For when you have removed the body, senses and mind, there’s still the residual ground without which nothing could be. Of course I am not the body. Everybody knows death round the corner of each living being. The senses only bring you information from the outside world. But as Yajnyavalkya said to Maitreyi, there is yet the knower who knows. Who or what is he? If you ignore him, you could not even say, there is nothingness. Nothingness is when no object is, but still you are, the ‘I’ is. Thus it is Sri Sankara chanted that famous hymn to the Absolute, sung to this day in most orthodox homes in India, the Nirvana Shatakam: I am Shiva, I am the Absolute. Mano budhi ahamkara chittani naham . . . Shivoham Shivoham.

I am not the mind, intellect, thought or ego:

Not hearing, taste (am I), smelling nor sight;

Nor ether or earth, fire or air (am I),

I am the essence of Knowledge and Happiness,

I am Shiva, I am the Absolute.

I am not virtue or vice, pleasure or pain

Nor sacred word (japa) or pilgrimage,

Nor Veda or sacrifices . . .

I am the essence of Knowledge and Happiness,

I am Shiva, I am the Absolute.

Thus when you have removed everything objective from yourself—that is the body, senses and mind—that steady light still remains, the knowing principle, the knower, who finally is himself Knowledge. And this Knowledge indeed is the very shape (murti) of pure love (prema). Here you do not have to offer compassion to any suffering creature, you are love itself, which goes where it should—you are not there to say, it should go here or there. Since in that state—which indeed is no state, but is one’s true nature, Atman—there is no desire to do this or that, for you are everything. It does what it has to do, without doing anything. When the ego is dissolved, who are you? There is no one there. Yet the ‘I’ is there. The ego’s death is the revelation of the ‘I’.

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