Continued from Verse Thirty-Six
37. The contention, 'Dualism during practice, non-dualism on Attainment', is also false. While one is anxiously searching, as well as when one has found one's Self, who else is one but the tenth man?
Commentary: The story of the tenth man is one where someone in a group knows there are ten people but keeps counting only nine. He wonders where the last one is. It turns out he’s been forgetting to count himself the whole time.
This kind of simple recognition of what is stunningly obvious is akin to the insight of Self-realization; it is the penetration of the usual forgetfulness of what is right in front of our eyes.
Yet this forgetfulness is not real. It’s just a thought. It’s not the case that the tenth man was somehow not the tenth man until he remembered it. He was always the tenth man.
Similarly, it’s not the case that the seeker is truly ignorant until realization. He is the Self at all times, in fact. Duality is false not just before realization but at all times.
But duality seems true to seekers. So it seems, but the end of realization will be to see that that seeming is itself untrue, and always was. Note: what this really means is that not only was the tenth man the tenth man the whole time — but that, in fact, never was it not the case that he did not know it!
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.