Religion and Social Values :25.

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3: The Reason for Birth and Death : 4.



This is a story which, to some extent, also explains our condition. We are in hell. We may say that we are not in a stinking place. Yudhishthira was not able to breathe. He was in darkness; and it was an awful atmosphere in which he was. But we are not in that condition. We are happy. Here is the blazing sunlight. We have oxygen to breath. We have food to eat. What is wrong with us?
That we are totally ignorant of what has happened to us and what is happening to us, and we are not able to know that we are in this state of ignorance, can be said to be a worse state than the one in which Yudhishthira was. Yudhishthira was in a better state because he knew what was happening and where he was standing. He knew that it was a very undesirable, awful atmosphere. But we think this is paradise.

This is the bondage of man. Man’s bondage does not necessarily consist in absence of currency notes or any physical amenities, but in his incapacity to know where he is standing. Ignorance is bondage; knowledge is freedom. It is not gold and silver that can make us free, not authority over people that can make us free, and no accumulation of the different particulars of the world can make us free—because they are, in a way, comparable to a dreamland where we may rule like Ashoka, Alexander the Great or his grandfather, but it amounts to nothing finally. All the glory of the dream world is a dream indeed as long as the dream continues. It is worse than a bubble, because even a bubble has its own reality. We are here in the space-time and material complex of dream, completely under the control of a magic which deludes the whole personality, root and branch. And even our thinking is deluded. Reason operates in dream. And what reason? The dream reason operates. Such is our intellect, our scientific achievement, our rationality, our genius; it is a dream genius, dream poetry, dream art, dream achievement, dream wealth, and dream emperorship. All is wonderful. How wonderful it is to be an emperor in dream! But we know the substance out of which this experience is made.


Such is the experience out of which our world is made. “The world is made of such stuff as dreams are made of,” said Shakespeare. A great eternal truth: the world is made of such stuff as dreams are made of. What is the stuff that the world is made of in dream? Can you tell me it is made of wood or brick, iron, gold or silver? What is the substance out of which the world of dream is made? You have to think very deeply to give an answer to this question. Vainglorious, mirage-like, unsubstantial, hollow experience is the substantiality, solidity and permanency of the dream world. What a contradiction! It appears to be a permanent experience. We can rejoice. We have the great joys of life even in dream. We can rule Earth and heaven there. But there is no substance in that experience.

To be continued  ...



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