A person who declares himself as Self-realized is not Self-realized because he is unaware of the fact that he is not the Self but the Self is the Soul.
A person who realized the ultimate truth or Brahman will never declare he is Self-realized. If a person says he is Self-realized he is still ignorant.
If you think you are self-realized, but you still say "I," and if you feel the ‘Self’ is the ‘I’, you are not a Gnani. You are simply ignorant with your accumulated dualistic intellectual knowledge accumulated from here and there.
Upanishad's say:~ "He who thinks he knows, does not know." This means that to know anything implies a second, an object of knowledge, hence duality, i.e. no Gnana.
Ashtavakra Samhita: ~ "The man of knowledge (Gnani), though living like an ordinary man, is contrary to him and only those like him understand his state.
A person who realized the ultimate truth or Brahman will throw off his religious robe and all religious identity and lives like a commoner. He never identifies himself as Gnani nor does he identify himself as superior to others. He only shares his knowledge with fellow seekers.
A Gnani never identifies himself as a Guru or a Yogi or someone disciple. The one who accepts himself as a Guru or someone’s disciple is not a Gnani.
There is no liberation for a person of mere bookish -knowledge, howsoever well-read in the philosophy of Vedanta, so long as one does not give up the false identification with the body, sense-organs, etc., which are unreal.
Even friends and family members of a Gnani will not know him as the Gnani. Due to ignorance, people will not be able to recognize a Gnani. Outwardly the Gnani behaves as an ordinary person behaves. A Gnani talks and jokes like others, but he is not understood as he really is. People may regard him as an exceptional person, but only a few can recognize him as a Gnani.
Sage Sankara himself said: ~ A Gnani "bears no outward mark of a holy man" (Stanza 539).
Thus, it proves that the intellectual who declares himself he is self-realized, the religious Gurus and yogis are not Gnanis because they identified themselves as holy people. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar
