THE SELF, part II

THE SELF, part II - by Guenther Zuehlsdorf, translation from the original German edition into Portuguese by Huberto Rohden and translated into English by Flavio de Mello.

 

 

 

 

A visitor asked Maharishi if God and soul are one, or not. The sage replied, "Occupy your mind to the point where they agree, that is, that we have to free the ego".  This is a clear renunciation of any useless discussion, and at the same time a requirement rarely comprehended and which evokes a question of great importance, namely: What remains when the ego disappears?

 

 

It is easy to give to this question a formal answer, but no explanation can replace the experience of Reality, the immediate experience. Words like Atman, God, Brahman, Super-Self, Cosmic Spirit, Universal Soul, the SELF, etc., are unable to give to man, as any other word, an idea of the immanent and transcendent Reality, while, in its relations with the supreme and ultimate Reality, still remains the dualistic concept of subject and object, while continue to persist the concept of separatism and distance. With words, whatever they may be, and what we only do is to camouflage ourselves the very lack of comprehension. The Self, the subject of all the experiences, the percipient principle (that perceives or have the facility to perceive) and to know in man is identical to the foundation of the WHOLE, of the Universal consciousness, which is the very Substance of the substance. Neither this nor that may be the object of experience or object of veneration. Despite this, men objective is one Self, creating one second-hand Self, in which they project within themselves and say: I am this, I am that.

 

 

It is part of the abysmal faculties of the Self to create in the imagination a relationship with an object, and yet differentiate from it at the same time. Always the Self appears in dual aspect: As creator of the world of imagination, as the pure "I-Am" - and also as the content of this imagined world, as name and form. On this last aspect, however, it is nothing else but a shadow of the true Self, like a ghost without its own form. In the case that we put another object in the place of the imaginary self, - as, for example, God or Self - we do not approach to the solution nor a step, and we move in a circle; before and after we try to realize something objectively, something that can never be object. While we identify the knowing with the knowable, while we confuse the Self with the non-self, while we degrade God or the Self for a object of relationship - we are far from the solution.

 

 

The distinction between the absolute Self and the empirical self, between the Self and the ego, gives rise to an inextricable confusion, since there is no two selves, nor can there be a ego separated from the Self. The phrase "I am Brahman" (properly: the Self, Brahman, I am), which is the expression of the unity experienced by the wise, it is pure absurdity in the mouth of an incipient profane, which understands by (Self) something that has no reality at all.

 

 

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