What is Knowledge : Ch-8-2.

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Chapter-8 : Control of the Instruments of Knowledge.2.

Now we are being told the opposite, as if we are not to exist at all in the world, when it is said that the senses are to be restrained. The restraint of the senses would imply the diminution of all happiness in life, inasmuch as for us there is no happiness minus sense activity. This is a problem of the common man, and man in general.

The necessity to restrain the senses arises due to a fundamental feature which is characteristic of the universe as a whole. We have heard again and again that, finally, it is impossible to consider the universe as an object of the senses. The world around us is not really ‘around’ us. The world that we see is really not something that is ‘seen’, but is a little different from what it appears to us.

The world is not an object of the senses; and if the world is not an object of the senses, and if the senses cannot think of the world except as an object, there is something seriously wrong with the senses – which would also mean, consequently, there is something seriously wrong with our idea that happiness is only sensory. One consequence follows from an accepted premise.

Swami Krishnananda
  To be continued ....


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