The swami of Sri Ramakrishna Mission had more questions to ask:
Swamiji, I went up the hill to see the asramas in which you lived in your youth. I have also read your life. May I know if you did not then feel that there is God to whom you should pray or that you should practise something in order to reach this state?
M.: Read the life and you will understand. and are of the same degree of truth; that is, both are imagined by the ignorant; they are not true from the standpoint of the .
D.: Is a capable or likely to commit sins?
M.: An sees someone as a and identifies him with the body. Because he does not know the Self and mistakes his body for the Self, he extends the same mistake to the state of the jnāni. The jnāni is therefore considered to be the physical frame.
Again since the , though he is not the doer, yet imagines himself to be the doer and considers the actions of the body his own, he thinks the to be similarly acting when the body is active. But the jnāni himself knows the Truth and is not confounded. The state of a jnāni cannot be determined by the ajnāni and therefore the question troubles only the ajnāni and never does it arise for the jnāni. If he is a doer he must determine the nature of the actions. The Self cannot be the doer. Find out who is the doer and the Self is revealed.
D.: There could be no in actions. That is how the question arose.
M.: But the stanza says there should be. This “do” is applicable only to the practiser and not to the accomplished ones.
D.: Yes. I quite see it. Moreover, cannot be practised in one’s dealings with the Guru. For consistently with it, he cannot receive instructions.
M.: Yes, the Guru is within and not without. A Tamil saint has said, “O Guru! always abiding within me, but manifesting now in human form only to guide and protect me!” What is within as the Self manifests in due course as Guru in human shape.
D.: So it amounts to this. To see a is not to understand him. You see the jnāni’s body and not his . One must therefore be a jnāni to know a jnāni.
M.: The sees no one as an . All are only jnānis in his sight. In the ignorant state one superimposes his ignorance on a jnāni and mistakes him for a doer. In the state of , the jnāni sees nothing separate from the Self. The Self is all shining and only pure jnāna. So there is no in his sight. There is an illustration for this kind of illusion or superimposition. Two friends went to sleep side by side. One of them dreamt that both of them had gone on a long journey and had strange experiences. On waking up he recapitulated them and asked his friend if it was not so. The other one simply ridiculed him saying that it was only his dream and could not affect the other.
So it is with the who superimposes his illusive ideas on others.
Regarding in early youth and at the present time, Sri Bhagavan said:
There is no as it is commonly understood. The ordinary ideas of jnāna and are only relative and false. They are not real and therefore not abiding. The true state is the non-dual Self. It is eternal and abides whether one is aware or not. It is like kanthābharana or the tenth man.
D.: Some one else points it out.
M.: That one is not external. You mistake the body for the Guru. But the Guru does not think himself so. He is the formless Self. That is within you; he appears without only to guide you.