When can there be total recognition that the world is unreal?

A friend recently wrote to me, ‘Could you tell me whether realisation would be like deep sleep with no world present or would there still be a world but with total recognition that it is unreal. I feel driven to understand but seem to be going round in circles’, to which I replied:

What is ‘the I-feeling’, and do we need to be ‘off the movement of thought’ to be aware of it?

In a comment on one of my recent articles, How to attend to ourself?, a friend called Viveka Vairagya wrote, ‘I think I have finally been able to figure out the I-feeling or “I am” feeling. It seems to be nothing but the inner sense of awareness (or consciousness or being)/self-awareness one has when one is off the movement of thought, correct?’ There are several points in this statement that need to be clarified, so this article is addressed to Viveka Vairagya and will seek to provide more clarity on this subject.

Can our mind be too strong for our actual self to dissolve it completely?

In a comment on one of my recent articles, We can separate ourself permanently from whatever is not ourself only by attending to ourself alone, a friend called Viswanathan cited an extract from an interview in which David Godman said, “This is a key part of Bhagavan’s teachings: the Self can only destroy the mind when the mind no longer has any tendency to move outwards. While those outward-moving tendencies are still present, even in a latent form, the mind will always be too strong for the Self to dissolve it completely”. Citing the final sentence from this statement an anonymous friend wrote another comment in which he asked: “David Godman, did you say ‘mind stronger than the Self’? I can’t get this. Is ‘the Self’ (our essential self) waiting for the mind to grow weaker so that it can dissolve it completely? How then was the partial dissolution taking place till then? Further, why did not the mind, while strong, dissolve ‘the Self’, if it all boils down to strong dissolving weak?” Since I doubt whether David would have read these questions, in this article I will reply on his behalf, though I may do so in somewhat different terms than he would.

Why should we rely on Bhagavan to carry all our burdens, both material and spiritual?

In a comment on my previous article, What is the logic for believing that happiness is what we actually are?, a friend called Sandhya wrote, “I remember reading in some book, where Bhagavan said, ‘don’t take all the burden on yourself, but transform all that to God’ using train/luggage carried by us analogy. If all the burden was created by the ego and if God is aware of not the ego nor the burden, how can one rely on God to carry the burden?”, so this article is my reply to her.