A Duet of One by Ramesh S. Balsekar


Chapter Ten

Janaka says:

Where are the elements, where is the body, where are the organs, and where is the mind?  Where, indeed, is the void, or despair? – for Me who am without the slightest taint by nature?  (285)

Where are the scriptures, and the knowledge of the Self?  Where is the mind detached from the sense objects, and where is contentment?  Where is desirelessness? – for Me who has transcended the duality of opposites?  (286)

Where is the knowledge, and where is ignorance?  Where is I, and where is ‘this is mine’?  Where is bondage, and where is liberation?  How can there be any attribute to my Self-nature?  (287)

Where is prarabdha-karma?  Where is the question of liberation whether in life or at death? – for Me, the ever undifferentiated?  (288)

Where is the doer or the enjoyer, where is the cessation of thought, or the rising of thought?  Where is the question of true perceiving or faulty perceiving? – for Me who am ever impersonal?  (289)

Where is the world, and where is the seeker, where is the question of yoga as knowledge, who is in bondage, or who is liberated? – for  Me who am non-dual by his very nature?  (290)

Where is creation and where is destruction?  What is the end, and what is the means?  Where is the question of seeking or achieving? – for Me abiding in my non-dual nature?  (291)

Where is the ‘knower’, and where the ‘means-to-knowledge’?  Where is the ‘object of knowledge’, and where ‘objective knowledge’?  What is any thing, and what is no thing? – for Me who am ever pure?  (292)

How can there ever be distraction or concentration, knowledge or delusion, joy or sorrow? – for Me who am ever without action?  (293)

Where is the relative or the absolute, happiness or misery? – for Me who am ever beyond any conceptualizations?  (294)

Where is maya, where is samsara, where is attachment or detachment, how can there be any question of jiva or Brahman? – for Me who am ever pure?  (295)

Where is activity or inactivity, where is liberation or bondage? – for Me who am ever immutable, indivisible and established in the Self?  (296)

Where are spiritual instructions or scriptural injunctions?  Where is the disciple, and where is the guru?  Where, indeed, is the question of any duty? – for me, the subjective, potential plenum, free from all limitations?  (297)

Where is the existence or non-existence?  Where is the unicity or duality?  In short, it is needless to say anything more, other than that nothing, indeed, emanates from me.  (298)