CHAPTER NINE

THE SELF OR REALITY

1.   "The habits of the mind (vasanas) hinder the realisation of the Self, and in order to overcome the vasanas we have to realise the Self. Is this not a vicious circle?"
The Master: "It is the ego which raises these difficulties and then complains of an apparent paradox. Find out who is making the enquiries and the Self will be found. "The Self is ever present; there exists nothing without it.
It is the witness of the three states: the sleep, dream and waking, which belong to the ego. The Self transcends the ego. Did you not exist even in sleep? It is only in the waking state that you describe the experience of sleep as being unawareness: therefore the consciousness when asleep is the same as that when awake. If you know what this waking consciousness is, you will know the con- sciousness which witnesses all the three states. Such consciousness could be found by seeking the consciousness as it was in sleep."
Talk 13

Note: The questioner sees an undoubted vicious circle in the preceding answers (not mentioned here) of the Master, which Bhagavan solves by asking him to enquire into the seer of the vicious circle, namely, himself. Why does he want to realise the Self, that is, his own self? Because he pleads ignorance of it, yet at the same time he is fully aware of it as the questioner himself. Is not that a paradox? The self he knows, or imagines he knows, is the same self he seeks, or else he would be two instead of only one. How can he get out of this dilemma?

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That everyone is sure of his own reality as intelligence is proved by his statements: "I know," "I study," "I smell," "I think," "I decide," etc., but the confusion begins the moment he gives a distinctive name to himself — Peter — as a body, different from all other bodies.

Therefore the "vicious circle" is due to the wrong mental attitude of the questioner about his own identity, and to dissipate this Bhagavan adds the other explanations, the substance of which is something like this:

The Self is pure awareness or knowledge. And, because it is pure knowledge, it has to be present in every experience as its knower, or else how can a thing or state be known?
This knower we call Self. So the Self is the knower of all things and all states. It must be present in the waking, dreaming and deep sleep states, which "belong to the ego", that is, which every individual or ego — Peter — experiences.
Therefore the ego is the Self itself. But, because the Self is one and indivisible, being pure consciousness, and the ego is known by names, such as Peter or John, and by form — the form of Peter or of John — that we say that the Self transcends the ego, that is, being without names and forms.
Names and forms are thus the cause of the illusion of a difference between the two, because they make the one consciousness to appear many.

Now the sadhaka arrives at the knowledge of his being nameless and formless, one in all names and forms — in all beings — by arguing his positions, as Bhagavan does in this text, in every one of these three states and relates them to each other. In jagrat, for example, I am aware of all the jagrat things that surround me, including my own self as
Peter, and my body, or form, which measures so much by so much. Then I go to the dream state, where I am neither
Peter, nor have his form, but somebody else, say, X, with
the form of X. Then I pass on to the dreamless state, where
I am aware of nothing, of neither name nor form, neither
Peter nor X.

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Reviewing in jagrat the whole of this process, I sum it up thus: I, the conscious knower, assume the name and form of
Peter in jagrat, of X in svapna, but remain nameless and formless, as my pure self, in sushupti. Therefore Peter and X, are not I. Similarly the gross body of the former and the subtle body of the latter are not essential to me, but superimposed on me when I witness the first two states. With the removal of the restrictions of names and forms from myself, I remain the same being alone, free from all limitations and qualities. This aloneness is known as kaivalya. And to experience it in jagrat we have to take to sadhana, which removes the obstructions and enables the `I' to perceive itself as the pure, eternal Self.
This sadhana and this knowledge of the Real are the main purpose of the Vedas. The state of kaivalya for the embodied obtains only in sushupti and samadhi, unconsciously in the former but consciously in the latter.

2.   "How to know the real `I' as distinct from the false `I'?"
The Master answered: "Is there anyone who is not aware of himself? Each one knows yet does not know the Self.
A strange paradox."
Talk 43

Note: In the last note we amply dealt with this "strange paradox", and showed that there is no such thing as "false `I'," but only false notions about the `I' which mistakes its upadhis or qualities, its names and forms for itself. Because of this transposition of the `I' from its being the seer to being the seen, that is, the name and form of Peter — to continue the idea of the last note — that the grave error of its being false, vulnerable and mortal is committed. Hence the desire to search for the real and deathless `I' arises.

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3.   "Unbroken `I' `I' is the boundless Ocean; the `I'-thought is a bubble on it and is called jiva or individual. The bubble too is water. When it bursts, it mixes with the ocean. When it remains a bubble it is still part of the ocean."
Talk 92

Note: Bhagavan gives a practical illustration. The `I' `I' is the pure, nameless and formless being: it is the ocean of consciousness. The bubble (or `I'-thought) is naught but water in substance, that is, also consciousness, but in form, that is, in its understanding of itself it has a separate individuality — ego or jiva, the mortal and ignorant Peter, or Ramaswamy. This false view persists so long as the jiva does not perceive itself nameless and formless in jagrat, as it stands in sushupti. But the moment it does the bubble bursts; the false appearance of separateness immediately dissolves, and the jiva cognises itself as `I', the ocean of the `I' consciousness. All that has happened is not the transform- ation of the jiva into the Supreme Consciousness, but the correction of its notion of itself as jiva, as a bubble entirely separate from other bubbles and from the Ocean, whereas in fact it has at no time been other than the Ocean of
Consciousness.

4.   "The Self is only one. If limited it is the ego. If unlimited it is infinite and is the Reality. The bubbles are different from one another and numerous, but the ocean is only one. Similarly the egos are many, whereas the Self is one and only one. When told that you are not the ego, realise the Reality, why do you still identify yourself with the ego?"
Talk 146

Note: The beginning of this text is not properly formulated.
The "If " is troublesome, as most "ifs" are. What it means is this: the Self is always unlimited, and, because unlimited, it cannot but be an indivisible whole. Now what happens is, as
it has been said above, that though the individual is the unlimited Self, he feels himself limited. To this feeling of limitedness he owes his separate individuality. In other words, ego is the Self who is under the illusion of being limited and disappears when the feeling of limitedness disappears, which Bhagavan clarifies in the end when he finds fault with the questioner that despite repeated assurances to the contrary, the latter continues to feel himself the limited ego.

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As for the analogy of the bubble and the ocean, it has been amply dealt with in the last note. One thing more need be said about it here, namely, like all analogies it suffers from the drawback of inadequacy, in that the bubbles in the ocean are insentient, material bubbles (see next note), whereas the jivas are imaginary, mere conceptions of limitedness. That is why Bhagavan always reminds us that "if you search for the ego, it will disappear", its being an illusory conception.

5.   "Destroy the ego by seeking its identity (with the Self).
Because the ego is not an entity it will automatically vanish and Reality will shine forth by itself. This is the direct method."
Talk 146

6.   "In Yoga Vasishta it is said, `What is real is hidden from us, but what is false is revealed as true.' We are all along experiencing the Reality, still we do not know it. Is this not a wonder?"
Talk 146

Note: This is very interesting in that it definitely declares the world to be false. Whatever is seen, thought or imagined is an illusion — a mere appearance; for the reality can never be perceived or conceived. Even the jivas, which are said to be real, are not perceived and do not actually see one another as knowers, as consciousness. What we see of each other are only the insentient, objective parts of us, that is, the upadhis:

height, breadth, colour, smell, sound, mental abilities, expressed thoughts or action, etc., but never the mind itself, their container. In other words, we see the outer coats of one another, and never the Self which they conceal and which is common to all. This is the meaning of the above quotation from Yoga Vasishta: what we perceive does not exist, and what exists always we cannot perceive.

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To take an example, Mr. Paul is an actor in a play. Once he plays the role of a judge, once of a lover, once of a dacoit, and once he acts as a big bear or a chimpanzee. All these entities are unreal, mere impersonations of Mr. Paul, yet they alone we perceive on the stage and not their substratum
Mr. Paul, notwithstanding his being the only real presence.
Similarly, though the Reality is ever present as the seer and actor of all phenomena, like Mr. Paul on the stage, we per- ceive only that which does not exist, namely, the phenomena — the chimpanzee, the bear, etc. The world no more exists than the chimpanzee and the dacoit exist on the stage. This seeing what does not exist and remaining blind to what really exists is the case of every person in the world and is the cause of all his misfortunes. Our science calls it Maya ^[?].
Bhagavan puts it mildly when he exclaims, "Isn't that a wonder?" It is an unconscious mass blindness indeed, a mass hypnosis not to see Mr. Paul who stands all the while before our eyes, but we swear to the reality of the bear and the dacoit who are not there at all.

7.   "There is only one consciousness, but we speak of several kinds of consciousnesses — body-consciousness, self- consciousness, etc. These are only relative states of the same absolute consciousness. Without consciousness time and space do not exist. They appear in consciousness. It is like a screen on which these are cast as pictures, and move as in a cinema show. The absolute consciousness is
our real nature. Everyone's experience proves the existence of only one consciousness."
Talk 199

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Note: Consciousness is "one only" and changeless. It cannot be otherwise. Turn it however we may, the notion of a variety of consciousnesses we meet with in certain schools of thought and in psychology proves untenable and defeats itself, being based on the ignorance of the nature and functions of consciousness. Being incognisable except in Yoga there is all this confused thinking about it. Consciousness or pure mind is the formless intelligence through which we perceive all things. Ideas, notions, sensations, perceptions, are representations in the consciousness, BUT NOT THE
CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF. They are in ceaseless flux; whereas the consciousness that is aware of them is fixed, or else it would not be aware of their change. It is constant, for it has no qualities whatsoever to divide, multiply, or change it. Thus body-consciousness simply means awareness of the body and its behaviour, like the awareness of any other representation made to it. Awareness is like the clean mirror which reflects all the objects that are presented before it.
What is known as states of consciousness does not qualify the consciousness, which has no other state but its own. The states are mere appearances in the consciousness, that is, in the subject who witnesses them. Bhagavan compares consciousness to the screen on which pictures are projected.
It is the pictures that change, and not the screen. It is the acting of the aforesaid Mr. Paul and his impersonations on the stage that change, and not Mr. Paul, who is constant and can act an infinite number of parts without himself changing. Time and space are, like other ideas and notions, objects of the Consciousness outside of which they have no existence.

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8.   "A madman clings to his samskaras, whereas a Jnani ^[?] does not. This is the only difference between the two. A man running the course of his samskaras, when taught that he is the Self, the teaching affects his mind, and his imagination runs riot. His experiences are only according to his imagination of the state of the Self. "When a man is ripe to receive the instructions and his mind is about to sink into the Heart, the instructions work in a flash and he realises the Self all right. In others there is always a struggle."
Talk 275

Note: The context of this text is the case of a young man, who, when once was looking at the picture of Bhagavan in his own house, saw the picture move, which frightened him considerably. The fear continued even after he came to
Tiruvannamalai and saw Bhagavan in person. As long as he was in the presence of the Master, he had no fear, but the moment he remained alone the fear returned.

This is one of the varieties of experience which some people who come to the Ashram, or worship Bhagavan even from a distance without understanding him, undergo, because they rely more on their imagination of Bhagavan rather than on what he in reality is or stands for. Bhagavan's answer is a warning against the tricks of their imagination. I once witnessed a case which appeared tragic in the beginning, but ended humorously. The humour did not become apparent till very recently, after twenty years. But not all cases have a humorous denouement. Some are very tragic, indeed, in that they affect permanently the mind, as, for example, the fatal case of the young man recorded in pp. 314-15 of the Talks.
Others are tragicomedies, victims of which are both the sexes.
The comedies fall largely to the share of the fair sex, because the "riot" of their imagination runs gentler than with their masculine counterparts, and move in the familiar grooves of saris, colour of dress, invasion of her heart and mind by the
spirit of Bhagavan, or even petty conversations with Ishwara — God the Creator — Whom Bhagavan "sends" her, and so on. But the hallucinations of men are much more serious. At least in one or two cases they led to the disruption of the family life. That is why the seer of visions and supersensuous phenomena is constantly reminded to be on his guard. To aspire for the Highest, one has to develop a strong common sense and a solidly practical mind.

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The ripe man, Bhagavan tells us, forms a more or less clear notion of the Self when he hears of it, so that he is steady enough to know the direction his sadhana should take and applies himself well, not allowing his imagination to have the better of him. The others have much an uphill work to do before they become ripe. Even to understand the teaching itself much effort will be necessary. This is their struggle, the labour-pangs of their salvation.

9.   "It is said that the Guru can make his disciple realise the Self by transferring some of his own power to him: is this true?"
Bhagavan: "Yes, the Guru does not bring about Self- realisation, but simply removes the obstacles to it. The
Self is always realised. So long as you seek Self-realisation the Guru is necessary. Guru is the Self. Take the Guru to be the real Self and yourself the individual. The disappearance of this sense of duality is removal of ignorance. So long as duality persists in you the Guru is necessary. Because you identify yourself with the body, you imagine the Guru to be the body. You are not the body, nor is the Guru. You are the Self and so is he. This knowledge is gained by what you call Self-realisation."
Talk 282

Note: It will be noticed that the question has not been given a direct answer; for Bhagavan is very often reluctant to give
a direct contradiction to the statement, or the alleged statement, of a well-known saint, but the contradiction is implied in the answer. Bhagavan does not recognise the possibility of transmitting a power to a person to make him realise the Self. In fact no such power is at all necessary.
What is necessary for the cognition of the Real is not an addition but a subtraction — the removal of the sense of duality which covers the One consciousness. This consciousness is the seeker's own self, which is always present: it does not lie within the power of the personal Guru to confer or withhold. It is there all the time, and if the disciple does not perceive it, it is because he mistakes his body for it; and, as he fails to perceive himself as a thinker, he fails also to see the Guru as a thinker but as a mere body, thus establishing a duality: himself as different from the Guru.
All the Guru can do is to help him correct this false identification, so that the disciple may eventually perceive himself in his true essence, as intelligence rather than as a pile of flesh.

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Then the questioner turns to ask about the necessity or otherwise of the Guru, and the Master confirms the necessity, so long as this false identification and the view of duality rule the day with the seeker, who is taken to be always in duality till he realises the non-duality, which is his
Illumination or jnana.

10.    "Look how every person believes in his own existence.

Does he look in the mirror to see his being? His awareness of his existence gives him the assurance of it. But he compares it with the body, etc. Why should he do that? Is he aware of his body in sleep? He is not, yet he does not cease to exist while in sleep. He has therefore only to be aware of his being and this will be evident to him."
Talk 363

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Note: This is extremely lucid. Paraphrasing it, it means this: no one need look in the mirror to know that he exists; for this knowledge is already available to him. We are aware of our existence with a certainty which is unshakeable.
Therefore the certainty of our being is the one element in us which can never be lost. We may doubt all other things, but this one never. Even in deep sleep we exist as we admit it later in jagrat. This is not an intuited knowledge, nor a reported knowledge, nor an inferred knowledge, but a direct, immediate knowledge. So long as we hold on to this pure knowledge of our existence, to this awareness of our being, there can be no difficulty, no ignorance for us whatsoever. But the trouble is that we do not: the moment we see the body, we immediately rush at it, hug it and call it `I'. This is our fall: this is the genesis of our disturbed peace. So long as we do not see the body, as in dreamless sleep or samadhi, we are in supreme peace — we are in our own state, our own naked being. But as soon as we return to jagrat and re-enter the body, the body becomes that being, that `I'. We confer the consciousness of the being on the unconscious body, and then woe betide us!

It can be now seen that when people speak of gaining
MUKTI, Bhagavan corrects them that there is nothing to be gained or added by the sadhana, meaning that it is not gaining, but returning to the status quo ante, to the condition which prevailed before the body entered our sphere of perception, to the bodiless being.

11.    "How is one to know the Self?" The Master answers:

"Knowing the Self is being the Self. You are aware of yourself even though the Self cannot be objectified. It is because you have got accustomed to relative knowledge that you identify yourself with it. Who is to know the Self?
Can the body know it?"
Talk 363

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Note: This is a continuation of the previous text. Supreme
Knowledge and Supreme Being are one and the same. Chit ^[?] is also Sat ^[?]. Awareness of the Being means knowledge of one's own existence, that is, Self-knowledge. Awareness and Being are therefore simultaneous and identical. To say `I am not aware of myself ' is thus logically wrong — a contradiction in terms. Self-awareness is admitted in the confession `I am'.
By "you got accustomed to relative knowledge", is meant that in jagrat we are aware of nothing but of objects — jagrat is the sphere of objects, though in fact no objects at all exist. Jagrat ^[?] is a mental state, wherein the senses have a free hand to manifest their powers to our consciousness in the form of smells, tastes, sounds, colours, etc., which we assemble in our minds and interpret as objects. We thus lose the being in the perception of imaginary, synthetic objects. The `I', though aware of its existence, gets confused by its own objectivity, and erroneously projects this awareness on the insentient body, turning it into the sentient Self. This is the true Fall of Man.

12.    "Is there a sixth sense to feel `I AM'?"

Bhagavan: "Do you deny your existence? Do you not remain yourself even in sleep? As for the senses, they work only periodically. Their works begin and end; whereas the `I' continues in sleep as well as now. There must be a substratum on which the activities of the senses depend. Where do they appear and merge? There must be a single substratum. That is the Self of which they are not independent. It is the power which works through them."
Talk 363

Note: The questioner, like most beginners, is a bit confused about his `I AM'. He is perfectly aware of his own existence, but is unable to place his fingers on the `I' and say `This am
I'. So he enquires whether a sixth sense can do it; for neither
the five senses nor the body can cognise the Self. Bhagavan's counter-question, "Do you deny your existence?" implies that even a tenth sense cannot do it, for the senses are jada (insentient) and can cognise nothing. The cogniser is the
Self alone. A smell, for example, is a smell only to the smeller, without whom it is just nothing. Moreover, the senses are functions of the Self only in jagrat. Postulating a sense to know the Self, therefore, is postulating the contained to contain the container.

The Self, therefore, must attempt the knowledge of itself: there only duality finds no accommodation: there only the knower and the known are identically the same `I AM', the substratum of both.

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13.    "The individual is sentient and cannot be without
consciousness. The Self is pure consciousness. Yet man identifies himself with the body which is insentient and does not say `I am the body'. Someone else says so. The unlimited Self does not say it either. Who then is saying it? A spurious `I' which arises between the pure consciousness and the insentient body and which imagines itself limited to the body. Seek this and it will vanish as a phantom. That phantom is the ego or individuality. "All the Shastras are written for the purpose of eliminating this phantom. The present state is mere illusion. Our aim should be simply to remove this illusion — to disillusion ourselves."
Talk 427

Note: In the first four notes of this chapter we made an extensive study of the relation of the ego to the Self and of the fictitious nature of the ego. Here Bhagavan tackles the subject from a different angle.

The body is not sentient and, therefore, unaware of itself to say `I am this body'. The Self, though it is pure sentience, but, because it is unlimited, it does not limit itself
to a body to say `I am this body' either. If neither pure sentience nor pure insentience can say `I am this body', here must be a third principle which partakes of the nature of both that can say it. But a principle which is sentient as well as insentient does not exist — it contradicts itself. Therefore such a principle can be only imaginary — "spurious." We call it ego or individuality to mean sentience gone amuck, thoroughly under the influence of delusion, from which to save it all the Shastras have been written and all Gurus have taken birth.

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To sum up: the ego is the Supreme Self itself imagining itself an insentient body. An emphasis must be laid on this psychical error — the imagination element, — which is responsible for the spurious entity, man the ego, that is, man as he imagines himself to be, and not as he in reality is. I think this is a very clear picture of the ego, which continues to give trouble till the Self is realised.

14.    "You speak of the vision of Siva. Vision is always of an
object, which implies the existence of the subject.
Whatever appears must also disappear. A vision can never be eternal. But Siva is eternal. He is the consciousness.
He is the Self. "TO BE is to realise — hence I AM THAT I AM. I AM is
Siva. Nothing can be without Him. Therefore enquire `Who am I?' Sink deep and abide as the Self. That is Siva as BE- ing. Do not expect to have visions of Him."
Talk 450

Note: This is an answer to a European lady who had em- braced Hinduism in the Shaiva cult and had been having the blissful vision of Siva off and on since her initiation. Now she desires this vision to be "everlasting". Bhagavan answers that she is asking the impossible: visions can never be ever- lasting, for in their very nature they are mere appearances,
which have no basis in reality. Reality alone is everlasting.
Therefore to have the everlasting bliss of Siva is to be Siva
Himself. And Siva, being the Supreme Consciousness, is the very self of all seers, all hearers and all knowers, the enquirer herself. Thus to be Siva merely means to be oneself as that
Consciousness, stripped of all sights and all thoughts, that is, simply TO BE.

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"Nothing can be without Siva" implies that without a
seer there can be no sight and, so, no seen. All that is seen therefore must depend upon the percipient consciousness.
Consciousness is thus the substratum of all that exists, i.e., present in all experiences.

If Bhagavan mentions Siva as the BE-ing, it is merely in answer to the question of the enquirer. Any other deity can be substituted for Siva without prejudicing the answer, so long as we understand by it the subject, the knower himself.
This is confirmed by the next text.

15.    "There is no being who is not conscious and therefore
who is not Siva. Not only he is Siva but also all else. Yet he thinks in sheer ignorance that he sees the universe in diverse forms. But if he sees the Self he will not be aware of his separateness from the universe. Siva is then seen as the universe. But (unfortunately) the seer does not see the background. Think of the man who sees only the cloth and not the cotton of which it is made, or the pictures and not the screen; or the letters which he reads and not the paper on which they are written. Siva is both the Being assuming the forms in the universe as well as the consciousness that sees them. That is to say Siva is the background underlying both the subject and the object — Siva in repose and Siva in action. Whatever it is said to be, it is only Consciousness, whether in repose or in action."
Talk 450

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Note: It is now evident that Siva is not other than the seer.
The last part of this text which makes the absolute consciousness to be "in repose" as well as "in action" is a good answer to the doctrinaire theory that Chaitanya ^[?] does not include the active senses. If it does not include them, whence then do they arise and enact a world? They answer that the senses do not exist at all — all is Maya ^[?], which implies that Maya ^[?] is the creator of the senses, which is absurd. The senses are, like memory, space-sense, time-sense, etc., undeniable, for they are responsible for the appearance of an external world, whereas Maya ^[?] is the name given to this appearance, this illusion. Maya ^[?] is thus not the parent but the offspring of the senses. Therefore, the senses are the activity of Chaitanya ^[?], the Pure Consciousness, but, to repeat, an
APPARENT activity, which displays a world that does not exist, like a dream. It is an activity which is within the consciousness, though it appears to be without it, an activity which does not affect the consciousness itself. And, being an appearance within the consciousness, it is the consciousness itself, that is, of the same nature as its substratum; for it cannot be of an alien nature, since there exists nothing but pure consciousness. Thus the world is Siva Himself. He is
BEING as well as DOING — Repose as well as Action. And this will not be realised as such until Siva is first realised as
BEING, because BEING is His very nature, whereas DOING is only an appearance in Him.

Unless action is understood to be a mere appearance in Being, the true nature of the object will ever remain a puzzle to the student of metaphysics. This is of fundamental importance for the proper apprehension of the relation of the perceptions to their seer, of the changeless Self to the ever-changing phenomena, of the screen, to use Bhagavan's analogy, to the pictures which move on it.

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16.    "There must be stages of progress for gaining the
Absolute. Are there grades of Reality?"
Bhagavan: "There are no grades of Reality. There are grades in the experience of the jiva."
Talk 132

Note: "Grades of Reality?" Reality is perfect because it is partless, integral, and changeless, or else it contradicts itself.
So, Reality is not affected by evolution, nor is it divisible into a number of imperfect beings who need the evolution to attain perfection. We have seen elsewhere that the jiva is the
Self itself, but deluded. The appearance of multiplicity of jivas is an illusion due to the unfoldment of the senses which create qualities and hence differences. Bhagavan says that it is not the Self that has grades but the experiences of the jivas. Thus the difference between the savage and the Jnani is one of experience, that is, of mental outlooks and not of substance — of being.

17.    "There is a multiplicity of jivas. Jivas are certainly many."

Bhagavan: "Jiva ^[?] is called so because he sees the world. A dreamer sees many jivas in dream, but all of them are not real. The dreamer alone exists and he sees all. So it is with the individuals and the world."
Talk 571

Note: This is lucid enough to need no comment, except applying it also to the common world, where all men perceive the same objects, same colours, same sounds, same heat or cold, etc. The critics argue that if the world is the senses, as
Vedanta says, individual senses would show exclusively individual worlds, so that there would be as many worlds as there are human beings with no connection with one another, which experience disproves. Bhagavan answers that all the senses, all the men and all the worlds are the dreams or thoughts of the jiva, which alone exists as the dreamer or
thinker. As the jiva in dream sees other jivas with bodies and senses, without any of them enjoying real existence, so it does in the waking state (jagrat). Jagrat ^[?] is called waking only in comparison with the dream state known to us, because the senses are then all out to intensify the illusion of a real external world, whereas the dream state feeds on mere impressions carried over from the state of jagrat, and not on the senses, which are then withdrawn.

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18.    "If the Self is one, when a man is liberated, all men
must be also liberated."
Bhagavan: "Ego, world and individuals all appear due to the personal vasanas: when these perish, that person's hallucinations also perish.... The fact is that the Self is never bound and thus there can be no release."
Talk 571

Note: In the last text Bhagavan declares that the multiplicity of jivas perceived in the waking state do not, like the dream jivas, really exist. Here he adds that they are the vasanas of the personal jiva. When the vasanas perish at Liberation, the hallucination of other jivas' existence also perish, so that the question of their Liberation will evidently not arise.