Shloka

अहं नैव मेयस्तिरोभूतमाया
तथैवेक्षितुं मां पृथङ्नास्त्युपायः ।
समाश्लिष्टकायत्रयोऽप्यद्वितीयः
सदातीन्द्रियः सर्वरूपः शिवोऽहम् ॥३॥

ahaṃ naiva meyastirobhūtamāyā
tathaivekṣituṃ māṃ pṛthaṅnāstyupāyaḥ ;
samāśliṣṭakāyatrayo’pyadvitīyaḥ
sadātīndriyaḥ sarvarūpaḥ śivo’ham .3.

English Translation

I am not hidden by Maya [I have conquered Maya] and so have not to be enquired into (searched for). Similarly there is no independent means at all to see me. Though I am surrounded by the three bodies (Sthula, Sukshma and Karana — gross, subtle and causal), I remain ‘secondless’. I am ever beyond the senses. I have the form of all. I am the auspicious (Brahman).

Accompanying notes to English Translation of Nirvana Manjari

Sri Sankara Bhagavatpada points out in His Satasloki that an actor who comes on the stage personating a lady does not ever forget his own manhood and similarly the Self embodied in ever so many ways cannot forget his essential nature as the true, conscious and blissful Reality. That is, nobody can he oblivious of his own nature. The Self is not therefore anything to be searched out or proved to exist by any extraneous means of proof but is ever a present and self-proven entity which however requires to be recognised properly. To see an external object, we require light and good eyes. As the Self is not an external object, such aids as these are not only unnecessary but cannot in any way help us to see it. Self-analysis or Self-introspection is the only way to self-realisation and even that does not really make us realise the Self but helps us to get eliminated the non-Self factors which prevent a perfect perception of the Self. Those factors are the three bodies, the physical body of flesh, blood and bone, the subtle body consisting of the vital breath, the faculties of perception and action, the mind and the intellect, and the causal body of ignorance, the seed of all experience and action, good and bad. These only cloud the real nature of the Self but cannot in any way affect that nature, particularly its essential unrelatedness to anything else. It remains therefore ever Single and without a second. Though it pervades all things, it is not perceivable by any sense of perception or affectable by any sense of action because of its very all-pervasiveness which prevents it from being limited enough to be perceived or affected. That all-pervasive transcendental Self am I.

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