Atma Bodha - Post 54

Verse 44

आत्मा तु सततं प्राप्तोऽप्यप्राप्तवदविद्यया ।

तन्नाशे प्राप्तवद्भाति स्वकण्ठाभरणं यथा ॥ ४४॥

AATMAA TU SATATAM PRAAPTAH

API APRAAPTA-VAT AVIDYAYAA

TAT NAASHE PRAAPTA-VAT BHAATI

SWA-KANTHA-ABHARANAM YATHAA

[Although the Self is the ever-existing Reality, yet, because of ignorance, it is not realized. When ignorance is dispelled, the Self is “gained” as though it were an object, just as the missing ornament around one’s neck.]

In discussing this verse, particularly the aptness of its simile, one cannot not resist asking: “How many doctorates must we give to Sankaracharya for these beautiful metaphors!”

In appropriateness this may well claim the first prize.  It has been said repeatedly that the Atman is the ever-existing Reality. It has always been there. When, after so much of sacrifice and serious Sadhana, the Jnani finally realizes the Atman, what a fool he must appear to himself! He searched and searched, for goodness knows, how many decades, and when he found it, it was in himself already!

Indeed the loss (of Atman) was illusory; and its gain, too, is equally illusory. It appears that It is ‘attained’ whereas in fact It is really forgotten; so It is not discovered but rather It is only remembered! And that idea is caught with great precision in the following metaphor… “Swa-Kantha Abharanam”:

The Missing Neck-Ornament Simile

To drive home the essence of this simile, a monk in Sandeepani (Chinamaya Ashram) addresses his disciple with this example.

Imagine a student sitting for Japa with his Japamala. Halfway through it he goes into Samadhi! It is a very deep Samadhi, and to enjoy it all the more he puts his mala around his neck and brings his head to his pillow. That is not comfortable enough, so he puts his blanket over him.

He only gets out of this Samadhi the next morning. When he gets up he is in a desperate hurry – there are only 7 minutes left and he still has to bath, but where is his mala? There is a knock on his door. 

The neighboring Brahmachari is there to remind him that he is getting late for the morning chanting class. He opens the door and says he cannot find his mala. Instead of his friend offering to help him to find it, as one would expect Brahmacharis to do, he just smiles back, as if teasing him! 

The Brahmachari who is running late cannot take this, especially when there are now only three minutes to go. The friend, still irritatingly smiling, walks closer to him, clutches something around his neck and turns it around.

The Brahmachari realizes instantly what had happened: “Oh, what a fool I have been, its still around my neck!” He is happy that he has found his mala.

Dear All,

This is one of the most famous simile in vedantha teachings and the teacher has to take aid of this simile in almost all Upanishads teaching to his students.

The distance between you the jiva and you the pure SELF is only the ignorance that you really and essentially are Pure SELF, just as the gap between one’s agony of losing a precious ornament and then finding the same on his own neck is only his ignorance that he already possesses the ornament, there, on his own neck, in his own SELF!!!!

All the years of the disciple’s stay in his master’s hermitage, 5 or 7 or 10 years, the role of his Master is only to teach the student that he is ever the Pure ATMAN, even while he is struggling to get a glimpse of this truth in the depth of his nidhidhyasana / meditation, on what the master teaches him every day, from dawn to dusk!!!

While in the path of Devotion, the God is separate and the devotee is separate up to the penultimate stage, in the path of Jnana, the edifice of Master’s teachings on Jnana is built on the foundation – “YOU ARE THAT”, “YOU ARE VERILY THE GOAL WHICH YOU ASPIRE FOR, THE PURE CONSCIOUSNESS, THE SAT CHIT ANANDA BRAHMAN!"

Love.