🔱 Om Namo Bhagavathe Sri ArunachalaRamanaya 🔱
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The Paramount Importance of Self Attention, by Sri Sadhu Om, As recorded by Michael James
Part Six - Mountain Path: July – August 2013 - Excerpt
Note of 8th January 1978
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Sadhu Om: Bhagavan begins verse thirteen of Ulladu Ναrpadu by saying: 'Self, which is abundant knowledge [jñānα], alone is real; knowledge that is manifold [that is, knowledge of multiplicity] is ignorance [ajñāna]'. Self-knowledge shines as 'am'. Multiplicity here includes the world, God and the ego. Since nothing exists unless it is known (experienced), our knowledge of multiplicity is itself the existence of that multiplicity.
He then continues the same verse by saying: 'Even [this] ignorance, which is unreal, does not exist apart from self, which is knowledge. All the many ornaments are unreal; say, do they exist apart from the gold, which is real?' That is, even the knowledge and existence of multiplicity cannot exist apart from or independent οf 'I am'. Multiplicity is like the variety of gold ornaments, and 'I am' is like gold, their substance. Just as a goldsmith sees only the gold, so the jñāni sees only 'I am', which is jñāna. When a jñāni says that the world is unreal, he means that multiplicity is ever non-existent, and when he says that the world is real, he means that 'I am' alone exists.
Religions try to make God, who is a third person, into a second person so that he may be known directly [sākshat], but even second persons are only known indirectly through the first person. When the light of 'I am' passes through the film of our vāsanās, it appears in two forms: as both the seer (the first person) and the seen (the second and third persons). The first person, 'I am so-and-so', is one of the expansions of the vāsanās — that is, it is one of the pictures (a name and form) projected on the screen of being by the light of consciousness. It is the first vāsanā, the root of all other vāsanās.
In Tamil the first person is called tanmai-y-idam, which literally means the 'selfness-place', because each of the three grammatical persons is considered to be a 'place' [idam]. The second person is called munnilai-y-idam, the 'place that stands in front', and the third person is called padarkkai-y-idam, the 'place that spreads out'. Therefore Bhagavan is discussing these three 'places' when he says in verse fourteen of Ulladu Narpadu:
If the first person [tanmai] [1] exists, the second and third persons [munnilai-padarkkaigal] [2] will exist. If the first person ceases to exist [because of] oneself investigating the truth of the first person, the second and third person, come to an end, and tanmai [the real 'selfness'], which shines as one [undivided by the appearance of the three seemingly separate persons or 'places'], alone is one's [true] state, which is self.
[1] First person: the ego or subject, ‘I’, named ‘I am the body’ [2] Second and third persons: the objects, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘this’, ‘that’ and so on.
Therefore 'I am' is the true tanmai, and 'I am so-and-so' is a thief, a second person posing as if it were the first person or tanmai. True knowledge [jñāna] is attained only when the body and person that were taken to be 'I', the first person, are recognised to be second persons, things that are not 'I'.
One important point to note here in this verse is that Bhagavan does not say that this false first person, the ego, actually exists, but only says conditionally: 'If the first person exists ...'. He never actually accepted its existence.
Until they come to Bhagavan, people generally believe that self will be experienced if they get rid of all thoughts, which are second or third persons. They don't understand that the first person, which is the root of all thoughts, must also go. That is why when some people come and ask me what my experience is, I say that I do not have any experience, because in the absence of an experiencer there can be no experience.
Photos by Guy Gonyea