Ignorance Is False

Sri Ramana Maharshi

• The seed and its sprout seem to co-operate, each being in turn the cause of the other, and yet each effect also destroys its cause; in fact the effect is not really produced by the cause, since both are produced only by the imagination of the ignorant mind. 
• If the rope were itself a sentient being, would any other being be needed for it to be seen as a snake? Similarly, as Self is Existence-Consciousness, the world is merely a destruction of this single Consciousness.
• Has Self changed its nature of still Being into that of motion, or how else has this world come into existence? Self has never undergone change or movement; this world seems to exist solely because of ignorance, which is itself false.
• When, in the view of the one indivisible space, even the pot has no separate existence, is it not foolish to say that the space inside the pot moves with the movements of the pot?
• Similarly, when, in the plenitude of Self-Consciousness, body and world cannot even exist, being non-Self and incomplete, it is ridiculous to say that Self moves because of the movements of the mutable body and world.

From Guru Vachaka Kovai By Sri Muruganar