All the religious scriptures and holy books are irrelevant -- God's greatest book is just in front of you.+

All the religious scriptures and holy books are irrelevant -- God's greatest book is just in front of you.

That is why Sage Sankara says you must first know what is before you. If you cannot know that, what else can you know or understand? If you give up the external world in your inquiry, you cannot get the whole truth.

You have to study the book of the universe carefully and find and realize God hidden in it.

All religions claim that their books are not man-made. Hindus claim that the Vedas are Apourusha: not made by man but revealed by God himself; and Sanskrit is the divine language, not human.

All religions have the same type of claim. Muslims say the Koran has descended from God, and so do Jews and Christians. Everybody is trying to claim that their book is the sacred book, and nobody bothers to look at the real divine book.

This is what the real Veda, the real Koran, the real Bible is. This is the book, and all other books are man-made. Only this universe is the book that is authored by God because God is hidden by the universe.

The universe is real Veda, the real Koran, the real Bible. The universe is the book, and all other books are man-made.

Only when you open the book of the universe, the God hidden in the book will be revealed. When you finish reading the book of the universe then the universe will become an illusion and God alone prevails as the ultimate reality.

Sage Sankara says: ~ “What is accepted without a proper inquiry will not lead a person to the final goal. On the contrary, such acceptance will result only in evil, in something which is detrimental to our spiritual progress.

Remember:~

The universe is verily consciousness. Without realizing ‘what is the Mind? It is impossible to get self-realization.

The universe is not different from the Mind because the universe is mind itself. The mind is not different from the Soul because the mind is the dualistic illusion created out of the Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness.

Thus, the universe is nothing but consciousness. The universe is unreal because it is not absolute and eternal like consciousness.

Until you hold you and the world in which you exist as a reality, you will not be able to realize the ‘Self’ hidden by you and the world in which you exist.

The world in which you exist hides the truth of the Soul, the Self, which is present in the form of consciousness.

That is why Sage Sankara says: - VC-65. As a treasure hidden underground requires (for its extraction) competent instruction, excavation, the removal of stones and other such things lying above it and (finally) grasping, but never comes out by being (merely) called out by name, so the transparent Truth of the Self, which is hidden by Maya and its effects, is to be attained through the instructions of a knower of Brahman.

People refuse to accept anything other than their inherited religious beliefs. For them, their religious beliefs are the ultimate truth. They do not accept anything other than their accepted truth. There is no need to convince such a mindset.

Such a mindset is not fit to acquire Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana, or Atma Gnana. The seekers of truth accept only the truth, nothing but the uncontradictable truth.

Sage Sankara: ~ “VC~ All this universe, which through ignorance appears as of diverse forms, is nothing else but Brahman (Consciousness), which is absolutely free from all the limitations of human thought.

The universe is the product of ignorance. The ignorance is present in the form of the ‘I’.

Sage Sankara says: - VC-47 All the effects of ignorance, root and branch, are burnt down by the fire of knowledge, which arises from discrimination between these two—the Self and the non-Self.

Until you think you are an individual separate from the world, and the world existed before you and you are born in it afterward, ignorance will prevail as a reality. Till ignorance is present, the universe prevails as reality.

Sage Sankara says: ~ “The exercise in discrimination between real and unreal and renunciation of the false is real meditation, then why are you indulging in other types of meditation.

Perfect understanding and realization of ‘what is what’ leads to Self-awareness. By holding onto theories, one remains in the realm of dualistic illusion or Maya. You have to mentally go on dropping what is not the truth through deeper self-search.

Finally, when you become aware of the fact that your ego, your body, and the world are one in essence, then there is Self-awareness in the midst of dualistic illusion or Maya. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar