Ramana Maharshi Comparision Of Our Body To A Radio

[Guest guest]

THOSE who have realized the Self remain uninvolved,even when they are

engaged in everyday activities.They are always in a state of utter

stillness. Bhagavan himself has described this in the thirtieth verse of the

Supplement to Reality in Forty Verses.

 

“The mind that is devoid of attachments, though it may appear to be engaged

in activity, is in reality inactive — just as the mind of a person listening

to a story might wander off to a faraway place.â€

 

Once, in the Jubilee Hall, we were all listening to the radio. At the end of

the program the names of all the artists were announced.Bhagavan said, “See!

The radio sings and gives speeches. It even announces the names of the

performers. But there is nobody inside the radio. Our existence is also like

that. The body might appear to walk and talk and perform a number of

functions, but in fact there is no individual inside the body. Everything is

God.He alone exists.†Bhagavan continued, “The concepts of time and space

are also imaginary. When we listen to a concert on the radio are we bothered

about the exact time and location at which the concert took place? What

difference can it make to our enjoyment of the music? Whether the concert

took place in Hyderabad or in Madras, we can listen to the music and derive

the same degree of enjoyment sitting right here in this hall.

 

The wise one does not attach any importance to concepts of space and time.

One has to go through certain situations in a given lifetime and for this a

body is required.That is the only reason for acquiring a body. One goes

through various experiences, without getting involved in anything. To an

ordinary person, worldly experiences

seem real.An ordinary man might think that a liberated person has all the

experiences that others have. But the liberated person has no attachment to

the body and therefore physical experiences hold no significance for him.

 

The jivanmukta has the same attitude towards his body that a railway porter

has for the luggage he carries.Just as the porter carries the luggage up to

the destination and lays it down at that spot, the jivanmukta carries the

body through the pre-ordained experiences of a lifetime and at the end of

the course he lays down the burden with relief. The porter thinks of the

load on his head only as a burden; he does not identify with it on a

personal level. That is why he feels no regret when he puts it down. It is

the same in the case of a jivanmukta. As he never thinks of the body as

having any personal significance, he feels no sorrow when the time comes for

him to leave the body.â€

 

During the last days of Bhagavan’s earthly life, when his devotees besought

him to retain the human form for a long time, Bhagavan used to say, “A jnani

(a realised soul) knows that the sole purpose of acquiring a body is to

enable the spirit to attain knowledge through experiences.Do we feel sad

because we have to throw away the used leaf-plate after a meal? In the same

way, a jnani discards the human body without any regret or sorrow.â€

 

Sources:

 

1) Cherished Memories, by Kanakammal

2) http://arunachala.org.ashrama.org/newsletters/2010/mar-apr.pdf

 

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