"The Vedanta appears among explicit doctrines as one of the most direct formulations possible of that which makes the very essence of our spiritual reality. (...) The Vedanta of Shankara  , which is here more particularly being considered, is divine and immemorial in its origin and by no means the creation of Shankara, who was only its great and providential enunciator. (...) According to the Vedanta the contemplative must become absolutely ’Himself’; according to other perspectives, such as that of the Semitic religions, man must become absolutely ’Other’ than himself —or than the ’I’— and from the point of view of pure truth this is exactly the same thing." [SPHF, chapter 2]

Intellection, inspiration, revelation. These three realities are essential for man and for the human collectivity. They are distinct one from another, but none can be reduced simply to a question of realization. The realized man can have inspirations that are – as to their production – distinct from his state of knowledge, [NA: There are very many instances of this: thus Shri Ramana Maharshi   said that his stanzas (Ulladu Narpadu or Sad-Vidya) came to him as if "from outside." And he even described how they became fixed in his will.] but he could not add one syllable to the Veda  . Moreover inspirations may depend on a spiritual function, for instance on that of a pontiff, just as they may also result from a mystical degree. As mind without the collaboration of his will.

Man is at once subject and object: he is subject in relation to the world that he perceives and the Invisible that he conceives of, but he is object in relation to his “own Self”; the empirical ego is really a content, hence an object, of the pure subject or of the ego-principle, and all the more so in relation to the immanent Divine Subject which, in final analysis, is our true “One-Self”. This brings us to the Advaitin inquiry “Who am I?”, made famous by Shri Ramana Maharshi; I am neither this body, nor this soul, nor this intelligence; what alone remains is Âtmâ.

Sometimes the concept of “image” can be understood in a larger sense, going beyond the question of works of art: it may be acknowledged that in the case of Shri Ramana Maharshi, for example, it is the sacred mountain of Shiva, Arunâchala, that serves as a permanent symbol of the Principle that was concurrently “incarnated” in the sage, and which was thus his true body; inversely, one might say that the body of the Maharshi was a manifestation of Arunâchala, of the earthly lingam of Paramashiva, in human mode. In an analogous way, the disciples of Ma Ananda Moyi   might consider her as a human manifestation of the Ganges in its aspect of “Mother,” which is to say that worship in the environment of this saint could coincide, in the absence of other supports, with the traditional worship of Mother Ganga. In the case of Ramakrishna, there is no doubt that the image which represents him adequately, and for purposes of worship, is that of the Shakti, not under the terrible aspect alone but rather, indeed, as she appeared to the saint, under the aspect of beauty and maternal love.

Moreover it must not be forgotten that the ego, as a natural factor, has a positive side like any other phenomenon of nature; the injunction "love thy neighbor as thyself" implies that it is permissible and even necessary — and in any case inevitable — to love oneself; it would be the height of hypocrisy for social theorists to deny the existence of this self-love. This complex of attitudes, so easily reducible to the absurd, is left behind only in Nirvana, where there is no self left to love, nor indeed any "neighbor"; it was in this sense that Sri Ramana Maharshi was able to say: "Is the dreamer, when he awakens, supposed to wake all those of whom he was dreaming?" [The Vedanta]