puts away this Ahaṅkāra and sense of mine will that principle be understood. Offer your bodily nature. Offer your nature of mind. Offer the fruit of your actions. Only one thing is left. You say, "You alone are my mother, you alone my father, you alone a friend to me, you alone my kin." Mother, father and friends will leave you some day or other and go. But "you" is there always. We must recognise that truth. Some day all of those will drop away. The "I" that is in all of them, that alone is the truth.

You must recognise that I principle. who am I? who am I? we must ask ourselves this question. This who am I. I. I. I…: this has two meanings. The one-letter I. EYE: this has three letters. Eye is our physical vehicle. The one-letter I is the Ātma. You must try to recognise the one-letter I. That something physical, I so and so. I have passed my MA. I am doing my Phd. That is the nature of your body. I am a Brāhmin. I am a Kṣatriya. I am a Vaiśya. I am young. To think "I am old" is only the nature of the body. But the one-letter I is no Brāhmin, no Śūdra, no one at all. It is no boy, not young.