Realisation

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Now, philosophy insists that there is a joy which is absolute, which

never changes. That joy cannot be the joys and pleasures we have in

this life, and yet Vedanta shows that everything that is joyful in

this life is but a particle of that real joy, because that is the

only joy there is. Every moment really we are enjoying the absolute

bliss, though covered up, misunderstood, and caricatured. Wherever

there is any blessing, blissfulness, or joy, even the joy of the

thief in stealing, it is that absolute bliss coming out, only it has

become obscured, muddled up, as it were, with all sorts of extraneous

conditions, and misunderstood. But to understand that, we have to go

through the negation, and then the positive side will begin. We have

to give up ignorance and all that is false, and then truth will begin

to reveal itself to us. When we have grasped the truth, things which

we gave up at first will take new shape and form, will appear to us

in a new light, and become deified. They will have become sublimated,

and then we shall understand them in their true light. But to

understand them, we have first to get a glimpse of truth; we must

give them up at first, and then we get them back again, deified. We

have to give up all miseries and sorrows, all our little joys.

 

" That which all the Vedas declare, which is proclaimed by all

penances, seeking which men lead lives of continence, I will tell you

in one word--it is `Om'. " You will find this word " Om " praised very

much in the Vedas, and it is held to be very sacred.

 

Now Yama answers the question: " What becomes of a man when the body

dies? " " This Wise One never dies, is never born, It arises from

nothing, and nothing arises from It. Unborn, Eternal, Everlasting,

this Ancient One can never be destroyed with the destruction of the

body. If the slayer thinks he can slay, or if the slain thinks he is

slain, they both do not know the truth, for the Self neither slays

nor is slain. " A most tremendous position. I should like to draw your

attention to the adjective in the first line, which is " wise " . As we

proceed we shall find that the ideal of the Vedanta is that all

wisdom and all purity are in the soul already, dimly expressed or

better expressed--that is all the difference. The difference between

man and man, and all things in the whole creation, is not in kind but

only in degree. The background, the reality, of everyone is that same

Eternal, Ever Blessed, Ever Pure, and Ever Perfect One. It is the

Atman, the Soul, in the saint and the sinner, in the happy and the

miserable, in the beautiful and the ugly, in men and in animals; it

is the same throughout. It is the shining One. The difference is

caused by the power of expression. In some It is expressed more, in

others less, but this difference of expression has no effect upon the

Atman. If in their dress one man shows more of his body than another,

it does not make any difference in their bodies; the difference is in

their dress. We had better remember here that throughout the Vedanta

philosophy, there is no such thing as good and bad, they are not two

different things; the same thing is good or bad, and the difference

is only in degree. The very thing I call pleasurable today, tomorrow

under better circumstances I may call pain. The fire that warms us

can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire. Thus, the Soul

being pure and perfect, the man who does evil is giving the lie unto

himself, he does not know the nature of himself. Even in the murderer

the pure Soul is there; It dies not. It was his mistake; he could not

manifest It; he had covered It up. Nor in the man who thinks that he

is killed is the Soul killed; It is eternal. It can never be killed,

never destroyed. " Infinitely smaller than the smallest, infinitely

larger than the largest, this Lord of all is present in the depths of

every human heart. The sinless, bereft of all misery, see Him through

the mercy of the Lord; the Bodiless, yet dwelling in the body; the

Spaceless, yet seeming to occupy space;

 

Infinite, Omnipresent: knowing such to be the Soul, the sages never

are miserable. "

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued