IN 1946, I went to Sri Ramanasramam for Bhagavan’s darshan. All devotees were as usual seated in the big hall in front of Bhagavan. On one occasion I wrote in a chit, “I feel that I have the experience of the Self, but my mind does not agree with that,” and placed it before Bhagavan. After reading it Bhagavan ordered a copy of Ulladu Narpadu, turned to verse 33 therein, and asked someone to show it to me. It read, “To speak I have not known my Self or I have come to know my Self is ridiculous. What? Are there two selves, one to objectify the other? Experience for all is that the Self is only One.”
On another occasion, when in 1947 I was coming down Arunachala Hill and Bhagavan was going up, I stepped aside to give him room to go, as the path was very narrow, and stood with closed eyes and folded hands. When Bhagavan came near me he asked, to my utter surprise, “Do you still find two?”
On a third occasion I put a question to Bhagavan, “If waking and dream states are not different, can a man realize his Self in the dream state?” To this Bhagavan graciously replied, “First realize the Self in the waking state and then raise the question.”
Once when Bhagavan was quoting an example of the relation of gold with the ornaments, that only gold is real, while the name and form of gold appearing as ornaments are unreal, I raised a query: “Though the ornament is false, we see gold with ornament which is false, which is not the case with the world, i.e., when we see the world in form we do not see the Reality, the substratum.” Bhagavan explained, “In dream there is no world, and yet you see it just as in the waking state. Both name and form are illusion; you see them only when you see yourself in form and identify yourself with the ego sense.”