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therefore, one investigates into that source in order to know of whom the bondage or liberation is predicated, one will find that they are predicated of ‘me’, that is, oneself. If one then earnestly enquires ‘Who am I?’ one will see that there is no such thing as ‘I’ or ‘me’. That which remains on seeing that the ‘I’ does not exist, is realised vividly and unmistakably as self-luminous and subsisting merely as Itself. This vivid Realisation, as a direct and immediate experience of the supreme Truth, comes quite naturally, with nothing uncommon about it, to everyone who, remaining just as he is, enquires introspectively without allowing the mind to become externalised even for a moment or wasting time in mere talk. There is, therefore, not the least doubt regarding the wellestablished conclusion that to those who have attained this Realisation and thus abide absolutely identical with the Self, there is neither bondage nor liberation.1 B.: The Self is Pure Consciousness. Yet a man identifies himself with the body which is insentient and does not itself say: ‘I am the body’. Someone else says so. The unlimited Self does not. Who does? A spurious ‘I’ arises between Pure Consciousness and the insentient body and imagines itself to be limited to the body. Seek this and it will vanish like a phantom. The phantom is the ego or mind or individuality. All the scriptures are based on the rise of this phantom, whose elimination is their purpose. The present state is mere illusion. Its dissolution is the goal and nothing else.2 Bhagavan here refers to the ego as the ‘phantom’ or a ‘spurious I’. In the explanation to the two Parsi ladies quoted earlier, he spoke of a ‘false I’ and a ‘true I’. For practical purposes, he did sometimes speak of giving up the false ‘I’ in quest of the true, 1 2
S. I., Chap. IV, § 15. T., 427.