All is Self for the Jnani

Sri Ramana Maharshi

A woman called Lady Bateman came to the ashram with her friends and retinue and stayed for a few days. She came for darshan with her group and asked Bhagavan, 'Just as we do, Bhagavan eats, speaks, applies medicine for toothache, and so on. What then is the difference between us and Bhagavan? I can't see any difference.'

Bhagavan explained the difference between the jnani and ajnani by giving several analogies.

'Just before going to sleep a small boy started crying and asked his mother, "Mother, I am hungry. Give me some rice." The mother replied, "Please wait a little, the rice is still cooking." The boy fell asleep before the rice was ready. A little later his mother woke him up and showed him the different types of ric that she had prepared: "See, this dhal rice, this is rasam rice, this is curd rice." The boy was very sleepy but still he managed to eat before he fell asleep again. The next morning, as soon as he woke up, he asked his mother, "Why didn't you give me any rice last night?" All the people in the house new that he had eaten but the boy himself was not aware of it any more because for him it had just been a sleepy interlude in the middle of the night. The activities of a jnani are in some ways similar to those of the small boy. That is, other people see him taking part in various activities but the jnani himself is not aware that he is doing anything.

'There are two other similar analogies: one can say that the state of the jnani is like a man listening to a story while his mind is elsewhere, or that he is like the sleeping driver of a bullock cart whose cart continues to move down the road even though he is asleep.

'Let me give you another example. Two people were sleeping in the same place. One of them had a dream in which both of them suffered while they were wandering through many forests. The other person slept well without dreaming at all. The one who dreamed the one who slept well was also suffering. The dreamer is like the ajnani: he makes a dream world for himself, suffers in that dream, and because he is not able to see that it is only a dream, he believes that all the people in his dream are also suffering. The jnani, on the other hand, does not dream a world at all. He invents no suffering either for himself or for other people. That is because the jnani looks upon everything as jnana, as his own Self, whereas the ajnani only sees ajnana around him.

'To what the jnani is asleep, to that the ajnani is awake. To what the ajnani is asleep, to that the jnani is awake.

'Swami Rama Tirtha was once doing japa of the name of Shiva on top of a high building. A man who was an ajnani came up to him and said, "Jump down from here. Then we can find our whether this word you repeat can save you."

'Swami Rama Tirtha asked him, "Where is up and where is down?" For the jnani who sees only jnana such distinctions cannot exist.

'The ajnani is like the man who only looks at the names and forms that appear on the cinema screen. The jnani, on the other hand, is always aware of the screen on which the names and forms appear.'

--Taken from the Diary Extracts (Sri Annamalai Swami)