'See thyself and see the Lord.'
That is the revealed word and hard is its sense
indeed.
For the seeing self is not to be seen.
How then is sight of the Lord ?
To be food unto Him, that indeed is to see Him.
Sat-Darshana Bhashya, v. 23 (pg. 84)
The sense of the authoritative utterance “See the self and see the Lord” is difficult to grasp. For if the self itself cannot be seen, how can the question of seeing the Lord arise ? Here, it is the nature of “seeing”, perception or realisation of the Self, that has got to be understood. With the object of revealing its true character, the seeing of the Lord is described by an illuminating phrase as being "food unto Him". The seeing soul is never seen; it is always the seer, the subject, never an object to be apprehended by anything other than itself. If this soul, the ego-self, the Jeeva, the subjective being, attempts to know its Lord, its own deepest being, it automatically withdraws itself from its pre-occupations with divergent thoughts in the subjective existence or divergent forms in the objective existence, and finds itself drawn to something deeper than itself and once it experiences its original being, its source, the deep Self in this manner, it ceases to be cut off in consciousness from its Supreme source to which it thus becomes a food, as it were, an experience and an enjoyment.
And there is no dualism dwaitha here, because of this relation between Ishwara and Jeeva, between God and Soul, as enjoyer and enjoyed. For this relation is one of identity realised in a conscious union of the soul with its Lord, of the ego with the Self in the one basic Consciousness. Even before the Self allows the ego to get merged in it, there is no dwaitha in the sense that the ego-self has an absolutely separate existence apart from its real Self, as the ego is nothing but a temporary formation in the consciousness of the Self. It is the Self that is behind the ego and though the ego is not aware of it so long as it is in a state of ignorance or bondage, yet it becomes aware of it once it is free from its preoccupations and prepossessions. When it is thus aware, It feels drawn to the deeper being of which it is the surface or the apparent self.
Dwaitha: The Dvaita Vedanta school believes that God (Vishnu, supreme soul) and the individual souls (jīvātman) exist as independent realities, and these are distinct. The Dvaita school contrasts with the other two major sub-schools of Vedanta, the Advaita Vedanta of Adi Shankara which posits nondualism – that ultimate reality (Brahman) and human soul are identical and all reality is interconnected oneness, and Vishishtadvaita of Ramanuja which posits qualified nondualism – that ultimate reality (Brahman) and human soul are different but with the potential to be identical.
Ishwara: In Advaita Vedanta school, Ishvara is a monistic Universal Absolute that connects and is the Oneness in everyone and everything.
