Sat-darshana Bhashya (translation)

Verse 5.

सत्यं मृषा वा चिदिदं जडं वा
दुःखं सुखं वेति मुधा विवादः ।
अदृष्टलोका निरहंप्रतीति-
निष्ठाऽविकल्पा परमाऽखिलेष्टा ।।

‘All this is the Real, the Conscient, the Delight.’
’No, it is the reverse’. Such are quarrels vain.
Agreeable to all, from uncertainty aloof, is the state exalted,
Where the ego lives not, nor the world is seen.

The philosophic disputations with reference to the reality or unreality of the world, or as to whether it is conscient or inconscient, sorrow or delight, are all futile, as the solution of the problem is not, by the way of intellect at all. It is only an exalted state of the Self that could remove all doubts and misconceptions. For in that state the world as we apprehend is not to be seen as an existence separate from ourselves, nor is the ego-sense active there. The doubts and uncertainties, as to whether all this is real or unreal, conscient or otherwise, delight or not, cannot then arise. Such a supreme state is not only acceptable to all but is held desirable by all, the dualist and the non-dualist alike. The various systems, even those that are opposed to each other, like the dvaita and the advaita, though they may disagree in certain fundamentals, are agreed upon the necessity of some kind of inner discipline, Bhakti Yoga or Jnana Yoga, the path of devotion or of knowledge, to realise their respective aims; and in no spiritual practice, in no Sadhana that is earnest, is there room for thought of the world or for the ego-self, as the discipline followed in any method lies in a concentrated reaching forth of the whole being towards the Ideal, the goal, whether it is Truth or Self or God. Hence it is stated that the exalted state of the self where the ego lives not, nor the world is seen in a state removed from all uncertainties which to the end beset the intellectual mind, which is trained or habituated to move between probables and possibles.

In this verse, there are three sets of alternatives offered and the suggestion is but thinly veiled that the truth of the world is not nonexistence, but existence, is not inconscient but conscient, is no sorrow but delight. Thus the ultimate Truth, Sat-Chit-Ananda, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, is affirmed to be a matter of personal experience to be gained by nistha and not at all by an intellectual knowledge of Shastraic disputations. As it is implied that this world is not non-existent, nor inconscient, etc., it may be noted that the Samkhyan dualism and the Jain and Buddhistic Nihilism are not agreeable to Shri Maharshi.

Because of the absence of difference between subject and object (seer and seen) in the Infinite Self in which the world, soul and God find their oneness, the next verse mentions the Infinite formless Self as the One limitless Eye.