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I am the Soul
61
and was bothered by a hundred and one questions that none could answer. He sat brooding over them trying to find the answers within himself.
He thought, ‘They are burning the body now, what was there in it before? What was it that activated the body? Where has that thing gone now? What happened of it? Why are these people burning up the body?' After a deep contemplation over the happenings, he came to the conclusion that there had been some wonderful force in the body, which was responsible for the activity, and that force had gone away. Then what was that force?
Brothers! You must have seen so many dying, burning bodies. Perhaps, you would even have lit a pyre or two. But did this question ‘how and why' ever strike you? You may say, “We know when life goes out of the body, it is a carcass, and that is why it is burnt. We don't need to think about it. Raychandbhai was just a kid not knowing anything, that is why he had all those questions.” Not so, Brothers! On the contrary he was more knowledgeable than any of us, and it was this knowledge that stirred awake his consciousness. His awakened soul took him deep into introspection and that led to his realising that what left the body was some animate element, the soul. Soul was responsible for the life in the body and when the soul left, the body had to be consigned to flames. Hence body and soul are different. Once this difference became clear, the turmoil within him subsided.
As he stood there atop the tree, he then recollected his previous lives. He could sense that this realisation of the duality of the body and the soul had occurred to him in earlier births too. Not only this, but also that he had led a saintly life earlier, and that his was a soul very much immersed in the hues of renunciation and detachment. Oh Brothers! At that innocent age of just seven years, his mind took the turn towards the soul. At that young age for the first time he saw the physical death of somebody and his soul was awakened. His nature and leaning were all pervaded by the soul.
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