# The Inner Path: 5

Voice 1 (pauses, seized by wonder): I understand jivanmukti—liberation in life. But who is the videhamukta, the disembodied one? Is he beyond even that?
Voice 2 (speaks with the quietness of silence itself): He—who has forgotten himself. Neither the feeling "I am Brahman" remains, nor any longing for liberation. He is consciousness without sound.
Voice 1 (falters): Then has he no existence at all?
Voice 2 (slowly, like a river without current): He exists in his own nature, yet does not call himself "I am." No sense of time lingers, no "I," "you," "this," "that." He is that—of whom nothing can be said.
(Voice 1): Is he then a knower? A meditator? An ascetic?
(Voice 2): He is no one, yet all. He has no identity, for name and form find no foothold in him.

Both together (softly, their voices mingling in the still water of silence): He is neither awake nor asleep, neither in meditation nor beyond it. He is one eternal knowing, which has neither breath nor word.

Voice 2 (emerging from the depths of stillness): He cannot be seen, yet he is all. He cannot be touched, yet he is the primal form of touch itself. He is the videhamukta—without "I," with "I." Neither waking nor sleep, neither consciousness nor unconsciousness. He is before the word "I," he is that—who exists by not-existing. No boundary between living and dying, no experience, no memory. What is not, is—the disembodied one, utterly complete.

Voice 1 (filled with wonder, asks in reverence): Then all that I see, all that I touch, think, remember—is that too the Soul?
Voice 2 (speaking with an invisible certainty): Yes... all that is—inert and conscious, waking, dreaming, sleeping—all is Soul.
Voice 1 (pausing, reflecting): Then these five elements? Earth, water, fire, air, sky?
(Voice 2): They too are Soul. This entire play of name and form is the Soul's game. The Soul, forgetting itself, dances in its own dance.
Voice 1 (overwhelmed by emotion, as if touching the shore of understanding): Then there is no "I" and "you"? Fear, greed, sorrow, anger—are these all illusion?
Voice 2 (impersonal, steadfast): All is Soul, the Soul's transformation. The very thought "you" that you think—that too is Soul.

Both together (in a spiritual note, as if two waves of the same ocean): Everywhere Soul—within and without, in love and in pride, in death and in birth. Nothing exists but me. And that "me" is Soul.

Voice 2 (in the final lines, in waves of deep consciousness, in a meditative cadence, awakening the silence): See yourself, know yourself—all that you see is but different forms of yourself.

...I am the tree, I am the bird, I am the shadow of wind, I am the river, I am the stone, I am the illusion of fire. I am the depths of sorrow, I am the song of joy, I am the line of consciousness, I am the breath of silence. There is nothing but me—all seeing and hearing, all form and taste—all is Soul, all is I.