#five sheaths

Arunachala - This Linga can be seen on a shining seat in the house of nine gates — never installed there by anyone but having faces, hands, feet, heads and seats in all directions... It is revealed as the Unqualified Being by Vedanta. From it emerges the magnificent earth and is resolved into it. The three qualities namely, brightness, activity and darkness (sattva, rajas and tamas) of which the universe is made, manifests from it. ~The Glory Of Arunachala

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Disciple:  

When I dissociate myself from the five sheaths and look beyond, there remains only a blank. I see nothing more than that. Am I to take this blank for the supreme experience of the Self? 

Master:

71. “In the anecdote [The ten foolish men], the tenth man, of deluded intellect, after counting only nine men and not recognizing himself as the tenth, was stupefied. Can such stupor be the tenth man? Good son, you are the seer of all (i.e., blank and the five sheaths).”

 72. I speak the Truth: You are the unchanging Witness of the gross, subtle and (causal) ignorance, the waking, dream and sleep states, and the passage of time — past, present and future, which endlessly rise and fall, like waves in the Ocean of Bliss.

 73. Do not ask: “By what light shall I see myself who am the all-seeing witness?” Can there be a light to illumine the self-luminous Light? The tenth man knows himself as such among the others. Is there an eleventh man in him?

74. To argue that another knowledge is necessary to make knowledge known, is foolish, and leads to interminable controversy. You are neither known nor unknown. Realize yourself as self-shining Knowledge.

75. Is it what makes the sweets sweet not the nature of sugar to be sweet? Realize yourself as the meaning of ‘I’, which makes known objects as ‘this’ and ‘that’ (or the seen and unseen) [1] and Itself lies beyond them.

[1]  Or: “the seen” and “the unseen”.  

~ Kaivalya Navaneeta - The Cream of Liberation, by Tandavaraya Swami,  Section I - The Exposition of the Truth

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http://ramana-maharshi.weebly.com/uploads/2/4/7/2/24723372/kaivalya_navaneeta_-_cream_of_liberation.pdf

Via Pinterest: Blue Egyptian water lily

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Nāṉ Yār?   (Who am I?)

Since in every spiritual text it is said that for attaining mukti [liberation] it is necessary to make the mind subside, after knowing that manō-nigraha [restraint, subjugation or destruction of the mind] is the ultimate intention [or purpose] of such texts, there is no benefit to be gained by studying texts without limit. 

For making the mind subside it is necessary to investigate oneself in order to experience who one really is, but instead of doing so how can one experience oneself by investigating in texts? 

It is necessary to know oneself only by one’s own eye of jñāna [true knowledge, that is, by one’s own selfward-turned awareness]. Does a person called Raman need a mirror to know himself as Raman? ‘Self’ is within the pañca-kōśas [the ‘five sheaths’ that seem to cover and obscure what we really are, namely our physical body, our prāṇa or life-processes, our mind, our intellect and the seeming darkness or ignorance of sleep]; conversely, texts are outside them.

Therefore investigating in texts hoping to be able thereby to experience oneself, whom it is necessary to investigate with an inward-turned attention having removed [set aside, abandoned or detached] all the pañca-kōśas, is useless [or unprofitable].

By investigating who is oneself who is in bondage, knowing one’s yathārtha svarūpa [own actual self] alone is mukti [emancipation]. The name «atma-vichara» refers only to the practice of always keeping the mind in [or on] ātmā [oneself]; conversely, dhyāna [meditation] is imagining oneself to be sat-cit-ānanda brahman [the absolute reality which is being-consciousness-bliss]. 

At one time it will become necessary to forget all that has been learned.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi - WHO AM I?, Paragraph Sixteen