No Time When Realization Was Not

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Mrs. Jinarajadasa: How shall we be able to remember the truth experienced in dreams?

M.: Your present waking state, your dreams and your desire to remember are all thoughts. They arise only after the mind has arisen. Were you not existing in the absence of the mind?

D.: Yes, I was.

M.: The fact of your existence is also your realisation

D.: I understand it intellectually. The truth is felt in temporary flashes only. It is not abiding.

M.: Such thoughts smother up the state of your eternal realisation.

D.: The rough and tumble of town life is not congenial to realisation. Jungle retreats afford the necessary quiet and solitude.

M.: One can be free in a town and may yet be bound in jungle retreats. It is all in the mind.

D.: The mind again is maya, I suppose.

M.: What is maya? The knowledge that the mind is divorced from the Reality is maya. The mind is in Reality only and not apart. This knowledge is the elimination of maya. 

Further conversation led to the question if the mind was identical with the brain. Sri Bhagavan said: The mind is only a force operating on the brain. You are now here and awake. The thoughts of the world and the surroundings are in the brain within the body. When you dream you create another self who sees the world of dream creation and the surroundings just as you do now. The dream visions are in the dream brain which is again in the dream body. That is different from your present body. You remember the dream now. The brains are however different. Yet the visions appear in the mind. The mind therefore is not identical with the brain. Waking, dream and sleep are for the mind only.

D.: The understanding is intellectual.

M.: Intellect. Whose intellect? The problem revolves round that question. You admit that you exist even in the absence of intellect - say, in sleep. How do you know that you exist if you have not realised your existence? Your very existence is realisation. You cannot imagine a point of time when you do not exist. So there is no period of time when realisation is not.