We have said that the words of the Masters are to be taken literally, and that our basic error is to continue to regard the concept of an 'ego' as something that nevertheless exists - 'for us', or however we choose to try to justify our retention of the notion.
Another, and vital, error of the same kind is to ignore, as we nearly all seem to do, the insistence of the Masters, in Zen and in Advaita, that there is nothing to 'realise' and no one to 'realise' anything, that there is nothing to strive after or grasp, and no one to do either - and for obvious enough reasons. The Buddha himself stated categorically in the Diamond Sutra that he had acquired nothing by complete and perfect enlightenment. Glance around us - who is paying attention to that? Individuals and schools - almost exclusively engaged in doing exactly the opposite by every means that they can hear of or devise!
The Maharshi suggested that the trouble may arise through the word 'realise'; it is a verb, and the last syllable implies action of some kind. But no action is possible, and to try to take any defeats its own object. It means 'to make or render or become real', but that which is real in us is so already, always was and always will be. We can no more 'become' real than we can become ourselves. What, may one ask, could 'we', objects of consciousness (not conscious objects), electronic machines, force-fields in perpetual flux, psycho-somatic apparatuses - whatever image we may choose - 'do' is such a matter? What a nonsensical notion! We who are already real, and only real, have no action to take in order to be what we are! No action is possible in reality; it is permanent and already realised. Do we have to realise that we have a nose? True, we aren't bothered, in the latter case, with the notion that we haven't one, as we are, in the former case, with the notion that we aren't real - or realised, as we say it. But the latter notion is even more absurd than the former would be - for our noses, obvious as they are, are still less obvious than our reality - which underlies every thought or action that we attribute to ourselves.
True, also, our noses may be objects of consciousness, whereas our reality could never be - I have explained that several times - and so we cannot know our reality objectively, as we can know objectively our noses, but our reality is nevertheless a certainty. It is the ultimate certainty, of which nobody who uses the first person singular or plural can possibly doubt without thereby flatly contradicting himself, a certainty ever present that can never be objectivised in any circumstances but of which nevertheless we can be conscious at any and every moment.
