Religion and Social Values :25.

-



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  ...



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is Knowledge : Ch-5 -3.

-
Image
Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-3. What are you going to understand when you are trying to understand yourself? Where is the object? And which is the subject there? When I see an object, I say, "I see this. I know this table, this desk, this person, this something that is in front of me"; but I am not in front of me, so I cannot make such statements in regard to my own self. I cannot say, "I am seeing myself"; nor can I say, "I am touching myself". These statements, which usually apply to persons and things outside, do not apply to our own self. Hence, this understanding may not be adequate for the purpose of understanding your own self. All knowledge fails when it becomes a means to the knowledge of one's own self, though it becomes a great success when it is a weapon to know what is not itself. There is this peculiar difficulty which is easy to miss, because of the fact that the only thing that we miss in our daily o...
Read more

What is Knowledge : Ch-4. Part-4.

-
Image
Chapter 4 : Yoga – An Integration of Consciousness. Pat-4. It is only the discriminating consciousness that feels dissatisfied with its present achievements. Ignorance is bliss, and when we know nothing about what lies ahead of us, and we are not even conscious of there being anything at all beyond our possessions and our areas of operation and action, we are kept in a state of This ignorance also brings a sort of joy, because of the disconnection of consciousness from the awareness of there being something beyond itself. So, the ignorant person is happy, and we too are happy, though we know very well that our very physical existence here is not secure. It is a terrible insecurity in which we are placed, and the next moment's fate of our physical existence is not known to any wise man in the world; yet, we are happy. This is an instance of how ignorance can be bliss. However, yoga is that art of awakening the sleeping consciousness of the human individual to...
Read more

VEDANTA FOR BEGINNERS - 23. SWAMI SIVANANDA.

-
Image
  ----------------------------------------- Sunday, January 03, 2021. 08:06. AM. 3. ADHYAROPA OR SUPERIMPOSITION-2. Post-23. -------------------------------------------------- You are in search of a rope. You find one. But in the dark you mistake it to be a snake. You run away from it. You search all other places in the house and fail to find a rope. Your brother brings a light and shows you the rope which you mistook for a snake. You now see the rope. Just as you found the rope in the snake itself, even so, you will see Brahman in the objects of the world themselves. You cannot run away to the mountain-caves in search of Brahman. You have to practise seeing the Lord or Brahman in each and every object around you. When you are able to cognise the Reality underlying the objects, you will no more be deluded. ------------------------- The highly exalted Brahmanishtha-Guru for whom there is no world comes down from his exalted state to teach the disciple. He is even then fully consciou...
Read more