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I am the Soul
51
a gulabjamoon and I shall not ask for anything else”. Yet if you are sick, and then you get a gulabjamoon, it will act like a poison. At another time you may be steeped in sorrow and your mind is all upset, and if soembody places a gulabjamoon before you, would you like to eat? On the contrary you may get angry and say, “I don't even want to see it. Get this out of here". Why does this happen? You said it gives you great pleasure, didn't you? But no, when the mind is upset even a thing of pleasure begins to hurt.
Brothers! An inanimate thing cannot give us happiness or sorrow. Those are feelings stored within us, mere figments of our imagination. When this truth is clear not only to our intellect but also to our feelings, then we will be disenchanted with such inanimate things. Then we can eat what we get, wear what we find, live as we are required to. Disenchantment develops thus, towards things and towards passsions.
When the senses do not lean towards passions, and if they do, not for long; that is vairagya, disenchantment.
वैराग्यादि सफळ तो, जो सह आतमज्ञान, Successful relinquishment is achievable when it is accompanied by atamjnana, the knowledge of self. For successful disenchantment limiting our passions and attachment is a precondition. Only then will the realisation of self be possible, not before that. A person who thinks that following this religion will help him achieve the atmajnana, know his Self, then before his urge could be satisfied he has to first invoke a disenchantment within himself towards the inanimate. This disenchantment will break the attraction for the inanimate, and then the thoughts can be directed towards the soul. The discerning ability that is guided towards the soul will rest only with the acquisition of atmajnana, the realisation of the soul. What this effort of achieving our Self is, is a topic for another day.
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