________________
Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
The Upanisads
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
For Private And Personal
71
and not an iota of 'otherness' or 'not-mineness' is experienced. It becomes an experience of infinity and non-duality. As all changes disappear, it becomes a steady and immutable state. All changes become to such an individual illusory. All surfacial experiences of change, pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance no more remain real for him. He attains permanence, all-pervasiveness and all-contentedness. This becomes possible for him because he transcends all limitations, all distinctions. Yajnavalkya describes the actual state of this experience in the following way- "In this condition, as a man in the embrace of his darling wife does not have any consciousness of outer or inner, so the soul embraced by the Self consisting of knowledge has no consciousness of outer and inner. The spirit in this condition is without desire and free from all pain; it is unaffected by good, unaffected by evil, the father ceases to be father, the mother the mother, the worlds the worlds, the gods gods."1 The state of such identity, experienced by the individual is expressed by Yajnavalkya in the following manner- "Where there is a duality, as it were, there one sees another; there one smells another; there one tastes another; there one speaks to another; there one hears another; there one thinks of another: there one touches another, there one understands another. But where everything has become one's own self, then whereby and whom would one see? Then whereby and whom would one smell?
1 Brh. Up. 4.3.21.
