The sheaths were peeled away one by one, and at each layer the student said honestly, I am not this. Now he pauses with a trembling doubt. O guru, once these five sheaths are called false and denied, I see nothing here except a sheer emptiness; so what thing is left worth knowing for the knower of the self? This fear is real, and it touches every true seeker, that once everything is removed, only a hollowness might remain in the hand. The student does not hide this fear, he sets it down plainly.

The guru first praises the student, O learned one, you have spoken truly, you are skilled in inquiry. Then he sets down an exceedingly fine key, so small it can be missed. The student said, I see only emptiness. The guru seizes that “I see.” If that emptiness is appearing to you, then someone is there who sees it. An empty room does not know its own emptiness, yet you know that emptiness is there, which means a knower stands present before that absence. The student has, unknowingly, in his own question, given proof of that knower, and the guru simply turns the finger toward it.

Now the guru sets down a direct answer to the student’s whole doubt. The search itself runs in the wrong direction. The student is looking for one more thing to be known, yet the atman (the self) is not a thing that can be known at all. The atman is the knower, like the eye, which sees everything and can never see itself, and that limit is its very nature. That by which everything is experienced, yet which is never itself experienced, that atman, that knower, come to know it with a very subtle intellect. The student saw emptiness for this reason, because he looked for a visible object, and found no object. Yet the seer was right there in every moment.

The guru lays down an irrefutable rule. Whatever thing is experienced, it has a witness, and where a thing is never experienced by anyone, the matter of witnessing does not apply at all. For experiences to occur with no one experiencing them is impossible. This same rule settles onto the student’s doubt. The student experienced emptiness, and whatever was experienced surely has a seer. In this way his own doubt gives its own answer, because someone saw even that emptiness, and that someone is the real principle.

Here a natural question could arise, that the witness knows everyone, but who knows the witness, then another witness for it, and another for that one, an endless staircase. The guru stops that staircase right here. The witness is its own witness, because it is experienced by its very self; to know it needs no other. A lamp shows every object in the room, and to show the lamp no second lamp is needed, it is self-luminous. The atman is just like this, and therefore it, plainly, is the supreme inner self, and nothing else, the nearest of all, with no intermediary.

The guru brings his answer to the student’s fear onto a solid, experienceable fact. The student felt that in the end he is an emptiness. The guru says, no, you are the very one who has gone on shining in every state, saying “I, I.” In waking, dream, and deep sleep, all three, that which rises very clearly as the inner form, shining ever the same as “I, I,” which watches these ever-changing things, this “I”-notion and the rest, and shines as the form of eternal bliss-consciousness, know that as your own nature, within your very heart. Circumstances changed, the body changed, the mind changed, yet that awareness of “I am” stayed present, the same in every state. That is the most solid, most unbroken reality. And the guru adds one tender word, in the heart, because this is no distant vision.

Now a most beautiful image begins, spanning three verses, the sun in the pot’s water, which sets the entire problem into a single picture. In the courtyard a pot is placed, water in it, and overhead the real sun. Its reflection falls in the water, a small, quivering sun. Seeing that reflection of the sun in the pot’s water, some naive person takes it for the sun itself; in the same way a dull-minded person, through delusion, takes the reflection of consciousness seated in the limiting adjunct to be “I.” The real consciousness, like the sun, is above. The intellect, like the pot’s water, receives its reflection, and that small, quivering reflection, this “I,” is taken to be the real one. The whole delusion in one sentence, mistaking the reflection for the source.

Now the same image shows the way, and it is very direct. The means of reaching the real sun is never to keep staring at the pot’s water. Only by letting go of all three, the pot, the water, and the reflection in it, is the real sun seen, which stands apart, untouched, lighting these three, self-luminous, and this is how the wise one sees it. The gaze has to be lifted off these three, the pot meaning the body, the water meaning the intellect, and the reflection meaning that “I” with its borrowed shine. Giving up the taking of any of these to be the real “I,” the gaze rises upward, and the real sun is right there, as it always was, neutral, apart from these three and lighting these three. This is the gist of the whole method of neti-neti.

The guru now applies the pot-water-sun image directly to the student. Letting go in this way of all three, the body, the intellect, and the reflection of consciousness, know that seer-self hidden in the cave of the intellect, which is undivided awareness, the illuminator of all, beyond both the real and the unreal. The three things, pot, water, reflection, now receive clear names, and the moment the eye turns from them, what is found lies hidden in the cave of the intellect, in an inner, quiet, covered place, as it always was. And one deep word arrives, apart from both the real and the unreal, meaning the atman cannot be placed in any single slot of “it is” or “it is not,” because it is the knower of both slots. The student’s emptiness-fear dissolves completely here. What remained is a full, lit, all-lighting seer.

Now the guru tells the fruit of this knowledge. Eternal, all-pervading, present everywhere, most subtle, free of any inner-outer division, undivided from the self, once a person knows this own-nature properly he becomes sinless, spotless, and beyond death. These need no earning as fresh attainments; the simple act of knowing brings them about, because sin, stain, and death all belonged to those very layers, of body and mind, while the real atman was always beyond them. You do not have to become sinless. You only have to recognize that the real nature was never a sinner at all. Here knowing itself is moksha (liberation).

The guru closes the first movement, the matter of the witness, on a forceful pronouncement. One who knows in this way passes beyond sorrow, grows solid-full with bliss, becomes wise, and fears nothing from anywhere, from anyone; and for the seeker of liberation, there is simply no other road to release from the bondage of samsara than to know one’s own reality. The student’s fear was that in the end he would meet emptiness, and the guru’s answer runs the other way, that what is met in the end is dense, solid, perfectly full, and brimming with bliss. And one plain fruit of this, he fears nothing from anywhere, because fear is always of another, and where it has been known that all is that one, who is left to frighten. The guru says bluntly at the close, there is no other path to this, and he offers it as a simple truth, spoken plainly.

Here the second turn of the part begins. Until now the matter was of the inner witness; now the guru brings a great word, Brahman. The knowledge of one’s non-difference from Brahman, this is the cause of liberation from samsara, by which the wise attain the one-without-a-second, bliss-formed Brahman. Here is a fine point, which will open further ahead, that the witness being sought until now is that very boundless Brahman, vast beyond any small or private measure. The inner witness and the Brahman at the root of all are one and the same. This is Advaita (non-duality), and this is the destination of the whole book.

Now the guru says something deep. The wise one who has become Brahman-formed never returns to samsara again; therefore the self’s non-difference from Brahman must be known properly. Take note of one word, becoming. To reach Brahman is to become Brahman. The distinction is fine and essential. A thing you obtain you can also lose, yet from what you become there is no returning. Let a river merge into the sea, and it can never again become a river, it has become the sea. Moksha is a change of identity, and for that reason it is final. The guru closes this verse on a plain command, so know this non-difference properly.

Now the guru gives a famous definition of Brahman. Brahman is truth, is knowledge, is infinite, pure, supreme, self-established, a single rasa of eternal bliss, and undivided from the inner self, forever triumphant. Three words, and each one a doorway. Truth, which always is, which does not change. Knowledge, which is awareness, consciousness, no dull, lifeless thing. Infinite, which has no limit, neither of time nor of place. And the real jewel of this verse sits in the last line, undivided from the inner self; meaning this vast, boundless Brahman is no distant thing, it is not separated by a hair’s breadth from that “I am” within you. The witness and Brahman, the guru says plainly here, are one and the same.

The guru now opens the word Advaita, a-dvaita, not two. This existent is the supreme Advaita, because apart from itself there is no other thing at all; in the state of true awareness of the supreme truth, nothing else exists at all. The guru goes deeper, apart from itself there is no second thing at all. People take Advaita to mean two things are secretly one. Its real claim cuts deeper, a second thing never existed at all. And one crucial phrase, in the state of awareness. This truth lives in experience. The table of logic cannot settle it, and only on reaching that condition does it become plain that, in reality, only that one is.

Now the guru takes a great leap. Until now the matter reached as far as “you are Brahman,” now he says, this whole world too is Brahman. This entire universe, which through ignorance appears in many forms, once all the flaws of false imagining are removed, all of it is Brahman. This does not mean the world is nothing; the world is, and what it is, is Brahman. The problem lies in the many-formed appearance, in our habit of seeing it as separate, in pieces. Let that habit fall away, and the same world begins to look like Brahman. The next verses will open this through the picture of clay and pot.

Now comes one of Advaita’s most beloved images, clay and pot. Though the pot is made of clay, it stands nowhere apart from clay, everywhere it is clay-formed; the pot has no separate form of its own at all, so what is “pot,” only a false, fabricated name. Wherever the pot is touched, the finger touches only clay, at every spot; every part of the pot is clay, and nothing beside clay. This same logic applies to the world as well. Every thing, every tree, every creature is a “pot,” that is, a name-form, and what truly is, is one clay in all of them, that is, Brahman.

The guru sets down a small experiment, one that anyone can be made to run. No one can show the pot’s form as something separate from clay, so the pot is only a thing fabricated by delusion, and clay alone is truth, the supreme real. Remove the clay and no pot remains at all, meaning the pot depends entirely on the clay. Then which of the two is true, the clay, because it can exist even without the pot, while the pot cannot last a single moment without clay. This is the test of truth, that it stand on its own strength. Every thing in the world is a pot, and that ground, that clay, that is, Brahman alone, is the one supreme truth.

The guru sets his seal on the conclusion, and gives a sharp, memorable image. The whole creation of the existent Brahman is existent, only that is, nothing apart from it; and whoever says there is some separate thing, his delusion has not yet gone, his speech is like the mumbling of a sleeper. Someone mutters in deep sleep, his words are meaningless, he does not know what he is saying. The person who keeps speaking of some thing apart from Brahman as real is in exactly that condition. This appears harsh, and yet it is an invitation, to wake, and waking means seeing that all of this, every thing, is one and the same existent.

Now the guru makes the shruti (revealed scripture) his witness. “This universe is Brahman alone,” the exalted voice of shruti, resting in the Atharva, says so; therefore this universe is simply Brahman, and a superimposed thing has no separation from its own ground at all. This is the deepest declaration of the tradition, no private opinion. And the last line carries a necessary point of logic. The snake was superimposed on the rope, but could the snake ever go anywhere apart from the rope, no; the snake was the rope itself, only under a wrong name. In the same way this world is superimposed on Brahman, and therefore can never be anywhere apart from Brahman. Even if the world tried to flee, where would it go, it is Brahman itself.

Now the guru offers a logical argument. Suppose this world were a truth standing independently, on its own strength, apart from Brahman. Then three things would have to be accepted, the destruction of the self’s infinity, the Veda becoming invalid, and Ishvara proved false, and none of these three is acceptable. If something besides the self also “is,” then the self is no longer infinite, a limit has formed for it, where it ends and the world begins. The Vedas say again and again that all is Brahman, so they would turn false. Ishvara said the very same, so he too would be false. This shows that Advaita asks for no blind faith, it sets out its case on the table of logic as well.

Now the guru points toward the Gita, and this is a startling line. Ishvara, the knower of the reality of things, said himself, “I am not situated in them, nor are the beings situated in me,” and thus he settled it. We think Advaita says everything is in Ishvara, yet here Ishvara himself says, they are not in me, I am not in them. This is a subtle point, no contradiction. “A is in me” can be said only when “A” and “me” are two separate things, one inside the other, and in Advaita there are simply no two. The snake is the rope itself. So it is also wrong to say the world is in Brahman, because that takes the world to be a separate thing. The truth goes deeper, the world is Brahman itself, never merely in Brahman.

Now the guru gives a very simple, everyday proof, deep sleep. If the universe were independently true, it should appear even in deep sleep, yet there nothing appears at all, so it is like a dream, not the final truth. The reasoning is straightforward. If this world truly stood on its own strength, its awareness should persist even in deep sleep, yet every night the entire world vanishes and not a jot of difference is made, rest is gained instead. A thing that vanishes by the mere act of falling asleep, how can it be the final truth. This carries no claim that the world fails to exist; it claims only that the world is not the final truth it appears to be. The real, enduring truth is that which remained even in deep sleep, that is, the witness, and that is Brahman.

The guru now brings the whole matter to a clear conclusion, and the last line runs very deep. Therefore the world is not apart from the supreme self, its appearing as separate is false; what worth of its own has a superimposed thing, it is the ground itself that, through delusion, begins to look like that world. The rope-snake again, but now with more depth. When the snake appeared in the dark, what was there, the rope; the snake was the rope itself, appearing as a snake through delusion, and no separate thing that had climbed onto the rope. In the same way this entire world is Brahman itself, appearing through delusion as a many-formed world, and no separate thing that has climbed onto Brahman.

Now the guru brings another famous image, shell and silver. Whatever a deluded person sees is all only delusion, the way “silver” is really a shell; by saying “this, this” it is always Brahman that is shaped and grasped, and the name-form superimposed on Brahman is only a name. On the seashore a piece of shell glints in the sun, from afar it looks like silver, someone runs and picks it up, into the hand comes a shell. Even when silver was seen, on what did the finger fall, on the shell. In the same way, whenever a finger points at some thing and says “this,” this tree, this creature, every time the finger is really falling on Brahman, with only a name laid over it.

From here four verses are a full introduction to Brahman, every word a pillar. So the supreme Brahman is, existent, one-without-a-second, densely full of pure consciousness, spotless, utterly calm, free of beginning and end, actionless, the very form of unbroken bliss-rasa. One word in particular answers the student’s old fear, densely full of consciousness. The student’s doubt was that after all the peeling, in the end an emptiness would be found, and the guru brings the same word again and again, dense, solid. Brahman is perfectly full, of pure consciousness and of unbroken bliss. The fear was that removing everything would leave a bare room, and on removing everything there was light upon light, with no darkness at all.

The guru carries the description of Brahman further. Free of all the divisions maya makes, eternal, of the form of happiness, undivided, beyond measure, formless, unmanifest, without name, indestructible, this “something” shines by its own light. Many words begin with “a” and “nir,” and this is deliberate, because Brahman cannot be grasped by directly saying “it is this,” every “it is such” would confine it in a slot. So the guru tells it by hint, not this, not that, no form, no name, no division. And then one tender word, “something,” returning to where it had begun. That “something” is nameless and formless, and yet it is, and it shines by its own light.

The guru says something exceedingly subtle, that Brahman lies beyond even the triad of the knower, the thing to be known, and the act of knowing. Free of this triad, infinite, without alternatives, only pure undivided consciousness, the wise know this alone as the supreme reality. In every ordinary act of knowing there are three things, a knower, a thing to be known, and the act of knowing that joins the two. Yet this triad is itself a division, a partition, and Brahman stands even before this partition. It cannot be known the way an object is known, because there the knower and the thing to be known no longer remain two. To know Brahman is to dissolve into it, only undivided consciousness, without a crack, without a partition.

This is the close of Part 8, and it ends on an explosion. That which cannot be given up, which cannot be gained from outside, which lies beyond the grasp of mind and speech, which cannot be measured, which has no beginning or end, that complete Brahman, I am that very light. The whole part was a journey. At the start the student was afraid that after all the peeling an emptiness remained, then the guru showed the witness, then Brahman, then told that the world too is that same Brahman. And now, in this last verse, all the threads tie into a single knot, and that knot is a declaration, that boundless, beginningless, endless, complete Brahman is what I am, no distant thing at all. It can neither be given up nor gained from outside, because it is one’s very own nature, and the student’s emptiness-fear turns completely over here. What was found in the end is a fullness, no emptiness at all.