Guest guest Posted October 30, 2007 Report Share Posted October 30, 2007 Continuing from the earlier message, i complete this topic by providing some more extracts, as under, from the same book. ----------------------------- I am what i AM, a confused, confounded entity. At one moment i am sweet little thing, at another, a terrible monster, because of variety of gratifications of my physical demands of lusts, mental demands for emotional satisfactions and because of my perturbed intellect, tossed by its endless mischievous thoughts. somehow, I am aware of all this. Yet I cannot get out of it. Why this helpless bondage? All this pernicious sorrows arise because I, the Atman, misunderstand myself to be the not-Self (an-atman). Suppose in a drunken mood you misunderstand yourself to be your own shadow. Terrible suffering must then start for you. You find that you are lying down on the road, and the traffic is incessantly passing over you. Your head is sometimes in the filthy, way-side gutter. You refuse to move because you are being dargged. Thus, all the sufferings of the Shadow become your sufferings. A simple misunderstanding that you are your shadow becomes the source of a chain of terrible sufferings. Similarly, the misunderstanding, "I am the anatman", is the spring-board for all bondages and limitations that are suffered in voiceless agony by our personality. To end this misunderstanding would be redeeming at once our personality from the encrustations of matter and its tyranny. One who is released from the tyrannies of matter is a God-man on earth--Perfect, free, liberated totally from the weaknesses which characterise a mortal. GOD, apparently sufering the sorrows of persecuting matter is man (human) In the dream when i forget my real nature, I identify with the things projected by me in the dream and suffer the consequences. The sufferings of the dream last only till i wake up. The moment i wake up and realise my real nature, all the sorrows of the dream end. When in a drunken state i forget my real nature, i keepthe wrong relationship with the world around me, and consequently, i come to suffer. A mad man, because of some psycological changes in him, forgets himself, and start behaving wrongly in the world around him. In the same manner I, who am God, the Paramatman, the pure self, not understanding myself, in the Non-apprehension of my real nature, start creating misapprehensions. Then, identifying myself with the not-self, which i am not, i come to suffer the pains of existence created by myself for myself. This identification with the not-Self in each one of us is the cause of our life's sufferings. In a cinema-hall, we identify ourselves with the hero or the heroine on the screen. We feel happy at their happiness and agony at their sorrows. ----- Many Salutations ! to Jagadguru Adi-Shankaracharya and Swami Chinmayananda. Om Tat Sat Utpal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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