When we worship the Lord, invoking Him by our constant contemplation upon His glories, our mind becomes detached from all its attachments with the pluralistic world. Thus when the mind is turned toward the Higher, through our earnest identification with His glories, the Truth, which is already within, unveils and reveals Itself.

Truth is not something separate from us - It is already there as the Illuminator behind every thought. As soon as the mind is hushed, Truth is quickly uncovered, just as a lost key previously sought in futile excitement is at last discovered in one's own pocket. The key was always there, but not being aware of its presence, the owner searched everywhere in vain. It was with us all the time, but we did not know it. Likewise when we invoke Truth, we experience It as divine revelation.

The Atman, the Self, is ever with us, but because It is now veiled from our direct perception, we do not apprehend It. Recognition of the Truth takes no time - the Self is revealed immediately when we remove the obstacles that blind us to It. The non-apprehension is removed. Turning our whole mind toward Him through constant contemplation of His glories will lead us to apprehend the Reality, Lord Narayana

It is the Lord Himself who gives His faithful devotee the experience of this absolute, unchanging Truth. The devotee cannot say "I know God," "I saw God," for Reality is beyond the triple distinctions of experiencer, experienced, and experiencing. At that stage, there is no instrument whereby we can perceive, feel, or think of Him. The knower, the known, and the process of knowing are all merged into the pure Consciousness.

When the equipments are transcended, there is no instrument with which to know. Then who allows us to understand the Reality? The Lord, out of His own compassion, allows us to experience Him. The effort to realize is not our responsibility. We only need to experience. Eating is our job. To make it possible for us to eat is the Lord's own work.

Even in the world outside, a thing existing may sometimes be veiled from our perception because we need certain favourable conditions to perceive it. In order to hear a sound, the sound produced must be of the right frequency and the sound waves must also reach the eardrum of the listener. Similarly, it is not sufficient if an object is in front of the eyes to give us the perception of it. It must be bathed in a beam of light and only then can the eyes recognize it.

Following these analogies, the Self that already exists in us, now hiding behind conditions not favourable for lts cognition, becomes unveiled when these unfavourable conditions are removed. This negative atmosphere in us that screens the Self from us is called darkness (tamas) born of ignorance. Remember that even in the darkness of ignorance the Self is abiding; only it is not available for our intimate subjective experience. When seekers have established themselves in the constant invocation of the Supreme, they become fit for the final experience of their real identity with the Self.

Rediscovery of the Self

When a seeker succeeds in removing all the veils of ignorance, which are nothing but his own mental agitations caused by the clouding of his intellect, the self-effulgent Self spontaneously reveals Itself in lts own light. Meaning, It does not come as a result of any deliberate action, but is a spontaneous revelation, as though by the intervention of divine grace. Therefore Lord Krishna says:

Out of pure compassion for them, I, dwelling within their heart,

destroy the darkness born of ignorance, by the luminous lamp of knowledge.

The above idea of divine grace can be made clear by an example. Let us imagine that we are searching for a fluorescent dialled watch kept on a table in a dark room. As we remove the various papers and books that were covering the watch, suddenly we come to recognize by its own light the watch we searched for. Similarly, the self-effulgent Self, when hidden behind the smoke screen of ignorance, may for the time being appear as though non-existent but when the enveloping ignorance is removed, Its own grace is sufficient to illumine It.

When the darkness of ignorance is destroyed by the luminous lamp of knowledge, the Self stands revealed in Its own glory as one without a second, all pervading, and all full. This act of Self-revelation is undertaken and performed by the Lord, the Self, who ever abides in the heart of His devotees. This kindly act of revealing the Self is undertaken in a spirit of compassion toward ltself. When I am tired of walking during my pilgrimage, I may sit on the roadside to rest out of compassion for myself.

This compassion cannot be directly invoked unless the seeker pays the price for it. In the daytime when I open the curtain in my room, the sunlight, out of compassion, illumines the room for me. We know that the sunlight has neither the freedom to withdraw its compassion as long as the curtains are open, nor has it the ability to show its compassion before the curtains are opened. In short, the sunlight is invoked the moment when that which obstructs the sunlight is removed. And just as darkness is instantly removed by light, regardless of the density of the darkness, so also in the one who has knowledge of the Self, the beginningless ignorance is at once lifted, and within a lightning flash, his ignorance ends. When ignorance has ended, there is the immediate apprehension of Truth, the supreme Brahman.

To those whose ignorance has been destroyed by the knowledge of the Self,

knowledge like the sun reveals the supreme Brahman.

In the case of the finite mortal sighing and suffering in ignorance, the Self is screened off by the walls of ignorance. Ignorance creates the egocentric concept that thrives in the body, mind, and intellect. With the end of ignorance, the ego also ends and the individual realizes his true nature as the Self.

When a dreamer wakes up, he ends his dream life along with his dream and discovers himself to be the waker. The waker is never known or understood or recognized as an object attained by the dreamer on his waking. The dreamer himself transcends the dream world, and enters the realm of the waking wherein he knows himself to be the waker. In the same way, when the deluded ego walks out of ignorance and enters the realm of pure Consciousness, it becomes the Consciousness that is the Self. This relationship between the ego and the Self and the technique of rediscovery of the Self by the ego, are beautifully described by the example given in this verse. Generally students fail to understand how the Self can be experienced when the experiencer, the ego, and the instruments of experiencing, which are familiar to them through perception, feeling, and thinking have all ended.

Foreseeing this possibility, Lord Krishna tries to explain how, when the ego has ended, knowledge becomes self-evident, by the example given in the second line of the verse: "like the sun." To see the sun we need no other light; to experience the Self we need no other experience. The Self is Consciousness. To become conscious of Consciousness, we need no separate consciousness. To know Knowledge, we need no knowledge other than Knowledge. Knowledge is the very faculty of knowing. Similarly, when the ego rediscovers the Self, it becomes the Self.

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Source - ‘ Divine Grace’, the Mananam series published by Chinmaya Mission West.