'Enlightenment is straightly attained by freedom from separate selfhood.'
- THE BUDDHA 'Is not the idea of liberation in the domain of maya? Does not the Vedanta teach that the Atman (the I-reality) is always free? Why then should I struggle for my liberation?'
- VIVEKANANDA
We have noted that this was the view of Ramana Maharshi (Ch. 28, Reality and Manifestation IX, p. 117). We can observe in several paragraphs of the brief Huang Po doctrine that Hsi Yun said the same thing. Is it not also implicit in Hui Neng?
But what are these people? Are they not precisely the outstanding, incontrovertible examples of men who lived, each in his way, for long years in a state of permanent illumination, the obvious Jivan Muktas of history?
They were speaking of what they knew from experience; their words do not excite controversy or arouse in us an expression of opinion; their words fall straight into our minds like stones thrown into a pond, clearly and definitely as (what we can recognise as) truth itself.
Beside them let us ask what is the value of the theories of metaphysicists and mystics who write about something they seek but have not found? These are opinions merely, interesting, stimulating, valuable as discussion among students, advanced students speaking to elementary students.
Let us be clear about the relative value of the two sources of knowledge. Moreover though both are necessarily expressed intellectually the latter are at best based on occasional intuitions, hastily seized and imperfectly interpreted, whereas the former are a direct and deliberate interpretation of knowledge from the plane on which intuition itself derives. And how simple and direct are the latter by comparison with the former! Is that not significative in itself?
Hui Neng, Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, all realised their identity with Reality in early youth. None was at any time an intellectual. Each merely spoke to us in his own way from the plane on which he lived. Their verbal formulae differed, but the sense of their words is identical.
Do we know of any illuminated man, historically speaking, who realised his identity with Reality via an intellectual approach?
