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– Swami Ranganathananda,
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The search for the Self must leave them [body, senses, mind, ego] behind and proceed deeper.
The search for the Self must leave them [body, senses, mind, ego] behind and proceed deeper.
If nothing is discovered beyond these changing not-self elements, man is right in resigning himself to nihilism in philosophy and pragmatism in life. Vedanta, however, finds in the facts of experience enough intimations of a changeless reality, which justify a more penetrating investigation of experience by reason. The reason is confronted by the puzzling fact that the diverse experiences of man form a unity, and there is also the fact of memory. These presuppose a changeless center in man; without such a changeless center, the perception of change, the experience of memory and their attributions to the one and the same knowing subject will become inexplicable. Such a scrutiny of experience revealed to Vedanta the presence of a changeless subject or knower at the center of the knowing process, at the core of human personality. As affirmed by Shankaracharya in his Vivekachudamani (verses 125 and 126):
अस्ति कश्चित् स्वयम् नित्यम् अह्म्प्रत्ययलंबनः |
अवस्थात्रयसाक्षी सन् पञ्चकोशविलक्षणः ||
‘There is some entity, eternal by nature, the basis of the experience of ego-sense, the witness of the three states (of waking, dream, and deep sleep), and distinct from the five sheaths.’
यो विजानाति सकलम् जाग्रत-स्वप्न-सुषुप्ति |
बुद्धि तदवृत्ति सद्भावं अभावं अहं इत्ययं ||
‘Who knows everything that happens in the waking, dream, and deep-sleep states; who is aware of the presence or absence of the mind and its functions; and who is the basis of the ego-sense.’
– Swami Ranganathananda,
Eternal Values for a Changing Society – Vol I P454-455
SRI RAMAKRISHNA TODAY 