Essential Knowledge of Reality (P6: 281-8)

281. Of all the three virtues the most essential is the knowledge of the Reality as it is the direct cause of liberation. The other two, detachment and withdrawal, are necessary auxiliaries to knowledge.

283. Without the knowledge of Reality even perfect detachment and complete withdrawal from worldly actions cannot lead to liberation. A man endowed with detachment and withdrawal, but failing to obtain illumination, is reborn in the superior worlds because of great merit.

284. On the other hand by the complete knowledge of the Reality a man is sure to have liberation, even though his detachment and withdrawal are wanting. But then his visible sufferings will not come to an end owing to his fructifying Karma.

285. The height of detachment is such a conviction of the futility of all desires that one considers like straw even the highest pleasures of the world of Brahmā; and the height of spiritual knowledge is reached when one feels one’s identity with the supreme Self as firmly as an ordinary man instinctively feels his identity with the physical body.

286. The height of withdrawal from action is the complete forgetfulness of all worldly affairs in the waking state as in the state of deep sleep. There are several intermediate grades which can be known by actual observation.

287. Enlightened men may differ in their behaviour because of the nature of their fructifying Karma. This should not make the learned think otherwise about the truth of knowledge resulting in liberation.

288. Let the enlightened people behave in any way according to their fructifying Karma, but their knowledge is the same and their liberation is the same.

~Pancadasi 6:281-8 (tr-Swahananda)

Experiencing Nonduality (Pancadasi 6:246-256)

Translation & Commentary by Swahananda (and Swartz) but underlining not

246. The whole world is a product of the inscrutable Māyā; be convinced of this, and know that the fundamental real principle is non-duality.

247-251 edited. Repeatedly practise negating this erroneous idea of duality. What is the difficulty in doing so? It is a trouble to continue the pursuit of unreal duality, not so is that of non-duality. For by the practice of non-duality all miseries are destroyed. Suffering is in your egoity (a product of duality) expressed in your use of ‘I’. Do not subject yourself to this identification which is due to mutual superimposition, but practise discrimination for its removal. Begin new impressions of non-duality by means of repeated discrimination of the truth.

252. Do not say it is reasoning alone which demonstrates the unreality of duality and not our experience, for we daily experience that mysterious is the nature of the world.

In śloka 246 the characteristic of Māyā has been described as ‘mysterious creativity’. There the word ‘mysterious’ really means one that cannot be rationally understood or explained. Mysterious creation is one that is wonderful no doubt, but it has no basis in reason. And such creation is Mithyā, unreal, because it vanishes after a glittering existence. 

Here (in this śloka) it is said that Kūṭastha, Ātman, is the immutable observer (Sākṣin) of this unreal creation. Being the observing Self, how can it be said that we have no direct experience of it? Of course, it (this experience) is unique and not of the category of objective experience—but an experience nonetheless.

253. (Doubt): Consciousness too is mysterious. (Reply): Let it be. We do not say that consciousness is not mysterious, for it is eternal.

The answer is Yes, ‘mysterious’ it is, but it is not unreal inasmuch as it is beginningless and endless and immutable, whereas mutability is the common characteristic of creation or Māyā.

254. Consciousness is eternal, for its non-existence can never be experienced. But the non-existence of duality is experienced by consciousness before the duality assumes manifestation.

To be called eternal, it must not be non-existent at any time. Duality is non-existent in deep sleep as a pot is before clay was moulded into it. Consciousness itself being the experiencer (there being no two consciousnesses) can never experience its own non-existence.

(Awareness has no prior non-existence, because to witness its absence it has to be present. The only other existent category, matter, can’t witness the absence of consciousness / awareness either, because it is an inert product of Maya. So it cannot be proved that consciousness is ever absent. ~Swartz)

255. The duality of the phenomenal world is like the pot which is non-existent before it comes into being. Still, its creation is inexplicable. So it is unreal like a product of magic.

256. Now you see that both consciousness and the unreality of the world are immediately experienced, so you cannot still maintain that non-duality is not experienced.

(The belief that I should go into nirvikalpa samadhi or gain the experience of the “fourth state” based on the idea that reality is non-dual in deep sleep and a duality in the waking state is one of the spiritual world’s most pernicious and persistent myths. I am non-dual consciousness when I wake, dream and sleep. ~Swartz)