Self is All

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Continued from here

Still another example: Scenes are projected on the screen in a cinema show. But the moving pictures do not affect or alter the screen. The seer pays attention to the pictures and ignores the screen. They cannot remain apart from the screen. Still its existence is ignored. So also the Self is the screen on which the pictures, namely activities, are going on. The man is aware of the latter, ignoring the former. All the same he is not apart from the Self. Whether aware or unaware the actions will continue. 

D: There is an operator in the cinema.

M.: The cinema show is made out of insentient materials. The screen, the pictures, lamp, etc., are insentient and require an operator, a sentient agent. In the case of the Self, it is consciousness itself and therefore self-contained. There cannot be an operator apart. 

D: (Protested that he did not confuse the body with the operator as the above answer would imply. )

M: The functions of the body were kept in mind involving the need for the operator. Because there is the body - a jada object - an operator, a sentient agent, is necessary. Because people think that they are jivas, Sri Krishna has said that God resides in the Heart as the operator of the jivas. In fact there are no jivas and no operator. The self comprises all. It is the screen, the pictures, the seer, the actor, the operator, the light and all else. Your confounding it with the body and imagining yourself as the actor amounts to the seer being represented as an actor in a cinema picture. Imagine the actor in the picture asking if he could enact a scene without the screen. Such is the case of the man who thinks of his acting apart from the Self. 

D: It is like asking the spectator to act in the cinema picture. Somnambulism seems to be desirable.

M: There is the belief that the crow rolls only one iris into either eye to see any object. It has only one iris but two eye sockets. Its sight is manipulated according to its desire. Or again the elephant has one trunk with which it breathes and does work such as drinking water, etc. Again serpents are said to use the same apparatus for either seeing or hearing. Similarly the actions and states are according to one’s point of view. Sleep waking or waking sleep or dreaming sleep or dreaming wakefulness are about the same.