18 Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 would not be ego but only pure “being-awareness” (Sa. sat-cit), “I am”. Therefore it is only our adjunct-awareness that makes us seem to be other than God, albeit only in our self-ignorant view and not in his clear self-knowing view. Therefore to know God as he actually is, we need to know ourself as we actually are, because he is what we actually are, and to know ourself as we actually are, we need to know ourself without any adjuncts, as Bhagavan says in verse 25 of Upadēśa Undiyār: Knowing oneself leaving adjuncts is itself knowing God, because of shining as oneself. [26] “Leaving adjuncts” or “letting go of adjuncts” (Ta. upādhi viṭṭu) is an idiomatic way of saying “without adjuncts”, so “knowing oneself leaving adjuncts” (Ta. “taṉṉai upādhi viṭṭu ōrvadu”) means “knowing oneself without adjuncts”. As ego or jīva we are just a conflation of pure being-awareness with a set of adjuncts, so “knowing ourself without adjuncts” means knowing ourself as we actually are, namely as pure “being-awareness” (Sa. sat-cit), “I am”, and since pure being-awareness is God, “knowing oneself without adjuncts is itself knowing God” (Ta. “taṉṉai upādhi viṭṭu ōrvadu tāṉ īśaṉ taṉṉai uṇarvadu ām”). In this context “because of shining as oneself” (Ta. “tāṉ-āy oḷirvadāl”) implies “because God is shining as oneself”, in which “oneself” (Ta. tāṉ) means ourself as we actually are. That is, because God exists and shines as pure being-awareness, “I am”, which is what we actually are, knowing ourself without adjuncts is itself knowing God as he actually is. 14 Being Ourself Alone Is Knowing Ourself However, though we can talk of “knowing ourself” or “knowing God”, we should understand that such “knowing” is not knowing in the same sense as knowing anything other than ourself, because knowing or being aware of any other thing is a mental activity, since it entails a movement of our mind or attention away from ourself towards that other thing (which is itself just a mental impression, an appearance fabricated by our mind), whereas knowing ourself without adjuncts, which is itself knowing God, is not a mental activity but a state of just being as we actually are, since it does not involve any movement of our mind or attention away from ourself, its source, as Bhagavan points out in verse 26 of Upadēśa Undiyār: Being oneself alone is knowing oneself, because oneself is devoid of two. This is steadfastness as that [Sa. tanmaya-niṣṭhā]. [27] What we actually are is pure awareness, and pure awareness knows itself just by being itself. That is, the very nature of awareness is to be aware of itself, because we cannot be aware without being aware that we are aware, and we cannot be aware that we are aware without being aware that we are. As awareness, therefore, we are always aware of ourself as “I am”. Being ourself and knowing ourself are therefore one and the same thing, because our very “being” (Sa. sat) is itself “awareness” (Sa. cit). When we know anything other than ourself, we know it by an act of knowing, but no act of knowing is needed for us to know ourself, because “being oneself alone is knowing oneself” (Ta. “tāṉ-āy iruttal-ē taṉṉai aṟidal ām”), as Bhagavan says in this verse, and the reason for this is “because oneself is devoid of two” (Ta. “tāṉ iraṇḍu aṯṟadāl”), meaning that we are one and indivisible, so knowing ourself is not a case of one “self” knowing another “self”. That is, when we know anything other than ourself, we are the subject and the thing we know is an object, whereas knowing ourself entails no such distinction, because in self-knowledge there are not two things, one as the subject or knower and the other as an object or thing known. In this context “being oneself” or “being as oneself” (Ta. tāṉ-āy iruttal) means being as we actually are, and “knowing oneself” (Ta. taṉṉai aṟidal) likewise means knowing ourself as we actually are, so just being what we actually are is itself knowing what we actually are, and knowing what we actually are is itself being what we actually are. What we actually are is what is called brahman, which is often referred to conventionally as “that” (Sa. tat), so knowing and being what we actually are is tanmaya-niṣṭhā, “steadfastness as that”. That is, tanmaya is a compound of tat and the suffix maya, which means “made of”, “composed of”, “consisting of” or “full of”, and niṣṭhā means “firmness”, “fixedness”, “steadiness”, “steadfastness” or “state”, so tanmaya-niṣṭhā means “steadfastness as that”, which is the state in which we are firmly and unwaveringly fixed or established as “that” (Sa. tat), the one infinite reality called brahman. Some of the fundamental principles of classical Advaita Vēdānta are as follows: What we actually are is “eternally liberated” (Sa. nitya mukta), so we seem to be in bondage only because we do not know ourself as we actually are. In other words, bondage is nothing other than ignorance of “our own real nature” (Sa. svarūpa). “Action” (Sa. karma)
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