What is, is ever present - here and now!

Sri Ramana Maharshi

D.: Vichara Sagara relates four obstacles to Self-Realisation. 

M.: Why only four? Some say they are nine. Sleep is one of them. What is sleep? It is only the obverse of waking. It cannot be independent of waking. Sleep is unalloyed Self. Do not think you are awake: sleep cannot be, nor the three states either. Only forgetting the Self you say you dreamt. Can anything exist in the absence of the Self? Why do you leave it out and hold the non-self?

As the mind tends to go out turn it inwards then and there. It goes out owing to the habit of looking for happiness outside oneself; but the knowledge that the external objects are not the cause of happiness will keep it in check. This is vairagya or dispassion. Only after perfect vairagya the mind becomes steady. The mind is only a mixture of knowledge and ignorance or of sleep and waking. It functions in five ways:

Kshipta (active); Moodha (dull); Vikshipta (distracted); Kashaya (latent); and Ekagrya (one-pointed).

Of these kashaya is only the latency of tendencies and not the tendencies themselves such as attachment, repulsion, etc. Yourself being ananda (Bliss), why should you enjoy it saying, “Ah! How blissful!” This is rasasvada. During the marriage ceremonies a virgin feels happy as a bride without experiencing the embrace of man: this is rasasvada. 

D.: Jivanmukti (liberated while alive) itself being ananda .  .  .  . 

Sri Bhagavan interrupted: 

Do not look for sastras. What is jivanmukti? What is ananda? Liberation itself is in doubt. What are all these words? Can they be independent of the Self?

D.: Only we have no experience of all this. 

M.: What is not, is always lost; what is, is ever present, here and now. This is the eternal order of things. Example: necklace round the neck.