Sue Moon’s Blog

From the book How to Know God by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

Knowledge or perception is a thought-wave (vritti) in the mind. All knowledge is therefore objective. Even what Western psychologists call introspection or self knowledge is objective knowledge according to Patanjali, since the mind is not the seer, but only an instrument of knowledge, an object of perception like the outside world. The Atman, the real seer, remains unknown.
Every perception arouses the ego-sense, which says: “I know this.” But this is the ego speaking, not the Atman, the real Self. The ego-sense is caused by the identification of the Atman with the mind, senses, etc. It is as if a little electric light bulb would declare: “I am the electric current” and then proceed to describe electricity as a pear shaped glass object containing filaments of wire. Such identification is absurd – as absurd as the ego’s claim to be the real Self. Nevertheless, the electric current is present in the light bulb, and the Atman is in all things, everywhere.