12-9-46

Casually going through T.P.R.'s notebook I came across
an entry there — Mithya=Jagat; Brahma bhavam=Satyam.

As I remembered Bhagavan occasionally saying mithya ^[?]
means satyam, but did not quite grasp its significance, I asked Bhagavan about it. He said, "Yes. I say that now and then. What do you mean by real or satyam? Which do you call real?" I answered, "According to Vedanta, that which is permanent and unchanging, that alone is real. That of course is the definition of Reality." Then, Bhagavan said, "These names and forms which constitute the world always change and perish. Hence they are called mithya ^[?]. To limit the Self and regard it as these names and form is mithya ^[?]. To regard all as Self is the Reality. The Advaitin says jagat is mithya ^[?], but he also says `All this is Brahman'. So it is clear that what he condemns is regarding the world as such to be real, not regarding the world as Brahman. He who sees the Self, sees only the Self in the world also. To the jnani it is immaterial whether the world appears or not. Whether it appears or not, his attention is always on the Self. It is like the letters and the paper on which the letters are printed. You are wholly
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engrossed with the letters and have no attention left for the paper. But the jnani thinks only of the paper as the real substratum, whether the letters appear on it or not."