[saurab]

When Ramana Maharshi had cancer in his arm, and someone accidentally touched that arm, he reacted and said something like: Dont touch it. Somehow I am controlling the pain.

And what did he say at other times ? That "I am not the body". To me that is a pretense, a deliberate falsification of his reality as also being the body but perhaps not just that. No one who has a body is above body consciousness. you might say that he "has" a body but is not the body. But that is not only the case. If that was the case he wouldnt have reacted. Some of his awareness must have been entangled in his body, and so he was ALSO the body. Wherever your awareness goes, you are partly that also (but maybe not just that).

So, the idea that there should be no sense of doership is not correct. The body and the mind does everything, and the advaitists say that they are not the body and not the mind, but the actionless atman. But as long as they have the body and the mind, and a part of their awareness is sucked up by the body and the mind, they are ALSO that (body and mind).

There is another reason why the teaching that there should be no sense of doership is harmful as long as awareness also flows into the body and the mind, and that reason or danger is that you may relinquish all responsibility for your mental and bodily actions, by saying I am the atman, for me there is no doership, I am free. But as long as there is the body and the mind, one MUST take full responsibility of the bodily actions and the mental actions. ALL ELSE is either pretense or accepting the words of the ancestral sages and saints.