Commentary on Ramana's Forty Verses: Verse Ten

Continued from Verse Nine

10. Ordinary knowledge is always accompanied by ignorance, and ignorance by knowledge; the only true Knowledge is that by which one knows the Self through enquiring whose is the knowledge and ignorance.

Commentary: Ordinary knowledge is knowledge of things. Knowledge of anything rests on innumerable assumptions about logic, about the reliability of the instruments of perception, about the interpretation of what is perceived, about how the laws of nature work, and so on. The more you know of the world, the more questions there are, as each fresh new piece of knowledge brings questions about how it relates to the rest. And these doubts and problems multiply, so that our current state of knowledge of the world, while quite sophisticated, also admits an enormous amount of ignorance. Ordinary knowledge requires making assumptions and simplifying the world, and continuously raises doubts. This is because the instruments of that knowledge are imperfect.

The only knowledge beyond doubt, therefore, cannot be that ordinary knowledge of objects. This ordinary knowledge and the ordinary world of objects is sustained by the assumption that there is an I “in here” which observes the world “out there.” It is this I which supposedly possesses this ordinary knowledge.

But if we look into who this I is, it suddenly becomes elusive, and if this elusiveness is pursued, it turns out to be an artifact of the movement of thought. The I that we think we are, we are not. And if we chase that I with sufficient intention, attention, and concentration, we will eventually slow the illusion-promoting dance of desire and thought long enough to see through it. And in seeing through it, the Self we actually are will shine. That shining will destroy the illusion that there is an I “in here” as opposed to the world “out there.” That shining, then, will be beyond boundaries, and being beyond boundaries, is beyond time, space, and change — and therefore beyond doubt.

This is not a knowledge “of” something. This is not a knowledge “that” something is the case. This is simply Knowledge per se, the pure light of knowing itself. That Knowledge alone is true, pure, absolute, and beyond doubt, because it is that medium within which the very instrument of doubt, which is the mind, operates.

At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.