The Atma Bodha concludes with the 68th verse that is called the ‘Phala Shruti’ or the benefit of studying the text and putting the ideas into practice. The self, I, or Atman is independent of directions. It is not confined by space. Time or indeed any other object or thought cannot bind it. It is present everywhere and hence has access to all places.
A glorious life awaits the person who meditates on this timeless, spaceless, directionless self, which is present everywhere. ‘Bhaja’ is to serve. Whenever we pay attention to something we are actually serving that cause. If we think a lot about movies, we are serving movies and to the extent that films can serve us they will do their bit to give us the experience of joy or sorrow.
While everything is limited in this world, the only limitless entity is the self or consciousness. When we constantly pay attention to it every day through the process of listening and reading about it, contemplating and meditating about it, it serves us in return. When one is serving the cause of the purifying water source of the self within not by devoting part-time attention but paying full attention to it exclusively by day and night, by virtue of their service and attention, the object they have served will rebound to offer its best to us.
The best it can do is to offer its own self-existence, knowledge and bliss. This reservoir of the self cannot be meditated on by participating in innumerable activities expecting different results for our experiences of joy. It has to be done to the exclusion of all other actions. In brief, you have to sit quietly, silently in meditation to serve and experience the self.
The Upanishads point out that this ever-present consciousness removes all duality in our life such as cold and heat of the atmosphere that is experienced by the body; joy and sorrow that is experienced by the feelings; and praise and censure that is known by the intellect. Consciousness knows everything, including duality.
The one who serves consciousness or meditates on it comes by to experience happiness eternally without a trace of sorrow. Just as the nature of consciousness is pure, the realised being also becomes free of any taint of personality. Just as awareness is present everywhere and hence omnipresent, he too gets the power to go anywhere he likes and has no experience of death as he has touched the immortal part of his own being. The Atma Bodha or Knowledge of the Self concludes with this realising of the blessings of the seer of the self.