Atmarpanastuti

What is jnanayoga? The Jnani seeks to realise Brahman. He discriminates, saying, ‘Not this, not this.’ He discriminates, saying, ‘Brahman is real and the universe illusory.’ He discriminates between the Real and the unreal. As he comes to the end of discrimination, he goes into samādhi and attains the Knowledge of Brahman.

Discrimination is the reasoning by which one knows that God alone is real and all else is unreal. Real means eternal, and unreal means impermanent. He who has acquired discrimination knows that God is the only Substance and all else is non-existent. With the Practice of awakening of this spirit of discrimination a man Discrimination wants to know God. On the contrary, if a man loves the unreal — such things as creature comforts, name, fame, and wealth, then he doesn’t want to know God, who is of the very nature of Reality. By turning the mind within oneself one acquires discrimination, and through discrimination one thinks of Truth.

‘I’ and ‘mine’—that is ignorance. By discriminating you will realise that what you call ‘I’ is really nothing but Atman. Reason it out. Are you the body or the flesh or something else? At the end you will know that you are none of these. You are free from attributes. Then you will realise that you have never been the doer of any action, that you have been free from virtue and faults alike, that you are beyond righteousness and unrighteousness.

Consider—what is there in money or in a beautiful body? Discriminate and you will find that even the body of a beautiful woman [or man] consists of bones, flesh, fat, and other disagreeable things. Why should a man [or woman] give up God and direct his [or her] attention to such things?

Take the instance of a bel-fruit. A man wanted to know the weight of the fruit. He separated the shell, the flesh, and the seeds. But can a man get the weight by weighing only the flesh? He must weigh flesh, shell, and seeds together. At first it appears that the real thing in the fruit is the flesh, and not its seeds or shell. Then by reasoning you find that the shell, seeds, and flesh all belong to the fruit; the shell and seeds belong to the same thing that the flesh belongs to. Likewise, in spiritual discrimination one must first reason, following the method of ‘Not this, not this’: God is not the universe; God is not the living beings; Brahman alone is real, and all else is unreal. Then one realises, as with the bel-fruit, that the Reality from which we derive the notion of Brahman is the very Reality that evolves the idea of living beings and the universe. The Nitya and the Lila are the two aspects of one and the same Reality.