In Part 16 you heard the disciple’s first outpouring. That same current flows on here, now carrying a new color. First the disciple lowers his head to the guru’s feet and says: I bow to you, and I bow again, O Gurudeva, O great soul. You are free of all attachment, highest among the true, the very form of the eternal nondual rasa of bliss, boundless, the abode of a mercy-ocean that stays forever vast. In this “नमो नमस्ते” the heart goes down, and then goes down once more. For everything the guru has already given, no single word is enough, so only this bowing and this praise are left.

Then the disciple sets down a poet’s image. The dense moonlight of your sidelong glance fell on us, and with it every weariness born of the world’s heat washed away, and in a single moment we reached the imperishable seat of the self, rich with unbroken glory and bliss. The guru’s sidelong look, one light glance from him, works like moonlight. The fever of worldly existence was an exhausting heat; the moonlight fell, and that burning cooled. And how fast, in a moment. The guru’s entire grace is one glance, and that glance turns everything for the seeker. Carried by this grace, the disciple says in his next breath: we are blessed, the work worth doing is done, we are loose from the world’s grip, we are the form of eternal bliss, we are complete, and all of this by your grace. There are five “अहम्” statements, and each one names a state. Yet at the end stands “by your grace.” The disciple credits the guru with the whole gift. This is a beautiful union of humility and pride.

Now a spring suddenly bursts open. The disciple does not stop; he keeps naming himself, one after another. We are unattached, we are bodiless, we are without mark, we are unbreakable; we are at peace, endless, spotless, ancient beyond time. Eight “अहम्” declarations, as if a mantra were forming, and each word peels away that old, small identity from every side. This identity was never imposed from outside; it is the self’s own form, hidden until now beneath the upadhi, the limiting overlay, and coming out into the open at last. And the current flows on: we are no doer, no enjoyer, beyond change, without action; we are the form of pure awareness, alone, Sadashiva. This “सदाशिव,” the Shiva who is always, the form of all good, beyond everything. The disciple is saying: we are that. This is the courage to speak the self’s real form aloud.

Then a very fine point arrives. We stand apart from all those “I”-figures we usually claim as our own. Seer, hearer, speaker, doer, enjoyer: we are distinct from every one of them; eternal, unbroken, actionless, boundless, unattached, full awareness is our self. “We are seeing,” and the “we” in that sentence is not it. “We are speaking,” and that “we” is not it either. These are all actions, and behind each one a doer is assumed, yet the real “we” lies beyond them all. And the disciple takes up the Upanishads’ famous neti-neti (not this, not this) method: we are not “this,” and we are not “that” either; we are what makes both appear, the utterly pure, empty of the outer-inner divide, complete, Brahman without a second. He does not halt at “not”; he goes further and says, we are the very thing that shows both, and without us neither “this” nor “that” would appear at all.

Now the disciple touches the very limit of language. We are without compare, the beginningless principle; we stand far from the fancy of “you, I, this, that”; the eternal single rasa of bliss, the truth, Brahman without a second is what we are. These four pronouns make up our entire language, and the disciple says, all of this is imagination, far from our real form. We come before all four of them, we are what drives them, and we are none of them. And then the boldest shloka arrives, taking up the name of every deity with “अहम्”. We are Narayana, slayer of Naraka, destroyer of the cities, the Purusha-Lord; unbroken awareness, witness of all that is; without a higher lord, without an “I,” without a “mine.” Vishnu, Shiva, the supreme Purusha-Lord, all of them. This is advaita, the nondual, spoken plainly, because all these divine forms are forms of one Brahman, and the disciple has already joined with that Brahman. Along with it, “निरीश्वर,” no other higher lord above; and “निरह-निर्मम,” no “I” and no “mine.”

Now the disciple speaks the Gita’s famous language. We alone stand present in all beings, holding the inside and the outside as the self of knowing. Both the eater and the eaten are ourselves, everything that earlier looked separate as “this.” The one who eats is the very thing being eaten. One and the same “I” wears both forms; the old distance of “it is over there, we are here” no longer holds. And then a marvelous picture forms. We are the ocean of unbroken joy, and within us, by the delusion of the maya-wind, world-waves of every kind rise and dissolve. A vast, still ocean, and on it waves that hold everything, rising and falling, while the ocean stays exactly as it is. The wind is an illusion, and so are the waves; the ocean is real. The whole of advaita fits inside a single image.

Then a lovely image of time arrives. All appearances, gross and the rest, are imagined in us by delusion, by the projected flicker people place there; just as kalpa, year, solstice-half, season, and so on are imagined within time that has no parts and no divisions. Real time has no partitions, yet we cut it into kalpas, years, the six-month ayanas, seasons, months, days, all for our own convenience. In the same way, the divisions of the gross, subtle, and causal bodies are not in the real self either. And on this comes a sharp image, the water of a mirage. What is projected never taints its own ground, whatever the fools swollen with fault may say; even the greatest flood of mirage-water fails to wet the barren land. However much water shows in a mirage, the ground stays dry, because that water is not real. In the same way, whatever distortions appear projected on the self, pleasure, pain, anger, desire, they leave it dry.

Now four large, earthy images come at once. Like the sky, we stay far from every coating; like the sun, we are unlike every object we illumine; like the mountain, we are eternally unmoving; like the ocean, we are without a farther shore. Sky, sun, mountain, ocean, each image for one quality: nonattachment, distinctness, stillness, limitlessness. Together the four draw one portrait of the self, vast, free, steady, endless; and we see all four every day, we just do not see them with our own eye. Then comes a small yet very subtle test. Just as a cloud has no true bond with the sky, we have none with the body; so where would its traits, waking, dream, and deep sleep, come to us from? A cloud shows in the sky, and the sky owns no cloud, and the cloud changes nothing in the sky. The body shows “in us,” and it is no part of us; the body may wake or sleep, and we stay the same.

Then a lovely word arrives, kula-parvata, some great mountain like the Himalaya. The upadhi comes, the same one goes; it does the deeds and takes the results; it grows old and dies. We stand always unmoving, like the great mountain. Everything comes and goes past the mountain, clouds, rivers, travelers, seasons, and the mountain stays there, for thousands of years. “We are young,” “we are old,” “we did this,” all of it is the upadhi’s coming-and-going play. And from this the disciple asks a lovely question: does the sky do anything? We have neither engagement nor withdrawal, because we are always one form and without parts; a thing that is single in essence, dense, unbroken, and full like the sky, why would it ever strive? Everything happens in the sky, and the sky itself does nothing. All the “we are doing” talk sits at the upadhi’s level, none of it ours.

Now the disciple brings the testimony of the shruti. Without senses, without mind, without distortion, without shape, we who taste unbroken joy, where would merit and sin settle on us? The shruti itself says “अनन्वागत,” nothing follows after. Merit and sin attach only when someone acts, and action happens only when there are senses, mind, distortion, and shape; we hold none of these. And to make this plain comes a fine image, the shadow. Any heat or cold that touches a shadow, any good or ill, anything at all, never touches the person who stands distinct from that shadow. Let the sun fall on a man’s shadow, and the shadow does not grow warm; let someone throw mud on it, and the man is not soiled. The body is like a shadow, and whatever falls on it, pleasure, pain, insult, honor, the real “we” it does not touch. In exactly the same way, the traits of the witnessed never touch the witness, who stays distinct, changeless, indifferent, the way none of the household’s doings touch the lamp. In the lamp’s light people eat and drink, laugh and quarrel, and the lamp just goes on burning.

Now three images come one after another, each showing a special kind of nonattachment. As the sun holds only a witness-role toward action, as fire holds the office of burning, as a rope holds the bond to a thing projected upon it, so is the bond of our unchanging awareness-self. The sun sees all the day’s things, and it is no doer among them; fire burns, and it never says “we are burning,” this is the law of its nature; a snake shows on a rope, and the rope has no tie to the snake, the rope stays a rope. Then the disciple gives six denials, in three pairs. We are no doer and no one who makes another do; no enjoyer and no one who makes another enjoy; no seer and no one who makes another see; that is what we are, self-luminous, the self beyond compare. Every layer of the bond of action is cut, and what remains is its own light, like nothing else.

Now an earthy image arrives, the sun’s reflection in water. When the upadhi shakes, the trembling of the reflection belongs to the upadhi, yet dull-witted people load it onto the one who is himself the original image, actionless like the sun, saying, “we are the doer, we are the enjoyer, alas, we are killed.” When the water shakes the reflection shakes, and a watcher can think the sun is moving; the sun stays fixed thousands of miles away. That same voice full of “alas,” as if in pain, casts the upadhi’s motion onto the self. And on this comes one more plain sentence: whether this inert body rolls in water or on the ground, we do not cling to its traits, the way the sky does not cling to the traits of a pot. The body is an inert thing, like stone; wherever it rolls, what is that to us? Whether the pot breaks or stays whole, it makes no difference to the sky.

Now a very important and startling point arrives. The sense of being a doer, the sense of being an enjoyer, the sense of being wicked, the sense of being intoxicated, inertness, bondage, release, all of these are constructions of the intellect; in one’s own pure nondual supreme Brahman they truly do not exist. We think, “we are bound, we must become free,” and in fact bondage and freedom are both constructions of the intellect, not present in the self; the self is free and unattached from the very start. And on this refrain the disciple says with force, let the distortions of prakriti come, in ten kinds, a hundred kinds, a thousand kinds, what are they to us, the unattached awareness? A cloud never touches the sky. Clouds float below the sky and do not touch it; the cloud and the sky are not on one plane at all. The unattached awareness and the distortions of prakriti are not on one plane either, so where is the question of touching?

Now the disciple takes up a new refrain that returns again and again across the next three shlokas: that nondual Brahman is what we are. This entire universe, from the unmanifest down to the gross, in which only a mere semblance appears, sky-like, subtle, without beginning or end, that nondual Brahman is what we are. The universe shows on Brahman like a semblance, and nothing in it is real, all the rest is that same Brahman. Then a lovely paradox arrives: what is the ground of everything, the light of all things, of every form, present everywhere, and also empty of everything; eternal, pure, unmoving, without alternatives, that nondual Brahman is what we are. It shows in every form, and belongs to no form of its own; it pervades every place, and is bound in no place. And that in which every particular of maya is dismissed, the inmost inward-facing form, unreachable by thought, of the nature of truth, knowledge, the infinite, and bliss, that nondual Brahman is what we are. Sitting down and trying to reach it by thinking is useless, since it is the innermost of all, where thoughts simply do not arrive.

Now the last chain of declarations arrives, again in mantra style. We are actionless, changeless, partless, without shape; without alternatives, eternal, without support, without a second. Eight “निर्” words, each naming the absence of one thing, and together they draw a picture of a wide-open self; and the loveliest is “निरालंब,” needing no one to lean on. Then the far end of this same current: we are the self of all, we are all, we are beyond all, without a second; the sole unbroken awareness, unceasing bliss. Three “सर्व” words at once, the self of all, all-that-is, and beyond all. The inner core of everything, together with the whole outer spread, together with a place past them all. This “we” is that, larger than the old small “we” by measure beyond measure.

Even after so lofty a placing of the self, the disciple turns first back toward the guru. This splendor of self-rule and empire has come to us by the gift of your grace, your glory, and your greatness; to the noble guru, the great soul, a bow and a bow, and then a bow again. The real kingdom here is one’s own true nature, and the whole credit goes to the guru; two bows, then one more, because no single word will do. And then comes the most feeling-laden shloka of the whole hymn. In the great dream, wandering the dense forest of maya-made birth, age, and death, suffering day after day from many fevers, tormented by the tiger of the ego, you woke us from sleep by your utmost grace, O Gurudeva, and you saved us. The living being wanders in the great dream through the dense forest of birth, age, and death, fevers on every side, pain, sickness, defeat, insult; and in the middle a tiger of ego hunts it day after day. The guru came for one thing, to wake the seeker; sleep broke, the forest opened, the tiger vanished.

And at the end, the most mysterious shloka. A bow to that which is forever one; a bow to some glory beyond all telling; the glory that shines out as this whole world-form, O king of gurus, all of this is yours alone. A bow to that incomparable glory whose name cannot even be spoken; and the loveliest line is this, that whatever shines out as the world-form is entirely the guru’s form. Whatever shows outside is the guru. In this way the disciple carries his hymn to its highest height and ends it, lifting the guru above any single person, seeing him as the world-form itself.