So he makes it clear how to get rid of that which does not exist and when that which does not exist is removed, what remains is what does exist, which is ever self-shining and also our real nature.

when we are told that all phenomena are just an illusory appearance, should we not consider to whom they all appear?

The primary texts of vēdānta are the prasthānatraya, the ‘triple origin’ or ‘triple source’, namely the Upaniṣads, Brahmasūtra and Bhagavad Gītā, and these contain a wide variety of spiritual teachings suited to the needs of people at different stages of spiritual development, so they can be and have been interpreted in many different ways by the

if you look carefully at the snake, you see it is a rope. If you look carefully at ego, you see it is pure awareness. It ceases as ego and it remains as pure awareness. That is, it ceases to appear as ego.

However, though the awareness that is aware of things other than itself is just a seeming awareness, which appears (in waking and dream) and disappears (in sleep) and is therefore not real, it could not seem to exist if it were not supported by the one awareness that actually exists.

Verse 38: If we are the doer of action, we will experience the resulting fruit, but when one knows oneself by investigating who is the doer, actions and their fruits will cease to exist.

guru is not a person but the eternal reality that always exists and shines in our heart as our own being, ‘I am’.

‘What actually exists is only ātma-svarūpa [the ‘own form’ or real nature of oneself]’.

In other words, it comes into existence as an erroneous conflation of what is aware, namely ‘I am’, with what is not aware, namely a body, because it is what is always aware of itself as ‘I am this body’.