Religion and Social Values : 30.

3: The Reason for Birth and Death : 9.


The point is, the fact of other people accepting our notion that the land belongs to us does not explain the belonging of the land to us. The explanation has to come from the deep root—the grass roots—of the experience itself. In what way are we possessing this land? Is it under our grip? Are we holding it in our palm, carrying it on our head? It is difficult to say how it belongs to us. It belongs only in a peculiar movement of our head. A wave of the mind is concentrating itself on a consciousness of a relationship called possession. So land or no land, the joy of possession is only the consciousness of possession. If the consciousness is absent, the land may be there or may not be there, but it is not going to help us in any manner. We cannot eat this land. It cannot become part of our body. As a matter of fact, we cannot swallow any material which we regard as our possession.


In fact, possession is a concept; it is not a material occurrence. We cannot materially possess money, we cannot possess our wife and husband, we cannot possess children, we cannot possess anything. We can have no such connection except in a conceptual operation of our mind in a peculiar manner—whose essence we ourselves cannot understand. Here again we are in illusion, like the space-time complex.


The concept of relation is the essence of philosophical discussion. All philosophy of the East or the West is only a study of relationships—how one thing is related to another thing. The relationship of ‘A’ to ‘B’ is a distinction that is drawn between ‘A’ and ‘B’ together with a conception of the connection between ‘A’ and ‘B’. See how mysterious relationship is! If ‘A’ is connected to ‘B’, there should be a non-distinguishable connection between ‘A’ and ‘B’. If they are non-distinguishable, they become identical. If they are identical, there cannot be a relationship; and if they are really different, there cannot be a relationship. There is an illusion in the form of relationship. It does not exist, finally. But, it exists in the mind. Therefore, the mind is the maker of man, and the great gospel of the scriptures that the world is made up of mind, finally, has some sense.

To be continued  ...