Tripura Rahasya

Sage Dattatreya

Do you think, O Bhargava, that the Self is not aware when objects are seen? If not aware, the Self cannot be. If the Self is not, how can you raise this question? Can you seek any good for yourself if the Self be a myth like a flower in the sky? How can I establish the Self for you? Consider and tell me. Or do you mean to say that there is ordinarily an awareness of the Self but it cannot be particularized? If so, know it to be the unending awareness which is perpetually existing. That is your Self. The Self is free from particulars. How strange that knowing it, you are still ignorant!

At the time of cognizing an object, the pure intellect assumes its shape and manifests as such. Of itself it is pure and has no form. Objective knowledge is thus a particularized section of pure intelligence. The Self is ever-shining, unparticularized, unblemished, ordinary existence - self-aware and self-sufficient.

If you say that the body etc. usually appear as the Self, I tell you that they are only the play of thoughts and nothing more. For think well and observe carefully. When you see a pot, are you aware that it is your self like the body? (No, your body is no less a thought and appearance in consciousness, than the pot.) Then why should the body alone be confused with the Self?

If you argue that there is no harm or mistake in identifying the body with the Self, because it is no worse than glorifying a part instead of the whole, I tell you: do not confine such glorification to one part only, to the exclusion of others. Extend it right through and glorify the whole universe as the Self. In that case, there will be no confusion of the object with the subject, and you will always remain as the subject.

For the Self is always self-resplendent and one without a second, and it displays diversities of phenomena as a mirror its reflections. Therefore rule out creation as a mere thought or series of thoughts and realize the non-dual, residual, pure intelligence as the Self.