From a friend:
Avidyayā mṛityuṁ tīrtvā vidyayā amṛitam aśhnute
Through Avidyā, ignorance, you cross beyond mortality, beyond death, beyond
change; through Vidyā, knowledge, you taste immortality.
Īshā Upanishad 11
The Self is always the Self; it is never non-Self; but somehow it became
identified with the body and with the whole objective field of life. So the ‘I’
got mixed up with ‘mine’; and when the ‘I’ awakens fully to its own original
identity, then is the taste of immortality.
The practice is just for this—to awaken to one’s own immortal reality. And
practice means we go beyond that which we have been identified all the time—we
transcend that, and transcend, and transcend, and transcend With time the
taste of transcendental consciousness begins to be a little more lasting, more
lasting, more lasting, and gradually the long identification with the
boundaries of the body and the surroundings begins to dissolve. Those
impressions begin to melt.
So this practice, or Sādhanā, is just for the sake of transcending change.
Through change you transcend change. That is why it says, through ignorance you
cross beyond the field of change—through ignorance. Because enlightenment is
the reality; ignorance is a mirage. You have the glasses on the eyes, but you
are searching—where are the glasses? You are the Self, but you are
searching—where is the Self, where is the Self? So the whole search is a kind
of fraud, which is just Avidyā. The reality is eternity, immortality; so you
taste immortality by virtue of being immortality. But to be immortal, you have
first to cross beyond the boundaries of change. Through change you transcend
change; through knowledge, that awakening, you taste immortality.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 6 December 1964, History of Thirty Years around the
World, p.574.
