Talk 607.

[Guest guest]

17th January, 1939

Talk 607.

Sri Bhagavan said to Lady Bateman:

There is a fixed state; sleep, dream and waking states are mere movements in it.

They are like pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show.

Everyone sees the screen as well as the pictures but ignores

the screen and takes in the pictures alone. The Jnani however

considers only the screen and not the pictures. The pictures certainly

move on the screen yet do not affect it. The screen itself does not

move but remains stationary.

Similarly, a person travels in a train and thinks that he moves.

Really speaking he sits and reposes in his seat, and it is the train

which is steaming fast. He however superimposes the motion of the

train on himself because he has identified himself with the body.

He says, “I have passed one station - now another - yet another

- and so on”. A little consideration will show that he sits unmoved

and the stations run past him. But that does not prevent him from

saying that he has traveled all the way as if he exerted himself to

move every foot of the way.

The Jnani is fully aware that the true state of Being remains fixed

and stationary and that all actions go on around him. His nature

does not change and his state is not affected in the least. He looks

on everything with unconcern and remains blissful himself.

His is the true state and also the primal and natural state of being. When

once the man reaches it he gets fixed there. Fixed once, fixed ever he

will be. Therefore that state which prevailed in the days of Pathala

Linga Cellar continues uninterrupted, with only this difference that

the body remained there immobile but is now active.

 

There is no difference between a Jnani and an ajnani in their

conduct. The difference lies only in their angles of vision. The

ignorant man identifies himself with the ego and mistakes its

activities for those of the Self, whereas the ego of the Jnani has

been lost and he does not limit himself to this body or that, this

event or that, and so on.

There is action in seeming inaction, and also inaction in seeming

action as in the following instances:

 

1. A child is fed while asleep. On waking up the next morning, he

denies having been fed. It is a case of inaction in seeming action.

For although the mother saw him take his food the child himself

is not aware.

 

2. The cartman sleeps in the cart when it jogs along the way in the

night and yet he reaches the destination and claims to have driven

the cart. This is a case of action in seeming inaction.

 

3. A man appearing to listen to a story nods his head to the speaker

but yet his mind is otherwise active and he does not really follow

the story.

 

4. Two friends sleep side by side. One of them dreams that both

of them travel round the globe and have varied experiences. On

waking the dreamer tells the other that both of them have been

round the earth. The other treats the story with contempt.

 

The lady protested that dream and sleep do not make any appeal to

her. She was asked why then she should be careful about her bed

unless she courted sleep.

She said that it was for relaxation of the exhausted limbs, rather a

state of auto-intoxication. “The sleep state is really dull, whereas

the waking state is full of beautiful and interesting things.”

 

M.: What you consider to be filled with beautiful and interesting things

is indeed the dull and ignorant state of sleep, according to the Jnani:

Ya nisha sarva bhootanam tasyam jagrati samyami.

The wise one is wide awake just where darkness rules for others.

You must certainly wake up from the sleep which is holding you

at present.