Sri John Grimes:
A sage is like an awakened one who speaks to us in our dreams. Picture yourself at home in your bed asleep. Your father, who is awake, comes in and speaks to you. You may hear his words, but you will distort them. The closer you are to waking, the more precisely will you understand him. If you are fast asleep, you will hear nothing. A devotee of Sri Ramana put it wonderfully:
"Do you understand that you cannot ask a valid question about yourself because you do not know whom you are asking about. In the question, 'Who am I?' the 'I' is not known and the question can be worded as, "I do not know what I mean by 'I'." What you are, you must find out. I can only tell you what you are not. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the world. Don't be afraid of a world you yourself have created. Cease from looking for happiness and reality in a dream and you will wake up. You need not know all the 'why' and 'how', there is no end to questions. Abandon all desires, keep you mind silent, and you shall discover."
Source: Ramana Maharshi, The Crown Jewel of Advaita
Dear Devotees,
Yes, this is indeed wonderful! Only those who are closer to awakening will hear Guru's and Gita's Words of Grace. Initially, they are not clear in the feeble light of the mind and they are hardly sensible to start with. But as one gets closer to awakening due to Grace, Awareness goes on deepening and Divine Words are lighted, that is, go on acquiring deeper meaning with crystal-clear clarity. However, if one is fast asleep, one is not likely to hear anything, and even if one hears, meaning and import are blurred and distorted. This is why perhaps majority of the world population simply do not care!
Dear devotees, Sri Bhagwan has taught that our effort to get rid of this dream of the waking state and our effort to realize the awakening are all part of the dream. When we attain Jnana we see that that there was neither the dream during the sleep, nor the waking state, but only ourselves and our real state.
During dream, objects are external to oneself. However, when one wakes one knows that all dream objects were actually internal to oneself. Only on waking one realizes that dream objects which appeared external to the dreamer in the dream were actually internal. Likewise, Sri Bhagwan has pointed out that only upon Self-realization or True Awakening one realizes that the objects of the world which were perceived as external to oneself are really internal. As waking state negates all the dream objects and dream experiences, so also, Self-realization obliterates all dream objects and experiences of the dream of the waking state.
Dear devotees, I have always felt that those who are attracted to Sri Bhagwan and His Teaching of the Atma-vichara are not fast asleep, and therefore, we must be hearing Guru's Words of Grace. If we are hearing Guru's Words, we must be having at least the inkling and intuition that this mundane life is something like a dream. Isn't it? Well then, duty is cast upon us to cease looking for happiness and reality in the dream of the waking state, and we wake up, as Sri Bhagwan's Devotee said.
Thanks very much.
Pranam,
Anil