WHAT IS BONDAGE- 4

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Dear Friends,

Hari OM

Considering oneself to be his body, mind and intellect is the bondage. This is what we have been discussing in the previous submissions. " Such a wrong idea comes to a supremly foolish man", says the scriptures. Foolishness is the result of

Tamas ,the non-apprehension of Reality, which overwhelms an individual when the potential discriminative power of his intellect is not available to him under the binding effect of Tamas(Ignorance). Such a thing generally happens in the dream condition. The intellect is slowly overcome by sleep. The discriminative power available during waking condition, slowly gets clouded, and a large portion of it gets veiled by sleep. With the remaining little discrimination when we look at our own thoughts, we start living in the dream-world projected by our mind. When we wake up from our dream, the full power of discrimination is available to us , and our dreams roll away. The dream can not exist when discrimination works fully. Let me cite an example. When somebody drinks half a bottle of whisky or swallows a couple of LSD pills or takes a few puffs of opium,

virtually his discriminative capability gets clouded by the unconscious state that has set in him. With whatever little discrimination is left in him when he moves about he feels' funny ' and starts seeking things which are not there. The gutter looks inviting enough for a nap for such a person. He mistakes a standing man for a lamp-post and feels like leaning on it. If such a drunken fool is given two or three blows on his head, his discrimination suddenly increases and he starts behaving more decently.

Likewise, what we think as one hundred percent discrimination in our waking condition is, in fact, only probably five or ten percent of the potential of discrimination lying dormant in us. Had this total potential of discriminative power were to become available to us, that is to say, if Tamas has been completely eliminated and the intellect has become completely pure, then by such a Satvik intellect, one can come to comprehend the Truth all by oneself. Truth becomes self-evident to a Satvik intellect. A foolish man`s intellect gets veiled by

Tamas and he suffers from lack of discrimination. In that tragic condition he mistakes the non-self for the Atma. If a snake is believed to be a useful rope and if a person picks up the snake thinking it to be a rope, let us imagine the unnecessary agony which that fool is bargaining for! What would be the condition of such a mad man who has dragged the snake thinking it to be a useful rope. This is precisely what is happening in our lives. The body is misunderstood as the Self (

Atma). The consequences are a house, a wife, a car,plenty of money,anxieties of how to procure it, having procured how to keep it, and having kept it, the responsibility of guarding it day and night, television, air-conditioning, pleasure, parties, entertainments and recreations..... all these can heap unnecessary , meaningless agonies upon our heads. The more we identify with the body, the more are our life`s botherations. Earlier, I had stated that considering the non-self to be the Self was the bondage. A second cause for bondage is holding on to an unreal thing. These two are essence of all bondages.

 

(to be continued)

G.Balasubramanian