2.1
In truth, I am pure consciousness:
at perfect peace, quite undisturbed
by all of nature’s seeming acts.
So, all this time I’ve been deceived
by mere pretence, by just a show
that isn’t really there at all.
2.2
This body here shines by my light:
it’s shown by me alone. But then,
the same is true of everything
in the entire universe.
Thus, either everything is mine,
or otherwise, not anything.
2.3
With world and body left behind
by me completely, here and now,
through some most inward faculty,
the self I am is seen at last –
beyond all doubt and ignorance.
2.4
Waves, foam and bubbles are not
anything but water, in themselves.
So too all things, throughout the
world,
are always rising from the self.
They’re never present otherwise,
in anyone’s experience.
It is of self that each is made.
They’re nothing else but self alone.
2.5
Examined closely, cloth is found
to be just thread. So too, upon
dispassionate enquiry,
the world turns out to be just self.
2.6
As sugar crystallized from juice
becomes pervaded by its sweetness,
so do I pervade throughout
the universe produced in me.
2.7
It’s only from mistaken knowledge
of oneself that world appears.
Where self is known for what it is,
no seeming world arises there.
It’s like a rope seen as a snake.
The snake appears through wrongly
knowing what is seen. Immediately
the rope is known for what it is,
the seeming snake there disappears.
2.8
My very nature is just light.
That is what I innately am.
I never am apart from that.
Whenever anything appears,
it is just I that shine in it.
Through all appearances of world,
there’s nothing there but I that
shines.
2.9
All of the universe, conceived
from ignorance, appears in me:
like silver seems to shine in shell
of pearl; or like a seeming snake
seen in a piece of rope; or like
a false mirage of water shown
by trick of light from desert sun
2.10
At every moment that I know,
the world originates from me ...
and then, immediately, returns
to end dissolved in me alone:
just like a pot returns to earth,
like waves dissolve back into water,
ornaments melt into gold.
2.11
I am just that which recognizes
what I am, found always standing
unaffected, undestroyed;
while the entire universe,
right from the all-creating Lord
to every smallest tuft of grass,
keeps vanishing without a trace.
aho(Oh!) aham(I) namo(recognition,
salutation) mahyam(to me) vinaso(destruction) yasya(of whom) na(not) ’sti(there
is) me(for me) . brahmadi(starting from the creator)-stamba(to a tuft of
grass)-paryantam(encompassing) jagan(universe)-nase(in the destruction)
’pi(even) tisthatah(stays standing) ..
2.12
I am just that which recognizes
my own self. And even where
I seem embodied, I’m not complex.
I am just that simple one –
not going anywhere, not coming
here from anywhere – found always
present, underlying everything
throughout the universe.
2.13
I’m that alone which recognizes
what I am. Here in this world –
perceived by sense, conceived by mind
–
there’s nothing with my capability.
For I support all things,
yet do not touch them bodily.
2.14
I’m that alone which finally
has independent self-respect:
approached by seeing nothing
anywhere, of any kind, as ‘mine’;
or else, by seeing everything
experienced as taking place
in me alone, throughout the range
described outside by words and acts
or thought and felt within by mind.
2.15
Someone who knows, some way of
knowing things, an object that is
known …
No such division of three things –
no separated knower, knowing,
known – is ever really there,
in anyone’s experience.
These three appear misleadingly,
as a confusing show produced
by a mistaken ignorance
made up from put-together parts.
I am the stainless truth of each:
uncompromised by ignorance,
untouched by partiality.
2.16
All misery is rooted in
duality, whereby some knower
seems at odds with what is known.
For this, there is no cure, except
to realize the simple truth:
that anything somehow perceived –
as known apart from that which knows
–
is nothing but an empty show,
believed through blind stupidity.
I am untainted consciousness,
the one pure savour of experience,
found at one with everything.
2.17
I am pure consciousness: expressed
in limited appearances
that make me seem what I am not.
Through wrongly knowing what I am,
these limited expressions are
conceived made up of name
and form and quality – put on by me,
to make a show of seeming world.
But where I stand, beneath the show,
appearances are not conceived.
No mind appears or disappears.
My stand is thus beneath the mind:
found always by reflecting back
from blind, unseeing disregard
to where there is no ignorance.
2.18
For me, there is no being bound
or getting freed. For all illusion
is unfounded, is at peace.
The world stands just in me. But
there,
in me, there really is no world.
2.19
It’s certain that there’s no such
thing
as this embodied universe.
In all experience, there is only
consciousness: just my own self.
And though this consciousness seems
mixed
with objects compromising it,
in truth it’s always clean and pure:
with never any trace found here
of foreign matter that the mind
conceives to have been added in.
So how can there be any base
on which conception could now stand?
2.20
This body, hell and heaven,
bondage, liberation, fear: all these
are just conceived appearances.
What have such things to do with me,
who am just knowing, in myself?
2.21
In my own sight, there’s no duality:
not even in a multitude
of seeming ‘you’s and ‘me’s.
It is as if the world has turned
into a far-off wilderness.
What could there possibly be here
to captivate my interest?
2.22
I am no body, have no body.
I am not a made-up person,
leading a created life.
I’m nothing else but consciousness.
My bondage was an empty claim
of personal possessiveness,
desiring fancied bits of life.
2.23
I am that endless ocean where
the differentiated waves
of world are all at once produced,
blown in the wind of rising mind.
2.24
In that same ocean of myself,
the mind is stilled and comes to end.
Here, ego is a merchant trader
travelling in the ship of world,
thus liable to be destroyed
by tides of fortune turning ill.
2.25
I am the unconditioned water
in the many changing waves
of different personalities,
of different egos in the world.
They rise, clash one against another,
play a while, and are absorbed;
impelled by nature from within.