Sat-darshana Bhashya (translation)

Verse 2.

मृत्युञ्जयं मृत्युभिया श्रिताना-
महमति भृत्युमुपैति पूर्वम् ।
अथ स्वभावादमृतेषु तेषु
कथं पुनर्म त्युधियोऽवकाशः॥

Those lose at once their selves who from fear of death Seek refuge in the Lord, Conqueror of death. Then by nature immortals are they. How then is thought of death to them?

They are great and realise that nothing on earth could conquer death for them; and from this the most invincible of all fears, they seek the protection of the Lord. What happens when they seek refuge in the Lord from fear of death? "They lose their selves at once’. Obviously it cannot be the real self that dies, immortal as that is. It is the ego-idea aham-mati that is put out the moment it seeks the protection of Him from whom it has derived its being. It is the ego-self that is struck with fear. What is this ego? It is a persistent pose of the Real Self on the surface being reflected in the self; it is the apparent self, the immediate sense of ’I’. It identifies itself with the body and says ’I am independent and separate from other existences; I am this body, this body is mine’. It is primarily formed in the mind and helps it to lend its support to the separative movement and divided interests of bodily life on earth. And when we say that it is the ego-self that loses itself on our approach to the Lord, Conqueror of death, it follows that there is no formation of the ego in the Real Self, who is the Lord of all existence and who is seated in the Heart spoken of in the first verse. That is why it is stated to be the apparent and impermanent self, not in the depths but on the surface. It is clear then that what is fear-struck in man is the ego which being a dissoluble formation naturally dies.

Now where does the ego-self seek the Lord’s protection? Evidently in the Heart itself. Even though the ego, circumscribed as it is in its own movement, may try to seek the Lord outside of itself, He is really in the Heart as its own ultimate Reality, the Self-being. Therefore when the ego seeks the Lord’s protection in earnest, the burden it carries and all its interests are either forgotten or automatically committed to the Lord’s hands. Then if the ego gets stripped of all its interests, its coverings, it ceases to be the ego. For it is the divided interests of the ego that spin around it a cobweb of notions, constructing a personal world of elusive and illusory forms of consciousness and strengthen it in its own fancy of a detached and exclusive personal existence with a false and wrong claim for the all that environs it. But it all its interests are focussed in and taken up into one supreme interest, then the ego is unwinged, as it were, dissolved or transformed into a true mould or reflection of the Real Self, the Lord in the Heart, ever one with Him, the Immortal without birth and death.

So in the third line we find, "Then by nature Immortals are they.’ Those that have lost their ego-selves by seeking the Lord’s protection, gain their Real Self, and as this is immortal unlike the mortal ego-self, they are called immortals. From the divine and spiritual standpoint, to be immortal is natural; and to be mortal is also natural from the human and the mental view point. As it is the ego that identifies itself with mind, life and body that perishes at the Lord’s feet, it is stated ’they lose their selves at once’. That is their ego-selves. And they become immortals because of their conscious union with the immortal Lord who is seated in the Heart. Do they not all become one in God, their Supreme centre? Will it not be more proper to say they become the Immortal, as it is the One Lord that is the Real Self in and of all beings. No. It is true that it is the One Self atman that has become the support of the ego-selves of the many; but when the ego perishes, the individuality of the Lord as its Real Self does not dissolve with the ego. In fact, the immortality of the immortal Lord is not at all manifest in the individual as long as the mortal ego does not work itself out. And it begins to manifest in the individual in whom the purpose of the ego is fulfilled in its loss or transformation into a true mould of the Lord or the Real Self; as it thereby loses its character as the ego, this transformation is generally mentioned as the death or disappearance of the ego. This ego then discovers its original and the Real and becomes a true mould of distinct individuality of the self, and, thereby, the individual Soul of the Self Supreme.

Hence the plural “immortals’ is used to denote the distinct individuality of such souls as are true moulds of the Self in conscious union with the Immortal Supreme seated in the Heart.

Therefore in those holy beings who take refuge in the Lord of all existence, the ego which the ancients discovered to be a psychophysical knot, called granthi in their parlance is loosened or cut asunder, and with the dissolution of this radical knot all other ties of ignorance disappear. How then is it possible for such beings to be lost in bodily consciousness and led astray by the mortal ego when they are firmly established in the knowledge by identity, in the supreme expereience of their real self, the Immortal Divine.

It is to be noted that this verse stresses the need and justification of the path of devotion Bhakti which consists in a spirit of surrender prapatti. But the surrender can be complete only in those that are in that exalted state of self-poise referred to in the first verse. Search for the Self in the Heart occasioned by some felt need or by fear of death, as in the case of Shri Ramana Maharshi, results in the giving up of all that one is and has to the care of the Lord. Indeed this verse of invocation throws light on Shri Maharshi’s inner life and personal experience, for it is a well-known fact that it was his search for protection from fear of death that initiated the process of building up his inner life and led him to the Father whom he describes as the one eternal Self cf all souls and of all existences. That is why he mentions fear of death as occasioning the surrender, instead of explicitly stating that surrender from love of God is the means that is right and natural, seeing that He is our own deepest self, the most Beloved and that indeed ’All are He’ as the next verse states. It may be remarked in passing that the fear of death is of all fears the hardest to bear and the most invincible and being most natural is the least unreasonable. From this dreaded mortality there is no protection from any source other than the One that itself has conquered it.

Thus we see that settled state in the self nistha and surrender prapatti lead to the same end. Though the attitudes in the path of knowledge jnana and in that of devotion bhakti are different, because of the difference in temperament and development of the devotee and the seeker after Truth, the state of Self-realisation is consummated in the surrender of all that one is and has to the Supreme and conversely, surrender is fulfilled in knowledge of the Self. Thus the Maharshi does not see contradiction between the paths of knowledge and Devotion, jnana and bhakti.

These two verses at the commencement of the work suggest the two-fold path of Knowledge and Devotion, affirming the Impersonal Brahman niskala as the subject of nistha and invoking the Grace of the Personal God sakala, the Supreme goal of self-offering. Incidentally such a commencement conforms to the sacred convention of beginning a work with a word of Prayer to one’s adored and chosen deity, ista devata.