Sage Sankara says Atman (the seer) in itself’ is alone permanent, the seen is opposed to it (ie., transient) – such a settled conviction is truly known as discrimination.+

Sage Sankara says: ~ “What is accepted without a proper inquiry will not lead a person to the final goal. On the contrary, such acceptance will result only in evil, something which is detrimental to our spiritual progress. 

Sage Sankara says:~ VC-47- All the effects of ignorance, root, and branch, are burnt down by the fire of knowledge, which arises from discrimination between these two—the Self and the non-Self.

Until you think you are an individual separate from the world and the world existed prior to you and you are born in it afterward ignorance will prevail as a reality. Till ignorance is there the universe prevails as reality.

Sage  Sankara says: ~ “The exercise in discrimination between real and unreal and renunciation of the false is real meditation, then why you are indulging in other types of meditation.

Perfect understanding and realization of ‘what is what’ leads to Self-awareness. By holding onto theories one remains in the realm of duality. You have to mentally go on dropping what is not the truth through deeper Self-search. Finally when you become aware of the fact that, your ego, your body, and the world are one in essence then there is Self-awareness in the midst of dualistic illusion or Maya.

Sage Sankara says in Aparoksh Anubhuti: ~

A. A 5~ Atman (the seer) in itself’ is alone permanent, the seen is opposed to it (ie., transient) – such a settled conviction is truly known as discrimination.

A.A 19. Atman is all consciousness and holy, the body is all flesh and impure; and yet, etc.,

A.A 45. There exists no other material cause of this phenomenal universe except Brahman. Hence this whole universe is but Brahman and nothing else.

A.A 46. From such declaration (of the Shruti) as “All this is Atman”, it follows that the idea of the pervaded and the pervading is illusory. This supreme truth being realized, where is the room for any distinction between the cause and the effect?

A.A 47. Certainly, the Shruti has directly denied manifoldness in Brahman. The non-dual cause being an established fact, how could the phenomenal universe be different from It?

A.A 48. Moreover, the Shruti has condemned (the belief in variety) in the words, “The person who”, being deceived by Maya, “sees variety in this (Brahman), goes from death to death”.

A.A 49. Inasmuch as all beings are born of Brahman, the supreme Atman, they must be understood to be verily Brahman.

A.A 50. The Shruti has clearly declared that Brahman alone is the substratum of all varieties of names, forms, and actions.

A.A 51. Just as a thing made of gold ever has the nature of gold, so also a being born of Brahman has always the nature of Brahman.

A.A 53. When duality appears through ignorance, one sees another; but when everything becomes identified with the Atman, one does not perceive another even in the least.

A.A 54. In that state when one realizes all as identified with the Atman, there arises neither delusion nor sorrow, in a consequence of the absence of duality.

A.A 55. The Shruti in the form of the Brihadaranyaka has declared that this Atman, which is the ‘Self’ of all, is verily Brahman.

A.A 56. This world, though an object of our daily experience and serving all practical purposes, is, like the dream world, of the nature of non-existence, inasmuch as it is contradicted the next moment.

A.A 57. The dream (experience) is unreal in waking, whereas the waking (experience) is absent in the dream. Both, however, are non-existent in deep sleep which, again, is not experienced in either.

A.A 58. Thus all three states are unreal inasmuch as they are the creation of the three Gunas; but their witness (the reality behind them) is, beyond all Gunas, eternal, one, and is Consciousness itself.

A.A 59. Just as (after the illusion has gone) one is no more deluded to see a jar in earth or silver in the nacre, so does one no more see Jiva in Brahman when the latter is realized (as one’s own ‘Self’).

A.A 68. Atman, though ever pure (to a wise man), always appears to be impure (to an ignorant one), just as a rope always appears in two different ways to a knowing person and an ignorant one.

A.A- 87. Thus through ignorance arises in Atman the delusion of the body, which, again, through ‘Self’-realization, disappears in the supreme Atman.

A.A 88. When the whole universe, movable and immovable, is known to be Atman, and thus the existence of everything else is negated, where is then any room to say that the body is Atman?

A.A 96. The real nature of the rope being known, the appearance of the snake no longer persists; so the substratum being known, the phenomenal world disappears completely.

A.A 98. “And all the actions of a man perish when he realizes that (Atman) which is both the higher and the lower”. Here the clear use of the plural by the Shruti is to negate Prarabdha as well.

A.A 99. If the ignorant still arbitrarily maintain this, they will not only involve themselves in two absurdities but will also run the risk of forgoing the Vedantic conclusion. So one should accept those Shrutis alone from which proceeds true knowledge. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar