thoughts, the cause of pain

May 25, 2007

Mr. Varma, Financial Secretary of the Posts and Telegraphs Department, Delhi: He has read Paul Brunton’s Search in Secret India and The Secret Path. He lost his wife with whom he had led a happy life for eleven or twelve years. In his grief he seeks solace. He does not find solace in reading books: wants to tear them up. He does not intend to ask questions. He simply wants to sit here and derive what solace he can in the presence of Maharshi.

Maharshi, as if in a train of thoughts, spoke now and then to the following effect:

It is said, “The wife is one-half of the body”. So her death is very painful. This pain is however due to one’s outlook being physical; it disappears if the outlook is that of the Self. The Brahadaranyaka Upanishad says, “The wife is dear because of the love of the Self”. If the wife and others are identified with the Self, how then will pain arise? Nevertheless such disasters shake the mind of philosophers also.

We are happy in deep sleep. We remain then as the pure Self. The same we are just now too. In such sleep there was neither the wife nor others nor even ‘I’. Now they become apparent and give rise to pleasure or pain. Why should not the Self, which was blissful in deep sleep, continue its blissful nature even now? The sole obstruction to such continuity is the wrong identification of the Self with the body.

The Bhagavad Gita says: “The unreal hath no being; the real never ceaseth to be; the truth about both hath been perceived by the seers of the essence of things.” “The real is ever real, the unreal is ever unreal.” Again: “He is not born, nor doth he die; nor, having been, ceaseth he anymore to be; unborn, perpetual, eternal ancient, he is not slain when the body is slaughtered.” Accordingly, there is neither birth nor death. Waking is birth and sleep is death.

Was the wife with you when you went out to the office, or in your deep sleep? She was away from you. You were satisfied because of your thought that she was somewhere. Whereas now you think that she is not. The difference lies in the different thoughts. That is the cause of pain. The pain is because of the thought of the wife’s nonbeing. All this is the mischief of the mind. The fellow (i.e. the mind) creates pain for himself even when there is pleasure. But pleasure and pain are mental creations.

Again, why mourn the dead? They are free from bondage. Mourning is the chain forged by the mind to bind itself to the dead.

“What if anyone is dead? What if anyone is ruined? Be dead yourself - be ruined yourself”. In that sense there is no pain after one’s death. What is meant by this sort of death? Annihilation of the ego, though the body is alive. If the ego persists the man is afraid of death. The man mourns another’s death. He need not do so if he predeceases them (by waking up from the ego-dream, which amounts to killing the egosense). The experience of deep sleep clearly teaches that happiness consists in being without the body. The wise also confirm it, speaking of liberation after the body is given up. Thus the sage is awaiting the casting off of the body. Just as a labourer carrying a load on his head for the sake of wages bears the burden with no pleasure, carries it to the destination, and finally unburdens himself with relief and joy; so also the sage bears this body, awaiting the right and destined time to discard it. If now you are relieved of one half of the burden, i.e., the wife, should you not be thankful and be happy for it?

Nevertheless you cannot be so because of your physical outlook.

Even men who ought to know better and who have known the teaching about liberation after death etc., glorify liberation along with the body and call it some mysterious power of keeping the body eternally alive!

There will be no pain if the physical outlook is given up and if the person exists as the Self. Mourning is not the index of true love. It betrays love of the object, of its shape only. That is not love. True love is shown by the certainty that the object of love is in the Self and that it can never become non-existent. (Maharshi cited the story of Ahalya and Indra from Yoga Vasishta in this connection.)

Still it is true, pain on such occasions can only be assuaged by association with the wise.

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi