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intellect is now the support and guide, while the main light of the Atma gets turned off. That is why there is so much confusion! The Atma had not changed at all. Nothing about the Atma has been spoiled and neither has anything affected it.
When a person goes out, does his shadow not keep following him around? All this is just like a shadow. If someone gesticulates like this in the shadow, raises a finger in the air, raises two fingers in the air, turns to look this way and that way, and all that, would not you think that he had gone mad? In the same way, when a person attains the awareness of his own Self, it is as though nothing has happened, as he becomes free from circumstances. This is only a coming together of circumstances and nothing else. And if someone ran around in the street, trying to shirk off his shadow, would the shadow go away? If he ran this way, he would see it behind him, and if he turned around, he would still see it. So no matter which way he turned, would he not still see something? So the shadow will not leave him. Now if someone said to him, 'Go inside your home', the shadow would finish.
So it is just that the belief has become wrong, and nothing else. The Atma has not bound any karma, and all that is gone on, is just a load of perpetuated inaccuracies. If it did bind karma, then it (the binding of karma) would become its permanent swabhav (nature; tendency), and a permanent swabhav would never leave. These are just misconceptions that have been knocked into people. The Lord said something different and people understood it differently. They cannot understand a single word of what the Lord had said, in these times! They cannot let go of anything, and they are affected with endless worries and external problems (upadhi). The Gnani Purush knows what all this is! Lord Mahavir knew this, but how could He say anything? You cannot speak openly. I may speak freely amongst this small group of people, but I could not be so open in front of five-hundred people. If you told someone,
