The adolescent sage Jnaneshwar was a legendary figure in India. Born in 1275, to a former sannyasin (renunciant), he was one of four children. His eldest brother, Nivrittinath, had become Self-realized, and was the stimulus for Jnaneshwar’s own enlightenment.

At age fifteen, he wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita—called the Jnaneshwari—in the local language of Marathi; some have considered it the best commentary ever written on that Gita. When Janadev (as he was also known) presented the work to his guru-brother, Nivrittinath “had complimented him on the very fine work; but he had added significantly that that work was essentially a commentary on what someone else had said, even though that someone was no less a personality than Lord Krishna. He had then suggested that Jnaneshwar should write an independent treatise based on his own personal experience.” (Balsekar) The result was a text called Amritanubhava (also known as Anubhava-amrita), translated as Experience of Immortality. Comprising 805 verses, it ranges from 19 to 295 verses in its ten chapters.

While the tenth chapter is vaguely a summary of the whole, the ninth is

essentially the climax: titled “The Self-realized State”, it outlines the condition of the jnani (one who is enlightened).

Jnaneshwar’s life ended, according to the record, at age 21. After a wide-ranging spiritual tour of Indian begun when he was eighteen, he asked to be sealed into an underground cavern, with his guru-brother placing the final stone.

In 1984, Ramesh Balsekar translated the Experience of Immortality (in a book using the same title).

After retiring as the director of the Bank of India, at age 60, he acted as a translator in English for the Bombay enlightenment teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj, who spoke only Marathi.

Within two years of Nisargadatta’s death (in 1981, at 84,) Ramesh became known as Nisargadatta’s appointed successor until his own death in 2009.

The verses by Jnaneshwar are poetic and metaphorical, with references best understood by a native of India; so Ramesh wrote some 220 pages of Commentary to supplement them.

What follows are original statements by Jnaneshwar — confined to his ninth chapter — complemented by excerpts (abridged) of Ramesh’s interpretation.

For the words which many sages employ, “relative” and “absolute,” Ramesh prefers “phenomenal” and “noumenal”; one can simply substitute the more common relative for “physical reality in space or time”, and Absolute for “unqualified incorporeal presence.”

And the word “apperception” can readily be understood as insight or realization.

The word Jnani (a Self-realized person) can be pronounced yah-nee.

Ramesh’s publisher (Chetana: Bombay) says of Jnaneshwar’s writing, “This is Advaita Vedanta in its purest form…. These are not conundrums but truths, albeit beyond common comprehension.”

If you tried to lift up a wave, all you will lift is water.

The sevanti flower [a spreading flower] expands into a thousand petals but it spreads within itself.

What is revealed in these verses, and in the rest of this [ninth] chapter, is the core of non-dualism inasmuch as the sage makes it clear that the phenomenal manifestation is nothing but the objective expression of the noumenal. This understanding is synonymous with the appreciation that in all phenomena what is immanent is the noumenon…. There is realization of the fact that the noumenon, while transcending phenomena, is nevertheless immanent in the phenomena; and therefore, the subject and the object (the noumenal and the phenomenal) are seen as not separate. After Self-realization, phenomena are seen as nothing but the noumenon. Therefore, the Jnani is fully conscious of the fact that all the innumerable phenomena are his own projections (as “I”). The Jnani sees himself in all phenomena, and there is no room for any discrimination between the “self” and the “other”. He has stopped conceptualizing, and remains in his “true state”…absence of the “me-concept” leaves only the presence of all there is, “WHAT-IS”…”enlightenment” comports the utter disappearance of any entity… All perception as such is only a reflection in consciousness.

Similarly whatever the experiences, all of them happen only in consciousness.

The various events that take place in what we call “life” do not exist otherwise than as movements in consciousness. For all practical purposes, there is no apparent difference between an ordinary person and a Self-realized one, in their experiencing the usual sense objects; but there is a fundamental difference in their respective attitudes.

While speaking of an “experience”, the obvious inclination is to regard it as an event in itself; but no experience has any existence as such, because what is known as an experience is nothing but the effect of reacting to an outside stimulus.

The point is that an experience is never factual, but only conceptual. The Ultimate question of any experience, pleasant or unpleasant, must be: who (or what) is it that experiences? The answer must inevitably be “me”. An experience and a “me” can never be separate! When he was suffering from cancer, Nisargadatta Maharaj used to say, “I am the cancer”. It is only when the experiencing is interpreted, through the dualistic process of subject/object relationship, as an “experiencer” “experiencing” an “experience” (in the duration of a time sequence) that the experiencing assumes duality.

And in all these forms of manifestations, there is nothing other than consciousness.

Merely thinking about something (either about something in the past or about something in the future) is futile because the object, about which there is thinking, simply does not exist.

All objects and all words have merged in this state, and conceptualization has also ceased.

The place of duality is taken over by non-duality, and the “objective” relationship gives way to non-objective relationship.

The Jnani is aware that all perceptible “objects” are mere concepts in consciousness and, as such, have no real existence at all. And identification with it is bondage and dis-identification is liberation. In these verses, it is pointed out that (in the Self-realized state) a sage does not differentiate between dualism and non-dualism; because he does not accept them as different, but only as two aspects of the same thing…

What it means is that in no way can the identity of the noumenon and its phenomena be sundered: Noumenon is immanent in all the phenomena, while at the same time transcending them. This-which-we-are (the noumenal), while transcending that-which-we-appear-to-be, is immanent therein: their separation as such is entirely notional. It is in this indefectible identity —our absolute totality —that one realizes, with firm conviction, that “one” could not possibly exist as an autonomous individual apart from the “other”.

Identifying with that which has an experience is what the ordinary person does; being-the-experience is what the Self-realized person does.

When Nisargadatta Maharaj was very ill with cancer, and used to be in great pain, he would say:”I AM the pain.” He has also realized that the “past” and the “future” themselves do not exist, because they are nothing more than a suppositional theoretical apparatus useful only in dualistic living.

That state is beyond the operation of space and time, and all duality. In that immanence of the Absolute, all relativity is lost.

This state has negated not only the duality of phenomenality and non-phenomenality, but all other inter-related concepts and dualities of name and form.

Most important of all has been the realization of the absurdity of a “me”, a mere objectification having a supposed “will” by which “it” can exercise a personal independent “choice”. When one is convinced that living is a sort of dreaming (in which he has no control over his actions), all tensions cease and a sense of total freedom takes over; so that he is prepared to accept whatever comes his way as proper and right, in the totality of the living that this dream-life is. The point is that the apperception of life as a dream makes abundantly clear the lack of autonomy or independence, so far as the “individual” is concerned; this makes it clear what one is not, which in turn brings about the knowledge of what one is.

Whatever a Jnani does, is not done with any specific purpose; therefore, it matters nothing to him whether he does it or not, or whether something comes of it or not.

Unattached, formless, and the witness to everything — that is what you are.

The Jnani is indifferent. He does not hanker after more pleasures nor does he refuse whatever comes his way. The point refers to the presence of volition, or purpose or intention, in the case of an ordinary individual, and its absence in the case of the Jnani.

The apperception of the Jnani includes the understanding that “volition”…has no real basis at all, because individuals who are supposed to have the choice of “decision and action” in fact do not… Wanting something positively, or not wanting anything negatively, are both aspects of volition. In the case of the Jnani, there is no volition, either positive or negative. The absence of volition comports the absence of identification, with any separate entity; because such identification is the very basis of volition. If there is no separate entity, who (or what) will choose and want something, and strive for it? In other words, the Jnani has apperceived the fact that all inter-related opposites such as “likes” and “dislikes”, “love” and “hate” are conceptual…

Such apperceiving is the state of non-identity: the “identified” man gets involved, the “non-identified” watches the show as a witness. We are not separate independent entities who “live”, but are merely characters who are “being lived” in this living dream. Having apprehended this very clearly, the Jnani merely witnesses himself being lived. The Jnani is not concerned; but the ordinary individual will feel gratified or frustrated according to whether the “event” satisfies his purpose and intention, or not. But the Jnani is not present in such actions as the pseudo-subject, supposedly directing such actions and reactions. In the case of the Jnani…the observer and the observed can have no existence apart from each other…In such observing, which is witnessing, there is neither the “self” nor the “other”, none to hate or to love. The Jnani has long since given up his identity, and is in complete apprehension of the fact that there is no “individual” doing anything.

Whatever acts the Jnani may seem to be doing, it does not affect him, for he does not associate or identify himself with the doing.

In that state of the Jnani, the volitional attitude is only apparent—all actions actually take place spontaneously.

Therefore the Jnani may utter whatever comes to his lips, but his Samadhi is never broken.

When Nisargadatta Maharaj was once asked what he would do in certain circumstances, his answer was: “I don’t know”. The obvious point of the answer was that, since there was no identification with any entity, whatever happened would be a spontaneous reaction, a noumenal response to a particular set of circumstances prevailing at that moment. In circumstances which might seem similar (to an ordinary person), the Jnani’s reaction – on two different occasions – may well be the exact opposite! All “doing,” of all kinds, is functioning of the Prajna, and it could operate through (or by means of) any phenomenal object, any sentient being…All the seeing, talking, or any other “doing” is part of the aspect that this manifested universe is. It is in this sense (of the absence of any “me” doing the talking) that the sage says that while the Jnani may appear to utter whatever comes to his lips, his Samadhi is never broken. It is in this sense, too, that the Chinese Masters have said that the Buddha preached for nearly fifty years, but not a single word passed his lips.

In this Self-realized state of the Jnani, the eight-fold Yoga has no place and it seems as lusterless as the moon in daytime.

For the Jnani, whatever action he does is his “discipline” and his unrestricted way of life is his Samadhi.

Nisargadatta Maharaj was very clear and specific in his views regarding the question of disciplinary practices, including meditation. His point was that Yoga and all its achievements are at the level of conceptualization in space and time; and are of no spiritual value, in the absence of apperception of what-we-are…. He wanted to make clear that such disciplinary practices (of whatever nature, however unselfish, or difficult) and the expected Liberation are not related; as cause and effect. Liberation, however, is actually nothing but the liberation from the very concept of bondage. Belief in what-we-think-we-are is “bondage”, realization of what-we-are is “liberation.”

The most essential element was a very clear apprehension of what-we-are. Maharaj used to say repeatedly: “Understanding is all.” And by understanding, he did not mean merely an intellectual comprehension. The hazard of any kind of disciplinary practice is that essentially the means and the end are likely to get utterly confused. Some seekers might end up in frustration when they find that long years of such practice had brought them nothing… Some others might fall by the wayside having mistaken some puerile spiritual “powers” as the ultimate goal.

In this state, the devotee and God become one, the path becomes the destination, and the entire universe becomes [empty].

In that state (of Self-realization), worshipping and not worshipping, action and non-action would lose their separateness and opposition.

In that state, where there is no separate existence for God as such, how can there be any question of “connection” or relationship between God and the devotee?

In this state, all conceptual separation between the self and the other, devotee and God, here and there, and all other inter-dependent opposites, disappears. The point, that is made here, is that separation between the devotee and his God has never been real: what seems like transcendence noumenally, is actually immanence phenomenally. It is essential to remember that the “normal” is not the separation but the integration, although our conditioning makes us think otherwise. When this conditioning is overcome, as in the case of a realized being, the excessively outward positive factor is counterbalanced by an intensive inward negation of the pseudo-entity… In that experience comes the realization that the sought is not different from the seeker, that the seeker is the sought. In this experience there is no “self” and no “other”.

It is necessary to always bear in mind — and this happens naturally and spontaneously, after Self-realization — that objects as such can have no existence other than as their appearance and interpretation.

Apart from what is obvious on the surface of what is said, what Jnaneshwar seems to convey is the deeper message that God is not an object. [Nor are “you.”]