When a person is talking, he is talking and you are listening. Of course, that is in the phenomenal level, in the lowest level. But you see, when I am speaking about the Absolute Truth, where are you? Where are you when I am talking to you about the absolute Reality? Well, are you listening to me? Is your attention directed to the language part of it? Is your attention directed to the language that I have been employing?
Disciple: Not only that.
Atmananda: Is it possible for you to experience two things simultaneously?
D: No
A: So your experience is certainly, your attention was not directed to the language part of it. That is granted. You understood the idea meant to be conveyed to you. You were in the idea part.
But were you in the idea? If I am speaking to you… if I was speaking to you about the ultimate Reality which is transcending even ideas, you were certainly not in the idea then. You must have gone beyond it. So when you go beyond idea, where were you, please? So, when I was talking to you about the absolute Reality, where were you? In the absolute Reality itself.
D: I was not the hearer.
A: No, well, then, you cannot be hearing, you cannot be seeing, there cannot be many, you cannot be there as the ego who puts the question now. I cannot be here as the person who returns answers to the questions.
So, I was not here, you were not here, you never put any question to me, I never answered any question. But, of course…at the time the absolute…when the absolute Reality was talked about, we vanished entirely. We were there and there alone – one thing. That is it. Can you prove that there were many there? That’s my point. So, there was nobody talking to you.
D: When you say it, it appears right.
A: Ah well, that is experienced. When you say it, it appears just that is the perfect Truth, but then, subsequently, just after it, you feel: “No, but can it be so? Well, he talked and I heard.” You immediately come back to your ego-ridden self. It is just that way: Immediately, from the right Absolute. You descend down, climb down to the lowest level, to the ego again.
D: What is the best way not to fall into that confusion?
A: Understanding it in this manner will help you not to climb down in that manner. That is all. There is no other means.
Understand it aright as I have now expounded it. That is the only means. There is no other way.
D: This is not a thing to learn after much thinking.
A: It is a case where you have been unlearning many things. You have been trained in the wrong groove of thinking from your babyhood. Well, that habit of thinking must go. Must leave you. Then everything will be quite all right. There will be no question whatsoever.
You are always in your real Nature.
D: In your talks, the experience is conveyed through words.
A: Experience is conveyed. Yes. Well, you say that at a lower level. I grant it, at the lower level. It will by conveyed, etc. but it is not a case of conveying experience at all. You come to Experience. Experience is within you. You go to the deepmost level, to understand things.
That is what is called Experience, where you are alone. It is that way that you understand it. You have necessarily to rely upon your experience for any position that you take up, and if that experience is misunderstood, well, you see, your perspective is not right.
Edited excerpt from chapter ‘Beyond All’ in Atmananda Tattwa Samhita. The 131st birth anniversary of Atmananda was celebrated on December 8
Atmananda Krishna Menon
