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VICHAR MALA. Am I, or an o t, the five sheaths ? Freed from all doubts, why the Supreme Self is fully cognised, there all dumhomerges.
Afilo refers to the five sheaths viz : foodful, respiratory, mental, cognitional and blissful. Self, pervading them like a thread is called thread-soul (Sutratma), and he is BRAHMA. To know him so, and recognize him as quite distinct from them, and to remove all doubts concerning him " whether or not am I the five s' eaths ? * is the finale of knowledge. To this effect, the testimony of the Sruti is " When perception of that BRAHMA follows, a person is freed from all doubts which used to affect his heart, and he has no more need of works."
"So long as a person lives, he should serve his Guru, and Iswara and study the Shastras with reverence and faith," 80 say the Shastras ; ad lest the author be taken for an ingrate he shows reverent to his Gury in the following strain :
Mother and father, brodber and friend, Spiritual preceptor, king, and life : Anath says, Guru is superior to them all; For," he gives knowledge and cognition.
A Guru (spiritual preceptor) is giver of visible knowledge of Self. He is superior to mother, father, brother, friend-who does a good act without expecting any return-the family deity, king and even one's life. For mother and father by giving birth to a son make him a subject of misery by instilling into him the acquisition of material comforts, educating in that way and otherwise befitting him to be entranced into the meshes of illusion ; but a real professor creates in his pupil a desire of release which finally ends in his disenthralment aud the acquisition of BRAHMA, whose sole essence is joy.
He is luminous like the Sun, He illuminates the mind and expands it;