The Self is pure consciousness. Your true self is the purest of pure. It is the witness. How is the self a witness and when is it that? When are you aware of your pure self? If you are not aware of the ‘self’, and although the self cannot and will not lose its identity in anyway. But when identification of the ’self’ happens with the body and mind then the self is in a state of delusion, and this false identification and delusion makes you suffer.

If you go to a shop to do your shopping and having bought what you need; you then realize that you forgot your wallet at home, so you just walk out without buying what you need. However, when you get to the car and whilst getting the keys of the car out of your pocket some monies also drop out, and which would have been sufficient for what you bought, how would you feel? That money was there all the time - just that you were not aware that money was there and therefore you could not buy what you wished to buy.

Similarly, ‘I’ – ‘the self’ is sakshi, pure witness. However, if I am not aware of it, I cannot be rich and blissful. To be truly happy the awakening of the self is required. This knowledge of the self gives you the understanding that you are pure consciousness – the witness. It is only through Brahmgyan, the pure knowledge that you come to know about your own true self.

Your body is always changing - in childhood it looked different from what it looks like today. It is only through pure knowledge that you will understand how many different bodies you have had and yet you are the very same existence; how many births you took and all those bodies died but you always remained untouched by death. You may not be able to recall one single body out of those thousands of bodies that you took, but yet you are the same unchangeable purity. Similarly, the mind too is in flux; it is always changing with plenty of good and bad thoughts lurking in the mind, all the time. Who knows all this? It is you and you only are the one who is witnessing these changes that are happening in the body and the mind continuously. The intellect too behaves differently: sometimes the intellect (buddhi) goes crazy and at other times it acts intelligently.

When I say that ‘the self is a witness – sakshi swaroop’ can you grasp what I am explaining? The answer can be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’; knowing it with your mind is not enough, the experience has to be there; is that not strange: knowing and yet not knowing. Those who do not realize their self, does their self die along with the body? No, even the ‘self’ of ignorant people is immortal but they suffer from the fear of death due to their ignorance. However, the one who has realized the purity of the self simply laughs away when he/she encounters death.

You are consciousness, pure existence and this body is mortal, jadh – dead. The Self is pure existence and a witness. In awareness of the self there is immense joy and in not knowing the self there is a lot of pain and suffering.

So for whom does a person require to have this realization of the self? Is it for the sake of others or for his own sake. When the self has this shell of the body, mind and senses in front of it, then false knowledge arises that I am the body, mind, and we are one.

The self is chetana – super consciousness, the one who knows, pure existence, truth, ever conscious and in one word known as ‘satchitanand. That anand or bliss and joy will only come to you not by verbalizing and repeating ‘I am satchitanand’ but only through experience, and that too your very own experience of your SELF. When would your pain, suffering, jealousy, hatred take leave of your mind? This will happen only when you understand and realize that the mind also is different from you. No doubt it is close to you but still it is not you.

You just be a watcher, a seer; be aloof from all this paraphernalia of the world and the body. Then only can you really enjoy otherwise you will suffer as no scenario is ever going to remain unchanged. Change is bound to happen as it is the very nature of the mind and this whole world. An enlightened being would say: if it is birth that is fine even if it is death that is also fine - as nothing can happen to the Self.

The realized ones would say:

“What can death take away
from me –nothing!
What can life give to me – nothing!
All the dramas of this world
is happening in front of me,
Let it happen whatever
has to happen, Therefore
why worry.”