Questioner: Acharya Ji, pranam. Ramana Maharshi says, “Since the self is free from the notions of knowledge and ignorance, how can it be said to pervade the entire body in the shape of sentience or to impart sentience to the senses.”
“Wise men say that there is a connection between the source of the various psychic nerves and the Self, that this is the knot of the heart that the connection between the sentient and the insentient will exist until this is cut asunder with the aid of true knowledge that just as the subtle and invisible force of electricity travels through wires and does many wonderful things, so the force of the Self also travels through the psychic nerves and, pervading the entire body, imparts sentience to the senses, and that if this knot is cut the Self will remain as it always is, without any attributes.”
And then comes the question, what is the knot of the heart connecting the sentient to the insentient? I suppose the knot is that of ignorance. Is the Maharishi speaking of discretion to identify the false from the true or something else? What is the force of electricity referred to in the text?
Acharya Prashant: You See, there is the physical process of the body and then there is the consciousness that is longing for the self because it is rooted in the formless self. Therefore, saints and wise people have always wondered and therefore speculated that there must be someplace, some point where these two meet. Otherwise, the existence of the human being is not possible. The human being is such an impossible confluence. The sentient and insentient, Jad and Chetan, the material and the para-material converge in the human being.
