Sat-darshana Bhashya (translation)

Verse 42.

रूपिण्यरूपिण्युभयात्मिका च
मुक्तिस्त्रिरूपेति विदो वदन्ति ।
इदं त्रयं या विविनक्त्यहन्धी-
स्तस्याः प्रणाशः परमार्थमुक्तिः॥

’In Release form is not’, ’Form is really there in release.’ ’Formless and formful both it is’. Thus the wise declare. Discriminating the threefold Release, the ego broods Loss of that is Release Real.

Three kinds of liberation are spoken of by the wise. Some hold, like Badari, that the liberated soul has no form, no embodiment of any kind. Some, like Jaimini, maintain that the soul in release has a body of its own. But Badarayana asserts that both are possible, that the soul can have a form of its own or can dispense with it.

Now Bhagawan Maharshi states that true liberation (Mukti) lies in none of these states, and that it consists in the loss of the ego that broods over the subject of the possible post-release states of the liberated soul. What is the suggestion here? Surely, a man, liberated or bound, must necessarily be in one of the three states viz., with body, with no body, or with capacity for both. Is it denied that these states are facts? Besides, the verse says that these views are held by the wise, that is, by men who are competent to opine. Moreover Shri Maharshi elsewhere states (vide Ramana Gita).

“The jivan-mukta becomes intangible .... invisible .... He becomes a mere consciousness... freely moves about..."

And in this verse if he asserts that true liberation is none of these states, he must mean that these are states of development coming upon the jivan-mukta, the liberated one, alive on earth or departed from it. These developments, the capacity to assume or dispense with a form at will or to become a mere centre of consciousness, one with the Supreme, refer to the dynamic condition of the human soul, in whatever stuff it may be embodied, physical and vital or purely mental and psychic, or spiritual, or still finer and diviner substance.

Mukti then is an inner experience that is the Realisation of the Self. The state of Realisation of the Self is the same whether here on earth or there in the next, in embodied existence on the earth-plane or in other supra-physical spheres of existence[^105]

[^105]: मुक्तिरेकविधैव स्यात्.

There are no distinctions of kind in mukti or Release which consists in the ego getting devoured by the Real, the Self giving itself wholly to the Supreme the Divine being. Whatever development takes place in virtue of the relentless tapas of the Real Self does not take away from or add to this radical liberation. It must be borne in mind that this is not a special effort, but is a normal state of the supreme Consciousness which by its nature is concentrated power, sahajam tapah. (Vide Ramana Gita and Introduction). There may be manifestations powerful and sublime, wonderful indeed to our common mind, but they do not affect the normality of the supreme state of the mukta, one in Consciousness with the Ultimate Truth, the Divine Being, called in this Shastra the Real Self to stress its significance and relation to the ego-self, the jiva.

Therefore to brood over the possible states of the liberated soul is not at all a means of liberation which lies in the loss of the ego itself.

Therefore, this Shastra once again in conclusion reiterates that the ego that is engaged in these discussions must withdraw from them and plunge itself into the Deep Self and that, that alone is real Release.