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VICHAR MALA.
not-Self can never be removed or destroyed, please therefore speak unto me the means of knowledge.
Replies the Guru.
Leave off inclination for the world first, Wife, children, home, keep your thoughts from them, Regard them as poison, all material comforts : Avd avoid passions and desires.
Pupil! The world which.is a means for the accomplishment of material gratification, must first be discarded and all inclination for it should be repressed, because attachment to earth and its goods is antagonistic to knowledge, as mentioned in the Panchadasi:--"When Jiva who is the reflected shadow of intelligence begets an inclination for, or attachment to worldlife, and gratification of desires by the accumulation of wealth etc., he can never have cognition of the luminous or Self-illuminated uniform Intelligence [Brahma]." Therefore leave off all attachment for wife, children, house, wealth and the rest, as mentioned in the Gita about want of attachment in the individual qualified for knowledge. { " In him there is no attachment for son, wife, home, nor has be any affection for them.” Moreover, material prosperity infatuates a person like one who has taken a narcotic poison, because it is opposed to knowledge.
To this effect Ashtabakra says "A person desirous of release abandons all inclination for material well-being and shews no attachment to them.” Then again, abandon passions and desires; for Bhagavan Sreekrishna says, “ the sensory organs have their desires etc., seated in their several subjects of perception, found and the rest, and a person desirous of release is never subject to them, because they are opposed to his path of knowledge."
To help it, defects are now being attributed to material objects mistaken for objects procuring happiness.