Perceiver Always Remains

Sri Ramana Maharshi

21-7-1946

In the afternoon the following two questions were put by Mr. Bhargava, an elderly visitor from Jhansi in U.P.: 

(1) How am I to search for the ‘I’ from start to finish? 

(2) When I meditate I reach a stage where there is a vacuum or void. How should I proceed from there? 

Bhagavan: Never mind whether there are visions or sounds or anything else or whether there is a void. Are you present during all this or are you not? You must have been there even during the void to be able to say that you experienced a void. To be fixed in that ‘you’ is the quest for the ‘I’ from start to finish. In all books on Vedanta you will find this question of a void or of nothing being left, raised by the disciple and answered by the Guru. It is the mind that sees objects and has experiences and that finds a void when it ceases to see and experience, but that is not ‘you’. You are the constant illumination that lights up both the experiences and the void. It is like the theatre light that enables you to see the theatre, the actors and the play while the play is going on but also remains alight and enables you to say that there is no play on when it is all finished. Or there is another illustration. We see objects all around us, but in complete darkness we do not see them and we say, ‘I see nothing’; even then the eyes are there to say that they see nothing. In the same way, you are there even in the void you mention. 

You are the witness of the three bodies: the gross, the subtle and the causal, and of the three states: waking, dream and deep sleep, and of the three times: past, present and future, and also of this void. In the story of the tenth man, when each of the ten counted and thought there were only nine, each one forgetting to count himself, there is a stage when they think one is missing and don’t know who it is; and that corresponds to the void. We are so accustomed to the notion that all that we see around us is permanent and that we are this body, that when all this ceases to exist we imagine and fear that we also have ceased to exist. 

Bhagavan also quoted verses 212 and 213 from Vivekachudamani, in which the disciple says: “After I eliminate the five sheaths as not-Self, I find that nothing at all remains,” and the Guru replied that the Self or That by which all modifications (including the ego and its creatures) and their absence (that is the void) are perceived is always there.